the bossbabe podcast - 375. Overcoming Burnout, Being The Breadwinner + Tapping Into Your Life Force Energy

Episode Date: May 7, 2024

Your superpower as a female founder, the REAL FORCE behind our biggest revenue months, truths about burnout, the energetic leaks quietly sabotaging your success, being the breadwinner in your family, and literally SO much more. Pouring from an empty cup has become the new normal for many female founders – the hustle culture mentality + the demands of being a mama and breadwinner in the family only adds pressure and stress… but in order to truly thrive, build a sustainable business, and create harmony personally & professionally, we’ve got to prioritize the different cycles + seasons we go through and understand when to sprint and when to pull back. This episode dives so deep into the energetics, mindset, practices, and strategies to help you do exactly that! TIMESTAMPS 0:00 - Coffee Talk + Life Updates with Natalie & Lindsay 04:41 - The Mental Load Of Being A Mom + Business Owner 08:11 - Women Experience More Burnout Than Men, Cycles As Our Superpower, Hustle + Burnout Culture 15:40 - Working Like A Cow VS A Lion  17:28 - Working In Cycles, Working Like A Man, Life Force Energy = Making SO Much Money 19:00 - Money Energy, Creating Rhythms + Seasons For Growth 21:20 - When Is Enough Enough? Full Capacity vs. Full Potential 24:00 - Shakti Activations + Executing From A Depleted/Burned Out Place 27:20 - Big Leaks In Your Business + Relationships 33:18 - Natalie’s Process For Writing Content That Created Big Sales Spikes At Bossbabe 40:40 - Tech Detox + Doing Less More Intentionally 42:28 - Being The Breadwinner In Your Family, Support Within Relationships 50:00 - Responsibility For Leaders, Inner + Outside Sides Of Holding Your Team Accountable 52:00 - 4 Things To Look At If Someone Isn’t Doing Their Job 58:06 - Wrap Up + Closing Thoughts RESOURCES + LINKS Join The Société: The Place to Build A Freedom-Based Business Get Our Weekly Newsletter & Get Insights From Natalie Every Single Week On All Things Strategy, Motherhood, Business Growth + More. Drop Us A Review On The Podcast + Send Us A Screenshot & We’ll Send You Natalie’s 7-Figure Operating System Completely FREE (value $1,997)  FOLLOW bossbabe: @bossbabe.inc Natalie Ellis: @iamnatalie

Are we the generation of burned out women? We as women have been trained to work like men. We've been trained to completely ignore that we are cyclical human beings. Being at full capacity doesn't mean I'm at full potential and actually being at full potential is going to require me to be at a low capacity. If someone's not doing their job, there's four things that you want to look at welcome back to the bus bay podcast lindsey welcome to austin i am so excited about the seoma retreat this week oh my goodness i love it here sometimes i'm like yeah do i need like a partial year home here steven would probably be less annoyed with me if I was like a neighbor and not like a house guest I'm not gonna protest you moving to Austin I know I don't think I can handle the summers honestly I'm very good at enrolling my friends into this specific neighborhood

so you are you have quite the tribe around here I love it um I just got back from Newport Beach it was absolutely incredible we just did a full week there it was absolutely amazing it was a mix of work and play it went with my grandparents who were in town for a month it was so good like weeks like that just remind me of the beauty of having freedom in your business like to actually enjoy life and like do life things it was incredible i love that area I feel like in California that's one of the best parts of California to live like you're close to amenities the beach is right there it's not quite as busy as LA I don't know that I could live in LA again

or at least not right now in this stage of life that I'm in LA is so busy and there's so much going on all the time especially like if I had a baby or toddler and it must be chaos yeah we don't need any more of that are you feeling chaos right now well I mean just kids like you know oh you're you're your solo individual very cute little girl doesn't feel like chaos to me but having two boys who are constantly loud and touching each other is chaotic to me yes touching each other i've said this before there's something about boy mom life that maybe girls do this too but like they're they're constantly touching each other constantly and it causes noise because one or the other of them reacts and then they fight and i'm like why are we why are we touching so no I mean just touches me 24

7 that's cute though like actually 24 7 her latest is when I'm on the toilet like actually crying if I'm not having her on my lap I'm like what is it about no personal space yeah I think that's a I mean that's an age that like i don't know what brain development it is right around two but it's it's like that they start to realize they're separate from you right and so they need they need like the reassurance of attachment to mom it's a thing yeah it's a real thing but steven doesn't deal with any of this he always goes to the bathroom in peace i literally have to announce my departure and then ask him to safeguard my bathroom time and then i still get knock knock knock knock mama i miss you mama

where are you mama open the door i'm like oh my goodness i got like steven sometimes just takes his phone and i swear just sits in there for like half an hour just to escape just to this is real no okay so I spoke in an event a couple weeks ago when we were sitting around the table and we were just chatting about like I don't know how this came up we were all talking about men and pooping and every single there are eight women at the table every single woman's husband it was like 20 to 30 minutes and I was like wait why like why and the same in my life and I'm like what are they doing in there and then they come out their legs are asleep and they're like limping around like I've tried it because it's so quiet in there and I've I've taken my phone sat in there and thought you know what

I'm gonna get 20 minutes of reading my kindle like I'm gonna take a leaf out of his book I never get left in peace there's always something Natalie do you remember where this is Natalie what do we do with this mama mama lift me up mama can I see you mama hi mama let me get the tissue paper for you I'm like oh my goodness just give me five you gotta use the upstairs bathroom or something you gotta come up here where like you can there's a baby gate she can't get to you and Stephen has to watch her downstairs oh that is a good that's a good that's a good call that's a really good call I mean not right now because you have so many house guests true but generally that's a good I lovingly refer to your house as Hotel Ellis and it really is it's very it is I love it thank god we've got a lot of space and separation lots of it for you

I love it how does it make you feel like have thinking of having a second kid when you think of how much Noemi needs you right now and how like you don't have personal space does that factor at all into how you're feeling about like oh the mental load of two kids yeah definitely does last night me and Stephen were lying in bed and um just knowing Noemi's gonna be two in literally one to two weeks we were scrolling through we went all the way back to the day she was born and just scrolling through and then that newborn weeks we were scrolling through we went all the way back to the day she was born and just scrolling through and then that newborn bubble we were in and having that conversation around that newborn bubble was so blissful and incredible that first three months before I went

back to work and definitely we were talking about it's not going to be like this with the second baby because it's not just like we were just I was lying with her on my chest we were just like watching tv and I was just resting and you know healing and all of that it feels like it's going to be a completely different ball game with baby number two because there's the toddler who also wants all of your attention so it definitely um I mean I'm not pregnant but I definitely have some nerves thinking about baby number two and how it all is going to go. And also we were at a friend's birthday. He just turned two and we bumped into some friends of ours who have four kids under six. And he was like, oh, how are you guys doing? Are you back in Austin? I'm like, yeah, we're actually leaving in a few weeks to go back to the UK.

We're going to do summer in Europe again and then summer in California and just like get, and it was like, oh, so how's baby number two coming? Because I don't think that's happening when baby number two comes. And I was like, what do you mean?

And he said, yeah, well, it's just a whole new level of chaos and it'll be a while before you have that kind of travel again. I'm like, okay, yeah, definitely getting anxious about that. I mean, it's hard not to like, until you know, obviously, it's like all things in motherhood. It's like, well, there's always the opinions until you know, but I do think like, it is

true. The second one, the newborn bubble is so different because you have your, I mean, I wholly, wholeheartedly believe that like, you just infinitely have capacity to love however many kids you have. So it's not like you don't have the capacity for it but you definitely don't get the kind of rest that you did I don't think with the first one because because you do feel like you need to have some one-on-one time and and they don't necessarily understand that your mobility is limited and things like that you know um but yeah I don't know thinking back to those days I'm like man I really pushed myself to to like try to be fair to Sawyer with time but I don't know that that's the right approach either

I think you can choose to to say like it's not going to traumatize Noemi to take a few weeks of really focusing on a new baby and healing and you know she'll be resilient I also love when people who when when you have a second kid you don't really need like a baby shower or anything you know you don't need a lot of gifts for the second baby but I always love um I learned this from my friend Jackie but every time that anybody in her life has a second baby or a third baby she gets gifts only for the older kids so like when the new baby comes home she buys presents for the older children to be like, you get something, you know. So here's a coloring book.

Here's new books to read, like stuff. So they feel like they're thought of in all of it, too. And I was like, that's really interesting. So there's those kind of things you can do, too, to be like, here's some stuff for older, for Noemi when the baby comes home to make it a little bit like more interesting, more at her level. Well, we're getting way ahead of ourselves, yeah yeah so we can we can think about that later um one thing on my mind because she's so cute and she's running around she is so cute um okay one thing that i wanted to talk you about um i was at an event a few weeks ago and this just kept coming up and i just want to have a conversation about it i'm just feeling like are

we the generation of burned out women and why and what do we do about it I was speaking at an event there was 100 women there and um one of the women on the panel said put your hand up if you're currently burned out or you have been burned out uh recently and I would say 97 of those 100 women put their hands up and I just looked at that room and I thought if this was a room of male entrepreneurs I just don't think it would be the same statistic and maybe I'm wrong and I'm open to being totally wrong I just don't feel like it would be the same statistic I don't hear Stephen talk about being burned out like I don't hear that being a topic of conversation with his friends i know we're feeling stretched and having a lot on but i don't see that as much and i could go into so many

reasons why i think it is i think there are a lot of reasons we could talk about them but i feel like burnout is a real problem for women especially in our generation of women for sure i mean same at the event i was at the same week and you were speaking it it was a big source of conversation around like do less better um which i think is another way of saying like i've tried to do too many things and i'm doing them all me like with a mediocre level of excellence and that doesn't feel good and so even if i don't label it as burnout, I'm not doing the combination of things I'm trying to do isn't my best. Right. Um, and so that, yes, I think it is that we are that generation and I have lots of thoughts on where that comes from, but what you said about men, it's interesting to me. Cause I'm like, I wonder if

they, is it that they don't feel it or is it that like they don't have the vocabulary or or like the the emotional somatic attack like um connection to know that that's burnout that they're experiencing like because i swear i've seen men and talk to men who are are having feelings about like doing too many things or not doing what they want to be doing or feeling all this pressure based on you know where they've gotten themselves in their lives but then they like they don't have they don't necessarily think that it's not normal or they they are afraid to admit it because it's not masculine you know to to feel like you can do it all I don't know so I'm just like as an offshoot I'm like interesting I wonder if burnout is something our whole entire generation experiences and women just feel it and are able to kind of identify it better because we it tends

to like manifest in our bodies um whereas maybe men don't have the somatic connection but not an expert on it i just think it's it's fascinating potentially i also think about though let's say the week you're ovulating right for me I feel like I have boundless energy I need less sleep I'm just generally happier more productive you know feel I wouldn't say I ever feel burned out when I'm ovulating just really feel very differently to other phases in my cycle and obviously men don't have cycles so i just wonder do they have a consistent level where their body maybe needs less rest they feel more energized like what that i just wonder is is some of it to do with our cyclical nature too and actually we try i do think i will say in our

society i do think we as women have been trained to work like men we've been trained to completely ignore that we are cyclical human beings we have been trained to like hustle have more like i also think men tolerate like tons of coffee and like things that might burn your adrenals a little bit more than women do or maybe specific times in women's cycle you know men we know can fast more than women so I feel like there's an element of men and women are built very very differently they go through different cycles and we are we work like men a lot of times versus honoring that we are women and and I don't And I don't think needing more rest. So I don't think being cyclical or any of these things makes us weaker.

Or, you know, makes us not as good at business or anything. I actually think it could be our superpower when we're tapped into it and we're using it. Because I think it allows us to have different lenses of looking at things. Different ways of... I think it's a real superpower but I do feel like when we work like men we burn out oh a thousand percent and and I agree with the cyclical nature um and I think there's lots of science that proves that you know from an energy standpoint and obviously men have like pretty consistent hormones every day of the month

um and I also I mean there's all the things too, of our generation. And I do, I do think that the millennial woman, you know, who's even some of the, the older Gen Z people that I speak with who are like mid twenties, like there's this major pressure to, um, to like be independent, you know? And, and I, I think women read that call differently than men do too. And, and I don't, I don't know all the nuances to it. I do want to like learn more about this from a, a like psychology standpoint, but I remember feeling this really hard push through high school and, and out like getting kicked out into the world, going to college, all these things of like, you have to be independent. Like you've got to make your own

money. You have to be, and it wasn't even so much about achievement anymore. It was more about like, like I didn't necessarily have to be the best at everything, but it was like, I have to be able to survive. You know, I have to be able to be independent. And some of that I think came from my mom, you know, they, my mom and dad were divorced. And so there was this whole like money mindset around independence and not wanting to be reliant on a partner because you might get divorced, you know, that I think is baggage that I, you know, carry from my mom. And, um, but also I feel like our culture really pushes women to work like men. Yeah. And like have the same, like live up to the same financial earning capacity

that men have. And then all we talk about, or a lot of what we talk about is how like, we're working just as hard as them, but we don't get paid as much, you know? And so it kind of reinforces this like, well, I'm working so hard, but I'm not getting that much as much out of it. And I think that psychologically burns us out. Cause I'm like, damn, I feel like I'm doing everything I can and I still can't make ends meet made or I'm still not making as much money as I wish I were, or I want to be making. Um, and so there's, there's the true like nervous system burnout we experienced. Like our body's truly getting past capacity physically. And then I think we have this like psychological burnout where like, I feel like I'm putting

so much work into everything I do and it, it's not working. And then I, the, like I ruminate much work into everything I do and it, it's not working. And then I, the, like I ruminate and churn on that. And, and I think some of that rumination and churn might be more of a feminine thing than a masculine thing. Um, so that's interesting to me as we talk here. I'm like, Oh yeah, I do that for sure. Like I make, I make things bigger. I burn myself out mentally, like by churning and ruminating, probably more than physically burning myself out. That makes sense.

For me, I feel like whenever I burn myself out, it's because I follow that excited energy. You know how I've seen, I've seen a quote, I think it was Naval talking about how so many of us work like cows, like very consistent, we're grazing day after day after day when actually so many of us are lions we sprint and feast and then we slow down we sprint if we slow down i feel like i burn myself out when i try and combine the two when i have these when

i'm doing the grazing when i'm just making like I'm very busy on a very steady um schedule so there's not really many breaks but then I get that big excited energy like that lion energy where I have an idea I go full force at it but none of the other stuff gets taken off my plate that's where I find I get burned out and my practice has been on a general basis week to week making sure that actually my plate isn't full and my schedule isn't full and so that it allows for that lion energy to have that idea to go sprint after it to have that project that I go hard in then I take a rest then go hard in that project and take a rest and I'm trying to bring that into the business one of the reasons that we've implemented the four-day work which by the way kicks off in is it a week I'm so excited

about it next week is because I feel like we've had a sprint we've had a launch and now I want people to take that summer to to slow down so that they can gear up for the next sprint because we're a female only team and I think there's a lot of power in that I think we have to be able to work in that cycle and give ourselves that breathing room we're all very creative to slow down to be able to not be firing on all cylinders so that we can then fire on all cylinders so that part is how I get burned out but also I so it's interesting because I feel like I've always earned more than almost every man I know um and I do earn more than any man I know or any man I'm friends with or close to but I feel like that for me never comes from working like a man I have definitely

worked like a man in the past and I and I my hormones were very, very screwed up as a response to that. I no longer do that, but I earn significantly more. And I actually think that, I know this is like very woo-woo, but if we talk like really filled up with life force energy and really filled up with creativity and things like that, I make so much money. And it really isn't to do with how much I'm grinding and hustling. And people ask me about money mindset. You've seen it on the team. Like, can we have an episode on money mindset?

People ask me about money mindset and i don't really have like a framework or a teaching around money mindset because to me money comes from me having life source energy and being so filled up with life force energy and being so creative then i make shit tons of money but if i am depleted if i started working like a man and i started ignoring all my cycles, I started ignoring the fact that I need to be filled up. If I started working like that, I would then find myself burned out and not earning. So it's really interesting. Like I don't, maybe there is money mindset stuff in there, but it doesn't feel like money

mindset to me. It feels like money energy, if that makes sense. No, it doesn't and what it makes me think about is you know to be able to have back to the cow and lion analogy like to be able to have space in your work rhythm in your life rhythm to have lion seasons you have to manage your life like a cow right like you have to create stability and you have to create a life like a cow, right? Like you have to create stability and you have to create a daily rhythm that's like, okay, this is what we do as baseline. And in doing that, like this is the nuance that I think is so important to hear is like, you can't book

yourself out at 40 hours a week and think you're going to be able to have a growth season. Because if you're already at 40 hours a week capacity, then that means that your capacity is very full. You can't go into growth season. You can't be a cow. Well, the cow and lion analogy kind of falls apart at that point. But it's like you can't add the sprint energy on top of somebody who's just run a marathon, you know, like you don't have it left in the tank. The cow can't be a lion.

Right. Exactly. The cow can't be a lion. Exactly. So it's like you have to start your day as a cow and then leave. This analogy has gone awry. But I think what I'm getting at is like, this is such a thing that we talk about and that you, I think, have mastered. I don't think you do it intentionally because of money mindset, but you leave space and you communicate so clearly with us on the team when you feel like you don't have enough space for there to be you to be able to go

deep into something if you need to. And if the weeks that you get to full capacity, you're like, I don't, I don't like how this feels because I can't, I can't jump at something if I need to, I can't go into lion mode if something's wrong, because I'm so at capacity. And so I think especially as you get to be more successful and you've learned this, like the secret as you become more successful and you magnetize money to you and you grow is that you actually have to leave time open so that you can, if the lion opportunity comes along, you have it in the tank to jump. If you've been in full lion mode for weeks and weeks and weeks at a time, and you're going full capacity on and on and on and on, you are going to burn out, which means the next big thing that needs your attention, you can't jump at. And I think that's

why we, when we take that back down into real life, it's like when we're talking about what's enough, what is enough, you know, and when is enough enough. And I think a lot of us are like, well, it's only enough if I'm at full capacity. And, and I think the challenge that we have looked at and really worked through ourselves and we're building into the business is like, what, well, full capacity is one consideration. And, you know, when we're looking at team members and salaries and roles, like, yeah, we want, you know, we want to have a talk about capacity. And when you're looking at you and your relationship to your business and your lifestyle and how everything fits together if every piece of your life feels like it's at full capacity all the time you're burned out and I think that that is a lot

of what we've been conditioned to think is what we have to do like if you're not doing if you're not at full capacity and everything in your life you're somehow failing and I and I think that's a myth that millennials believe like I when I say that a lot, I'm like, yeah, I, I believe that if I'm not using my full potential all the time, I'm failing at something that means Lindsay, like little achiever, Lindsay is not doing her best. And I think that is hardwired into a lot of us and something that is really challenging to soften on. And, and you have, you know, what you're saying is you've figured it out where it's like, I've actually learned when I, when I have capacity left over and I can step back and I can sit in my capacity, I have this like infinite expansive, expansive

magnetism to let things come at me. And then as things come at me, shit, I can be a lion and jump at it because I have the capacity ready to go after it that's a that's mastery and I yeah you don't do it because you're like a money mindset master you do it because you've learned being at a hundred percent capacity all the time doesn't work yeah one thing I wrote down as you were talking about that was how I've realized that being at full capacity doesn't mean I'm at full potential and actually being at full potential is going to require me to to be at a low capacity because if you are doing doing doing you're leaving no space to think and evolve and when you're thinking and evolving then executing at that level you move up how much potential of yours that you are actually stepping into whereas if you are just doing doing executing

executing you're actually not stepping into more and more of your potential you're just executing at the same level of potential that you're at but every time I think about stepping into more and more of my potential it requires me to step back learn regroup reassess fill up again and then jump into something else but it's never like my capacity and my potential is um if i'm full with one i'm full with another that's that's been such an interesting realization for me i also i'm really excited i haven't told you yet i'm gonna do a shack deactivation for um our ceo mamas yay well we can't ruin that well i guess yeah they might be listening so we can't tell well i won't tell them what we're going to do but i'm i really want to help women tap into

more of this life force energy because i know what is so possible with it like i just have really feel the difference of when i am executing from life force energy how fun and energetic and expansive it feels versus when I'm executing from just a depleted tank it's a completely different ball game or just like the depletion and I also think that there's something to be said for like you know there's the spectrums there's like really lit up full of life force energy and then there's like fully depleted really really burned out which is definitely not where we want to be said for like, you know, there's the spectrums. There's like really lit up full of life force energy. And then there's like fully depleted, really, really burned out, which is definitely not where we want to be executing from. But I also think there's this like middle zone, like middle, middle end where it's like, you're kind of in it. Like you check the boxes, you're like on paper, getting it done, but the people around you or and maybe your clients can feel that you're

like meh and and I think that there's also that to be considered in this calculation around like capacity and potential because I think sometimes it feels worse to be in the like halfway in energy because then you're like I have potential here and I have days where I like the spark kind of lights up and and I feel it and then but then like this isn't really where I want to be or there's something else in my life that's draining me or whatever it may be. And if you're in that kind of like meh relationship with your business or your of my life force energy to anything especially a business i want it to be i want it to feel like yes it's it's my me and my potential and i want it to feel like it's very um additive to my energy and especially if it's my business being additive to my life right and and i think that that it's funny because i think a lot of people wouldn't

necessarily say they're fully depleted, but I think that they would say, I'm just like, I'm meh, you know, I'm not lit up. And, and, and I think we see that a lot in people we talk to and it comes up in CEO mom and stuff where it's like, I'm not, I'm not like so burned out that I can't do it. Or I'm, I'm, my health is being affected, but this isn't, this doesn't light me up the way it used to, or like, I'm just checking boxes. And how long do you want to go through your life? Just checking boxes. Like that's another big edgy question. I think for a lot of us, when we start to look at burnout and potential and capacity and like what we're conditioned to believe about ourselves,

I think a lot of us are conditioned to believe that like, it's worse to give up on something and go find the life force energy than it is to like stay in something and check boxes and and I really challenge that belief as someone who's been there and and years have gone by of doing something where I didn't feel passionate about it or lit up by it and it I do think over time that depletes you in like spiritual ways that that like actually overworking hours wise wouldn't it doesn't measure the same as it like the physical depletion of of overworking towards something you really want so I don't know that's another thing that I feel like has come up where

I'm like that's so interesting um I agree and I feel like that is kind of like there's like leaks yeah you might be doing the things you can do to fill up that life force energy but there's leaks and actually this brings me on to something else i was going to talk about this is a perfect segue a big leak can be not being surrounded by people that actually are let's say you work with them they're not holding themselves accountable they're not executing they're not doing what they say they'll do, that's really leaky for you. And that's going to deplete you even if you're filling up in all the ways, that is going to really, really deplete you. Or let's say, let's make it personal, let's say your partner actually isn't pulling their weight, that's leaky, that's going to deplete you because you start to build resentment. So it can

be personal or professional um and i did want to talk about how we can hold team more accountable because i get a lot of those questions as we talk about it but i think the more leaks you have you yeah you can do your work but if you're also not setting yourself up for success in your teams or your relationships and i've also been there in so many personal and professional ways you're going to keep finding yourself depleted and almost on this hamster wheel of like fuck I'm ticking all the boxes I'm doing all the things and I feel it rising and I feel myself getting excited and lit up about it and then xyz happens and it feels like this is taking so much of my energy that I actually can't

channel it in the places that I'm most excited about or that I want to. You might be like really aligned and on that path but if that's happening I think it's really leaky and it's hard. 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 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 yeah it's funny that as you write that out or um as you're talking i wrote down you know leaky energy and the source can be in the business people you work with your team like that kind of stuff it can be your relationship. And I wrote down inner

world because I also think there's, we can be energetically leaky in the way that we're treating ourselves or we're thinking. And like, we're, we're prone to like overlooking our own little things that we're doing that might be our, our, our inner practices or the food we're consuming, like how we treat ourselves can be this leaky energy source too. And I think it's the same way where you can, you can feel really lit up and really into something and then get sick or, you know, have your energy crash in the middle of the afternoon every day. And like, and, and then, and you, you can overlook it and not in not credit it to what it's actually causing it. Cause it's easy for us to be like, Oh, it's this or that or whatever, when it's truly an internal energy leak. And so I think

as much as we talk about team and relationships, it's also this challenge of like, and we've got to be treating ourselves well too. Um, and you and I talked about that a lot, but I think that that's something that our generation and a lot of women we meet who are leading businesses, we, we become, we become low on the list because there's so many other things that have to get done every day. And it is like we were talking before we pushed record that neither of us have showered yet today. And I'm like, I'm feeling it, you know, at this time of the afternoon that, you know, because we just got up and we got going on our day and there's no one is around and all this stuff. And it's like, I need to shower. Like, when am I going to do that? And, and, but it's so easy to be excited

about work and get going. And then these little things start to nag at you, you know? So I think that that's in, in looking at all these bubbles of our lives where we, we get to choose how our energy applies. It's, it's good to take inventory every once in a while and go, okay, am I truly lit up by this? Am I bringing my life force energy? Am I in a rhythm where I have capacity to jump like the lion if something does come up that I want? Or am I burning on all cylinders going full capacity for weeks at a time? And if I am, why? Is this what I truly want to be doing and and when is enough enough so um I like these kind of calculations and like these little energy audits that we need to do in our lives on a regular basis to go where's all my energy going does this feel fulfilling and

are there any places in my life where I'm just checking boxes because if that's the energy you're bringing to something like no bueno I agree and also hot take but I do my best creative work when I haven't showered really yeah I tell me about this before I had no I haven't showered oh before I had no me I would write so well in the morning before I've showered and brush my teeth and I know that sounds so gross but having like a long shower or spending too long getting ready in the morning can kind of pull me out of like a creative flow so before I was a mum my creative flow on writing days was I would get up make my coffee read a book journal and then dive into writing and probably brush my teeth somewhere in that but I wouldn't shower literally until after, at least after lunch. And I would be so in the zone. But as soon as I'd showered and got ready for the day,

my energy completely shift would shift. And then I'd be like ready for calls ready for like extroverting stuff. Now, obviously, it's a little bit different because I get up and I'm like, actually giving Noemi energy and stuff in the morning. But if I can delay like full showers and like full getting ready processes, I am way more creative. I don't know if there's like some kind of science-y to this, but there's a zone that I'm in when I wake up from sleeping that I'm taken out of when I'm like spending too long getting ready.

I mean, somebody should DM us and tell us the science that knows it because I bet there is science. But I have heard that of like, you know, writers that they get up and they literally like roll out of bed and walk five steps to their writing desk and they don't do anything else because it's like your mind

is in that like brainwave state where you can almost basically channel it out of you at that point versus having to think about it. But if you once you wake up your nervous system now your nervous system's a little more alert now you have to like think a little harder about how to create that makes sense to me i yeah it sounds like permission too to like do you boo like make your own schedule during the day whatever works and my process so when when um how how long ago was this probably five years so a big way that we would sell at boss

babe was through stories and i would always write these long clickable stories out and i would do it every single morning and we'd always have a call to action on them and i would always always always have the same routine every single morning i would wake up at like five or six early i was young had more energy i would wake up maybe five or six and make a bulletproof coffee and i would probably read for about 10 minutes and then i would sit and take an hour to create all my content for the day and i mean that fueled the business like that was 90 of businesses new revenue was coming in from that and i would always always have to do it before i shower and get ready i mean i honestly did it before i brush my teeth like i don't know why but

that would pull me out but my content would be on another level when i did it that way and i fully would lean into that and like i protected that time and i was on pacific time too and we had team um in the uk and not eastern time so i would have to like not have my phone turned on um and then keep it on airplane mode to create all the content because the minute i started getting reactive responding to any of that would pull me out of it so there is method in the madness it on it there's something to it for me personally something to it works and then when i shout so tonight out like before dinner I'll shower and that will be my transition into like out of work into chill mode it just bookends

my day wow it's got to be something with the nervous system and like waking waking your nervous system up a little bit more being more alert and like out of creativity but that's fascinating yeah yeah do you not feel like that I i mean i don't know i i'm thinking about it i mean i'm obviously not at my own home right now so i don't i'm trying to like think about my rhythm at home but i have gotten a little bit i feel like a little i i want to say the word lazy but it's not lazy because i work hard but um like i've gotten into the rhythm of letting the boys wake me up in the morning instead of being up ahead of them. And, and they are sleeping a little later now, like later they get up at six. So it, um, you know, like I used to get up before them and intentionally have that kind of creative

space. And yeah, same thing. I wouldn't brush my teeth. I would like make coffee and sit in the dark and journal and read and like have kind of like channeling the universe manifestation time and now I feel like they wake us up and it's like I don't feel like I get jolted awake in any any negative kind of way but like we cuddle and we tickle and like you know it's like little cute little kid time um as a family but then it's like yeah lunches breakfast get him out get Sawyer out the door, like everything kind of picks up into, into like, get it done mode. And then I don't transition back into like work mode until it's like right before we start, usually we start our day at Boss Baby, and by then I have checked my phone. I am like alert, I'm on, I'm already thinking about what

everybody needs from me. And obviously I get, you know, people are waiting for me to wake up usually because we have East Coast and the UK team still too. So that's interesting for me to think about. Like, I'm not sure, but in my previous life of having that morning practice that I was so dedicated to, it did feel that way. It's like you kind of you that darkness the dark hour right like if you can kind of preserve a little bit of the the veil that you have between sleeping and waking you can channel better in that time yeah to try it that's making me think actually noemi is sleeping till 6 50 every single day right now and i think because i haven't slept in two years well actually longer than that because

I had pregnancy in some years so maybe two and a half years I haven't slept I'm milking every last minute that she's sleeping but part of me starting to think you know what should I especially now that I'm writing more should I actually be getting up even at six and sitting and actually getting that done and would that feel I'm trying to weigh it up it's like i think this is like another thing i'm trying to weigh up would that actually feel more supportive and have me feel more filled or would i benefit from the 50 minutes extra of sleep i don't know the answer yet yeah but maybe i should give it a try yeah it's the question like the perennial question of mothers like an extra hour of sleep or this project I want to get done yeah like alone time because I really remember those mornings and

I feel like I mean that was such a pivotal moment of for boss babe just thought that that that creativity channeled into those building blocks and as we step into a new phase this year with with projects that are very new to us i'm just wondering actually would that be a really good practice because you're right like the minute babies get up kids get up it's just like you're in action mode and yeah there's not really there's no slowness to it i mean she gets into bed and cuddles and we feed her milk but i'm still as soon as she's there my nervous system is attuned to her yeah when she's not there before that I probably could actually be more internal yeah well and I think you said alone time which is another thing that just reminded me that that came up in one of the talks I've done recently um which I think is correlated

to where we opened around burnout like I think one of the things that our generation also has discounted a lot is like, since we were adolescents, we haven't been alone. And I don't mean like physically alone. I mean, like we always have our phones. And I think one of the things that we're suffering from and leads to this feeling of burnout, even if we're not at full capacity or leads to this feeling of burnout, even if we have like a lot of life force energy and really good energy going into our work in our lives is we don't actually have alone time. Cause like we sit on the toilet with our phones. Like we go on walks with our phones. Like I listen to podcasts all the time. I don't like our, even our parents could, they had alone time. Like they could listen to the radio, I guess when they were driving, but like if they went for a run, run, they didn't really take their iPad with them and like

listen to a podcast. If they, you know, if they were in the bathroom, they were just in the bathroom. Like they didn't feel every single second that they had with someone else's voice or someone else's face or someone else's content. And I think we do that a lot, you know? And so I also think there's this call to look at the juxtaposition of burnout and your life force energy and your capacity and go how much of how much of these in-between moments that so maybe I can't get two hours of alone time every day because I have a young baby

but how much of your in-between transitionary moments are you filling with scrolling or someone else's voice but don't stop listening to our podcast but like you know what I'm saying like yeah that's an awareness for me of like oh yeah like you know what I'm saying like yeah I that's an awareness for me of like oh yeah I complain about not having alone time and yeah I could get up earlier and have a practice and I need to do that and I also have the opportunity to take 15 minute breaks between calls and just go sit in the sun but what do I do I typically scroll or I get caught up on slack or I you know like go find somebody who's in my house, you know, my nanny or somebody to go talk with, you know, versus just sitting alone for 15 minutes

and like refilling my energetic cup. So I think that's a good call out to on the need for alone time and how our lives really don't have much alone time anymore. So good. So I had such a similar conversation with Stevenven yesterday and we were talking about i we were listening to a song in the car that inspired you know and songs just bring up memories in you brought up the memory of when i did three months in asia without a phone and i went completely without a phone i didn't check in with my family nothing didn't didn't go on social media was completely without it and how i was like i was talking to steven about it like i was so hot i was going through a big heartbreak probably the

biggest heartbreak um back then and like i really knew i wanted to heal it and i decided to go on this healing journey without my phone and it was so powerful um it's so funny how we're having that conversation but a part of me listening to this i'm like i i can foresee us creating a life force challenge inside of the society actually and and really thinking back to the practices that we know have filled us up the most in the past like i think about like a slingshot that's really like i think about a lot of the moments where i've hit big milestones before that i always pull back always always pull back and what was I doing when I pulled back to then be able to let go and shoot forward I feel like we could actually create something like this inside of the society and put a few practices in and even 30 days and just watch

the magic unfold because I think so often we think that to get the results we have to do more and what I'm just hearing from us both in this conversation is actually it's not about all the doing and it's not about doing more but if we are this generation of especially women being so burned out we need to be doing less more intentionally and i think a lot of that is going to come back to how do we fill up our life force energy because that's the real magic especially as women i also just talked about this too um on the panel i was on a few weeks ago because there was a conversation around uh being breadwinner in your family and a couple of the women uh were saying you know they love it when they're with partners who actually don't mind

that they're so ambitious and that they earn a ton and that their partners can support them. And I love that. I think we should all be with men who fully, fully support us. And there should never be, like our men should never be trying to compete with us or make us like smaller or turn down our light or earn less or anything like that. I think we all deserve to be with men that fully support us and and it may be this controversial to say but I don't think that us being supported is all they should be doing like oh I support you to go out there and crush it okay well I still expect more from you and the way I was sharing it with them with the whole audience was um this has been a

challenge for me in my relationship when I felt like yes he's always always been supportive of me Stephen's one of the most supportive incredible men I've ever met and he has his own stuff going all that stuff but whenever I feel like women and I'll talk about me but I feel like women generally we are very very good at pouring our energy to others we are very, very good at pouring our energy to others. We are very, very good at pouring energy into our community, into our team, into our clients, into our family, extended family. We are very good at putting it out there. What I, the way that I feel best in my dynamic with Stephen and the way that it works for us when I am the breadwinner is for him to pour into me.

And men are very, very good at generating their own energy and if he generates and holds a lot of his own energy and pours it into me I feel a lot more full to then go and pour it into others but if I don't feel poured into and I'm just pouring out everywhere that's one of those leaks we're talking about then it's not just enough for me to know that my husband's out there cheering me on it's like no this is a team and if we're in partnership doing this together how are you pouring into me and I think that's also part of the conversation and I think stuff that we can really talk about and we do talk about it but I just I want to open up that conversation more yeah no this is a very current conversation in my household too as you know we you and I have been talking about it, but I just, I want to open up that conversation more. Yeah. No, this is a very current conversation in my household too.

As you know, we, you and I have been talking about it for weeks. Um, and, and it's, it's so dynamic, you know, I think being the breadwinner is, it's not that it's unnatural for women, but maybe this is super controversial to say it is a little unnatural. I feel like to, to be the one who is responsible to bring in the bulk of the income to support the family and the mental load of, of the household, you know, which like statistically falls on women more than men. Right. So like we're generalizing, I'm making a lot of general statements but in my in my for me I both am the quote-unquote breadwinner financially and I take on more more than 50 percent of like the household

day-to-day kind of stuff and so and and I like I've taken responsibility for my own role in creating that system and all of that but it is's like, now that I'm aware of it, especially the financial piece where I'm like, okay, like I said this to RT a few weeks ago, I was like, I want you to make more money. And it just like came out of my mouth. And I'll, and, but he, he's in a place in his business where like, he can't really make more money right now. His business is in a phase where he can't just like take more money out of the business. And so I was like, wonder what this means? Like, is that really what I mean? Like, do we need more money? Is the business and so I was like wonder what this means like is that really what I mean like do we need more money is that really what it is or is it that like I'm not

feeling supported in other ways and money is what I think it is the vocabulary I have for it yeah you're bowling yeah well it I yes and I think I'm like how fascinating that the only vocabulary we have to to interact with our men around like how we might feel supported is money like make more money um and so i've really been in that question over the last few weeks of like well what support from him would feel like what i need you know i have a practice i'm gonna give you privately okay okay i don't know if we can bring it to the podcast yet um listen if you guys want this practice leave us a review five stars and tell us um but i'll give you something privately

that okay will set your world on fire in all the best ways i'm here for it because because i think this but but like i don't think i'm alone even if you're not the breadwinner quote unquote but even like one of the questions i asked when i was speaking a few weeks ago was like okay if you're not the breadwinner quote unquote but even like one of the questions I asked when I was speaking a few weeks ago was like okay if you're not the breadwinner is your income as as the woman in your family system is your income critical to your lifestyle and everyone raised their hands like there's nobody very few people in the room for whom their income is like inconsequential they're they don't need it at all and so I'm like okay then these practices and these questions are really relevant to everyone around how are you being supported and what do you need that isn't financially, you know, determined, but are some of these energetic things that could really help support you so that you aren't feeling burned out or you aren't feeling obligated to work at a pace that's not right for you. i completely completely agree and the thing is i think even if it wasn't money it's still that conversation of i do feel like women do a lot and hold a lot and if and are constantly pouring

energy out whether it's a financial conversation or not and i think in partnership we do get to be poured into so yeah i'm all for it. And I really love this conversation. Me too. It's important to have. Do you want to touch on team? I feel like this is also like, I think this is related. There's partnership

and there's the people who you're intimately. This is the link I want to make because I think it does tie in here. There's the intimate relationships in your life. And I mean intimate, not like sex intimate. i mean like people who know you really closely like you and i have an intimate relationship we know a lot about each other that we wouldn't necessarily ever speak about publicly right um let's hope and yeah and then we have intimate relationships with our partners and you know friends and things like that and then there's people who we have relationships

with and we spend a lot of time with every day, like people that we work with, right? Where or people who work for us or even sometimes family members where you're not super close to them, but you, you know, you're in relationship with them. And I think some of these these conversations and like it doesn't have to be a one-way street energetically. And I think sometimes when we're building our business and we start to hire a team and now we're like, well, I like, I owe them something or like, this isn't working, but it's on me because it's my business, you know? And like, it can feel like a one-way street energetically in the same way that an intimate relationship might start to feel, you know, and then you get resentment growing and you're like, crap, like, how do I have this conversation with team? Or how do I manage this with people who are not necessarily, you know, my family or

my partner where there's more on, more on the line, like, you know, and more nuanced to it because we're intimate, intimately connected. Are these like, so when you think about it, like are some of these energetic conversations and the way that you look at team, do you think of it similarly to relationships and partner? Like it's a two-way street in the energetic exchange? Kind of. So I did write a few things down in case you wanted to talk about team. I will say, I feel like if you're the the entrepreneur or the leader I feel like a lot of our responsibility is pouring into our team so our team can then go and pour into the rest of the team or clients or the business as a whole so I don't think it's so

much of a two-way street but I do think it is absolutely essential that we hold team accountable because if we're pouring in and doing our side of holding our side of the street I think holding team accountable is actually really really important because if we don't that's a big energy leak like we talk about and you're going to feel like you're depleted because you're doing other people's jobs so when I was thinking about this conversation coming in I think there's two elements of it. I think there's the inner side of holding people accountable and the outer side. I think the inner side is something I've really struggled with in the past

and thank fuck I have healed because it was a nightmare, was people pleasing. I was such a people pleaser that I was really terrible at holding people accountable because the idea of letting someone down or getting into those uncomfortable conversations or you know it was just very very uncomfortable for me and so I wouldn't hold people accountable I would just go and do their work for them which yes would relate to burnout and I didn't have I didn't have a baby at the time so I was more than willing like I had that extra time right like I'll get up early I'll work late I had more of that energy and I would just do people's jobs for them and I would avoid

those uncomfortable conversations I wouldn't want to like make someone feel bad or make them feel like I'm expecting too much and I think a lot of my worth was tied up in how much I was doing and executing oh I can do that I can do that I can do that so yes it's the inner and then I also made a list of some of the outer so if you've if you've worked on the inner side and you're like fuck no like I'm ready to hold people accountable I'm paying them like they should be doing their job I don't want to do their jobs for them I think there's four things and I and I would love your perspective on this I think you're such an expert with this I think there's four things if someone's not doing their job there's four things

that you want to look at the first is skills do they actually have the skills to execute on what you're asking them to execute at at the level you're asking them to execute at motivation are they actually motivated to execute on this whether that's financial or beyond that like internal motive like are they actually motivated third is capacity are your expectations realistic or unrealistic do they actually have capacity and the fourth is could it be a knock-on effect from other team members so you know is it the fact that they're not doing their jobs or is it the people before them actually aren't doing their jobs properly that they're not passing the baton? Like you think about like a relay race. And so it's actually not where we're maybe pointing the blame in the wrong way.

So whenever I am having the thought that someone's not really doing what they're being asked to do, that's generally the place that my head will go to those four places. And I'll assess that to then decide what my next steps are but I'm curious also you because I feel like I mean that this is literally your job yeah there's people yeah no I mean it's it's all of these things and I think sometimes it can they mask right like it I'm thinking of like assessing these things with situations we've dealt with recently on our team over the last, you know, year or I guess I'm only like seven months. I feel like I've worked here for a long time. But we've, you know, we've had to have a few conversations over the time that I've been in the role with people where it seems at first like it's one of these, but it comes out that it's another. And you and I are so, you know, we, we really dig in before we have conversations with people or we look at anybody's performance. We're like, what do we, what have we done? You know,

like it always starts at the top. And so we're always looking for that too. But yeah, I mean, I think that's what I would add to this is it, it's not always easy to assess and not to jump, like, you don't necessarily want to jump into like blaming one of these things because it might be all four you know it might be that they that they have it might be a combination of all four or that something has gone left unattended for long enough that now it's kind of into all of it um and so before I would say the thing to add to this is before you take action on any of them, it's important to understand how you, like as their leader, how you've supported them

in each one, what expectations did you set so that even if they're lacking motivation or they're lacking the skills, like, did you put them in a role? Like, did you put them in a role knowing they didn't have the skills and now you're holding them now you're, you know, now that's leading to poor performance or whatever um so what expectations were communicated um and then like the intangible thing for me that kind of tacks on to the end of all of it is what's what do they want you know and i think we're getting to this with with this modern age of working remotely and um people waking up to their sovereignty. And like, we run a very entrepreneurial team, right?

Like all of our people are really empowered to kind of manage their own schedule and to think of the business to some extent as their own business and to really look for opportunities on how we could all be doing things better. And I think sometimes what I'm looking for for people specifically on our team is like,

I want it to feel like when I'm working with you that you want to be here, that you love it here and that you would jump in if we needed you on anything. And I think sometimes people can have all the skills and they can have the motivation and they can have the capacity and like the whole team can be performing great and you still get this like meh feeling from them and you're like what is this this is so interesting like what's going on here and I

think some some of that comes down to what we talked about earlier around just general life force and like maybe there's not a match energetically or something's happening in their life that's totally not at all connected to work but it's affecting them energetically and I think that you and I have had these edgy conversations where I'm like I don't know like all the boxes are checked but I don't feel good about the energy and I feel like it's it's causing a ripple effect where performance wise it's hard to point at something that's, you know, exactly wrong, but overall the, the, the energy is off. So I still think you can manage that just like you would in a relationship where you're like, I don't know, like he's a good

boyfriend, but like, something's not a match, you know, like, I think it's kind of the same, that same assessment. Um, and so I, that's why I wanted to bring it up. Cause I'm know like I think it's kind of the same that same assessment um and so I that's why I wanted to bring it up because I'm like I think we can we feel it and we can relate to it really closely in our intimate relationships where we're like I don't know something's just off I have this intuition that he's not telling me the truth or I just need something else for my husband and I really want to know it and then we get to team and we're like I don't know like it has to be managed it has to be really clear I have to know it. And then we get to team and we're like, I don't know, like it has to be managed. It has to be really clear. I have to have it all written out for HR and all these things. And like, yeah. And I also think when we start to get into these realms of freedom and capacity

and potential, and we, and we want to really look at each individual that we're in relationship with both in our life and in our business, every, every one of these relationships has an energy to them. And one, one piece of persons being off, even if all the boxes are checked, can still bring the overall energy of the business down, you know? And so I think that's why I, that's what I'm always looking for in our team is not so much, obviously, yes, that these four things are being managed well, and that everybody's good and I'm always looking for that like little energetic nuance of like something doesn't feel right here what's going on I think it's a really good call out it's like something you can't put

into words but often if you if you have very direct conversations with someone it will become apparent oh that's what I couldn't put my finger on. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I get that. So I just, I think that these are like, I like that we talk about these things because this is the real stuff that happens behind the scenes. And then like, we feel burned out. Yeah, we do. Cause we're dealing like something's off. So like you're saying there's this, you either jump in and you do people's jobs for them and that burns you out or you don't do their jobs for them, but something's off and you notice it on the team or you notice it in your revenue. And you're like, then that burns you out because you're mentally ruminating on it, you know? And so I think like, it's just important when you're,

no matter how big of a team you have, no matter how many people are involved in your business or in your life, you can honor these questions that you feel in your body of like, where's burnout coming from? Am I really at capacity? Am I managing my energy in such a way that if an opportunity were to come along, I could jump at it. And I think so many of us aren't. And I think that that's such a fascinating thing to think about in your own life is like, man, what if my dream opportunity came in today? Would I even have the capacity to do it? Crazy if you say no to that, you know, and like a former version of me probably would have said no to that a bunch of times if I was

really honest. I know you would have, you know. Totally. So this is your deep inner work for the day, my friends. I love it. I love these conversations. We never know where they're going to go, but I'm all in for creating a life force challenge in the society too so let's do it um summer life force summer oh my god yes i'm all in for this okay everyone if you enjoyed this episode please please please leave us a review um a five star one preferably uh but let us know what you loved about this episode because it makes a massive massive difference with getting this out to people and if you want to take it a step further which we would love for you to if you wanted to share it with someone else or share it on your stories

that would mean the absolute world because we are going all in on our podcast this year and we just want to get it into the ears of as many women as possible we're pouring so much into it so that would mean the absolute world to us we appreciate you please do and tag us we'll share tag us okay bye everyone