Dive into the realities of managing business amidst personal upheavals in this episode. Drawing from the Good Business Incubator community's experiences, we face balancing entrepreneurial demands and life's unpredictable events. Discover strategies for handling both planned and unplanned breaks, from creating financial buffers to building supportive networks. Whether you're currently facing a pause or planning for the future, this episode offers valuable insights and practical advice for maintaining your business and well-being through life’s ups and downs.
Good Business is hosted by Illana Burk, CEO of Your Life's Workshop llc and strategic coach to entrepreneurs, creative leaders, and industry disruptors the world over.
For more details, visit YourLifesWorkshop.com.
Dive into the realities of managing business amidst personal upheavals in this episode. Drawing from the Good Business Incubator community's experiences, we face balancing entrepreneurial demands and life's unpredictable events. Discover strategies for handling both planned and unplanned breaks, from creating financial buffers to building supportive networks. Whether you're currently facing a pause or planning for the future, this episode offers valuable insights and practical advice for maintaining your business and well-being through life’s ups and downs.
Good Business is hosted by Illana Burk, CEO of Your Life's Workshop llc and strategic coach to entrepreneurs, creative leaders, and industry disruptors the world over.
For more details, visit YourLifesWorkshop.com.
Hey there, welcome back everyone. Today's episode is inspired by the members of the Good Business Incubator. As many listeners know, this show is frequently recorded with the members of the Incubator as my studio audience. Many of them are here today, in fact, listening as I record this. But today we are missing several members. One had to fly across the world to attend a funeral. Another is caring for an ailing relative. Others have shared how hard it is to balance their personal needs with their professional ones. And I think that's something that we can definitely all share. As solo entrepreneurs, this is something that we have to deal with all the time. So today we are talking about the complexity of business ownership when it collides with real life. Having babies, aging parents, mental health crises, trauma, healing from trauma, grief, a pandemic. That was fun, right? Illness, chronic pain, there's so many ways that life can hit us like a truck. And it seems like this day and age, there are like way more trucks than there used to be. Maybe that's my imagination or maybe it's just age. I was talking to a client this morning that we were like, you know, there's something about being like in your, like, passing your forties and beyond that it starts to feel like life is a little bit like digging a hole in the sand. Like there's just always more things in the hole. So today we're going to talk about how to prepare for a pause, what happens when you do, how to actually take a break, what to expect when you do, and some of the complexities involved with all of it. Now obviously that is a lot. We're going to just skip the, skim the surface a little bit, like skipping rocks across the water because there's so much that could be talked about around this, and I want to help boil it down to a little bit of my own experience with taking a break and what I've learned both in my own personal experience and from my very many clients that I've had over the years who I have helped to navigate things like this in all kinds of contexts. uh, breaks happen in a couple of different ways. First off, they happen in the planned and the unplanned ways, right? When we get to prepare for a pause, we, we have a little bit more You know, a little bit more energy to like, figure out how to navigate what, what needs to come with it. But when it's unplanned, sometimes it just kind of hits you out of left field. So we're going to talk about the fact that there is just complexities involved with all of it. And today I am going to touch on a little bit of both. The one and only thing that I had, That they really have in common, though, is that they have a ton of completing, competing, excuse me, competing priorities and competing complexities. Emotional, physical, professional, personal, they all kind of mash on top of each other like a big old snowball. The, those piles of competing priorities are all trying to vie for your attention, right? Like, how do you prioritize the actions that will help you pay rent versus, versus the actions that will help you keep a friend or loved one alive, right? How do you deal with that? it's next to impossible when everything is important. So for me, the longest pause I've ever taken since I started my business. It's going on 16, 17 years ago, something like that, was when I had my daughter eight years ago. I took a three month maternity leave, which was not enough. If anybody is out there and has not done that before, I thought I was going to take like a month off and then I'd be dying to get back to work. Yeah. That was not how it went. Three months was not enough. I couldn't, I was so hard to go back to work. so if anybody's out there, just that particular type of pause, take as long as you can. That was some of the best advice that I got from another entrepreneurial buddy, which is something we're going to talk about in a minute, that. You know, pauses are like, you might think it takes this amount of time. You might need a lot longer. So a lot of what we're covering today is how to think about and how to roll with the punches when those breaks need to happen, My pause gave me time to plan, but the competing priorities still felt like they would never end. I was terrified that all the momentum that I had built for nearly a decade would just, like, evaporate if I took a real break. It was so, it was so egocentric, right? Like, I was absolutely convinced, like, oh my god, the internet will never remember me, I will disappear into the ether, and like, I'll never get it back, I worked so hard to get here. But then I got some of the absolute best advice from the same person that told me to take more than a month off, incidentally. She also said something that hit me hard, uh, and that was that people will simply not notice. That was, the internet is busy. And time tends to just sort of collapse in on itself, especially with algorithmically based content, like where you're not really seeing recent content and recent posts all the time. We experience time really differently as info consumers, and when one of the many people that you follow gets quiet for a bit, there are simply too many other things available to pull our focus. This was disappointingly momentary blow to my ego. I really, I wish I was more involved in that, but I wasn't. I was like, oh man, like they're going to forget about me and that's okay. then it was just a really massive relief. And I, it meant that if I didn't plan and preload every single thing that I wanted to and get every single thing to prepare done, my business might actually survive. And there would be people there waiting for me when I was done. And considering the fact that in the end, baby prep totally eclipsed business prep, I did absolutely zero front loading of social media. I literally had nothing. done in that department. I had all these plans to write all this content, create all this stuff, and it just didn't. It just didn't happen. Pregnancy was a lot. I could barely think of a re entry plan, like, and, and I still came back and nobody noticed I was gone. The response I got the most when I was like, hey, I'm back and I have a baby now, was like, oh my god. No way, you were gone? And hey, you, you were pregnant? People just don't, it's just not on their register. Like besides your inner circle, like most people barely really register what's happening in your life or that you're there or that you're not. So, you can let your ego get out of the way for a little bit, a lot of times the things we think will be a huge deal, whether it's planned or unplanned, aren't necessarily as big of a deal outside of you. So that's kind of one big thing to, to remember and think about, but really my business was just fine. And it's also kind of a sidebar for those of you who are also contending with like, I haven't posted on social media or I haven't produced content in a long period of time. This is also kind of a sidebar lesson in the fact that, like, that is, it's also true, like, any kind of pause, whether you're, like, having a life pause where you can't do any business, or whether you just, get quiet for whatever reason, the only thing you have to do to get going again is get going again. People probably didn't notice. You didn't really lose momentum. You just stopped having momentum. It's a different thing. There's no actual active backslide process that happens, which is one of the good things about how busy and noisy the internet is. You can always jump back in the pool. No matter what. So don't forget that part too. So my break was a lucky one though, like it was a happy one, right? I got a baby at the end. But as soon as she came out, I was like, I don't ever care about my business ever again. I have a baby now, which obviously is not true. when all the pregnancy hormones hit you, you're just like, I don't care if the hospital fell apart around me. I like, you know, there's, you just don't care about the same things in the same way. And the same can be true when it's not a happy one, right? When other things just are more important than your business. That can also be hard, and My, my biggest lesson here was that, pay attention to the thing that truly matters most to you. Now, some of you, that might actually be your business, and that's okay too. Depending on the circumstances, you really do only get one crack at this life, right? And if your business and your work in the world is more important to you than something that's being, that's pulling your focus, obviously having a baby is a different set of circumstances, but there are times when something is being asked of you by others that you don't have to say yes to if it's going to pull you away from the things that matter most. So don't forget about that too. Okay, so Here's my core advice for making it through any break. These are my boiled down bullet points. Of course, there's so much wisdom to be had in so many other ways besides this, but when I really sat down to think about this episode and write my outline out, these were the things that made, that stayed the most true for the most sets of circumstances. So the first is build revenue streams that can carry you, whether you're working every day or not. It doesn't have to be every dollar, right? what that means is the, quote unquote passive income, or I like to call it more asynchronous income. income that comes in whether you're sitting at your desk every single day or not, right? e Even if it's just a little bit, if it's just a piece of your bigger income perspective, it's okay if you're a service based business or you have, you know, you're doing one on one work where you're required, like that is okay. I'm not saying you have to change your whole business model, but always have some, Eye on what can I create in my business that will bring at least a trickle of income in because sometimes that trickle during an unplanned break especially can be the buoy that can get you through a crisis that can just keep you just afloat, right? Something coming in is better than nothing for sure. And along similar lines, the second point was that try to create at least some kind of financial reserve. Now, Believe me, I know how hard this is. I started from absolutely zero. I learned design because I couldn't hire a designer. I absolutely started from zero. I understand how hard it is to create financial reserves when you're an entrepreneur, but You're also not going to survive without some cash flow, your business or your personal life. So sometimes that financial reserve is an empty credit card that you never touch, but it's only there in case of emergency. That can be considered a financial reserve too, just something that can cushion the blow if you have to be out in an unplanned way. Something, money in the bank, like an actual emergency fund is great. Sure. But I know that that's a luxury that not everybody can have, but create something that's in, that's waiting in the wings for you. It's part of being a healthy business owner and it's, it's important. And it's something that like, you'd be surprised how fast you can save even, you know, sticking 10 bucks in the bank every so often because catastrophes thankfully don't happen all that often. So if you can at least build something up. It beats having absolutely nothing and no idea what to do. So the third point is share what's happening for you with people who both understand and can support you. That means that you need to have some cultivated emotional scaffolding in both your personal and professional realms. And what that means is you need to invest in developing your professional network and your personal one. and the reason I said that in very specific terms is that Very often when we hit a point of crisis, especially as, as small business owners, right, very small, a lot of the people listening to this are solo acts, it's easy to forget that, not everybody can support you in the same ways. because for us, it's like your business and your personal life is all this mishmash one thing, but as I'm sure many of you have experienced, you probably have people in your personal life who have absolutely no fucking idea what you do for a living. And the more you try to explain it, the more their eyes sort of glaze over because they don't understand how you can just sit and stare at a computer and magic things happen and money pops out, right? And then we keep trying to ask them for support for like professional drama in some way and they just might not be able to give it. So it's really really important to have business best friends. It's important to have people who maybe are not really in your direct competition realm but who do business in the same way that you do. And developing that network and having a few business partners. people that you can talk to about what's happening in your personal life through the lens of your business and vice versa, right? Because then you need to be able to talk to people in your per in your personal life about your professional life that might understand that too. So make sure you're looking for people who get both sides of you and don't expect to get Support from the wrong place. It's hard to ask for support from the right place, and it's hard to identify who to go to for what, you know? It's like, we don't really always know the answer to that question, so this is your prompt to think about it. To figure out, who are your people in a professional realm and who are your people in a personal one so that you can, you have the best chance of getting the support you need from the right people who can actually provide it and actually give you real advice. it's like a notorious issue that I am constantly advising clients on, Don't ask your spouse how to solve a client problem unless they do exactly what you do and understand the full perspective and the full needs of both the client and you, right? Because your spouse doesn't, isn't in your world that way. Your spouse can be there to give you a hug and let you, freak out about how mean your client was to you or something. That's how you get that support, but you don't ask them how to handle the problem because that's not their area, right? You ask, to how to handle a client problem from somebody who is another business owner or a business coach or somebody who can advise you from the perspective of someone who understands your business landscape. So make sure you're looking for that. And you're always as a constant practice building towards having more of it because it matters. It absolutely matters. I know for sure that I have benefited from it. That many, many times over having people, it's like having a community, even, my, my incubator buddies that are here with me today, it's like having people who you can go to when you have a question, having people you can go to when you have a concern or you're feeling overwhelmed and you don't want to be seen as being like weak to the big wide public or something, it's hard when you're going through stuff and it, and having little communities. And it's extremely beneficial, both as a leader and a participant. So that one's really, really important. Now, the very last one that I'm going to spend time on today is this is about scaling sustainably. And this is a really big one because as entrepreneurs, we like to think big, grow fast. Make more, do more, double your income, change more, help more people, produce more, it just, and on and on and on, it's all about more, right, especially those of us who were raised in specifically American culture, it's like, all about being the top of the heap, it's competitive, and it's Pushy and it's loud. And no matter what industry you're in, you feel the effects of it. Even if you are not a competitive person or you're not motivated by money, you're still feeling the effects of scaling, right? We're inundated with messaging about that, but you don't actually have to. That's what I mean by scaling sustainably, because as you get older, breaks become less and less predictable, right? your business ages right with you. Like, how we think about scaling has to be approached from what we can do, whether we can show up or not, day after day. So we have to get okay with right sizing our work and our life as one entity. And that can be deeply frustrating. And it can be really, there can be grief involved. There can be, stages of like, right? Like there's anger and there's acceptance. And I, somebody here is going to know all the stages of grief. I'm not remembering right now, but they're all in there, right? Like of recognizing that you might not be able to get as big as you want to get. That might not be what's sustainable for your life. It may not even be what you want. And you just never stop to ask yourself the question because you think you're just supposed to keep running, keep growing, keep making things bigger, make a bigger impact, as if the impact that you're having is not big enough. It's not enough somehow. So planning for breaks, planning for pauses, planning, frankly, for life to fit into your business means that you have to be willing to right size things. Your scalability. You have to think about what's actually sustainable from a real grounded perspective. Now that doesn't mean stop dreaming big. What's realistic for you and what's realistic for me and what's realistic to every other person listening to this is going to be different. And I am, believe me, I'm not much of a realist. I'm, you know, I, I love thinking huge. I love dreaming big and coming up with big ideas that can be amazing things that have amazing impact. But you also have to understand what's in your tank And create timelines for yourself that can be sustained by your own ability to grow and your own ability to meet your other obligations. And those things are different for everyone. You can only drive as far as your tank can carry you before you have to refill it. That might mean putting in more pieces or finding new ways to fill your tank so that you can do the big and make the big things happen and grow fast, but it just means that your inputs are going to have to change and your priorities may have to change along the way because there's always a cost. Somebody always pays. You always have to fill your tank somehow. It's all about inputs and outputs and if you're a solo act. You are your only gas tank, and you probably have responsibilities outside of your business that are going to need you at some point. You're going to need you. Your body will need you. Your friends will need you. Your loved ones will need you. That's not going to change. It only gets more complicated the more full you make your life. So breaks are complicated and hard, and when you work from home as a nomad, you often get tapped as the default person who handles all the things, right? The doctor visits, and the home repairs, and the sick kiddos, right? Breaks can be long or short, but they are always unpredictable in some way, and they are complicated, and they are frustrating. So we plan for what we can, and we ride the wave of what we can't. But we have to recognize that we all have limits. And that doesn't tend to change as you get older and as you're a more experienced business owner, your limits just shift, right? You might have more people working with or for you. You might have more capacity. You might have more financial freedom. Those things flex, but it never changes the fact that we do actually have limits that we have to work within. And we have to recognize that if you want to grow sustainably, sustainability means that you can continue to move and you can continue to do what you've been doing, even as conditions change. So don't forget about that part and think about scaling sustainably and ride that wave. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for joining me today. And I hope you all have, good breaks as summer approaches. All right, everyone. See you soon. Bye.