Nienke Nina from StartDigital.io (00:00.75)
Hello everyone, welcome to a brand new episode of the Digital Nomads Daily podcast. I'm so, so, so excited to record this episode. I've been thinking about for like really, really long time, if I'm going to record this, how I should record this. And now I finally got my head together and my thoughts together and say, okay, this is how I'm going to do it. So welcome, welcome today to a new episode. So.
What I want to talk about today is so freaking important. I have learned this the really, really freaking hard way this year. Um, but also it didn't happen overnight. And that's why I want to record it because let me go back last year when I had to sort of rebuild my business, I just went, I just kind of did it the same, the same way, just what I knew. And I just went, went, went, went, went. And in my, in this, in this moment,
I went so much in doing mode that I forgot to be in being mode. And I feel like that's because of the rush culture that we're in, like just like normal life, but even more so entrepreneurship life. This is even much like, this is stronger. So I started having more conversations with other nomadic entrepreneurs or remote entrepreneurs or people that have a side hustle on like, how did, how do they go about this?
And I asked them like, when is the last time you were like, fully in being mode? And you know, some eyebrows went up. I don't know how to do that. So I was on eyebrows went up and people were like, when? I was like, yeah, like we're always in doing mode, but when are we actually in being mode? Just, just being. And I realized that from like the different conversations that I started to have, and even sometimes on the podcast, we have already talked about it. I talked about this with Han. I talked a little bit about this with Maris.
And also with other guests that are coming on the podcast, but maybe that episode hasn't been out yet. Like this has been a bigger, becoming a bigger topic. So today I really want to focus on that. So kind of moving a little bit away from the doing mode and allow yourself to be in being mode. So giving yourself the gift of just to be for a moment and not be like...
Nienke Nina from StartDigital.io (02:20.238)
I need you to distance is this am I to do this is so big and oh my God, I woke up, I opened up my eyes and I'm already 10 steps behind. No, just like breathe in, breathe out and just be in being loved. Now I know that this is hard and you might be thinking like, yeah, Nina, that sounds great. Whatever. Like who has time for that? Lesson, the first lesson that I realized very, very harsh way you need to create time for this.
And it's an accountability that you're going to have with yourself, that you're actually putting blocks in your calendar, that you're going to be in being mode and not per se in doing mode. So let me, let me break down a little bit for me in my experience, what the differences between doing mode and being mode. And this is just from my personal experience and from conversations that I have with people. So.
If you have any thoughts to this or you're like, wow, this resonates so much with me and I actually have, you know, like a few things I want to share about this. The best way is to go to our Instagram. It's digital nomads daily, or you can go to my personal LinkedIn because I love these conversations. And if you're also like listening to this and you're like lighting up really like, yeah, let's go. Let's go. Okay. That that's the vibe. So if you have thoughts, awesome, please share it because.
This is going to be a much longer conversation. Like now it's a conversation. Well, it's not a conversation. I'm just chatting, but like, I'm, I know that I'm going to keep on talking about this with different entrepreneurs to help you guys to slow down a little bit and just to be okay. So for me, when I am in doing mode, well, the word says I'm doing stuff, but I feel like doing mode is like building, helping clients.
Um, making sure that things are significantly moving forward. So that is that giant to do list that is so big that is never ending. That is like total doing modes. What I realized is that when I'm constantly going and doing, doing, doing, and I don't slow down the moment I want to slow down because I'm super tired, I'm exhausted. My brain is not operating properly anymore. I can't.
Nienke Nina from StartDigital.io (04:35.086)
because I'm just so like on a roll, like the hamster wheel doesn't stop. And I think that this resonates with a lot of people. So what I started to do is sort of drip moments of being into my calendar. And with that in mind, whenever I really need to slow down, it's not of a, the step is less big because I've already dripped, you know, moments of being. So when I'm in being mode,
What I'm doing are things like, yes, I meditate or I envision how a new product or a new project, how that feels, you know, it's like, so it's instead of thinking, oh, this is a to -do list. I'm just connecting with the experience in a human, in a human way where it's not about like, how much am I going to get done? But it's more about like, how does that feel? So for example,
I've had, I'm designing a retreat, a mindful marketing retreat or a line marketing retreat. And what this retreat is going to do is that it's really going to help entrepreneurs, nomadic entrepreneurs, remote entrepreneurs to, to work with their passion, to work in flow and to create marketing strategies that are fully aligned to, to their personal values, to their personality, to their personal lifestyle, their unique lifestyle. Right. So.
Instead of thinking about all the things I need to do for this retreat, specifically marketing wise, I am sitting on my Moroccan poof. This retreat is going to be in Morocco, by the way. So I'm sitting on this poof and I'm just like listening to music that reminds me of being in Morocco or just music that is just like calming me down. And I. I start to really envision and with my body even like, how does it feel?
How does it feel when I welcome people? How does it feel when I look at Marius from Enoma because we're co -hosting this and we're giving each other the nod like, it's happening. How does it feel when we have our first sharing circle? How does it feel when we do a photography workshop where we're actually capturing.
Nienke Nina from StartDigital.io (06:55.982)
our realness, like our true faces and just being there in that moment. Like, you know, there's all these, these little golden nuggets, all these golden nuggets that are not on the doing list, but they're on the being list. So in this way, I really connect with what is that experience gonna look, gonna feel like, what is it gonna sound like, and just really embodied it. And you might think like, yeah, woohoo, that sounds like a bit woohoo.
But what it helps me is to come closer into being mode. So it is a work -related being mode. Another related being mode is, or related to another being mode, is more on a personal side. So I'm building this business, my marketing agency, and we have the podcast for, you know, because I want freedom, just like you guys. We all want flexibility.
And we want freedom and we want to make our own decisions. And we want to make sure that those decisions are aligned decisions. So there's a lot of things that we want with this. We're sometimes so focused on building and AKA meaning doing stuff, tasks, bum, bum, bum. Ooh, this person is doing that. No, whoa, we need to go faster. That I try to take a few steps back and just being just in being loved and try actually not to think about that at all. So how do I do that? I will go for a walk.
I would hang out with friends. I would, I don't know, take like proper time to read a book. I will take myself out on a date and I would just go to the cafe or whatever. Just bring my e -reader. I'm just going to read and just something that is not work related. I'm giving myself time to learn about me. So currently a very, very big topic for me is human design. So I'm a projector and there's a lot of things that I'm still discovering about myself. And by
letting myself be in being mode, I can actually discover things about myself and I can reflect about myself and I can think about like, why did I do it that way? Why was this conversation so difficult? And I can really like, you know, like, like, look more inward and also sit with those feelings for a while. So that is like a bit of the difference between like being mode and doing mode.
Nienke Nina from StartDigital.io (09:15.278)
Now, how do you achieve this? What I see from a lot of conversations that I have here on the podcast, behind the scenes, and also I guess conversation with myself is that, and I already said it, is that this is difficult. Like this is not easy, but it is definitely possible. So one of the things that I already gave you is to drip moments in your calendar. Since I started doing this, I feel much more at ease.
But not only that, so important, what I'm feeling is that whenever self doubt kicks in, whenever I'm going into sort of like, oh, I don't know what to do, it's crazy, blah, blah, blah, I go to my being mode. And I'm trying to see why my mind is telling me these things. Maybe they're past experiences, maybe I got triggered from something else that happened in the morning and now it's just spiraling down.
So being in being mode even throughout the day, throughout the weeks, it allows me to observe better sort of the self -talk. And unfortunately, my self -talk is not very positive. And this is something I'm actively working on. And I cannot work on this if I'm constantly in doing mode. And when I'm constantly in doing mode, the self -talk keeps going subconsciously.
So I'm not fixing it. I'm not dealing with it. I'm not facing it, but it's there. Even though I might not hear it, it's there. When I'm in being mode, I hear it and I'm like, whoa, is that what I tell myself? Okay. So this is kind of like what I love about it is that you start to sort of see what's happening more. And one of the things is specifically with self -talk, I realized that just sitting there meditating and doing this, it's...
It's not really helpful for me. So what I did instead is that I have two notebooks. I'm going to get actually one. So I have like these little notebooks. They're like the size of my hand. I have two. One is my positive self -talk. So that's everything that I'm proud of. So whenever I do something that was little, big, whatever it is, it doesn't matter. I'm proud of myself. I make sure I write it down in this booklet and I, I...
Nienke Nina from StartDigital.io (11:36.174)
say not like, oh, I'm proud. That's it. No, I am explaining why this matters to me. Why am I proud of this? So this is one thing. But I have another one. And the other one is more focused on what are the thoughts around fears, things I'm scared of, things that doesn't sit well with me, like the more not so positive self -talk that I have. So I write that down. Now, the first month I started doing this, I kid you not, I put them both together.
my not so positive self -talk book was, oh my God, it was so like, I had so much more to write in that. Whereas with the proud of, I had very little to write. And that's when I started seeing by being in being mode, wow, there's like a big gap here. And it's okay sometimes if you have thoughts or things that are, you know, like that's fine because it helps us to be observant and be realistic. But if you're not having a lot of...
Positive self -talk and you see that by for example pointing out the things that you're proud of I don't know it could I have things in here does like let me just I Remembered it one day I didn't want to go for a morning Walk or like a walk in general because I felt like I didn't have time I couldn't find it right now, but I felt like I didn't have time and Then I was like no, I am NOT gonna slip. Let another meeting slip through I am going for this walk. I
walk in the park, I gotta do this. My park is five minute walk away or eight or something like that. There's no way. So I did it and I was not in the headspace to do it. But I was like pushing myself out of the door. Just like go, go, go. And then eventually I went and it was so amazing. The weather was amazing in the house. It was very cold outside. It was amazing weather. There were.
There were like little birds that were like doing their thing. It was amazing. There was a forest. And then actually I figured I had one call with someone on my team and I was so overwhelmed because I had already so many calls that days. I text her and I said, look, I'm walking right now. I really, really need this. Can we please push back our meeting? Because I feel like this is re -energizing me so much. And I just want to listen to the birds and just sit here and walk and do nothing. And she was like, sure, like go ahead.
Nienke Nina from StartDigital.io (14:00.334)
this walk really changed a lot for me. So this was like a moment when I wrote down in my book, like I'm proud of for taking my amazing body outside and go over this walk and just treat myself with being in being mode. But sometimes also when I, I don't know, when I had a difficult conversation or, you know, work is work. So sometimes.
You know, things are more challenging with clients or when I said no to someone else's proposal because financially I was like it was not in alignment. I also write down those things or if I had a difficult conversation with a girlfriend or something like it's not just work related. This is just day to day life. So this is important. Now what I want to do next is just kind of give a few tips on how you can apply this in your life. So one of the most important things.
is in general is that you're that you're realistic, that you're realistic about how much you can do and how much time you have and how much capacity you have in terms of resources and finances and time. Like one of the most challenging thing for people in business, freelancers, coaches, service providers, consultants, people are hosting retreats, like, you know, entrepreneurial folks.
maybe like yourself, is that we don't really set realistic expectations. And this is a muscle to flex. Like this is not something that's gonna happen overnight. But what I would love to invite you on is an open invitation is to look at maybe tasks or projects that were done much quicker than you expected. Or also, and also maybe look at tasks and projects that had massive delay.
And take, and this is also being mode, right? Like taking a little bit of time to reflect on that. Like, why was that? Like, was there some underlying stuff that was happening? Why was that? You know, like, and just really figure out the whys a little bit and have those reflection moments. I did this as well. And what I realized is that changing business from what I said in the beginning, I was operating like I was operating last year.
Nienke Nina from StartDigital.io (16:13.166)
And I am not the same person last year. Like I realized that I actually don't want to work 80 or 90 or a hundred hours a week. I actually want to enjoy my weekends. So what I started seeing is that I needed to change the way I was operating because my expectations were not realistic at all. Was that a bit of a painful bite? Yes, because I was like, I cannot do everything I wanted to do. But now that I'm easing into this, I'm also seeing that because...
I have better expectations right now and more realistic, right? I am overwhelming myself less with stuff. Sometimes it still happens, right? It's part of life, especially entrepreneur life. The other thing is to really focus on the progress, so the journey and not perfection. Here's a big secret, boo hoo, perfection, it doesn't really exist. Like...
I know that we, when we jump in a project where like it needs to be this, this, this, or even when we want to launch it before that, everything needs to be perfect. But truthfully, sometimes it's just better to give it 70 % or 80%, give it a go and just see what happens. I have done course creations, like full on courses. I want it to be perfect before even putting it out. And I honestly, it was a learning curve. That's okay.
But it was a tough one because I spent so much time on creating this course. And then the end, I decided I actually don't really like designing websites or helping people build their websites. Like I don't mind a landing page here and there because we do it all the time for the agency when we build marketing funnels. But like a full on website was just not really what I enjoyed doing. So when you focus more on the progress and not the perfection, when you...
And when I say focus, observe again, like are there things in your current process that you're like, oh, this feels icky or, oh, I don't like this or, oh my God, this is amazing. If you are more observant of that, you learn what fits better you, your lifestyle, your personality, your capacity, the way you want to work. And then you can start tweaking how you show up online or how you design your offers. All right.
Nienke Nina from StartDigital.io (18:33.486)
The other one that I wanted to share with you and this is, I have one episode about this. I talked about this with a few people and recently we had Hannah Dixon from NomadKit on the podcast about virtual assistants. So what I want to tell you is to consider, to delegate and outsource a few of the things that you're doing. What's important is that you start recognizing at one point that you don't have to do everything on your own.
There are other people that love certain things, things that you might hate or not enjoy. So a few weeks, months ago, wait, oh, I'm recording this early May. A few months ago, I would say I started to create a list and every time I was doing my task, I was like, oh, I don't like doing this. OK, I put in a list and then I have a three column list. One is the stuff that I absolutely love doing.
No way Jose that I'm going to outsource that because I just love it too much. There's a list of things that I potentially want to outsource, but I'm like, I don't know yet. Maybe, maybe also not because outsourcing that piece is like giving away a lot of control, which is obviously a bit hard. And then there's a list of like need to outsource ASAP right now, please like yesterday already. This is a list that is actually more nitty gritty tasks.
And I actually started outsourcing this. Now, some people might say, yes, but it's like investment is money. But trust me, like it's like similar to having someone cleaning your house. Like if it takes you six hours and you're frustrated and annoyed, or it takes someone else three hours that likes doing that or likes the money and you can use your six hours to just have fun, work on your business, work with your clients, do other stuff, go on being mode, right?
That is such a great investment. So look at the big picture with this. I am not saying that outsourcing is easy. It's a big process. There's a lot of considerations. But what I would say is that if you start with outsourcing nitty gritty things, you start to learn the people that you're outsourcing tasks to. And when you get to know these people better, you might also figure out that they are really passionate about something that is on your maybe outsourced list or it's
Nienke Nina from StartDigital.io (20:55.054)
is on your outsource list. This happened to me as well. And what was really cool is that I didn't hire this girl to do this task. I hired her for other tasks. But then she actually told me in a call, just like a random call, like, or it wasn't random, it was a work call. But like in a more random conversation, she told me about what she liked. And I was like, wait, I think that's actually on my list. Because I don't want to keep everything in my head, right? So I went back to the list and I was like,
You know what, let's create a project around this because this is on my list that I'm actually of the things I don't like doing. So let's go for it. And now I feel so much better. Um, but again, set realistic expectations and just know that this takes time. You can't just like, Hey, do this task and be out. Like you need to be there because also you want to make sure that the person that is going to do that work specific that work for you, that they have the opportunity to do it the right way. So also treat people.
with patience, please. Okay, and the other one, and this is basically the last one I want to share with you guys. And this is so important for me, this is everything. And that is connect with a supportive, like -minded community, community members. So these can be single people. This can be a larger community, can be a small thing. I have different moments throughout the week where I'm connecting with people in the community.
Some of those are one -on -one calls. Some of that is just voice messaging on WhatsApp. Others is in a Slack group or in a Slack channel. And others is like on a Wednesday call that I'm part of. And it's, one thing is having conversations, but the other thing is just to have this booster of like, yes, things are possible. Yes, I can do this. Yes, I'm here with everyone. And obviously there's this big part of all like, whoa, this is challenging. How did you do this? Whoa, I don't know the answers to this question. Well,
Can you fix this? Like, or, you know, like it's good to be with like -minded people because we can all help each other. And one of the things that I really love for entrepreneurs in entrepreneurship, especially in the digital nomad space and the remote workspace and the mindfulness space, there's so many communities. There's so many communities. Some of them are paid. Some of them are free. Some of them are like higher prices on a bit low, like entry, but like there's so many communities.
Nienke Nina from StartDigital.io (23:16.462)
This is online and then obviously there's offline. One of the things I'm struggling with right now is that as I'm in Vienna and I'm living here, where my partner is that I'm not so, I don't see so many digital nomads so often. So I started to realize that one thing I need to connect with more digital nomads. So I went to running remote, amazing community. Like that was such a motivation booster. Oh my God, insane. I loved it, loved it, loved it. I'm...
I am also looking into other workations or things that I can do to places where I can find digital nomads. But also I realized it's not just the digital nomads, it's the entrepreneurship part. So I'm thinking about joining communities here. It could be either through coworking space or some sort of social club. I'm still figuring how this works. So I haven't figured out my community yet in Vienna.
But that doesn't mean that I'm not thinking about this. And this is a very good example of real life. These things don't happen overnight. It's not about how many Slack groups or channels you're in. It's about finding the right community for you. Another really great way is to go on workations or like trips. There are so many people right now that are hosting retreats, including myself. Super exciting. It's going to be happening in September, but there's so many people doing things. So even if you're feeling like a bit low and you're like, oh,
I don't know what to do. Seek out to community and don't, don't be scared. Like, please not. Like there's so many amazing people in the space. So, um, yeah. So for me, that was it for today, guys. I really, really want to encourage you to be in being modes, to take care of yourself and to, I know entrepreneurship is cool. I know it's really cool to see how your internet heroes and your internet friends are like, bomb, bomb, bomb.
But just keep in mind is that you are you and you need to figure out or you need to as an open invitation, you need to figure out what works specifically for you. So you don't have to copycat everyone else around you. Just sit with yourself, being being mode and then find your alignment, tweak, learn, observe, reflect, go in doing mode, do all of that, but always come back to being mode.
Nienke Nina from StartDigital.io (25:37.966)
Thank you so much for listening today to this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. Again, like I said in the beginning, if you have thoughts on this, if you want to share what being in being mode means to you, maybe you are also organizing a retreat or you are, you know, or community, sorry, you have a community, please let us know. You can either comment on our post, you can, you know, send us DMs. That's really amazing because I would love to hear from you guys as well.
All right, thank you so much for listening and like I always say, happy nomading.