The Power of Oxygen 1st
When my son was little, I was a single mom who was doing it all alone. I was putting everyone else first and my own needs last. To everyone around me, I was successful but little did they know that my success was tied to pushing, stressing, sleepless nights and early morning workouts pushing my body and my limits to the extreme. Until one day I was flying alone and nearly crashed an airplane and I realized that I needed to take care of my own needs first before anyone else. You see, when you’re a pilot, if you have any issues in the plane, you put on your oxygen mask 1st, not your passengers. They need you to land the plane.
This podcast is all about this journey to healing, to getting clear on the desires of your heart… and stepping into them with courage while leaning into, asking for and receiving support. I hope you feel inspired to do less, to follow your passions and infuse them into your daily life and truly claim the life you were meant to live: a life filled to the brim with epic ADVENTURE.
The Power of Oxygen 1st
EP 66: Why Getting Back to What You Love Will Transform Your Business
Perfectionism and the compulsion to do everything yourself might have gotten you this far in business, but it won't take you where you truly want to go. This enlightening episode explores the common trap entrepreneurs fall into - gradually drifting away from the passion that sparked their business journey only to find themselves drowning in tasks they don't enjoy.
Drawing powerful parallels between how we lose ourselves in both relationships and business, I share my personal experience of disconnection after running my business on autopilot during my divorce. The wake-up call? Realizing that the activities I kept pushing to the back burner - like pursuing speaking engagements - were precisely what attracted my ideal clients and reignited my passion.
The solution lies in a three-step process to reclaim your business joy: auditing your tasks to identify what energizes versus drains you, delegating the energy-depleting work (which isn't always about hiring), and recommitting to your original purpose. When you operate in your zone of genius - that magical space where time seems to disappear - you naturally become more magnetic, confident, and creative. Your business thrives because you're showing up as your best self.
Ready to make a change? I've created a specialized Hiring Return on Investment calculator that helps you make data-driven decisions about delegation - whether you're an entrepreneur or not. This free tool will show you exactly how outsourcing tasks you dislike can transform both your personal and professional life. Download it today at dotrockconsulting.com and take the first step toward reclaiming the joy in your work.
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Hey guys, this is the Power of Oxygen First podcast and I'm your host, dot Rock. I am an entrepreneur, a mom, a stepmom and a scaling consultant who is obsessed with the art of hiring, support and that dirty word we call delegation. I'm a recovering perfectionist who pushed my body and my limits to the extreme until one fateful day I learned that, just like pilots, I needed to take care of myself first. This podcast is all about the journey to healing, to getting clear on the desires of your heart, stepping into them with courage and leaning into and asking for support. I hope you feel inspired to do less, to follow your passions and infuse them into your daily life and truly claim the life you were meant to live. Well, hello my podcast listeners. Welcome back to the Power of Oxygen First.
Speaker 1:It's that podcast where we just keep talking about putting ourselves first so that we can really lead, grow and thrive, and this is the business podcast of the week. So I do one personal Oxygen First episode and one more related to business or the working world. I'm your host, dot, and today I wanted to talk about a very similar topic to my Tuesday podcast with the personal one, and that is about just really reclaiming your joy and remembering what your favorite things are, why you do what you do and doing what you love first, and then actually leaning into delegating the rest or asking for someone else to take stuff off your plate. Because at some point as business owners even as employees of business owners sometimes we just get really lost in the grind of doing things we don't love. Maybe you started your business because you were passionate about something, but now, if you're honest, your days are just filled with emails, admin work and kind of a never-ending to-do list. Am I right? Does that sound similar to what is going on with you in your life? Going on with you in your life, familiar Today? I just want to really dive into why you need to lean into the work that just lights you up and honestly work on your subconscious beliefs that are holding you back from delegating the rest. I know I said that and you said, but I can't afford it, but I don't have time, but I need to master it first. Those are the subconscious beliefs I am talking about, because if you started your own business, a big reason behind that is because you had a why and your business should fuel you, not drain you. And if your business is draining you, we have a problem. What's going to happen is likely you're going to burn out and the business is not going to turn out the way that you had hoped.
Speaker 1:So let's think about it for a second. Like, how do business owners lose themselves? My Tuesday episode, we talked about how we lose ourselves in relationships themselves. My Tuesday episode, we talked about how we lose ourselves in relationships. Well, in business, it's very similar.
Speaker 1:When we start a business, we just wear all the hats. We think we can do it all CEO, accountant, marketer, customer service rep do it all Because you think you have to know all the ins and the outs and you have to set the website up and you have to do it all. And, by the way, that is a limiting belief that keeps you small. It is also a real sign of codependency. Codependency meaning you are trying to control the outcome by doing it all. That's actually codependency. All that's actually codependency.
Speaker 1:Over time, once we lose ourselves by doing it all, we get stuck in these shoulds, doing things we don't love because we think we have to. Huh, isn't that interesting how we also do that in relationships, how we also stop doing all the things that are absolute oxygen, first to our souls, that feed us, that take us to the next level, and instead we self-sacrifice. And then the problem is the more time you spend on the things that drain you, the further you get away from the reason you started your business. The further you get away from that spark, the further you get away from putting in business proposals that light up your soul. We all get stuck in this.
Speaker 1:I am actually right now kind of digging myself out of this because my business was a little bit on autopilot as I was navigating my divorce, and now I have the opportunity to turn it up a notch. But being on autopilot has been a little bit disconnecting and draining and I've got to reconnect with those things in my business. That don't necessarily seem to be what makes me lots of money, but I always end up manifesting new clients when I'm doing things like. One of those is working on speaking engagements. Now, yes, I make money on speaking engagements, but I have to put in some time and effort into getting those speaking engagements. And what's interesting is, when I do that work, which doesn't seem to be directly tied to revenue, I actually end up attracting more clientele in the other areas of my business. So I need to take a little dose of my own medicine, because there's a little bit of burnout beginning to creep in for me and my passion for the things that I know light me up, like speaking, is starting to slip away a little bit. I'm starting to make more and more excuses for not doing that work and it is time to set a 30 minute timer and let myself do that work this week. Set a 30 minute timer and let myself do that work this week, so I'll report back to you and let you know how that went. I'd love it if somebody out there DMs me and ask me if I actually did that work.
Speaker 1:So why is it that we do this where we get a little bit lost and we start doing the things that don't light us up? Well, it's because we're kind of exhausted and when we get uninspired, we begin and we get stuck in busy work. Our businesses just begin to suffer. And don't forget you are the most valuable asset in your business. You're the most valuable asset in your life, and our best work happens when we're doing stuff that feels like time doesn't even exist. That's what we call our zone of genius. That's from a book called the Big Leap, one of my favorites. Read it if you haven't. But there's this zone of genius where we're doing work. It lights us up and we could just do it effortlessly. That's the kind of work you should be focusing your efforts on. If you're only doing like 2% of your work in that, try to increase that to 5, then to 10, then to 15%, because when you focus on what you love in my world, that's speaking engagements it brings new energy and new creativity and new results, and the rest of the work goes faster.
Speaker 1:So it's time to delegate the things that don't light you up, because success is not about doing everything. I get that that might have got you here, but it is not going to get you there. I know that grit and hard work got me to where I am in life, but I am not going to keep doing this, burning it at both ends of the candle, and it's not serving me. It stopped serving me long ago and I stopped doing that when I started my business. So I don't want to do that now. I don't want to keep hoarding things in my business that someone else could do at a cheaper rate, while I make more money doing the things that light me up.
Speaker 1:If you haven't done the math on this, I have a hiring return on investment calculator on my website, dotrockconsultingcom. It's actually fun. You can do it for household stuff whether you're an entrepreneur or not. You can do it for household stuff whether you're an entrepreneur or not, and it's fun to see what the return on investment can be by outsourcing things you hate. Anyway, that's just a little side plug, but don't forget your time and energy. They're finite and where you invest them really, really matters.
Speaker 1:So what do you do if you know you need to reclaim the joy in your business? You're feeling a little lost. I've got like three steps Audit your task. Just start writing down what you're doing. Make a list of everything you do in a week, or jot it down at the end of a day. Or set a timer and jot down what you were doing the last hour. Just do that for a week. I know it's a pain in the butt, but what's really cool about it is you can go back through that and highlight what it is that you don't like doing. You highlight the tasks that energize you and you highlight the ones that drain you. And the ones that drain you, go on your delegation list when we delegate the. So that's step two.
Speaker 1:When we delegate the draining work, we see a growth in our business, because delegating doesn't always have to be about hiring somebody. It could be about automating a system, it could be about not doing it at all ever again, it could be about ditching that work and it could just be about hiring somebody. Like I said, hiring help isn't always a cost either. It can be an investment back into your energy and your business growth, because you may be making more money at your rate of billing than the person doing the accounting would have. Right, like, so many people are so comfortable outsourcing bookkeeping but nothing else in their business, and that's because bookkeeping is scary to them. And if the only stuff you're outsourcing in your business is because you're afraid of them, that in and of itself is a problem. We need to be outsourcing the things that do not light us up, the things that drain us, because when we do it it frees up so much time and energy, we get things done faster, more ideas come and we're more magnetic to drawing in the clients that we really desire.
Speaker 1:Okay, third step in reclaiming the joy in your business is to recommit to your why. Why did you start your business in the first place? What is that? Why, when you're looking at that list of tasks you wrote down that you do for the week, which ones make you feel alive, which ones align back to your why you have to make those a priority, not an afterthought. And when I'm saying all this out loud to you, I need to shift what my week looks like, coming up ever so slightly, to be spending a little bit more time in what lights me up, the things that get put to the back burner, and I need to delegate one more task for sure off of my list.
Speaker 1:I can feel it in my soul right now, and so one other thing I just want to point out is what's really cool about reclaiming the joy in your business is that it actually builds confidence in you, just like reclaiming your favorite things in your life and spending time doing things you love increases self-confidence. It builds self-confidence in your business, and sometimes the reasons our business artists are not growing the way we want them to is because we don't have the self-confidence to do that. Business are not growing the way we want them to is because we don't have the self-confidence to do that and you have to be confident in the fact that your heart desires something and there's reason for that. You have purpose. There's a reason you're being called to do something For me. It's speaking that will probably change lives and I need to honor that. That calling is in me and spend some time on that, because when we operate in our zone of genius, we just show up as the best version of ourselves. We're more magnetic. It increases our confidence. It makes us more creative and effective, and our clients and our customers and all of the opportunities around us are drawn to that energy. The more you enjoy your work, the more successful your business becomes. I think it's very similar to the more we pour into our personal lives, the more everyone around us really feels that.
Speaker 1:So if today's episode hits home for you and your business, I'd love to hear from you. I'd also love it if you call me out later this week and see if I did what I said I was going to do and worked on my speaking process just a little bit, did what I said I was going to do and worked on my speaking process just a little bit. So tell me, reach out and let me know what's the one thing you are ready to let go of in your business, and if you need any help hiring the right support, I'd love to help you. So remember the power of oxygen first, because when we take care of ourselves, when we take care of what lights us up, our business thrives too. Oh my gosh, am I excited to share this new hiring return on investment calculator freebie that I have been working on for about six months. You're probably thinking what the heck is a return on investment? Well, that's when we take our revenue minus our expenses and it calculates how much return we get by investing in something.
Speaker 1:I've applied this very masculine concept to hiring into the art of receiving support, and so what this little tool does that you can just go and download from my webpage, dotbrockconsultingcom. What you can do is go and download this and use curiosity 15 minutes total of your time. Go through this tool and it's going to help you make a little bit of data driven decision making around hiring and why it can help you in either your personal or professional life. You don't have to be an entrepreneur, but you could be an entrepreneur and it's going to help you understand the impact hiring or delegating more, or handing off more tasks or even not spending any money on this and simply asking for more support how that could change your life. I'm excited about this freebie and I hope you will go check it out.
Speaker 1:Download itrockconsultingcom Enjoy. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for listening to another episode of the Power of Oxygen First podcast. I hope you walk away feeling inspired to do less, to follow your passions and infuse them into your daily life and truly claim the life you were meant to live, and I hope that you start leaning into the art of receiving support. I'm here to support you on that journey. Find me at dot rock consulting, comm or dot underscore rock underscore on Instagram. I'd love it if you'd go follow me and shoot me a quick DM and let me know what takeaway from this episode hit you the hardest, sending you love and adventures on this beautiful day.
