Stop managing time. Start managing yourself - With Abigail Langridge

I’m joined by Abigail Langridge, and this is a conversation that goes far beyond traditional time management.

Abigail has played a significant role in my own journey. Years ago, when I was trying to do everything at once and feeling completely overwhelmed, she helped me create a way of working that actually allowed me to breathe again.

In this episode, we talk about what time management really means and why most approaches fail.

This isn’t about rigid schedules or forcing yourself into systems that don’t fit your life. It’s about understanding how you’re currently operating, where the mismatch is, and making small, practical changes that create real impact.

Abigail helps senior leaders and heads of departments reclaim control of their time and their lives. Through her 1:1 Time Mastery sessions, she works live with clients to cut through overwhelm, tackle priority tasks in real time, and embed habits that actually stick. No theories, no endless planning; just clarity, focus, and results.

Her signature program, Get Your Life Back, transforms overloaded calendars into actionable, controlled schedules, helping leaders feel present, in charge, and free to focus on what matters most.

Work with Abigail 

Or connect with Abigail on linkedin / Facebook

There is also a bonus extended conversation with Abigail available inside the membership, where we go deeper into her personal transformation, the moment everything changed, and what it really takes to rebuild your business in alignment with who you’ve become.

If you’re ready to go beyond the surface and implement this properly, you’ll find that inside.

If this conversation resonated, you can find the extended version and deeper insights inside the Stop Waffling & Start Selling membership -  currently €9 per month HERE

Sandra ten Hoope is a Sales & Story Strategist and corporate attorney, known for bringing clarity to complex situations in both boardrooms and business.

Drawing from her own experiences, she now empowers professional women to rewrite their personal narratives. In Do Not Try HIM at Home, Sandra reveals the duality of her life, closing multi-million-pound deals while living in fear at home.

This podcast is for entrepreneurs who want to stop circling, trust their voice, and build a business that sells through clarity, not pressure.

Alongside the podcast, Sandra offers the Stop Waffling & Start Selling Membership, helping entrepreneurs move through:

Clarity → Connection → Conversion

Members receive bonus episodes, tools, and guidance to turn insight into action.Sandra also offers Revenue Clarity Sessions, focused one-hour conversations to identify what’s impacting your revenue and what to do next.

If you enjoy the conversations shared here, you’ll find extended discussions and additional insights inside the membership  HERE

Transcript

Welcome to stop while playing start selling the weekly podcast in which we dive deep into the world of persuasive storytelling, effective sales techniques and practical strategies to help you grow your business.
Welcome to a new episode of store, browse, start selling, and I'm very honored to have Abigail Langridge as my guest today, Abigail has been
detrimental to my success, even though she might not realize it,
because years ago, she helped me
to get out of a do it all at one day. Do it all together. Do everything you can imagine to do rather by
helping me to come up with a schedule that allowed me to wear the
many hats without going nuts as the Mad Hatter.
So Abigail over to you. Tell us a bit more
about who you are and what your business is about.
Well, that's a lovely intro. Sandra, thank you very much. Always pleased that I hear when I help people not to go nuts, i My business is called it's your time, and it many connotations can be taken from that. It's your time because it's it is always your time. But ironically, on the flip side of that, many, many people will spend a long time in their in their lives saying they don't have enough time. I wish I had more time. I'd love more time to do whatever. So my business is centered, absolutely centered around putting people back into their own lives. Now that's not just in a professional capacity. That's very much in a personal side too. Because, again, we focus our lives on other people, their obligations, what they expect of us. But actually, by putting ourselves first, and this is not rocket science for anyone or new, but even just in a very small way, putting ourselves first can absolutely transform everything in our lives so and I do that in a very, very practical way. I never come in and clear the decks and tell you to start again from scratch. It's in a very easy, tweakable way, shall we say.
And do you find,
when you look at your client base, that women are more prone to put themselves last when it comes to whatever has to be done during a week. I know a lot of people take either their job or the business very seriously. They take their family life very seriously. And then sometimes, you know, maybe on the weekend, you wonder, is there a me, because I just went through, you know, your latest post on LinkedIn, I think it was yesterday, about how much, I think, if we summarize it, how much you enjoy the Sunday, basically allowing yourself to enjoy that time. So is there your experience that we tend to forget that we are also meant to have proper fun and rest time?
Yes, because I think we're conditioned to not see it as productive. We're not. We're not doing it's that operating in that masculine energy, isn't it? Because it's we're seen as doing things, you know, we're human beings, not human doings. And if we're not physically doing something, producing a result, chasing up, following up, you know, working on the report or whatever, we're not seeing it as productive. And we then berate ourselves over that, and as a real DNA advocating of this process of me following and pulling the plug on my previous business and really stepping into this one was me using my weekends for me, and that still feels selfish, but the benefits I've had, not just for the business, but for me as well, of but doing that so this weekend I was in London, avid part run fans as a family, and as much as it was exhausting, I feel completely reset. And I've had a break at the weekend because although physically, I was very busy, I didn't really think about my business. Now that's not to say that I don't love it, that I'm not ambitious or anything like that. Because, again, I very much get those noises in my head that well, if I'm not thinking about it, or if I'm not drafting a post, or if I'm not messaging someone or something, that I can't have a successful business, that's absolute rubbish. And this is what I completely advocate for clients. Because once you do find that time to reset, and it doesn't always have to be a whole day, we can incorporate that into the week as well. You come back so refreshed. It's it's literally like magic. It's wonderful.
Yeah, I fully agree. I think it's also always the narrative that
I think we've all been there, when I was in corporate, especially when, when you're in an office environment, would always be, what are you going to do? You know, on Saturday, what you're going to do on Sunday? The same question would appear on the Monday,
and just the idea of maybe not doing,
or not knowing and allowing that weekend to flow.
And also, I think now with, I mean, we met, you know, as online entrepreneurs,
the idea of having to be on also
over the weekend can be,
well, it can exhaust me at times. So now I've come up with
not being a very tech person, what I recently discovered the benefits of the edits app. So what I do now is maybe the old story over the weekend, and then, like I did last night, I do a little summary of what happened over a couple of days, and it makes a lovely little wheels out of it, and makes life a lot easier. And what I'm a bit worried but what I'm seeing is this trend of personal branding.
And part of me is like,
Is this the new hype? Because obviously, as online entrepreneur, I think we are, have always been our brand, but I'm hoping it doesn't make people focus so much on themselves as a persona within the business that is going to be a personal,
burnt out thing, because being a personal brand, I'm afraid that people
think that they would have to be on the socials, on everything
all the time. Can you see now, with the client base that
you're working with this tendency, that I think if I'm not showing
everything all the time, I'm behind,
I make it in the corporate, either world, corporate or online?
Yeah, absolutely. And I feel that myself, and I agree the buzzwords and the personal brand narrative is very, very prevalent. I mean, I see it more on LinkedIn, and I do agree with it to a certain extent. I think we've kind of come full circle with the AI, because so many people have been using it so much and resting on it, that we've lost that human element, so it's thrown the scales the other way, and everyone's really wanting that human connection. There's so much noise online, so that's built up the personal brand, because people will always buy into you as a person. You know, we are our businesses, but healthy boundaries will always have a place and that they're hard to enforce sometimes, because, you know, business owners, we love what we do, I could easily work seven days a week. I am not perfect. I don't because I know the benefits of stepping back, like I said at the weekend. So personal branding for me is just it going full circle? I think pretty much after covid, I think we were in a similar place. It's it's building human connections. It's sharing what you're doing talking to other people. It's opening the doors on, you know, our story, conversations like this. It's not necessarily opening the doors on your family or, you know, things that you don't want to share it make you uncomfortable. But personal branding, for me is just being really, really authentic and your your true self, for want of a really cheesy phrase,
yeah, no, I fully agree. And for me now, my speciality in this whole realm of marketing and sales is your personal story and how to weave that into your business. But as I always say, you know at a pace and scale that you are comfortable with, it does not mean that everything that happens to you as a person has to be showcased online. And also, you know what, with you being a specialist in time management, like I said, if there are no boundaries, and you consider yourself not just a personal brand, but you know, on 24/7 I think it will be so difficult to upkeep those boundaries, is that something that you find
with your clients, is that also one of the
reasons that they come to you?
Yeah, absolutely. So time management is a massive, massive black bucket of just everything. It's procrastination. It, you know, can be delegation. And it's we start with, how do you want your life to look how do you want to use your time? Do you want to finish at four o'clock on a Friday? And then we look at how you're actually operating. How far away are you from that? And then it's. Tweaks, practicalities, reality, you know, all those wonderful things that we do have to incorporate. And then once we look at how big that mismatch is, then I can suggest boundaries. And then again, it's adding in that dose of reality, because if boundaries aren't realistic. They're not going to be maintained. They're not going to happen. So for me, what's the point of having a boundary where you're not going to check your phone after six o'clock at night? But actually, that's very much an inbuilt habit, and that's also a window of time that you maybe like to do that, maybe after dinner. Brilliant. It's not a hard and fast rule that you know you have to clock off at six or whatever. The you know, what I do is very much tweaked around what's going to work long term, because if it's not going to work long term, we're not doing it. So that reality is a huge part of what I do, but with the boundaries, and also refer acknowledging that they will change, acknowledging where you are in your life. If you've just come back from maternity and you've got a baby, you know, realizing that the boundaries are not going to be the same in six months time. So just working right? This is where we're at at the moment. Let's just go with this. How's this working? Right? We need to tweak that a bit. If you're, you know, at your later stage career, and you're going into maybe an ED role, something like that, your boundaries are going to be completely different. So really recognizing where you're at and then where you want to be, and then they reflect that journey. So it's hugely different for everyone. But like I say, it's got to be sustainable, yeah?
Because also, you know, I think
you've seen so many of those posts online saying we all have 24 hours in a day. And I'm like, Yeah, sure. And you know, the one still saying that is your, your old school bro marketing kind of guy
who may or may not have a wife who may or may not have children.
But obviously, it's not true. We cannot all carve out
certain hours in a
day to do whatever we want to do. I mean, for the longest time, I've tried to work the nine to five, and then, as they say, the five to nine to build something up. And I've only been able to, to a certain extent.
Also, we've been, obviously, I
was almost going to say family obligations, but it's not an obligation, but it's obviously, you know, caring for your family is a commitment that we we've been blinded by like you say, what is your time reality? And I was just wondering, when you ask that sort of first question, what do you want your day or your week or your life to look like? The concept of choice.
How do we respond to that?
Because we've gone to become accustomed, especially in corporate, you're working the nine to five yada yada yada. Or mine, you're working 24/7 yada yada. And then you bring them a choice. Is that at times, is it liberating? Does it scare them?
I would say 99% of the time they laugh because how they would want it to look, especially within the constraints of corporate, they find it funny that it isn't. They don't think it is their choice, and again, realistically, a lot of what they do isn't their choice. They do have things to meet, deadlines, etc. They can't just, you know, leave the office for two hours for no apparent reason, but they can, to a certain degree, because as long as we pick up those obligations and those things that they do have to meet the rest of their time, as to when they prepare for the meeting or when they go for a coffee with a business development colleague, is their choice so, and that's how we organize their time, because the business just cares for output. Basically, that's, you know, being completely brutally honest. That's what the business cares for. So as long as we're meeting those obligations, slotting that person back into their own life can also work for them. But again, it's that mismatch. It is that mismatch. So it's, you know, when putting in preparation for a KPI or a project, or whatever it might be, take into consideration their energy management. There are they a night out or they, you know, they someone that actually likes to be in work for seven doing that preparation work in accordance with their own natural rhythms. And energy management makes a huge difference to how the rest of their time is used, so things like that are again, tweaks, but a small tweak has a really big transformation in their week.
Yeah, I also love that you touch upon, you know, night owls and early birds, because we've also seen the
Miracle Morning 5am
Club.
I'm an early bird. I've never been a regular sleeper. But if you are a regular sleeper, and you just happen to
wake up somewhere like between
six and seven and you start your day, you make to work. Please don't ever force something like that upon you, because all the things that they say that you could do between five and six. You could do maybe lunchtime. Works for you, if you would want to incorporate journaling or a bit of, you know, you could have a walk with a guided meditation on or, you know, have a bris walk after 20 minutes of exercise in the idea that it would have to be at five o'clock in the morning. And they say, Yeah, but it's a lot of successful people do. But they speak about people have such success that between five and six in the morning, because everything else you know, the you know, commitments or obligations they would have towards
family or otherwise are being covered, are being outsourced.
If, if you know, if you are a young mom, but you
happen to have a good nanny who is up
early in the morning and you can go to the gym at six, perfect. Most of us do not have the luxury. So you can well wish
for things to to happen
between five and six.
But if that's not you, and especially, I think we've it might have more value to me being an irrecular sleeper. Sleep is
the one energy source. If that works for you, if you have a
pattern that works for you, you feel refreshed in the morning, you can well, do away with a lot of forced relaxation techniques. I think it's very much under appreciated the benefits of
sleep, absolutely. I mean, I'm a sloth, so I would, I mean, especially with the sunshine, now, I could happily just go and lay on a rock and sleep for hours and then still sleep at night time. So I am completely opposite. I adore my sleep. My mum always said it was the best medicine, and I completely preach the same to my own children, but I've also had interrupted sleep, being of that age where I'm kind of coming to the end of certain cycles and things. So if I don't get that sleep, the days are really affected. So I use time as a moving target, apart from committed calls like this one, the rest of my time is okay. I need to do X, Y, Z. Do they have a time deadline? No, okay, as long as I get it done by x, y, z, and they kind of just float around the week. That works for me brilliantly. Sometimes I advocate that with clients, if that works for them too. Sometimes people like to live their life quite rigidly and like to time block their color code, and really go the full caboodle with kind of more traditional time management stuff. But actually, on the whole I'd say, looking at all of my clients, just scanning them all metaphorically in my head. I would say it's a moving target approach, because, like we say, if you have a bumpy night, if you have your kid, if you've got young children, they wake up until you wake up and you know how you're feeling and what mood you're in, you can't then say, right, yep, I'm actually going to do this. Or you need to just roll into your day, picking up the commitments and deadlines, obviously, but it's I allow for you being a human in your time management, because I think unless you give yourself a break, your life will just become very robotic and you won't enjoy it. So that's the real element of time management that I think that was lost, that I really, really advocate to put back in. I mean, you know, like I say, putting people back into their own lives seems a very strange concept, but it's where I begin, which is why I ask, how do you want your life to look which is a huge question, which usually ends up with being laughed at. But I need something to go on. How are they living their life? How? You know, so it's takes me 10 minutes, very, very quickly, I can establish things that we can just tweak, and then we just work in parallel for a little while, and then within six months, within six months, they're coming onto calls. We haven't really got much to talk about anymore, and it's kind of like, they're like, kind of graduating and, yeah, that it's, it's magical. It's really, really magical because it's changing their perception. It's not something that's now running out of. Because I think time is a the only thing we're never going to get back, as you say. But if you don't see it like something that's constantly running out of, you view your whole life completely, completely differently, but it but you need to tweak your habits for in order for that to happen.
Now, like you say, your approach your service
is special in this 24/7
Go, go, go online world and.
Whilst it should be, you know, as natural as can be, and I
can fully agree to it being magical,
because that's how, you know, I introduced you. We met a long time ago when I was juggling
intense you were,
and I also thought that there was no choice, and we did some tweaks. And yes, there was a choice. There was a choice in so many ways, and I still benefit from that, and I can only hope that
your message spreads so more people can really
realize that notwithstanding commitments,
there is always an element of choice.
And you know, you also touched upon
as women coming to end of cycles,
I've I'm now, as they say, post menopausal. As I was
going through perimenopause and menopause,
there was so many other things happening in my mind
that that was an edit, whatever it was, and I would have wished that when it all started, I didn't have so many things going on that forced me to be in sort
of survival mode, and I could have handled it
in such a different way, understanding more of what was going on with my body, my mind, my Soul, everything, because it touches you up on every level. I sort of did not have that luxury.
So it would be wonderful if
I think for all women you know around the 40 level, 40 mark, that you would realize
really what could be ahead, that it
need not be something that will issue.
But if you prepare and also allow for time in your schedule to adjust to your
recklessly the hot
flashes, the brain fog.
It will ease the whole process, but usually it hits women at a peak in their career, which we're forced to just go on and on. Also, when it comes to seasons, you know,
take away the cycles and seasons affect both men and women.
We when we started to rent where we were at last year, we inherited the cat. And Tony had never really lived with a cat before. He knows. You know he knew our dog. We're still very much alive for living with my ex. We see we see him regularly, and obviously now with winter all that, Louis, that's the cat's name, does is sleep in the summer. He's outdoorsy, and now he just sleeps. And I said to Tony, so should we? Because we are mammals, yes, yes.
He came up with all the
inventions, be it electrical light and
even this, you know, as being able to
communicate wherever we're at around the world.
We seem to think that we can do away with the rhythm of the seasons, to the extent that first of January,
everybody's going crazy with all
sorts of things that have to change in their life
right now, and the energy and what are you going to accomplish? And you're going to be fit, you're going to be rich, and you're going to be all sorts once you're in the middle of winter, unless, obviously you'll be in a failure. But us here, we're in the middle of winter, so your whole system just wants to and then there is this voice in the background saying, what are you going to accomplish this year, as if there is a true transition
between the 31st of December
and the first of January? Dates are man made. Seasons are
not Yes, I couldn't agree more Absolutely. Yes, so to me, and now is a better time for New Year. When the daffodils are coming up, it's everything's a new beginning for this year. The sun's starting to come out more. You know, it's not as dark morning and night. It's much more of a natural New Year. I couldn't agree more. January is, I don't hate January. January was didn't drag on, particularly for me, but I don't push myself to I certainly don't join a gym with millions of other people across the land. I just carry on, just leaning into what I'm feeling. You know, the myth the plan is always the same, but yeah, loads, loads of people come into January with such a force that they are exhausted by February, March time. And it's such a shame, because it's not, it's not really needed. It's yeah to you know, the seasons exist for a reason, and many, many other things are run in accordance with the seasons. Look at the birds, for instance, as well. They also go on holiday, don't they, in the winter. So yeah, but us humans like to
do things a different way, which is, which is a shame.
Yeah, it would be. Wonderful if the majority of your clients would, sort of, you know, meet you end of summer, and
then you could also tell them, you know,
there'll be a season, but I'm guessing maybe
many will come to you end of January, beginning of February, wondering how they're ever going to meet all those new plans in an already over stretch schedule Exactly?
That's exactly it. It's where people's lists and things that they want to do don't match available time again. It's that mismatch, and that's that's why I start there so and rewinding just a bit further back, starting with managing the mental load, because, again, we carry so much of everything and anyone else's stuff as well in our head, managing that first, and then filtering down to the practicalities of day, right? Okay, the start, we extract it all from from the head first, and then we go through priorities, right? None of this is actually yours, so, and by doing it with pen and paper, neuroscience proves that physically crossing something through you're actually creating space in your head. So managing that mental load means that when you do show up to something in your diary because it's a priority, you're far more likely to do it. So, yeah, it's, it's a process. But I do the same with every single client, and every single client I've had and still have in this business. It's worked.
Working. Well, obviously, you know, having been
a client, I can well
imagine, and when you speak about
the mental load, and I still think it's also bigger for women, I think that
in most relationships, most
families, it's the women who think of all the little things I remember, obviously, before we split up, and it's not a reason for the split up, but it didn't know either. It came to a point I would always make the sandwiches for everybody. So for my for my partner, for his daughters, for my son, for myself. I would get that every, every evening, and sometimes I'd be a bit tired, and then he would say, Yeah, you know what? That those five minutes in the morning, I could do that. I could do it myself. I was really, like five minutes. So I, you know, if you know, I would wake up very early not to do all the morning miracles, but just to basically make it through the general morning routine. And as you know, if we were to walk from one room in the house to the other and we'd see something that has to be sorted. We, Oh, we didn't laundry. I'll take it away. Oh, washing away. And we would just normally do that. So by the time that he would be up, and as he was a smoker, had his food, cigarette in his coffee, I would have already done a 30 task. I could just, I could make my sandwiches, I mean, and I know my son has just turned 16, and I just left a project at the bank, and I'm working on
several online projects,
and he's going through his exams, and I'm now really teaching him to be mindful of my mental capacity when it's okay to ask certain things and when it's better to wait a bit. And obviously that's that's that difficult, because he's a
teenager and he's a boy, so
he is very like, oh, there's something. Get it out there. But I think it will benefit him in the long run, also, if he, you know, was to find a girlfriend, maybe later, a wife, to realize that
there is so much that's going on, there's so much that we,
by nature, would have a process more and arrange more with even without even Thinking about it, that you can't always jump on everything. And I think that's also a part of time management, to be able to really close yourself off to get the task done
without everybody. And I think that the most of us can
relate if we we work online and work from home,
people think, Oh, she's at home, which means,
no, it means we're working, yeah, she's
available, because she's at home, absolutely,
yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, I mean, but that's boundaries, isn't it? Again, that comes back to boundaries. So I have that with my mother in law, because I work from home. She She just comes in and expects me to just suddenly have food and tea and things, and I don't. If she comes in, I can hear the door, I work upstairs, and I just ignore her. So even if she calls, I just completely ignore her. And then she leaves again, so and then later on, when I see her or she'll ring me, you were in. Why didn't you come down? I'm working. Do. I'm not sitting upstairs in the bath having you know, I've got work to do. I run a business from home, so that's been a bit of a journey to get there, because that's probably what she takes it as being rude. But I'm working, so it's, yeah, I absolutely get that. I really do. And even
sorry, sort of maybe generational thing, because for the longest time you would work outside the house, be it, you know, be it in
in an office, in a shop, in a hospital, but you would always be
outside the house. And then, obviously, online entrepreneurship became a thing, and then covid hit, and we was all forced in the house. But there's still this perception that if you're in, you're in for anything.
Yes, absolutely, yes. I know. No, that's not the case. That's not the case. Yep, absolutely, absolutely, definitely, a generational thing, but it's, you know, your boundaries can be anything. I mean, that's, I heard a great phrase last week at an event. You get to, you get to be God in your business, and you do, yeah, yeah. Really good, because you don't have to adhere to the nine to five just because you are working from home. You know you're working hours can be anything you want them to be as long as it works for you, and if you've got a family, and you know, things like that. But if you don't, you don't have to work nine to five. And I love that, because you we're totally accustomed to be available when everyone else is available. But who says you do? No one you know. You get to be God in your business. I think that's brilliant.
Oh, that's a lovely phrase. And, you know, I think that I see that with myself. I see
that with others. We sort of bring that corporate way of working,
be it time or be it how we interact with people. We take it online and we It starts off thinking, Oh, we're free and we can do as we like, but we're so accustomed to the rituals and the timeframes. Like you say, Yeah, you could do nine to five. I now find myself often on a Saturday evening, my son is out with his friends, and I'm having a creative flow, preparing content on a Saturday evening. I even had
the same now ex again at some point it was like,
oh, yeah, wouldn't you want to do something fun on the Saturday I said, Well, this is one
of the ways that you and I differ.
I love to work on my business on Saturday evening.
It's my idea for fun, and it works for me. My son is out.
And the thing is, if
you do on the Saturday evening, you don't get the WhatsApps, you don't get the emails.
Because if I think that you would also talk
to your clients about the concept of flow, allowing that focus time, you know, for you to really focus on the task and be in the flow of it. Well, if
you need to create a flow time,
it's perfect, if that works for you, but we're so stuck sometimes in in the mindset. So obviously, I know you work with corporate clients, but when you work with online clients, do you still see those tendencies to sort of rebuild the nine to five, but then just being a one man or one woman show which is different, because if you work in corporate you work in a nine to five, but usually, like the commercial, side is taken care of the administration side is taken care of, the logistical side is taken care of, and then you're on your own, and you're you're having the nine to five mindset, but all of that, you have to organize yourself, you have to go out to get the client. You have to nurture the client. You have to administer what you do with the client. So we go from Freedom falling back into a corporate rhythm, and
then maybe feeling
the tension like hey, but this was supposed to be fun and free and and there is no office that sets the boundaries. There's no manager telling you that you work between the nine to five. You have to keep yourself going, so to speak, is
that something that, that you see is is a hurdle that time.
So I don't have any one solo, one man bands, kind of as such. That's not to say I wouldn't necessarily work with that dynamic, but right now I don't have them. But it says it's a similar dynamic, because, like you say, 95% of people that I have worked or working with have been and come from corporate background or even a business background, and even businesses, everyone tends to work nine to five, unless they have only ever really been an entrepreneur and they're incredibly creative and they've just embraced their own i. Like work, work way since, you know, sort of they're 18, and I think that is quite rare, unfortunately, but it's really leaning into what feels right for them if they don't have those corporate constraints, energy management and deadlines, and you know what you're working towards, like you say you were doing content on a Saturday night. Does that content need to be out by the end of March? We still can create deadlines and things so things can keep moving, even without that corporate nine to five deadline. So it is using time to your advantage in that way.
Do you find that
someone who is in corporate is
open to the concept of energy management.
When I bring it to life, they are because, after a conversation with them and they're they tell me what they're struggling with. They tell me how they're feeling so and then I use what they've said to me back at them, so if they're going through perimenopause or something like that, and I'll say, Well, how about we still meet that deadline in two weeks time or whatever? But actually, we might book a half a day off or or something given, depending on what their diary looks like depending on the deadlines they've got in their life. I propose a solution, and I have to think on my feet quite often in order to present it back to them, I will, I will incorporate their energy into the solution, and now I've never had a knock back, because it's giving them the outcome they want, ie the professional outcome, because that's what most are driven by. But actually, by sandwiching them in the middle, it's it's a no brainer, because they instantly know they're going to feel better. They instantly know that the outcome is going to be a better outcome, because they're going to be delivering it better, they're going to feel better, they're going to be supported better. So it is a no brainer, so it doesn't take me long to establish where they're at, but it's how they're feeling actually. So time management is very much about how you're feeling day to day, because time still makes you feel something. When you're in a meeting, you're still existing, you're still feeling you're you know, you're getting vibes off other people, the human connection. There might be tension. It might be a really big project, there might be stress. So this is all how time is making you feel. But actually, again, as I touched on earlier, it that's a perception. So it's very much, it's a real, quite big dose of sort of coaching, but we reflect on how that person's feeling in the meeting, the stress. Where's that coming from? Is it coming from the work? Is it coming from the person? And then we can absorb it. We reflect on it. So the coaching, but then we're actually using that reflection in the call at the same time. So the normal coaching call would probably be talking, you know, how does it make you feel? And then you'd go down that rabbit hole of questions. But actually it's a lot more intentional and a lot more direction. But with me, because I need to know how they're feeling, where they want to go, etc, because we're going to implement that now, because it's clarity and control by the end of every call with me, because they're already time poor, they've already got loads to do. I don't need to give them something else to think about, something else to do. They've already got a plethora of those things to do anyway. So it's quite intense, but in a really, really practical human, human way. Yeah, I
love that, because, like you said, the
last thing anyone needs is just to be sent away with with open questions, with your experience, you can, I think, very quickly, see where the pain points are at and how it could be solved, and sense what they need that they didn't know they wanted.
This is really, you know, say, you know,
really gift what they need without them realizing that they wanted, and present it in a very bite sized plan that they feel comfortable executing. And I think that's so important that it's, like, I said, it's, it's,
it's part, like, very holistic coaching. But then, really, yeah, practical,
yeah, the practicality of it. And I think that is what
really, I think makes you unique, because you're not just
practically thinking so many hours in the week, so many
tasks, which is also that that's
also part of maybe more general time
management, and can help people to a certain extent. You're also not
just, you know, giving them space, energy and everything. You're the perfect combination
of sensing. What they have no
clue that they need, and giving them a practical plan, and that's rare,
and then we're implementing it as well. So there is a plan, but also it can change, because curveballs land, you know, things happen, and it's, it's that dose of reality. You know, it's children are ill off school, or you're ill, or, you know it's right, okay, how can we change the plan, right? Okay, so what we're doing now and that, I mean that that's been my career. I mean thinking on your feet was pretty much my entire career before I started doing this. So drawing on the things that I did before this have been incredibly useful and have led me to really, really nail down this, and that's how I get to have so much impact, which is amazing.
Well, you are amazing. Really, you are and thanks. I'm really you know, because we haven't spoken
for a long time, but I'm very glad that we reconnected,
because if I had not found you when
I did, and if you had not, and you did it with me, you know, I had this.
I was almost suffocating
with everything that had to be done, and I felt like I had no choice.
And who does help me breathe? And then gave me
something very practical, and here I am, literally, here I am, so
what I would love to do, and this is
for the members of my substack membership, I would love to bring you over to that part of the podcast, because when we met again, you told me about the big transformation that you've done in Your business to touch upon that. That would be specifically for the members. For those of you in the general podcast Abigail we will also put it in the show notes. Where can
people find you?
So I am on LinkedIn. Abigail language. You can find me on Facebook, also, Abigail language, I think those are the two main platforms. I think they would be the best port of call for now,
wonderful. And I can
only recommend anybody who is
sensing, and I think most of us are, whether
we are still in corporate whether we are
in a transition where we're online
but feeling that we're still stuck
in a corporate way you're thinking and working. If you want to have briefing space and a schedule that works for you, contact Abigail. It has worked for me, and I could not recommend you enough. So thank you very much, Abigail. Oh, thank you, Sandra, wonderful. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Stop waffling, start selling. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope it helped you on your business journey. And if you liked this episode or the podcast in general, do share the link and for further information on Stop waffling, start selling, have a look in the show notes. See you again next week. You you.