0:00:02 - Briar
There we are. Hello, welcome. I am Briar Harvey. This is the Neurodiversity Media Network. Today, I am here with Joa and we're going to fix work.
0:00:17 - Joa
This is so exciting.
0:00:20 - Briar
Okay, so y'all, if you've missed the previous episode, you want to go back and catch our introduction. Today's episode is specifically focused on small micro businesses, solopreneurs, people who are doing it. Small, because, whether you realize it or not, most of us internalize productivity culture And we bring those things into our own businesses, and so that's what we're going to fix today. I'm so excited, joa, how are you?
0:01:07 - Joa
Doing well. I'm so excited as well. This is such a good series And I feel like our first episode last week we really like we went pretty big pretty quick And I love that we're bringing him back down to the individual level. And what better way to do that than the individual who's like trying to like grow their own thing from this, this one man band, one woman band, into a whole, a whole system of itself? right, We, we are a system in of ourselves And then we can, we can grow more beyond that, But we have to make sure that we're not inadvertently replicating all of these patterns that we absorb from our larger, our larger work culture.
0:01:46 - Briar
And how does that show up?
0:01:52 - Joa
Yeah, well, you know, we, we move through. we move through our, our culture, experience wherever we're rooted And I grew up in the United States. most of my work history is in the United States, so American work culture is sort of the culture that I am imbued with And a lot of that looks like very task oriented, very goal oriented, very accomplished oriented, not so much process oriented, not so much sustainability oriented, not so much of you know, where are you as a person? And I will have a caveat that a lot of my work history was in psychology and social work. So there is quite a bit of talk about self care. we could do a whole episode about that Briar self care industry And and what that means in terms of work and who we are in the workplace.
But you know when, when we talk about the cultural messages that we get, we are absorbing cultural messages all the time, largely in an unconscious sort of way. And so when we are sort of ground down by the system, by trying to be in these work systems, to the point where we eventually had a point and we say I don't want to be in this work system anymore, i'm going to do my own thing, i'm going to be an entrepreneur, i'm going to be a freelancer, i'm going to do my side gig full time, right. whatever it is that moment of like I don't want to do this anymore, i'm going to do it differently. Almost always that is catalyzed by this moment of wanting to do things differently. And that's where the trap comes in, because sometimes, when we've absorbed all of these messages unconsciously and subconsciously, no matter how badly we are ground down and and think we're going to do something differently we strike out on our own and we start doing the same thing over and over again.
0:03:54 - Briar
Yeah, it's really interesting the ways in which these patterns repeat themselves, especially unconsciously, And it really takes a lot of work to unpack them. How do we determine when a practice is causing us harm?
0:04:22 - Joa
That's such a good question. I think that we touched on this last time a bit about doing that inner inventory and building in reflective practice to just do that internal kind of self assessment like how are you doing today self, how are you doing this week self, how are you doing this quarter self, you know to kind of check and note milestones. You know in positive directions and negative directions, are we more tired than usual? Are we more engaged than usual? You know there's there's all kinds of metrics that we can look at, but usually we start to think about something not not going well when we start to feel adverse effects And that that can look a lot of ways.
0:05:08 - Briar
Already not too late, but by the time we're feeling adverse effects, the problem has usually picked up steam right.
0:05:21 - Joa
Right, right, and it's not too late to fix. But it is too late to be proactive at that point. Right, that's, that's an important distinction. Right, we can. We can preempt a lot of these things before we have adverse effects. We can't preempt them once we're feeling adverse effects. But we can, course, correct, we can make adjustments at any point. You know, there's there's never really a point where we've gone too far and there's no, there's no getting back again. At least that's that's my perspective. I suppose some people might feel differently.
0:05:55 - Briar
I think the question becomes then what are we looking for? What are we looking for in terms of toxicity, that we this is tough right, because I don't know what I don't know And I don't know that I have internalized bad systems If I'm not constantly reviewing for what those systems are and I feel like in my own business this has been a very intuitive, reflective process That I'll find these things because I've sat with them long enough to go.
Why do I not like this thing? What do I do about it? I tend to think that because I am autistic, i'm really good at that level of self examination And most people don't spend that much time naval gazing. So how do we assess when there is a problem before it becomes a crisis?
0:07:12 - Joa
Yeah, well, you know, in in preparation for for this episode of ours today, you know I was looking at some of the cultural norms in the US for work related details as compared to a lot of other places, and I thought it would be. I thought it'd be fun to go down the list and sort of assess these pieces from both like the individual level and then like the structural level, because I think that you don't know what you don't know exactly, like you said. So how do you get that? Well, you can start from a list of call, work your way backwards.
0:07:49 - Briar
You can always ask chat GPT.
0:07:52 - Joa
You're going to ask chat, gpt, you can do like a scholarly, peer reviewed research. There's, there's any number of ways aside from you know, just like being able to do that inner inventory right of you know how are things going truly, and how do I gauge this based on how things have been versus what I would like them to be? But you know, one of the things, one of the sort of like mantras of professional life I feel like, is work life balance right, this idea that we're supposed to balance work hours with non work hours, and that you know, and then sleep hours right. If you, if you just have the right formula and the right ratio, everything's going to be fine.
Eight, eight, eight, eight, eight, eight, eight, eight, right, eight work, eight personal eight, sleep. Everything's going to be beautiful, happily, ever after. Which, of course, is first of all, that that ratio is true for, like, i don't know, point zero, zero, zero, one, yeah, nobody, yeah, like, and maybe That.001% is super happy, but maybe not, i don't know. I haven't found anyone who actually has that exact formula yet, have you?
0:09:06 - Briar
Nope, no one.
0:09:07 - Joa
No, no, and then you know so. so, but I think that the idea of balance is still an important one. It might not mean 888, but we all do need to sleep to some degree. We all do need personal things that sort of like feed our soul. We all do need to earn income to like support our lives. We all have these needs in different constellations for different people, right, and that looks a lot of different ways. Somebody who has no family life may have like way more hours that they genuinely want to devote to work, but also someone with no family life might also really not want to devote those hours to work because they love world travel, and they will use all of those extra hours in the day to like plan and enact all of their travel plans. right, you know that's there's no, there's no assumptions that we can make just based on family constellation, for example. So we run into problems there making assumptions when you're looking at it from the employer perspective.
0:10:08 - Briar
Okay, So let's hit your myths. Let's what Let's. let's go down your list of beliefs here.
0:10:17 - Joa
Yeah, so belief number one Americans work easy, long hours right, and that is backed up by data. That was backed up by data.
0:10:29 - Briar
The more educated you are, the more hours you work This one has been. I read an article from Anne Helen Peterson about this fairly recently that there's more bleed because you spent all this time getting these degrees And so now you are part of the elites and it's harder to say no. It's harder to not check your email after work hours. It's harder to not be available. I mean when your billables are at 12 minute increments. you can get 12 minutes in anywhere.
0:11:11 - Joa
You know, there's a really interesting like a tangent on that, which I would be interested in investigating further at some point, which is this idea that, like, of micromanaging and how leadership is constructed in US based teams versus other places. I think, by and large, a lot of the research alludes to the fact that US based teams are a lot more micromanage. The supervisors, managers, are all much more intricately involved in the day to day of their teams than a lot of other places, and so that really supports what you're saying, though, which is, even as you ascend in leadership presumably often with education as well like you don't really have less demands on your time, you have more, but that may be a US based phenomenon as well.
0:12:07 - Briar
I'm willing to bet that it is at least in, or North American I think there are similar cultural norms in Canada, But once you go out of North America people do not view work the way that we do work.
0:12:23 - Joa
No, no, yeah. So the data that backs up the long work hours for the United States shows sometimes a disparity of double. Like Americans are working double the number of hours of some, for example, european countries, which is just like. That blows my mind. It blows my mind when you think about that. It's not across the board, those are the extremes, but it's at least 50% more oftentimes in terms of hours in the day or hours in the work week, rather. So there's one to examine. And when we think about that, let's talk about what that looks like when we become a team of one or the leader of a very, very small team. I think especially I mean, i'll speak from my personal experience When I decided to do my own business, i was like I can do this better, i'm going to do great things.
I was so excited and enlivened by it And I wanted to do it all the time And I just I couldn't not do it. You know, i really I didn't set boundaries for myself on it. I just was like, let's do it, It's so exciting. I worked crazy long hours. I, you know, would work weekends. I wouldn't be able to stop thinking about it. Part of that was just the creative process right And I don't. I don't feel any like negative feelings about that, but it's certainly like from an outsider looking in. Was that a good work life balance? It really wasn't. It really wasn't. I was so immersed in it.
0:13:53 - Briar
The, the culture of always being on as an entrepreneur and hustling man. That's a real thing.
0:14:08 - Joa
It's a real thing. It's a real thing. So, even though, like, i felt like it was very inner driven, with, like my creativity just wanting to really come out and and form this ball of clay right And to into my vision, it's also definitely reinforced right As soon as I had a single like search logged on the computer of like how to start a small business. Right, like you start getting the like the targeted ads for all the things which are about hustle culture and like getting to that six figures, or seven figures, or 22 figures, like however many figures you're supposed to aim for now, right, like and all of that. It's just like it piles on. It piles on so quickly, but it's weird juxtaposition too, of like lie on a beach, make six figures, hustle all the time, rest 60, you know hours a week, i don't know.
0:15:02 - Briar
Which is fascinating when you look at the actual numbers, because what we know is that most solopreneurs never break six figures. most small businesses go out of business within three to five years. These numbers are extraordinarily high, and so I really personally, i have a hard time understanding how people are. I think we believe that we've hit gold and that our thing is not going to fall prey to those numbers. We're going to be different, but that, too, is a toxic byproduct of this culture, right?
0:15:55 - Joa
Absolutely. When you look at the reasons why most small businesses fail, a lot of it has to do with not being able to access financial resources to be able to really thrive. And we talk about this all the time in the catalyst where you and I met, right, which is just this whole mindset around like is it a scarcity mindset of like this is the bare minimum I need to survive, to get by, to have a business that's viable, or do I think expansively about what would it take for me to thrive? right, that's what Marisa talks about with the profit plan. And how do we build out a vision that will actually allow us that room? Like, don't come at it from bare minimums, come at it from expansion.
But yeah, i think that that, getting back to the point of, like the long work hours, right, when we are an employee and we're being implicitly or explicitly asked for these long, long work hours, part of the reason why it doesn't feel good to do that oftentimes is because we're not seeing the full sort of the full trajectory of what those long work hours yield. Right, getting back to your stakeholder-ish idea. Then, when it's our own, it feels differently to put in those work hours because we are seeing the full trajectory. It really is all for us. If we want to work 12 hours, those 12 hours are going towards our bottom line, they're going towards our business vision. So those long hours get cast in a different light. That's one distinction. But at the same time, i've found it useful to sometimes reflect on my work patterns as a solopreneur and say if I were being asked to do this by someone else, would this feel like an okay ask? Just because I'm asking myself to do it doesn't mean that I shouldn't have some sort of a valuation metric.
0:17:58 - Briar
Right, and we are the worst bosses. Right, because, again, we've internalized all of this. Okay, what's next?
0:18:07 - Joa
What's next? Very similar, though like one step out is never going on vacation. Time off Like literal, actual time off, not just like reasonable work hours but time away from work. And then the choice of vacation time and sick time and parental leave, and and and and right Literally anything that's categorized as being out of the office, all of that.
0:18:39 - Briar
And in a business of one you are always the bottleneck. So if you can't replace yourself, then you have to create structurally things in your business that allow you to make enough to cover these times, or that you can cover income in ways that don't require you to be physically present. But you have to have an idea of what that looks like. So, for example, i take all of October off. It's the month my son died. It's important for me to be able to set aside that month and be with my family and my grief. This year I will likely just rerun greatest hits. I will have a couple of people covering lives on the network to keep stuff new. Next year I fully intend to have stepped out of this seat entirely, and so the network will run as intended, because I will have given it to other people to do that in the month of October. whatever it is for you, you got to be able to build these things in structurally.
0:20:07 - Joa
That's exactly right. That's exactly right, and part of the task of being an entrepreneur is to envision what you'll need down the road, beyond the context of the here and now, because if you don't set the pattern now, before it's needed, good luck setting the pattern once something else is already established.
0:20:27 - Briar
And what do you do when shit hits the fan and you have no backup plan and you are your only source of income?
0:20:34 - Joa
Right, right, mm-hmm, right, and that's. That really is the task at hand. And I had that experience, you know, within the past two months, when my dad got very sick and passed and I had to be Literally out of the office entirely for two weeks straight. You know, first ever refund of a client because I knew they had just signed up for a service. I knew there was no way I was going to be delivering on it.
You know, like all of all of the steps that I needed to take in that moment, luckily I had thought through what, what it would take, and I had Taken vacations, you know, mindfully and planfully last year. So I knew it. I knew ahead of time sort of what, what would, what would be needed, even though I had to implement it At a moment's notice this time. But if I hadn't, if I had just worked through last year and thought, you know well, some first year got a grind it out like Day in, day out, not not practiced, in a certain sense, how to step away, i would have been much harder in, in that crisis situation, to be able to implement those steps.
0:21:44 - Briar
Mm-hmm, and Especially again United States in particular, with no paid parental leave. If you decide to have children, your business has to cover all of that time and it can't just be After you give birth either, because you don't know what will happen in the second or third Trimaster and whether or not you'll be able to work at the speed you were able to work before. So These things, structurally I mean Jesus, no wonder the younger generations are not having kids. But if This is not built in, then it will never be sustainable.
0:22:39 - Joa
Yeah, that's right, that's right. And you know, like, i think having kids is like one season of life that you know a certain portion of people sort of think about as an automatic thing. But you're right, fewer and fewer people, in a certain sense, are really enacting that vision for their lives. But just in terms of like Age, right, you know, like we all get older every year. We, like, our abilities and our capabilities change as time moves us through. You know, changes our bodies, it changes our minds, it changes all of these things, let alone the context of our lives, for changing what we would like to invest our time and energy into. My friend guys says we're all one good fall away from disability status. Right, oh yeah, there's like, then there's the whole disability element of it too. Like a lot of able-bodied people, you know, sort of never think twice about, well, what if I wasn't an able-bodied person, what would that look like? And all of these contingencies are things that you have to be acutely aware of.
0:23:48 - Briar
Disability in particular y'all, especially again in the United States. Disability insurance is means tested, which means if you make more than a certain amount of money, you don't qualify for it, and It is, for all intents and purposes, enforced poverty, because disability payments are not enough to live on and So you can get them or you can make enough money to support yourself again. Build this into your business, have a plan.
0:24:22 - Joa
That's right. That's right. You got a plan for all the things. The next, the next category on the list. It's actually like three different entries, but they are all about the same thing, which is How, how we move through like a 24-hour period, so eating lunch at your desk. You know that.
0:24:45 - Briar
I'm very occasionally guilty, although I worked really hard on that one.
0:24:50 - Joa
Yes, Yeah, not taking breaks during the day and sending emails after work hours. So it's. It's sort of this idea that, like we're just from the moment we wake up to the moment We go to bed, we're available to do work related tasks and we don't Really do anything other than that if we do other things, we do them at the same time as work tasks. We eat at our work desk, you know, and it's It's just like this idea that we're literally carrying the work with us, like for all of the waking hours, which, again, with my experience of being an entrepreneur like I certainly Did that and it was creative and vibrant and wonderful in the early days, but it's also It's not sustainable.
0:25:36 - Briar
No, and it's very draining over time.
0:25:38 - Joa
It's very draining over time and and part of part of my entrepreneurship journey is also understanding, like the seasonality of Work and of a business Over time. You know there will be these intense periods, but there will also be these like slower periods. You have to build in these these different, these different seasons to it to make the whole rather than just trying to go at one pace all the way through. It gets it gets very tricky to maintain anything over time, no matter whether you set it at a breakneck pace or a snails pace. Doing the same thing day in and day out, week after week, year after year, is nearly impossible.
0:26:20 - Briar
And for small businesses in particular, especially people who are managing their own social media. There's a lot of bleed here into Regular time because it's all on your phone. You have the ability to check Facebook check linked in. Just get a quick DM send you know. Truly, this is probably one of the biggest Thieves of time when you are a small business owner and I think, even if you are hyper aware of it, it can be very easy to just lose track. Oh yeah, because let's not forget that social media platforms.
0:27:05 - Joa
I literally designed to make you do that. That's correct, it's. It's not an accident, it's by design. It's by design. It's by design, so so when you do that you are. It's not because you've got a shortcoming Or you're not being intentional enough. You know like it is designed To like. Have you say, i'll just check this thing and then scroll for two hours And there are.
0:27:32 - Briar
There are Techniques that you can use that can help you get away from that. I truly recommend that everyone track their time with as much closeness as you are able, because the more you track your time, the more you realize how much Of it you spend on stupid shit that you would not be doing if you realized. I Also recommend especially for my nerd divergent folks Either two separate phones.
I have a work phone and a home phone because my home phone has, i mean, and it's I work at home, so it's the upstairs phone and the downstairs phone, but the upstairs phone is not having so much of it. The phone does not have social media on it. Yeah it's also in grayscale, so there's not any Need for me to. Actually there's no colors, it's. There's much less dopamine. It's really much more likely that I'll pick it up, use it for what I need it for and then put it down.
0:28:42 - Joa
Yeah, that you're to be commended. That is excellent advice. I'm so glad to hear that you're doing it. I mentioned last time some of my clients who have the best quote-unquote work-life balance are our government employees, because they just can't.
It's strictly regulated as to whether you can or cannot be on a device Doing work things not, you know, during work hours, and so they just don't, and That is something that you know. I would wish for everybody Um to be able to have that distinction so so solidly, because sometimes, like let's, let's be honest, sometimes we respond better when we're told that we can't do something. Then if we're just left with wide open choices not all things, not all things. I'm not condoning An authoritarian regime. I'm just saying that there's sometimes that, you know, really strict boundaries like that can make a huge difference for ourselves.
0:29:40 - Briar
And because these things have been programmed into us. Boundaries with ourselves are really healthy. This is this is the way that we create The kind of structure that we need, rather than feeling like they're oppressive.
0:30:03 - Joa
Absolutely, absolutely. Boundaries make the world go around, especially and and and you know we, we have to start with ourselves. We have to start with ourselves before we can really do them very well out in the world oftentimes. So let's start with ourselves, let's do it.
0:30:21 - Briar
Okay, do we have anything else?
0:30:25 - Joa
There's one really interesting one on this list, which is that Americans don't socialize Well with their co-workers. Interesting, fascinating thing to think about.
0:30:44 - Briar
So I think that When there are so many requirements about how we work, the only way to approach your, your colleagues is competitively.
0:31:13 - Joa
Yep, yep. the competition piece definitely occurred to me as well, because it gets, gets caddy and there turns into this, this one upmanship of like oh I'm working so hard, no, but I'm working so hard, no, but I'm working the hardest Right. and so it's like, if you want to compete at that level of working so hard, you can't sit around and chit chat.
0:31:40 - Briar
Truly, it is one of the things that I admire most about Gen Z. Is there complete and total willingness to say no, fuck this. I'm sorry, i'm not playing This game. This is not worth my time.
0:32:00 - Joa
No, and it's. It's such a, it's such a point of consternation for, for older generations, who are often in leadership positions with them, this idea that they're not like Falling in line in doing what we've always done, it's, it's a real, it's a real tension point and The generational gap, so People get.
0:32:27 - Briar
People are still blaming millennials for most of the societal problems at large, but in fact Millennials are now, in many cases, middle management.
0:32:40 - Joa
Oh yeah, we are. Oh yeah, we are Right.
0:32:43 - Briar
And Gen X We're going into upper management Right, we'll be there soon. And Gen X, the original Slackers. They are now upper management because most boomers are either in government or they have retired. Yeah, okay, that was perhaps a bad joke, but accurate. So when we look at enforcement of norms, all of these generations have come along and said we're going to do things differently. And they get in. And I think there's been some slow procedural changes, but it's taken all of those things for us to reach a place where Gen Z now can say completely sincerely I'm here to do the job I was hired to do, nothing more, nothing less. Want me to do more, pay me more. That's it.
0:33:51 - Joa
Great, we don't have to get emotional about it. Nope, just the situation, no.
0:33:57 - Briar
I mean, and it's truly, i look at my daughter, who's 21 years old, and I look at the way that she treats her job and she's just, she's not stressed about. This is the job. She goes to work, she does the job. When she leaves the job, she's left the job. I truly am finding that to be a refreshing shift in the way that we are approaching work. So how do we bring that attitude in to a business of one or a few?
0:34:40 - Joa
Well, it has to start to look like those boundaries with ourselves, right, you know the idea of putting work down, having a separate work phone, having dedicated time, and you know to do something else. And there is this pressure. Right, we have to build in, we have to build in the passive income and we have to be ready for you know when, when we need sick leave, when we need to take a vacation right, it's like there is that, that sort of real motivational drive that's, you know, financially tied of, like we are supporting ourselves. Now, this is it. There's, no, no one's coming to save us.
0:35:20 - Briar
No one's coming to save us. Yes.
0:35:22 - Joa
Right. But it's also like, if no one's coming to save us and we burn out, then what? Then? what, Right, Like that's that's the what if that you've got to look at really hard when you're like no, no, I'm just going to put in this like full weekend doing work with no break, Like yeah, and then you burn out, then what Right? Take the break before you need it, Even if you're not sure what you'll do with the time. Take the break before you need it.
0:35:54 - Briar
And work it backwards, right. That is implicit, and I think so much of what this piece entails. If I have to pay for my own maternity leave and I have to pay for my own disability and I'm going to have to pay for my own retirement because that's not guaranteed to me in any way, then I need X amount, that's right. I need to create it in X number of ways, right, and I have to remove the emotion from it, right?
0:36:40 - Joa
Hmm, Say more about that.
0:36:44 - Briar
I think that a great deal of the things that you've mentioned are an implicit culture of expectation and guilt. But we do those things because if we don't, we're not a team player, we're not a member of the family, we are ostracized from work culture, and so that's how we get those things to stick. It's built around guilt, obligation, shame and toxicity that we then bring to ourselves as I'm not good enough, i will never be able to do this. I am not worthy of having these things.
0:37:52 - Joa
Yeah. So we internalize that and it turns into isolation, really profound isolation. Then, when you layer on that competitiveness that keeps us from being able to just connect human to human with colleagues, oftentimes Yeah, and when you are a solo, truly like.
0:38:12 - Briar
The thing that has accelerated my growth is finding communities. That's right. Every single time, whether it's a few close local business besties that I can go out and have lunch with, and we talk about our businesses and we just brainstorm, even though we may or may not do anything like what the other person does, it's for me the catalyst, for you the catalyst right That I've built this community for myself where I can show up and be seen, but there is no competition in those places.
0:38:54 - Joa
That's right. That's right. In some ways. It's a really nice way to train that out of our reflexive way that we interact around work oftentimes is to just really be in those spaces with people who. I mean I'm not sure if you're in the space with any direct competitors I am, but we're not competitive with each other, we're collaborative with each other And that has been a real joy.
And I'll say also that community building cannot be underrated in the least. I mean, it is one of the most pivotal parts of how we operate as human beings. We are sort of wired to be relational And community building is the thing that gets us through a lot of hard times And outside of the catalyst. I also have a group of entrepreneurs who meet on a twice a month basis And we're not in each other's spaces in terms of our businesses, but we have been meeting twice a month for two years now. I mean there's nobody who knows me better in a business way than these women do, and it's literally changed my capacity as a business owner Now just a curiosity is this group paid?
No.
0:40:24 - Briar
See And truly. For me, like the catalyst, is different because it is a coaching environment. I pay for that because I value the entire experience of it. But in terms of community, some of the best ones that I have worked with have been built on mutual affection and admiration for each other, not paying to be in somebody's energy.
0:40:56 - Joa
That's right. That's right. That's right. It's yeah, you're right. They both have value. But there's something that is truly remarkable about just organically formed community groups.
0:41:12 - Briar
And if you do not have one, i encourage you to go out and make one. And it is as simple as the last mastermind group that I was in I created and it was very much. Hey, ladies, love what you're doing, let's get together every week and talk about our businesses, and we were together for about 18 months before schedules fell out and things just. However, even though we no longer meet on a regular basis, those women are some of my biggest fans, right? They share my stuff. They're constantly doing things with me and for my business. These groups may not be permanent, but you just build them by saying hey, you, i like the cut of your jib, let's hang out for a while and share notes.
0:42:11 - Joa
That's right. That's right. Yeah, i mean, admiration takes you far.
0:42:18 - Briar
It really does.
0:42:20 - Joa
Yeah, no, i completely agree. I completely agree, and I think you know there's one tiny add on from that list that I'll just mention because it's kind of related to this too. One of the callouts was that Americans, by and large, don't really take pride in what they do to work.
0:42:39 - Briar
Oh, I really want to unpack that.
0:42:43 - Joa
It's a compelling sort of juicy little thing to end on practically the end for today, but I was thinking about that really hard as it relates to So a pretty worship, because there's this whole emphasis of you have to be the face of your business. You have to be so proud of it, you have to be putting it on social media all the time. But a lot of people start their businesses as a side hustle that they can't really publicly come out and scream from the rooftops because of a lot of reasons. And some people want to do their business and they don't want to be the face of it. They don't want to be having to scream from the rooftops about it. Right, there's like there's so many facets of it that are really interesting to me in the context of team of one or or head of a small team.
0:43:38 - Briar
I also. there's a lot of emphasis on starting with why and doing what you love, and that if you do what you love, the money will follow, which has led many people myself included I'm very guilty of attempting to monetize my hobbies which is terrible. And then you put all of that in a bowl, toss in imposter syndrome. And then you put all of that in a bowl, toss in imposter syndrome.
0:44:29 - Joa
And then you put all of that in a bowl, toss in imposter syndrome. Yeah, and don't feel too guilty about having tried to monetize your hobbies, by the way, because I think that that was explicit advice for like 15 years on all channels.
0:44:50 - Briar
I think we really lose sight of the idea that it's okay to make money separate from our passions. Yep.
0:45:07 - Joa
Yep, absolutely 100%.
0:45:10 - Briar
You know, and this is especially true for people with jobs, but I also know people with businesses who don't love their business. I don't think people go. Well, not everyone goes into real estate because they like houses. They go into real estate because they have really great commissions.
0:45:38 - Joa
Right, right.
0:45:41 - Briar
So it's okay if you don't love it, but we truly like there is an expectation in the entrepreneurial world that you're doing it because you love it.
0:45:59 - Joa
Yes, that's true. So let's bring it back to our our fixed work. Like what are our bottom lines for fixing work as it pertains to our micro businesses?
0:46:15 - Briar
It looks like finding the culture and forcibly removing it from your business.
0:46:26 - Joa
Mm, hmm, mm, hmm, absolutely Setting boundaries with ourselves, practicing setting boundaries with ourselves, not arbitrary ones, but ones that pertain to exactly what you just said.
0:46:41 - Briar
And once we set them with ourselves, it becomes much easier to set them with clients.
0:46:50 - Joa
Mm, hmm.
0:46:51 - Briar
So I have talked about this before. I do not, i'm not a quick start, i do not work well on a short deadline And I have built a lot of margin into particularly my service offerings, because we are not about that productivity culture here And part of working with me is that we release some of the expectations around when things happen.
0:47:31 - Joa
Mm, hmm.
0:47:33 - Briar
I had to set those boundaries for myself, though first, before I could ever say to a client no, actually, that's an unreasonable expectation. This was the guideline that was set out in our initial contract. This is when you'll hear from me. Mm, hmm, and for me and I think for a lot of solopreneurs, it's that 24 hour instant communication feedback. If I haven't heard from my SaaS in less than 24 hours, I'm going to go get a different one, Right.
0:48:08 - Joa
Right.
0:48:09 - Briar
And I do not think these expectations are reasonable in a space where almost nothing is urgent.
0:48:18 - Joa
Right, right, right, the, the reasonability factor. A boy could talk on that all day long. But I think that setting the expectations is so key, setting them for ourselves and then setting them for other people. Because a lot of people say, you know, i think a lot of entrepreneurs worry like well, if I don't get back to them quickly, like what if? what if? what if? Right. But if the expectation is that you won't get back to them for you know three business days, you don't really have to think about the what if anymore, that's just the expectation. So if a day goes by, you still got two more.
0:48:59 - Briar
Right. And again we are finding the culture as it exists in our own lives and business, figuring out the ways in which it is personally harmful and then creating new norms.
0:49:15 - Joa
That's right Creating norms.
0:49:22 - Briar
Or creating the rules, as Marisa would say, we get to, if you will, our own. So how do you find that it works to codify this, like I actually have this stuff written down. It's in Notion, it all lives in a document, like my boundaries, my guidelines. I have put a great deal of thought into creating documentation around this. Do you have any recommendations for people who are building this for themselves?
0:50:02 - Joa
Start the document. It could be a word, doc could be Notion, like if you're starting from scratch on this. You got to open up that document and start brainstorming. It doesn't have to be full sentences to start with, they can just be you know, phrases, ideas. But you know, start with a brainstorming exercise of how do I want my business to look? What sort of timing expectation do I want my clients to have? right, choose any facet of what your business is and start ideating on it so that that way you can get to the bottom of what it is that you are identifying, that you want to enact. The intentionality makes a huge difference.
0:50:48 - Briar
You can't have that intentionality without putting in the effort to get there And I come back to removing the emotion from it. For me, what it's always been is that there will be a thing that I feel a type of way about, and I don't know why I feel that type of way about it, but I really have found that if I sit with it, there's always something inherently destructive around, whatever that thing is or why I feel that it has to be this way. And if I can create new structures, then I've removed my emotion about it, i've removed those negative feelings And now it's just this neutral thing that exists that allows me to feel okay about it, as opposed to positive emotions in your business are great, and they aren't going to be the thing that sustains you. So for me, it's been about finding the things that I hate and getting rid of them.
0:51:57 - Joa
Yep, absolutely, i think. along with that, do the inner work, do the gut check, examine it from some different angles. But it's good to use community for that aspect too. It doesn't have to be like an informal poll of your 200 closest friends. It has to be one or two trusted people who are on the journey with you in some capacity, who you can practice saying some of these things out loud too.
Also, because I'm like this. I mean I can, i can ideate all day long in my head, and sometimes I really can't get to the bottom line of what it is that's bothering me about something until I say it out loud to somebody. And it's not even about what they say back to me, it's just the process of saying it out loud to someone who's listening and hearing, really hearing what it is that I'm saying. So you, i think it's important to get to know your own process for how you develop, how you develop. That's the end of the sentence. The next thing you know process about how you develop and then work that process. If it's journaling, journal, if it's writing a notion, right in notion, if it's talking with a trusted friend, talk with a trusted friend, whatever it is, that is your process. Do that.
0:53:18 - Briar
Okay, so I want to wrap with then. What does a small business or solopreneur look like when it's fixed? What is that? What does a healthy business look like? What's? what's the end point here?
0:53:36 - Joa
What such a beautiful question I don't hear your answer to. I think that I think that a fixed solopreneur business looks like a business that is thriving and supporting the solopreneur And Adding to their life not just providing for them, but adding to their life in some tangible way. When you look at the totality of moving through the world as a person, as a business owner, as whatever piece of identity feels important to you, that being at the helm of that business has added to your life.
0:54:32 - Briar
Yeah, i think it's about having clarity about what the thing is and always where it's going, at least in the broad strokes, that a healthy business is one that you can. I often refer to businesses as pets. Right, they're separate from you. It's your own entity and you know it's healthy when you can take it to a vet and get a health check. And your business is the same when you can sell it, when you can replace yourself, when you can take time off. So when your business is a healthy entity, you will be able to see it in the coat right. It's nice and shiny. It's visible that this is a strong, healthy entity.
0:56:04 - Joa
Right, right, i like that, i like that And I think that sort of inherent to all of those things you listed for a healthy business. it's almost a sense of self-sustaining about it. Right, it could be sold, it could be out there in the world belonging to someone else, and it would be fine. You could be away from it for an extended period of time, and it would be fine.
0:56:31 - Briar
Yeah, I don't want to liken it to raising a child, but there is a little bit of that to it That you spend 18 to 25 to 30 years creating this adult person and then you send them out into the world and your business is. It's not going to take that long fingers crossed, But it's got the same kind of feel to it. You're making something that can go out into the world and be an autonomous thing, separate from you.
0:57:05 - Joa
Yeah, yeah.
0:57:10 - Briar
And that takes real work y'all. That's how we fix work is by defining the ways that work works for us.
0:57:23 - Joa
That's right.
0:57:25 - Briar
Okay, so next time mid-size businesses is that what we're looking at.
0:57:31 - Joa
We could work our way up. Let's keep working our way up.
0:57:35 - Briar
Y'all, thank you so much for being here. This has been absolutely amazing, so truly. I'm going to be so sorry when this series is over, because getting to hang out with you is just so much fun. And, folks, if you are looking to create your own workshop style masterclass, you should reach out and let me know That's briarharvey.com/partners. We are booking right now for June and July, so get yourself in before it gets out of the comfortable ranges. Yes, i'm very excited about what we're doing over here. Thank you all for coming and we will see you next time for fixing the mid-size business. Have an amazing day, y'all.
Transcribed by https://podium.page
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