Follow the show:
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Everywhere else
Erika is a past client who recently implemented the belief that achieving more does not mean working more. As a recovering “hyper-doer”, Erika always tried to fit one more thing in and check one more thing off her list which caused her to always feel exhausted and overworked. Today, Erika has learned how to contain her work so that she (and her brain) stop working at whatever time she chooses. In the last year she has replaced her corporate salary with entrepreneurship, working far less than ever before. In this interview, she shares exactly how she got out of the thought pattern “I should be doing more” so that she could actually enjoy the life and success she created.
Topics in this episode:
What it takes to get rid of the thought “I should be doing more”
Why you need to stop thinking you “have to” do anything
Learning how to expedite success without working more hours
Starting your day with what fills you up!
Getting out of a rinse and repeat life
Show Notes:
Sunny Spaces Organizing: https - www.livingsunny.com
Want to speak to me directly about how to get out of the “achieve more” mindset? Then apply for a free breakthrough call by clicking here: www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book
Enjoying the podcast?
Make sure you don’t miss a single episode! Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or where ever you listen to podcasts.
Leave a rating and review in Apple Podcasts or Podchaser.
Transcript
Intro
Welcome to the ambitious and balanced working mom podcast, the place for women who want to balance their ambitious career goals with their life as a mom. If you’re looking to feel more confident, decisive, and productive at both work and home then this is the place for you. I’m your host Rebecca Olson, let’s get to it!
Rebecca: Erika has been a client of mine for...oh gosh, we started working together almost two years ago. And we have worked on and off in various capacities. You've worked with me in group coaching. We've done one-on-one coaching now for over a year, I love it. And we started together, really, because you were feeling very dissatisfied in your work life and just wanting more of an abundance of time with your son. And at that time, your son, your little baby - and now you're pregnant with number two. So I know we're going to hear a little bit about that too. But at the time, you just wanted to have more time with your family and not have work as the number one priority. And so we've done a lot of coaching around that. And today, you work full time, if you will, the only job you have is your business - running an organizing company.
Tell us a little bit about where you're at right now today. And then we'll backtrack a little bit because you have so much to offer us on this journey of how you kind of separate effort, if you will, from the success equation, there's just so much you have to offer as we talk about that. And so let's hear a little bit about you and introduce yourself a little bit. And then we'll get going.
Erika: Yeah, we started working together when my son was like six months old, and we're approaching our third birthday now.
Rebecca: Oh my gosh, that's crazy. It's been a long time.
About Erika.
Erika: Right now we're approaching our one year anniversary of leaving my corporate job, which was a huge part of the work we did together last year. So that feels incredible. And I definitely have never looked back and said ‘oh, I regret this decision or what was I thinking..’, it's just been full steam ahead. I was determined to make my business successful and be able to create the balance that I wanted to create with having more time with my son and just more family time and not feeling tethered to a computer and the 9-to-5 and my phone always being on and always available. So it's been a huge transition these last 12 months, but even kind of ahead of that just some of the work that we've done together. So as of now, I own my own business, I have a team of about five girls that work with me - it feels amazing. And the business really took off faster than I could have imagined and it has been successful really right out of the gate. Looking forward to welcoming baby number two at the end of October and my team is going to continue to keep the Sunny Spaces ship floating while I'm taking a little leave too. So, it’s really amazing that I've gotten this to this point.
Rebecca: I love it so much. And Sunny Spaces, of course, is your organizing business. And you're based out of where again?
Erika: We are just north of Pittsburgh. So we service the whole greater Pittsburgh area.
Rebecca: Awesome. And of course, we will link to your business and what you do just in case there's listeners out there in your area that want your services.
As we talk about your story, I think what's really applicable to so many ambitious women and there's just no question that you would be in the category of an ambitious goal setter, you're very dedicated and committed to accomplishing whatever it is you've decided to accomplish in your life. And in the beginning, in our very first stint of coaching together, we were focusing very much on you finding balance and peace with where you were at in your current job, in your corporate life. And then our second stint of coaching together was basically getting you out of that corporate life and into the dream - which was this business that you have now. And then the third part of our coaching together has been how do you expedite success, where it's not you working overtime to make it happen. And in the midst of that, knowing that you are pregnant and how do you take maternity leave and not have this urge constantly to have to work, and to get it done, and worry about the money drying up and all of those kinds of things.
And here we are today with eight weeks to go or something till baby number two comes. We've made lots of plans for how your maternity is going to go. So, I'd love to hear a little bit about how you would describe yourself before in terms of your go-getting kind of attitude and personality and the drive that you have and how that was all tied up with time and success and effort. We've done so much deep diving into that. I'd love to hear some of your thoughts about how you would describe yourself.
Overworking and taking no time for herself.
Erika: I was definitely that get up and go girl. My alarm would go off at 5 am and sometimes I would get out of bed a little bit before that, just to get a jump start on the day and I'd be on my computer, plugging along drinking my coffee, trying to catch up or get ahead or whatever it was because I knew once my son was awake, it was the whole breakfast out the door, get to school, you know, the fun that it is with toddlers and putting on shoes and brushing teeth. And then I would see clients back to back because I felt like I had to get everybody in as fast as possible and work as hard as I could. So I’d eat a piece of pizza in the car on my way from one client to another and never take a break. I would be making phone calls as I go. So it was just like this constant run, run, run, get home, pick up Caleb, get dinner going. And then as soon as I put him down, it was like, okay, back on the computer for a little bit just to stay afloat. I really didn't give myself any time to work on the business. I just always felt like I had to keep things going as fast as possible for my clients.
Rebecca: When I think of the old Erica, I think of someone that had noticed if there was five minutes of space, you would be like, oh, maybe I can check one more thing off the list, I could definitely do one more thing. Like, let's squeeze it all in and see if we can get down to zero on my to-do list.
Erika: Exactly, yeah, like I have five minutes in this client's parking lot, let's do a post on social media or see if I can run into target as fast as possible to get whatever I need. And there was no whitespace. It was just cram, cram, cram, how much can we get done in a day. And I felt like that's what I had to do to be successful. You know, I'm an entrepreneur and for a while I was a one-man show - I did have some help along the way, but I really just wanted to do it all and do it fast. And, of course, please my clients as fast as possible. I was always very worried about well, if I tell my client I can't see them for two or three weeks, they're gonna go with someone else. So I think I had a lot of thoughts from this scarcity perspective of like, well, if I don't do it now, and I don't do it perfectly, then it's not going to happen, I'm going to lose the sale or lose the client. So it was almost fear-driven, that I did so much.
Rebecca: I'd love for you to describe the same energy - because you're talking about this in relation to the last year in your business and growing it to the success that it's at right now. But I know all of this was there when you were in corporate life. So what did that look like in the corporate life for you with the same kind of energy and the same kind of drive that you had? Tell us a little bit about, like remembering back to what does this equate to in your corporate life?
People Pleasing
Erika: Yeah, I think that's just who I am, you know, we did a lot of work on people-pleasing. And I know you've probably talked to a tonne of clients about that, but just wanting to always do right by people. And you know, you want to please your boss, I had a team there, I wanted to make sure they always felt supported. So it's very similar to always wanting to be on. Your phone's always on you, you're always available because I felt like that's what made you a good employee. I'd take calls during dinner and not prioritize well, but it was all because I thought that's what I had to do to climb the ladder and get the next promotion and be taken seriously. I wanted my boss to know I was serious, I wanted my team to know I was there for them. And so it was always, what extra projects can we do? What other ways can we make ourselves special? There were times when my team was going to be getting cut, so I had to make sure that we were top of mind and showing our worth, and it just seemed like anything extra that we could do to go above and beyond had to be done now. There was no tomorrow for me in that sense.
Rebecca: Show your worth, that's a really interesting way of describing it. Because that's the proving mentality, right? That if you do more, you're worth more, you're more valuable, the more you check off the last or the more that you are present, or the more you say yes to or the more meetings you attend, or the more available that you are, the more valuable you are to your company, or now like in this case, the more worth and more value you are to your clients, right? It's the same mentality that in order to grow your business, you have to be on always. And you have to show that you're very available to them. And that you can cater to all of their needs, and all of those things. So whether we're talking about a client now, in your business, or we're talking about the customers and the team or the boss that you worked within your corporate environment, it just equated exactly the same. Let's talk about how some of these things have shifted. But I would love to hear how you would describe yourself today now that we've done so much work on this, and we've gotten you to a very different place. How would you describe where you're at today and some of that drive or that mentality that you used to have?
Erika: I mean, I'm still goal-driven. And I still want to be successful, right? Obviously, that hasn't changed.
Rebecca: We set some big goals for you for sure.
I am in control.
Erika: There are definitely days where I wake up and I have this drive where I want to get on the computer right away and I want to get stuff done. There's this constant reminder, I have to tell myself, I'm in control. I have my daily affirmations that I go through and that's just one of them. I come back to it all the time because no one is telling me - we worked a lot on this, like no client is dictating my schedule. I am in control. So I always just kind of come back to that and I remind myself that I also deserve this downtime. I still get up early, I like to have time to myself in the morning but now I make it about me and my personal growth instead of ‘oh, I better check my bank account and do the schedule’ and you know, blah, blah, blah, do all the things.
The big thing I think that really came out of our coaching this most recent time around was just reducing the cram.
Rebecca: What does that mean? Tell us a little bit about that.
Erika: Yeah. Even if it still meant eating in my car on the way to a client's house, I would actually pull over in a parking lot and stop and eat lunch. That was kind of how it started. Like I gradually got myself to a place where I just wasn't constantly driving and shoving food down my throat and running from one to the next.
Rebecca: Tell me why that was even important to you. I mean obviously, I know that we set it as a goal. But why did you want that? Why did you want to reduce the cram in your life and not fill every little space of time?
Erika: I just felt like I could never enjoy anything. I was always rushing from one thing to the next. And then I'd get home and I'd feel stressed because I hadn't had a chance to check any messages all day and then I felt like it always cut into our family time. So I'd finally be home at five o'clock to have time with my family, and then I felt this pull to my phone of like, well, I didn't get to follow up with people and I didn't get to do things that I wanted to do during the day, whether it was personal or client follow up.
So I think the big why was because I knew it wasn't sustainable. I can't keep running like this, also I just didn't want to feel that way anymore. And even on my days off with Caleb - I only work typically three days a week. So the other two days are supposed to be dedicated mommy Caleb days, and I will just feel myself being like, oh, let me just check this message as he's playing let me just, you know, do these things and get kind of sucked in. And I just wanted to be free. That was the whole point of quitting a corporate job because I wanted to do what I wanted to do and have the freedom and flexibility. And I wasn't giving it to myself.
The have-to mentality.
Rebecca: We experience that in a corporate life too, like let me just check this email real fast that you know...it's on your mind you're like, but if I get it done, then I'm not going to think about it and I'm going to feel that feeling of freedom. If I just get this out of my head, and I check that email, I answer this text or whatever. And then of course, as you said, it's like a trap, it takes you down this rabbit hole. But really, even if that was the only thing you did, it's that sacrifice of pulling away from your family to do it and now you're not present. Now you've missed out on an opportunity to hang out or chill or have a game time or read a book or whatever it is with your family. You've traded that off, and we really step back and look at it, it almost never feels actually worth it. And this idea that you're describing is like something that I like to call the have-to mentality, like I just have to do this, I don't have any control, I have to because they need to get it back to them. Or I have to because I need to feel better and I need to let it go. Like there's no other way I can let this go. There's no other way I can rest, there's no other way I can be present, there's no other way I can, I just have to. And this feeling of have-to is a feeling of confinement, not a feeling of freedom, right?
Erika: We talked a lot about the have-to vs the want to and there'd be many nights that I would log on because I wanted to, there was a project I wanted to do. You know, being an entrepreneur, it's still fun for me to work. I mean, that's the whole goal is to enjoy what you're doing.
Rebecca: I hope everybody has fun at work. I'm sure that was one of the reasons why you left your corporate job was because it was not fun anymore, right? So let's just be clear about that. That's the goal, you want work to be enjoyable. I hear that from so many women. They really love their work and genuinely want to continue to work.
Erika: Right. I'd be like, do I feel like working tonight or do I not? And if I felt like it I would and if I didn’t feel like it then I didn’t and it's cool that it was always in my control. But it didn't feel that way before. So now I have this more conscious decision over what actions I take when I take them.
Choosing to work vs feeling you have to.
Rebecca: My philosophy with all of my clients is, generally speaking, that you don't work at night or on the weekends or you don't work past the time you've decided is your work hours - basically from the reactionary place, so you don't do it because you didn't finish your work during the day or you didn't get enough done or you feel like you have to. That all is kind of the same mentality. You can never overwork, which would be working on the weekends or working at night, because you didn't accomplish enough and you need more time. You can do it if you want to from a place of, you've thought about it ahead of time or you are working on something that you feel very passionate about doing and there's gonna be a lot of life that comes from it. That's a very different mentality of working not out of obligation, but out of choice and out of predetermined decision making, not from a place of urgency, and not feeling enough or good enough or that you did enough. So there's this big empowered place that you have come to where you feel much more in control of what you're doing, even if sometimes you're doing exactly the same thing. Maybe you do wake up sometimes and decide to work or you do work at night, from a very proactive place, same thing that you were doing before, but now it feels different. Can you describe that feeling to us?
Erika: Yeah, it's the choice of doing it. Being able to consciously do it. I think almost before it was like you were on repeat. I used to play this over and I felt like I was in a movie, where like, you know, this montage just keeps playing where the coffee goes off and drips into the cup, you go to your computer, you type away, the next morning alarm goes, like same thing, you're just like, on a repeated cycle. And now it doesn't feel like that. I don't know the way to describe it, it doesn't feel like I have to. Some days I meditate, some days I go for a walk. And some days I do get on and I feel like I just really am in the mood right now and I want to knock this out, and I'm gonna do it. And I do and that's okay. It's this freedom of whatever I want to do in the mornings. I wake up, I'm like, what am I gonna do this morning? Maybe I'll do some yoga...it's just whatever feels right.
Rebecca: Whatever feels right to fill you up, not what feels right, because you are so overwhelmed or you're feeling so anxious or you need to accomplish more, or you need to get a head start on something. All of those drivers tend to create an imbalanced life, they tend to drain your energy versus bring you life. And, of course, we take lots of action during our day, we do lots of things that take energy from us just because we exist and we live life and we breathe and so we expel energy. But a big part of our goal is that we choose the way to live our life and the choices that we make. And when we work and when we don't work and the kinds of activities or commitments that we have, all of that we want them to be life-giving to us so that work doesn't feel like work and so chores don't feel like chores and life feels free and like you're in control of that. I love it, so good. So I remember this very specific moment that we had in coaching - of course you know exactly what I'm going to talk about, where we were talking a lot about not working in your business but on your business or in your business. I can't remember which one it is.
Erika: More on my business not always being in the business, I believe.
Rebecca: In your business, right. In a corporate life, that's like taking time to not just do the task but step back and think about the big picture of what you're doing. Are you on the right track? Is it meeting the right goals? Is it the right priority to work with? You can really only do that if you zoom out. And the same thing when you're an entrepreneur like you can't always be doing the tasks - in your case of organizing, you can't always be with clients at some point you have to step back and you have to go, how am I going to grow this business? What's the strategy around how I'm going to manage my team better? So we were working on that and I remember you kept coming to me saying I just need to spend more time in my office. I'm setting these office times to do some of the stuff and I'm not following through with, instead of filling more clients in there right? And of course we all know what that's like even in corporate life. You put a chunk of time on the calendar to work on this project for these two hours and then somebody needs you during that time you're like, Alright, it's fine I'll just move that...and then of course you don't move it and then you get in their cycle. It's all the same stuff right? Whether we're talking about an entrepreneur or corporate life. So we were coaching on this and I was pretty clear with you. I put my foot down and I said no, for the next month this is what you're going to do. So tell us about what happened during that month and what we coached on?
Put your CEO hat on and take a step back.
Erika: One of the things you kept saying was you need to put your CEO hat on and take that step back. I think I was treating myself as an employee and not really having this vision for my company or running it from that stance and I knew that, but it was so hard to remove myself from the day-to-day of the clients need me, I need to be there, I have to be here. I remember you challenged me to only see one client a day so no longer was I allowed to wake up, drive to a client, have lunch in my car and then go to another one. I had either had the morning or the afternoon reserved for my office time. And I thought you were out of your mind and like this lady's gonna derail my business. How am I ever going to keep everything afloat? See people, stay on a timeline...you know all these thoughts. And now I never see two clients in a day. anymore. It's been so amazing.
Rebecca: That was July right?
Erika: I think it was.
Rebecca: Obviously I was pretty strict with you, but we're just experimenting, we're gonna see what happens in July if you do this. So why did we do that though? Let's get really specific. Why did we get very specific about how much you were allowed to work in your business? And creating that space to step back and really strategize?
Erika: Part of it was wanting to create the space and reduce the cram and this is all kind of inter-linked together. I think I just couldn't do it without some specific rules. My brain needed the black and white of like, this is now your new routine or schedule. I wasn't honoring the time before. So it was like alright, now we've got to hunker down and get a little bit more strict with ourselves.
Rebecca: And I remember very specifically, as much as we talked about you believing that office time or strategy time was some of the most important time you could spend in your business because it was going to help you grow, it was going to let you get bigger goals, and all of these things that you needed to do - even though you knew that that was some of the most important time that you could spend, it was almost like you couldn't take that thought, do it and then execute on it. Right? Always when another client came in, it was way more important than spending this time strategizing.
Scarcity mindset.
Erika: I think it came down to money for me too because it was like, well if I'm not in a client's house, I'm not making money. I get paid when I work the hours on these organizing jobs. And if I'm not organizing then I'm not making money. And I'm paying for daycare, so I better be making money. This was my mentality for a long time. I remember feeling so guilty. But like, how do you sell something and market it or put anything in place if you don't give yourself the time to do it.
Rebecca: I love continuing to make this connection to corporate life because it's so true, you feel the same way when you're sitting there thinking about your workload, if another meeting or another task comes up, and you have another opportunity to just check one more thing off your list that always feels better to your brain than honoring a time to step back and look at the bigger picture and decide if you should even be doing that thing to begin with. Like we all know that we should step back and we need time to prioritize. And yet when the opportunity to check one more thing comes up, that always feels better to us in the end. So we had to put it to the test.
Erika: And I was like fine, let’s do it.
Rebecca: We need to prove to your brain that you can make money - and I even thought you're gonna make more money if you take on less clients and you spend more time stepping back and strategizing and creating better processes and honing your business, versus doing the actual work. And so that was the theory and then you were trying and then finally it was like nope, here's the plan. This is what you're gonna do. You're only gonna take one client a day. And I think it was like once a week, you didn't even take a client or something. I don't even remember exactly what it was. And so the end result that month came along and what happened?
Working less and achieving more.
Erika: Oh my god, we knocked it out of the park from a sales perspective, the best sales month ever by almost doubling what I was doing months prior which was also a good number. It was crazy, so I was like, okay, that's cool, this works.
Rebecca: You doubled the amount that you'd ever made in one month basically, by working less, and taking more time to step back and think about the big picture and strategize. So why did that work? Now that we've had some time and some space to analyze that, why did it work?
Erika: I think I was able to be a little bit more authentic because I was less frantic. I wasn't rushing to respond or making mistakes - not that I made a tonne of mistakes, but just like silly little things. Or I had the space in my calendar to go see clients for a consultation. When before it was like I just couldn't even fathom where I could cram something in and that's where I would make my money, that's where I'd close the deal and make a sale. And I think I got over this fear of, Oh, I can't see them next week, they're never gonna want to hire me. I was like, okay, well we're booking out the end of August early, and everything became more fact-based instead of just where can I move this client? If I move her to Tuesday, then maybe on Wednesday, I can fit this in. It was always this puzzle I was trying to maximise. And I think it just allowed me to be more clear on everything. And the clients just kept rolling in. And we took a step back even further to say let's just get back to why you even wanted to start this business in the first place. What was your why? What do you have to offer people? And then I was able to say okay, that's right, this is why I started my business. And that was my new approach to finding new clients and my new marketing strategy and it was just way more relatable. It wasn't a quickie post from my phone in the Target parking lot, it was thought out, planned out, what am I going to help them solve? And so people really resonated.
Rebecca: Your marketing was immensely better because you actually took time to really think about it and think about how you could give value and how you can support people through just a single post, and what would connect with them - not just from a sales perspective, but a how could I help somebody today that might happen to see this post, which of course always brings in business when you do that from an entrepreneur standpoint, for sure.
Erika: Yeah, just being authentic. And yeah, kind of connecting mom to mom, or whatever the case was, just being real.
Decide what is most important to you and prioritize.
Rebecca: Yeah, for sure. It feels like this as an entrepreneur, it feels like this in corporate life, it's really all about your priorities, it's really about deciding what is most important to you, and then orienting your tasks around that. And inevitably, that's going to mean that some of your tasks go away as they should. Because it's not about doing more, it's about stepping back and thinking bigger picture about what's the best strategy for use of my time, like bang for my buck and my time, if I'm only going to work X amount of time, or if I'm only going to do this amount of work, what's going to get me that best result out of that? And that's what you did during that time. You thought about marketing, you thought about who you were trying to connect to, and you thought about what was going to serve them the best. And you thought about consistency with your clients. And you thought about how important that was, and you took the time to think about that - which is so much of what we do in coaching, right? As we take a step back, and we go hmm, is this working for you? Is it not working for you what would work better for you, we just strategize around what you see happening, and how that's being created. And if you want to continue to create that.
Erika: And then having less time to focus on it, like knowing that I'm not lugging on tonight, I have to get it all done. Being hyper-focused and productive in that space, you're not wasting the time or trying to decide, it's very clear what your priorities are, and you just go for it and do it, it just feels more focused.
Rebecca: Yeah, because you're saying my son's coming home from school today at four o'clock and I have to go pick them up. And I'm not logging back on again today so I have to finish this task. There's no more like putzing around on social media, there's no more getting stuck in perfectionism, I just have to write this, or I have to do this, and I have to move on because I have to leave and I'm not gonna allow myself more time, which is so much of being in control and that freedom that we talked about earlier. That's one of the tools and the strategies that we use in coaching and that I coach all of my clients through is you decide the parameters, and then just figure out how to fit into the parameters. That's it, if you continue to say, this is an open-ended project until I get it done, then your brain is going to take an immense amount of time to get it done, because you haven't told it otherwise. And of course, it's way more comfortable to take five hours to do something than it is to just take two hours to do something, it's gonna feel better in the end, of course, but we know that actually isn't the life that you want. You want those three hours back, you want to be able to do whatever you want with that time, you want the time to be present. You don't want your brain thinking about what you haven't gotten done and that you didn't complete that and feeling bad about that. Right?
Being present with our family.
Erika: I think that's one of the biggest things was like okay, if I knew I wasn't logging back on or I wasn't coming back on until nap time, that was my rule on my Caleb days was I wouldn't log on till naptime. Like no morning stuff, I wasn't checking anything because I wanted to be mentally there for him. And I saw a huge difference in the way we spend our days and even our nighttime, you know, all three of us family time being more present at dinner or playtime. Putting my phone in the office and not checking it, I just felt like okay, I'm really here, I don't feel that pull and that distraction...the text may have still come in or the leads might still come in, but I didn’t feel this need to constantly be checking and making sure I was right on a five minute response time.
Rebecca: Why do you think you didn't have that need? Why did it go away?
Erika: I think a lot of it came back to our belief work of just knowing like, if they're the right client, they're going to be willing to wait for the response. I think I even wrote it down and why my July was so successful was because I was willing to just let stuff go, like not every client is my client. You know, the ones that want something immediately or done yesterday or whatever, they're just not who I need to be servicing and that's okay, let someone else take care of them. Whereas prior to that I was just like, I need every dollar I need every client and it was frantic, I thought when's the next one going to come. So knowing it'll be there when I get there. And if it's not meant to be, it's not meant to be and being a little bit more relaxed about it all. And believing that the next would come.
Rebecca: 2 things really pop up. And I love that you use the word belief because it for sure comes back to belief. There's a belief in self, that in this case, if a potential new client comes and goes because you didn't get back to them within an hour or whatever, there's a belief that you can go out and get another client in the same way that in a corporate life, if somebody needs something from you right away, and you aren't online, to give it to them, they are going to have to wait and they're not going to think poorly of you. You're not going to be less of an employee because you did that. So that just built that very core belief that I'm not getting paid to be online all the time, I'm not getting paid to always be available. That has nothing to do with how good I am as a human, as a business owner, as an employee, like none of that has a comment on me personally as a human being and so really separating out identity from work, availability and work, pleasing and people being disappointed and so forth. And then also, I think that is the second piece of you have that belief in self and then you have the belief that you can get it done in the end, that you don't have to keep going in order to achieve at the level that you want to achieve. You believe that you can figure out how to get more clients in the end. Or you can figure out how to accomplish more in less time. There's just this deep down core belief in you as a human and then in your ability to get it done.
Erika: Yeah, and the client will come and it's all going to work out.
Becoming neutral towards disappointment.
Rebecca: For sure. And so many times I would come back to that and say if you really did believe that another client would be there tomorrow if you really believe that, what would you do differently? And you're like well, I just wouldn't answer that text, I would just let it go. So that's what it points back to. And of course you had potential clients that could have been yours if you would have answered an hour within that time, or of course you had potential clients that were super frustrated or disappointed that you didn't get back to them. Do you want to live your life based on other people being disappointed? Disappointment is kind of a way of life. We all feel disappointed sometimes. I feel disappointed sometimes when I'm not getting the fast enough service or when I'm not getting the response time that I want. But that doesn't mean anything about the person. I don't sit there and think about them. A great example is standing in line at the store and it's like, do I think less about the store clerk because I'm standing in this long line and I wish that they would go faster? Of course, I don't have any thoughts about that person at all. It's just disappointing and frustrating. We like to personalize people's disappointment so often, and rarely do we actually personalize that to other people, rarely do we think about other people in an ill manner. If they don't get back to us or they're not available whatever it is just like that's a bummer.
Another great example of this is we have been planning for your maternity leave. As an entrepreneur, there's this added element of complexity with the maternity leave because you just get to decide what your maternity leave is and in corporate life you get paid - at least on some level, most people get paid for some level of their maternity even if it's just at a percentage of your pay or whatever it is but as an entrepreneur we make the rule. It's a little different and so tell me, because we did a lot of work on how you are going to have a maternity leave where you're actually turned off and focused on the baby and turning off that need to always be on, that need to check-in, that thought of if I'm not around everything's gonna fall apart and I'm gonna have to start all over again, you know all of those thoughts that I'm sure you had processed at some point
Erika: I wasn't even thinking I was going to take a leave because I remember you asking what's your plan and I was like, I don't have a plan, I'm just gonna figure it out. My partner will be off so I'll just go out a couple of times a week or whatever. You're like no, I think you need a plan. So it went from not even wanting to remove myself almost at all, I mean, aside from maybe the hospital stay, to now I have a Sunny Spaces phone that I've delegated to one of my girls. I have an admin that's taking over. I even have this whole plan in place now so I don't have to check-in. I did a practice run about two weeks ago when we were in Florida for vacation and I was like alright, this is my chance to let it go, drop the reins and see what happens and you know what, nothing. No one is dying because we didn't get back to them about organizing their pantry fast enough like it is all going to be okay. And one of my girls did a consultation and sold a 36-hour package. I'm finding ways that I want to be more of a mentor to help them be better at taking over versus just jumping in and doing the action. So there is a little bit of a pull still to just know what's going on, but knowing that I have a plan in place, and we're doing these practice weeks leading up to our delivery, things are really good.
Working backward to achieve your goals.
Rebecca: I love it, what we did is we decided what we wanted the result to be, in this case, we wanted you to take maternity leave, and we decided how long that was going to be. And we wanted you to feel present during that maternity with your baby, and we wanted you to still make money. That was the result that we were aiming for. A lot of entrepreneurs take this break, right? And they take a break financially and we were like, No, that's not what we're doing, that's not an okay cultural norm that we have out there. You deserve to continue to make money and take a break. And so we just put that as a result that we wanted. And we started working backward from it. We just said what do we need to do in order to make that happen, where you continue to make money, where you're present, and actually take this time off to be present with your baby? And so we started working backward. That's where we started to figure out how many people you needed on a team? What kind of team did you need? What are the kinds of things that get in the way of you being able to be present? You're the one that is the center of communication? How are we going to take you out of being central to communication? What does it look like to continue to take leads? Who's going to take that on? How do you train them? Often we assume the result instead of deciding what it could be. And thus, we don't problem-solve, or strategically decide how to make it happen. But really, any results that we want in our life, whether that leaves work at five every single day, if that's the goal that you have, you start working backward and say, well, what do you need to do to make that happen? What do you have to do? What do you have to delegate? How do I make it happen? And that was a lot of the work that we did to get you to that point. I want to hear that you had the next biggest month that you've ever had while you're not even working, I totally believe that that's possible. And I love the idea that we created that for you.
Erika: I do too. I think it's amazing what we've accomplished goal-wise so far, and I'm now looking forward to my leave. I have confidence in the girls that I have in place that it's all gonna work out. At the beginning of summer, I didn't have any of these girls in place, they were new and I just wasn't confident they were the right people. And it was just a little bit of putting it out to the universe and saying, Okay, this is what we're going to set out for. This is the team I want to hire. And then just, I don't want to say it happened because we definitely put the work in, but it worked out.
Rebecca: It happened because we decided we wanted it and then you went out and you created it. I'd love to segue a little bit into this, you've been coaching with me for two years now on and off, not the whole two years, but kind of like three very specific stints of time that we've been coaching together, what has continued to bring you back to coaching. Tell me about why you continue to make this investment in coaching and kind of generally speaking what it's done for you.
Erika on why she continues to invest in coaching.
Erika: I feel like at this point, I got a lot of the tools and a lot of the things that we've talked about, and I think something that people don't know, or realize or take action on is that you're in control of your thoughts. So anything that you want to think or feel you can think or feel it, you control that. And I think so often we let different circumstances dictate to us how we feel and we don't take control or ownership over that. And I think that's really a huge part in the beginning stages of coaching, is just that awareness and recognition of what you're actually thinking. So I think after two years of having that voice in my head now I'm always thinking, what would Rebecca say to that? or how should I be questioning this or looking at it differently? But I think that's the huge part of just taking that initial step into coaching. I don't think you realize how powerful your own brain is, and how much you can control what you think. Two years ago, three years, whatever we're going on here, I would have never thought I could do some of the things that I did now and change the way that I view things and...
Rebecca: What's something that kind of blows your mind as you think about it in retrospect to that?
Erika: Starting this business! So you know my whole journey but I wrote this business plan in 2009 for this business, Sunny Spaces Organising - it wasn't called that at first, it was Erica Organises, it was very creative. And I started and stopped 3 times I think, I was in my early 20s, I needed some business experience, there's other factors too, but I never had the belief in myself or I always had these limiting thoughts or reasons why it wouldn't be. I think just knowing that you can set yourself up for any kind of success that you want, whatever your end goal is, it doesn't have to be starting a business, it can be anything, it can be finding a husband, it can be figuring out your work life and whatever. There's no circumstance that dictates anything to you.
Rebecca: Obviously I’m a coach. I have a business coach, I have a life coach - and one of the biggest reasons why I continue to pay for coaching and invest in coaches is because though I know my thoughts play a big part in the life I create and the results, and the way I feel in my own life, it can also be really hard sometimes to figure out what you’re thinking. It feels so a part of you, like you don’t even realize that you have some agency over how you think and feel. There is a choice here. I always like to tell my clients you have 100 different ways you could look at this, and they’re all right! All of them. You just get to decide what is the most useful to you and what makes you feel good. But it’s really hard sometimes to parse that out. So much of coaching is looking to another person and asking what do you hear me saying that’s not useful and holding me back?
Gaining clarity through coaching.
Erika: Or just to get clarity sometimes. Like you ask me super-simple questions but I would never think to ask myself why I’m feeling that way, or why it happened that way and really digging into the core of the reasoning behind any situation. It’s very eye-opening. I didn’t realize I was feeling that way or thinking those thoughts, or that was a reoccurring thing I was doing. So just being able to talk through it and have someone redirect your brain, and see where you’re going. Whether it’s getting strategic on a goal or just understanding why you’re thinking of feeling some way. Sometimes it’s hard to know.
Rebecca: Yeah for sure. One of the sayings in coaching is that the brain that creates the problem has a really hard time figuring out what the solution is without the help of another outside brain. You’re still creating your thoughts and believing them and you have to execute on them, it’s my brain that’s helping to parse out your brain and give you some perspective and options, and then your brain can be like okay, which option is going to give me the maternity leave I want and make me the money I want. Which of these beliefs do I want to hold onto?
Erika: I remember saying ‘oh my business is successful, my business is working’.
Rebecca: Because the dollar amount was there, the goal was achieved and everything is working, but you’re not living the life you wanted to achieve. You’re not feeling the good feelings of the life that you created. You didn’t feel free. And I knew that wasn’t how you wanted to feel. So I was like, ‘no, not really, we aren’t there yet’. So now we need to figure out how to make the money and feel that way at the same time.
Erika: And then we doubled sales.
Rebecca: And felt good at the same time. I love it. I love how you continue to invest in coaching and see the value of parsing out your thoughts and investing your time into coaching after all the amazing results you have gained.
Investing in coaching.
Erika: It felt like a big investment upfront. The first time was a group setting so it was a bit more manageable. But then I went to 1-on-1 and that was a big thing for me, I was like, I better get results out of this, what I’m signing up for is a lot of money. And then we did the math and I 7x my investment from just this coaching session within 6 months. So it was just amazing. What would have happened if I didn’t have you in my corner?
Rebecca: I love it. Thank you Erika for sharing your story. I love to witness the before and after of the go-getter who can still achieve at a much higher level with all the lifestyle feelings you wanted. It is such an inspirational story. Any other parting words you have from this journey?
Erika: I think going into having my second baby, especially for new moms too, it’s a very confusing time and that’s what brought us together for our coaching journey and I think so much of my life has changed, it’s like how do I manage it all? And now going into having a toddler and a newborn, how do you lay that framework when you add a little more chaos to your life? And I think that we have done a great job at laying down the framework and figuring out how that’s gonna look. It has been such a journey from fulfilling a dream, becoming successful and now another kid on the way. And I remember when I wanted to quit my job last year and my husband said can you just wait until after we’ve had another baby? And I was so determined to say no, I want to live my life my way and nothing's gonna stop me. So here we are. I am so proud of everything we have accomplished.
Rebecca: Yeah, you should be proud because you have come a long way, it is so fun and exciting. I love that mentality. Here is my goal, it’s time, I'm ready, I'm not gonna let life circumstances dictate this for me, I’m going to go for it.
Thank you again for sharing your story. It has been an honor to have you here and of course, if you are in the Pittsburgh area and you’re looking for an amazing organizer, I have one here for you.
