Erin Thomas Wong (00:53)
Today I'm going to be sharing a bit more about my own journey in business and also stepping into the role as owner of my business. And it's only really over the kind of last year or so that I've really understood this as self leadership. What I've been learning is about how to step into that role as the owner of my business, as the leader of my business.
and the leader of myself since I am a solo-preneur. So it's been a real kind of journey of recognising what my strengths and weaknesses are and working out how I can best leverage them for the business. So when I was at school, I was labelled a worrier. I am a verbal processor, so I really like to be able to talk things through and...
often talk things through with different people because, you we all know what it's like. You get different things from different types of people that you speak to and especially depending on the kind of relationship you've got with them as well. And so I wear my heart on my sleeve and I tell people how I'm feeling. I'm no good at this pretending everything's okay type thing. And so at school people would say that, you know, Erin's always worrying. And I remember at the parents' evening, the teachers would always say, well, Erin's a worrier.
And it was always seen as quite a bad thing. It was like a negative thing. It was a weakness that I had. And as I grew up, it got a little bit better. But then when I started working in television, I was really lucky to have some quite nurturing female bosses who would take me under their wing and they would be able to talk me through things that I was feeling a bit worried about. And when I had my first son,
I then became labelled anxious, an anxious mum. And it's not surprising, is it? Because we suddenly have this responsibility of keeping this tiny human alive. So it's not really surprising that we're worried about that. But obviously sleep deprivation, My son was ill all the time in and out of hospital. And, you know, we found out at like
18 months that he had all these allergies which we had no idea about. So it's no wonder that I was anxious. But of course when I started my first business I carried that anxiety with me and I was doing something completely new. I set up as a franchisee of a jewellery business so I had to learn how to make jewellery. I had to learn how to market myself and jewellery, go out there and sell it.
And so it was all new and you know, of course, I felt worried And so I would speak to my friends and family and I would tell them I was feeling worried and I would want to talk things through with them. And my husband just got so irritated at how many times I would ask different people their opinion, but I needed that. I needed to be able to do that. I needed that validation. And it's kind of, as I got further into my business journey that I realised, hang on a minute. I
don't like the way that people are perceiving me. And I should caveat that by saying how I felt people perceive me, because of course, so much of the time, it's all in our heads and people are way too busy thinking about their own lives to really care much about ours. But I just felt like, you know, I was coming across as someone who didn't know what they were doing. And also that I was just like running a small business and I wasn't really taking it seriously. And I knew that that wasn't
the case and I knew I was really capable. So I embarked on a journey of kind of personal development and for me it started actually when we lived in Abu Dhabi for a year where I was actually deeply unhappy and I went to my first kind of personal development conference and actually Jairek Robbins, Tony Robbin's son was speaking there.
And he was really inspiring. There was also like a whole drum workshop and we were all drumming and I was like, I really love this. So when we came back from Abu Dhabi, I decided to do more of that. And that's when I kind of went to Tony Robbins Unleash the Power Within event and I walked on hot coals. I also had my own coach and mentor for two years and really kind of immersed myself in that. And, you know, I realized that what I was doing was learning self leadership.
And self leadership is the ability to intentionally lead yourself to achieve personal and professional goals so that you can create your own extraordinary life. And I'd really love you to think about that because the fact is that we get to change the narrative. We get to change how people perceive us because the way that we show up is obviously going to dictate that.
And the truth is, is that we cannot drive a car from the back seat. You can't drive a car from the back seat and you can't drive your business from the back seat. We need to get comfortable with being in the front and leading the car and leading our business and leading ourselves.
And for me, this is all about stepping up into the CEO role in your business. If you are the person who makes the decisions in your business, you are the CEO. And we need to embrace that and allow time in our business to work in that role, to have that overview of everything that's going on.
And for me, that's why the CEO time every week, I do this every Monday morning is really, really crucial because it allows us to be proactive rather than reactive. And, you know, one thing that when I'm speaking to my clients as well, like so many of us, because we've got this massive invisible load of all the other things we're trying to do in our lives, all the other people we're caring for, we're carrying around this snow globe brain where, you know, the water's all shaken up, you can't see clearly and
The fact is, is that on a daily basis, we're having to make tens, if not hundreds of decisions. Tiny decisions, huge decisions. Decisions about the kids, decisions about our parents, decisions about what we're going to eat tonight, decisions about what we're going to do next in our business. And actually, so many of us are living with decision fatigue. We're tired of making all the decisions. This is my whole thing of like, no, this is adulting, isn't it?
I wish someone else could be the adult sometimes. The definition of decision fatigue is the mental exhaustion that comes from making too many decisions, leading to reduced willpower, poorer choices and increased stress. How many of you resonate with that? We've just got too much stuff to process all of the time. And that makes it harder for us to stay focused and be productive because we've just got all these different decisions.
swilling around in our heads.
So decision fatigue might be showing up as procrastination. If you know that you keep putting things off because you don't want to have to make that decision, that could be because you've got decision fatigue.
you might be struggling to choose what to focus on on your business and you just wish that someone would tell you, right, now you need to focus on this.
You might find the constant small decisions in your business so draining like what to post on social media today.
and you might be defaulting to the easiest option, even though you know it's not the best one. And because we're living very busy lives, so many of us are just living in this survival mode where we're just trying to keep afloat. And the problem is, is that that's okay in the short term, but when we're doing that over a longer term, we can be wasting so much time and not getting the results that we want to get.
Now I have created a decision fatigue checklist to help you with some of those decisions and the link to that will be in the show notes. So do take a look at that. It's a really great way to evaluate the different decisions that you have to make on a daily basis in your life and business. So I really hope that's helpful. Do reach out and let me know if you do download it.
But I think the thing that we need to really recognise with decision fatigue is that it's a sign that we're trying to do too much. We're trying to please too many people. And this comes back to our boundaries in business as well. And recognising that every time we say yes to something, we're saying no to something else. So what are all the things that you said yes to in that moment? And are there things that you can actually take away to reduce all of this?
overwhelm going on in your brain so that you can make better decisions in your business because this is self leadership. Being able to make concise decisions is self leadership. So we need to recognise when that's feeling really hard and why it's feeling really hard. That's the work that we need to do first before we can really show up
and make the best decisions for our business and be the best boss to ourselves that we can be and allow ourselves to step into that CEO role. So if you're putting things off, if you're procrastinating, if you're making knee-jerk reactions to things, perhaps you are suffering from decision fatigue and it's time to do something about it. So learn how to settle your snow globe brain.
Download my checklist to help you evaluate different opportunities and things that you can be doing to grow your business and just recognise the fact that you've taken on maybe too much and think about what you can strip back. I hope that's been helpful today. Please do let me know. Contact me on social at @lifefriendlybiz. Download the decision fatigue checklist.
And if you would like more support from me, this is the amazing thing about having a one-to-one mentor with when you're struggling with decision fatigue is that I use Voxer support with my mentoring clients, which is a bit like WhatsApp. It's like a real time voice memo app. And you can literally reach out to me Monday to Friday and say, I don't know what I'm doing about this. And we can talk it through together. That's what I love about working one-to-one with people. So if you're interested in that,
reach out and we can have a chat or you can find out more at www.lifefriendlybusiness.com. See you next time.
