Erin Thomas Wong (00:00)
Hello and welcome back to the Life-Friendly Business podcast. If you're new here, I'm Erin, the Life-Friendly Business mentor, and I help female solopreneurs build businesses that work with their real lives, not against them. In this season, I'm sharing a different way to think about your entire business, a way that feels calmer,
more focused and actually sustainable alongside everything else you have going on. And if you're listening to this and thinking, want more of this kind of thinking, more support and more structure, then The Cocoon is where you need to start. It's my membership for women building life-friendly businesses. And I'll share more about that at the end.
So firstly, it's been a little while. The last episode I recorded was episode 87, which was all about permission to pause. And apparently I really took my own advice because it's been about eight months since I last recorded an episode.
In that time, a lot has shifted. I wrote and published my book, How to Build a Life-Friendly Business. I've been doing a lot of work behind the scenes and really honing my message and understanding what women in business need right now. And life has shifted for me too. My kids are getting older, which brings a different kind of capacity. I'm moving into a new season personally as well,
navigating perimenopause, which again changes your energy, your focus and your capacity. And all of that has really deepened the way that I think about business.
I wrote the book because I kept seeing the same thing over and over again. Capable, ambitious women feeling like they were failing when actually they were trying to follow a model that simply doesn't work for their lives. The book brings together the life-friendly business framework that I've developed over the years through my own journey and working with hundreds of women, all building businesses around real life.
And I really believe that this message is needed right now more than ever.
Because we're constantly evolving. Our lives change, our capacity changes, what we want changes. And if our businesses don't evolve with us, that's when things start to feel hard.
That's what I want to talk to you about today because one of the biggest shifts that I'm seeing both in my own business and with the women I work with is this. Not taking your own capacity into account before creating your strategy. Capacity before strategy. So often we build our strategy first. We decide what we should be doing. How often we should be showing up.
what growth should look like and then we try and squeeze our own life around it and that's where the pressure comes from. That's where the overwhelm builds.
And this isn't just something that I teach. is something that I'm actively doing for myself right now. So at the moment, my eldest is just starting A-level exams and finalizing university details. This June, my youngest is about to go on a school trip to France. And then in July, we're heading off to China for three weeks. So there is a lot happening in my life alongside my business.
And I also know my audience. Every year, things go quieter for me over the summer. Sales dip in July and August, and that's okay.
So instead of ignoring that every year or trying to push through the end of term chaos, I've looked at my own capacity and I've looked at the patterns in my business and I've made a decision that May and June are my window. This is the time to focus on launching and selling.
Because if I wasn't looking at this in that way, my mental capacity would be so stretched. My stress levels would be rising as I try and juggle everything. And then when things naturally go quieter in the summer, I'd panic.
because I've anticipated it, I can make decisions in advance. I can support my future self and I can actually enjoy the time away with my family.
And this is what a life-friendly business looks like. It's not reacting, it's not firefighting, it's not blaming yourself, but anticipating what's coming and building your business around it. The life-friendly approach isn't about waiting for things to go wrong and then trying to fix them. It's about seeing what's coming and making decisions in advance.
And this is where so many women go wrong. They plan their business as if their life isn't happening alongside it.
For example, if you only realistically have a few focused work hours a week, then trying to show up on every single platform, launch things constantly and do everything is always going to feel overwhelming. But if you build your strategy around what's actually possible, everything changes.
And I see this all the time with my clients, setting themselves these big, ambitious targets because they feel like they should, because that's what they're seeing other people do. And then feeling frustrated when they don't hit their targets, not because they're not capable, but because those targets don't reflect their actual capacity.
And this is where it gets really important to be honest with yourself. If right now you're not in a position to invest in a virtual assistant or extra support, don't add a VA's role to your to-do list and expect yourself to produce what a whole other person would produce in the limited time that you have. Of course, that is going to feel overwhelming. Of
that's going to feel like you're falling behind. But when we strip it back and rebuild what's actually realistic for you, that's when things start to move.
And this is really important to say, this isn't about being against ambition. It's not about playing it small. It's about setting your own rules, recognising that you are one person wearing many hats. Yes, you can push yourself to extremes to achieve your goals, but the reality of that is often burnout. And we'll talk more about that in another episode.
And this is where the life-friendly business framework comes in.
Over the years, through my own journey and through working with hundreds of women, I've developed what I now call the Life-Friendly Business Framework. It's a way of approaching your business that brings you back to what actually matters and helps you build from there. And it's made up of five simple moves that you can come back to again and again. Own. Step into the role.
as the leader of your business. Align, define what success actually looks like for you. Simplify, focus on what really moves the needles. Shine, show up and be visible in a way that feels true for you. And lastly, Evolve, allow your business to grow and change as your life does.
And what we're really touching on today is the second move, Align Because before you decide what to do, you need to decide what actually matters. And that's what we're going to go deeper into in the next episode.
But for now, I want you to take this away. Before you build your strategy, look at your own capacity. Look at your life. Look at what's actually possible and build from there.
And if this way of thinking is resonating with you, if you're ready to stop trying to fit your life around your business and start building your business around your life.
Then The Cocoon is where to start. It's my membership for female solopreneurs who want more clarity, more focus and a way of doing business that actually works for them. You'll find the link in the show notes. And I'll be back next week with episode 89.
to your success, your way. See you then.
