Erin (00:00)
Hello and welcome back to the Life-Friendly Business podcast. I'm Erin Thomas Wong, the Life-Friendly Business mentor and I'm on a mission to help women realise that they are not failing at business. They're simply following a model that doesn't fit their real lives. I help female solopreneurs take a capacity first approach so they can grow their business without sacrificing the very life they're building it for.
And in this season, I'm sharing a different way to think about your entire business. Before we jump into today's episode, I just wanted to share this lovely podcast review from Victoria. I am coming up to 100 podcast episodes. So I've been looking back at the reviews that I've had and I thought it'd be so lovely to just read that out and share that with you.
Victoria says, "this is friendly advice from someone who actually gets it. When I found Erin's podcast, I binged the whole thing start to finish. It was so lovely to hear from an experienced and professional businesswoman who wasn't prescribing a relentless hustle as the only route to success. Her podcast episodes feel like a cosy cuppa and chat.
with a friend who really cares about helping you reach your business goals in a sustainable way that supports your lifestyle. This podcast is brimming with practical advice and relatable stories from other women in business. If you're on a course for burnout trying to juggle it all, then this podcast is for you".
Thank you so much for taking the time to leave that review, Victoria, and reviews genuinely do help more people discover this podcast. So if you have been enjoying the episodes, I'd be incredibly grateful if you could leave one too.
So in this episode today, I want to talk about what becoming a life-friendly CEO actually looks like in action. Because I think that, you know, the phrase can sound lovely in theory, but if you are in the thick of client work, school runs, laundry piles, marketing admin, and all the rest of it, life-friendly business can feel a little bit vague. So I want to make it really practical in today's episode.
Because becoming a life-friendly CEO is not about becoming some perfect polished version of yourself.
It's not about meticulously colour-coded planners all lined up or 5am morning routines or suddenly turning into someone who has endless discipline and never feels wobbly. This is about learning to lead your business differently with more intention, more clarity, more self-trust and more honesty about what actually works for your life.
For a lot of women, the version of business ownership that they've fallen into is incredibly reactive. They're wearing all the hats, responding to everyone else's needs, trying to squeeze running their business into the gaps, having to make decisions on the fly, constantly second guessing themselves And starting every week feeling behind.
and then wondering why it feels like they can never quite get ahead. Becoming a life-friendly CEO is about moving out of that constant reactivity. Not all at once, not suddenly, but gradually, intentionally, step by step.
A lot of women assume that the answer is that they need to be more motivated, more disciplined. They just need to create more time from somewhere. They need a better planner, a better strategy. They just need a bigger audience or like one magic system that somehow makes everything easier overnight. And yeah, sometimes those things can help, but more often what they actually need is to start leading themselves and their business differently.
So I want to share a few of the shifts that I see women really start stepping into with that life-friendly CEO role.
One of the biggest shifts that I see is when a woman stops trying to fix her entire business and everything in one moment, because that's what so many of us are doing. We're trying to improve our messaging, create content, update websites, launch offers, get more visible, sort systems, plan the summer holidays all in the same week, and then feeling like they're failing when they can't keep up.
But a life-friendly CEO starts to recognize that trying to do everything at once is part of what's keeping her stuck. She learns to ask, what actually matters most right now? What is the 5 % that will make the biggest difference in this season? And what can actually wait? And often this brings so much relief.
because suddenly you're no longer carrying the pressure of fixing everything in one go. You're giving yourself permission to focus.
I have conversations all the time with the women that I mentor and sometimes the biggest shift is them giving themselves permission to not try and do everything and actually get honest with themselves about what is enough right now. One woman I spoke to recently recognised that actually she was already stretched too thin and with the added pressure of the summer holidays coming up she needed to really
take a moment to think about what was enough, what her capacity was for that season. It's not forever, but for right now and make changes accordingly to her strategy. And to me, that is life-friendly CEO thinking. It's not waiting until you're on the edge of burnout to make a change. It's not consistently pushing yourself past your limits, but it's noticing what's going on, adjusting your expectations.
and leading yourself accordingly. And it's so hard to do that when we're moving quickly. So slowing down and giving yourself time to think is so important.
A life-friendly CEO also makes decisions based on her capacity, not the pressure.
She plans from reality. She looks at what's going on around her in her life in that moment, what energy she has available, what support she has access to, what season she's in, and then she makes decisions from there. So it's not coming from a place of panic or guilt or comparing herself to everyone else. It's coming from her reality.
because there's a huge difference between making plans based on the week that you wish you had and based on the week that you actually have.
So sometimes that might mean recognising that now is actually not the month to launch something new. That you can't say yes to something right now. That you need to simplify what you're offering because it's just not working. You need to protect your mornings because that's when you focus best. And you need to stop expecting yourself to work at the pace you did five years ago. That doesn't mean that you're lowering your standards.
or playing things small. It's actually self-leadership.
I've had to do this in my own business too. It's been a bit of a strange year for me this year and I've also been going through perimenopause and recognising that my focus is changing,
is changing and I've had to adapt the way that I am working to suit that and also recognising that my family situation is changing with my kids getting older and my son finishing college.
So I've learned to build buffers around myself when I know there's a lot going on around me. It's like I have to create a bubble for myself. And so much so that sometimes I feel like I've taken too much off my plate in order to try and protect myself. But I know that this is better than the alternative, which is feeling completely overwhelmed and not being able to do any of it properly. Instead, it feels like a bonus when I have more time and headspace.
than I expected.
A life-friendly CEO doesn't wait until she's in a complete spiral to stop and think. She creates that space regularly to review, reflect, plan and make decisions before things hit a crisis point. Because when you are the only person in your business, it's incredibly easy to spend every day being reactive, serving your clients, answering messages, sorting admin, firefighting issues.
doing the next task that's in front of you.
And before you know it, another week has gone by and you've had absolutely no space to think about the bigger picture.
No space to ask yourself what's actually working well here, what's not, what do I need to change?
And what do I actually want the next season to look like? A life-friendly CEO understands that CEO Time is not a luxury. It's part of the job. Even if you only have a small window. In fact, if you have limited time, that's even more reason to use some of it intentionally.
For me, my weekly Monday morning CEO Time routine has literally changed the way I show up for my entire business.
A life-friendly CEO is not just about throwing random content at the wall and hoping that something lands. She takes the time to get clear on what she stands for, what she wants to be known for, what her audience actually needs her for, how to guide people into her world so that she can build trust. And this is where visibility becomes so much more strategic and so much less draining.
I love seeing this in the Visibility Reset program that I was running.
The women came away with clear content pillars, a whole bank of evergreen content that they can keep using, and a much clearer plan and strategy for what they were going to post. One woman said that visibility now feels like a huge relief because she finally understands what it is she wants to say, what she wants to talk about, and also how to stop reinventing the wheel every single week. So that's not just a content win. It's also a CEO shift.
because she's no longer approaching visibility from a place of panic and pressure. She's approaching it with clarity.
CEO starts asking much better questions. Not, how do I work harder? But how do I stop making the same decisions over and over again? Wasting time. What could be simpler here? What can I batch create? What can I template? What can I automate?
What do I keep over complicating? She starts building systems around the things that drain her mental energy.
And that might look like having a content bank instead of creating new content from scratch every single week, templating client emails, simplifying her offers, batching admin tasks like invoicing, building a better onboarding process for her clients, setting clearer boundaries around her work, not because she's trying to become hyper efficient for the sake of being efficient.
but because she knows her energy matters and she's trying to protect that. And she wants to create more time for the work that only she can do.
A life-friendly CEO recognises that she doesn't have to be the only brain in the room. She doesn't have to sit alone with every decision, every wobble, every idea, every fear or every problem. She gets support, perspective, accountability, community. And I think some of the biggest CEO shifts happen in those conversations. Being in the right room with the right support.
I see this all the time in Cocoon+ A woman comes onto a call feeling all tangled up in her own thoughts. She's not sure what she should do next. She's feeling stretched and overwhelmed. And through one honest conversation, she leaves with a decision made, a simpler plan, a clearer next step, and a much calmer nervous system.
Sometimes one conversation really can save you weeks of overthinking and inaction. And one of the most powerful things about those spaces is hearing other women talk openly about what they're navigating too. Their own doubts and challenges and the things that they're trying to simplify, the boundaries they're trying to hold and struggling with, the business decisions that they're trying to make.
Because those peer-to-peer conversations create so many lightbulb moments. That realisation that it's not just you.
or that feeling of that is exactly what I needed to hear today. And that is such a huge part of becoming a life-friendly CEO too. Letting yourself be supported, letting yourself be in that room and letting yourself stop carrying everything alone.
And this is a really important one. A life-friendly CEO doesn't just say she wants flexibility, calm family time or a business that fits around real life. She's actually making those business decisions that reflect that. Because it's one thing to say, my family comes first or I don't want to burn out.
But it's another thing entirely to build a business that genuinely supports that.
And it might mean not building a business model that relies on you being on all of the time. It might mean saying no to opportunities that look good on paper, but they don't actually fit your life. It might mean simplifying your offers. Maybe you're offering too many things, creating more spaciousness in your week, protecting school holidays, choosing a slower but more sustainable path.
And I know that that can feel conflicting in an online world that's constantly telling you to do more, scale faster, launch bigger and keep pushing. But to me, this is the heart of life-friendly leadership.
It's not just about saying that your life matters and you want your life to come first, but it's actually building your business accordingly.
So when I'm talking about becoming a life-friendly CEO, this is what I mean. It's not about perfection. It's not about having it all together. It's not about suddenly becoming this superhuman version of yourself. I'm talking about moving from being reactive to intentional, scattered to focused, overwhelmed to clearer,
And that shift does not happen overnight. It happens through a small series of decisions, small acts of self leadership and small moments where you choose to pause, simplify, ask for support or do things differently. And over time,
those shifts can change everything.
So I'd love you to leave with a question to ponder. What would becoming a life-friendly CEO look like for you in this season? Not in some perfect fantasy version of your life, but in the reality of the season that you're living in right now. What would need to change? What would you need to stop doing? And what support might help you?
Really it's about thinking what might become possible if you started leading your business from that place.
And if you're listening, resonating to this and thinking, this is exactly how I want to feel in my business, but I'm just not there yet,
then the best place to start is with my Life-Friendly CEO Reset. It will help you spot what's getting in the way, where things are feeling out of alignment and what to focus on first. And if you know that you want ongoing support to build these habits and rhythms and foundations,
That's exactly what we're doing inside The Cocoon with the brand new 90 day pathway. I'll put the details in the show notes below. And if this season is helping you think differently about your business, I would love you to hit follow or subscribe on the podcast so you don't miss the next few episodes. And if you know another woman who needs this message, please do send this episode her way. And remember, you get to choose.
See you next week.
