Erin (00:00)
Before we jump into today's episode, I wanted to just read out this lovely review that has been left for the Life-Friendly Business podcast. This podcast is game changing. I've listened to every episode and each time taken invaluable points away, which have really resonated with me. I found it so empowering and it's given me massive clarity. I massively recommend it as it has strengthened my business.
Thank you so much to whoever left that review. I'm honestly so grateful. You have no idea who's listening when you are putting a podcast out there. So I really appreciate it. And if you've been enjoying this season, please do like and subscribe and leave me a review. So let's get into today's episode. Episode 99. I can't believe that next week we are going to hit 100 episodes.
So 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 actually fit their real lives. I help female solopreneurs adopt a capacity first approach so they can grow successful businesses without sacrificing the very life they are building them for.
And in this season, I'm sharing a different way to think about your entire business.
Here's a question for you. Does your business ever feel like it's following you around? Not physically, but mentally.
You're making breakfast and thinking about the newsletter that you haven't written yet. You're driving the kids to school and rewriting your pricing in your head. You're trying to enjoy a trip to the cinema with the family and suddenly you remember that you forgot to reply to a client. Maybe you're lying in bed and mentally reorganising your to-do list.
you go to sit down with a cup of tea and instead of just relaxing, you're wondering whether you should be posting on social media, maybe posting this moment of you having a cup of tea on social media. You never really switch off because even when you're not working, your business is still inside your head. Honestly, I think this is one of the biggest reasons so many of us feel exhausted.
The important thing to note here is that you're not carrying your business around in your head because you're not coping or you're not doing it well.
you're carrying it around because you've been trying to build a business using the advice which assumes unlimited time, energy and capacity.
And for most of the women I work with, that simply is not the reality. You are already carrying so much. Your family, your clients, life admin, the invisible load, maybe aging parents, maybe children who need you, maybe perimenopause, maybe a whole combination of things. So of course your head feels full.
And the problem is not you, the problem is that you've never been shown another way.
I often describe this effect as snow globe brain. So imagine one of the snow globes that's just been shaken up, all the snow's everywhere. You can't see clearly through the water because there's so much going on in there. Every unfinished task, every client you need to respond to, every idea you have, shiny objects, every opportunity, every email that you've got to write, every decision you've been putting off, every social media tip you've saved and still haven't actioned
every AI prompt you keep meaning to try,
Every notebook full of workshop notes, it's all spinning around together and when everything is moving it's almost impossible to see clearly.
when you give the snow a chance to settle, you suddenly realise, okay, I can see what actually matters right now.
I think so many of us are trying to make important decisions in our business. While actually, our snow globe is just spinning out of control.
One thing I've noticed over the last few years is that women rarely come to me saying that they don't know enough, that they need to learn new skills.
fact, most women I work with absolutely love learning, just like me. They've listened to loads of podcasts, they've read the books, they've downloaded the guides, they've attended workshops, conferences, they've joined memberships to learn new skills, they've worked with coaches.
and mentors and that's brilliant. They see the value in that and I love learning too. But learning isn't the problem sometimes. It's trying to implement and trying to implement everything at once because eventually your head becomes so full of brilliant ideas but there's no clear path through them.
One of the biggest shifts I've made over the last 18 years in business has been realising this. My business should not live solely in my head. I think when we're a solopreneur it's really easy to assume that because we're the only person in the business, everything can just stay in there, stay in our head. We tell ourselves, well, it's only me. So we don't document things. We don't create systems.
We don't have one place where all our ideas live. They're all over the place. Instead, we become the filing cabinet. We try to remember everything. Every client that's just been on boarded, every idea we've had over the years, every future plan we could implement, every new task. But your brain was never designed to be your business storage system. It was designed to think and to create, to solve problems.
and to make decisions. These are the things we need to be doing in business, not remember absolutely everything. And the more you can get your business out of your head and into a trusted system, the lighter everything starts to feel. You you hear about the term blue sky thinking, you need to have space in your head to be able to do blue sky thinking.
The more women that I've worked with, the more I've realised that they're not
actually always looking for another productivity hack, they're looking for a quieter mind. They're looking for clarity, for confidence in their decisions, for better habits, for perspective, for momentum to keep them going and for a business that feels manageable again. Because when your mind is quieter, you make better decisions. You're more creative, you're more present in the moment.
and you enjoy your business more. And perhaps most importantly, you enjoy your life more.
You know, we spend so much time talking about return on investment in business, but I don't think we talk enough about the return on headspace. What would it be worth to stop lying awake, thinking about work? To stop carrying unfinished decisions around with you all day? To sit with your family and actually be present? That's valuable too.
I get to see this first hand all the time. One of our Cocoon members, Rochelle, recently shared something that really stayed with me.
After consistently protecting her CEO time over the last couple of months, she said she felt so much calmer. She had more clarity. She found it easier to prioritize. Now, this isn't anything dramatic. This is simply implementing CEO time. She hadn't suddenly found another 10 hours every week to work. She hadn't completely changed her business. All she had done was changed her thinking and given herself the headspace.
to step out of reactive mode and make better decisions. And I think this is such an important reminder. Sometimes the first thing that changes isn't your business, it's you.
Another member once said to me that things always feel calmer in her head after the Cocoon live calls. And I remember thinking, that's it, that's what we are trying to create.
Another member once said to me, things always feel calmer in my head after the Cocoon live calls. And I remember thinking, yeah, that's exactly what we're trying to create. It's not just about building better businesses through all the training in the Cocoon. It's about learning how to create headspace. And this is why I rebuilt the Cocoon recently and added a new 90 day pathway.
to help women no matter where they are in their business journey, strengthen the right foundations first, to learn what deserves their attention in this moment and to build the habits of a life-friendly CEO one step at a time. And one more thing that I've noticed over the years is that some of the biggest breakthroughs that I've witnessed haven't happened because somebody learned a new skill.
I've seen women spend weeks and months overthinking a decision tangled up in their own thoughts and then when they bring it to a Cocoon call, they talk it through, they hear different perspectives from the hive mind and suddenly the way forward becomes obvious. It's because
clarity doesn't come from thinking harder, it comes from thinking together. So here's my question for you. What are you currently carrying around in your head that does not need to stay there? What decision have you been circling for weeks? What unfinished thought keeps following you into family time?
What could you write down, systemize or plan? Or simply say out loud to someone that you trust because your business was never meant to live in your head. I don't think most women want a business that consumes their thoughts every waking minute of the day. I think that they want a business that supports their life. One that feels manageable, one that gives them confidence.
one that allows them to switch off and one that feels lighter as it grows. Because here's what I've realised over the last 18 years in business. Women don't come to me because they want to learn another quick hack or find out what the magic pill is. They come to me because they want to stop feeling like they're carrying the whole business around in their heads. They want to feel calmer, clearer, more intentional.
They want a quieter mind. And when that happens, business becomes so much more enjoyable. You make better decisions, you become more consistent, and you stop constantly second guessing yourself.
And perhaps most importantly, you get to enjoy the life you're working so hard to build.
If today's episode has resonated with you and you're thinking, yes, this is exactly how my business feels right now, I would love to invite you to download my free Life-Friendly CEO Reset. It's a guided experience designed to help you stop carrying around your business in your head.
In around 20 minutes, you'll create a calmer, clearer plan so you can stop trying to do everything at once and focus on the things that will make the biggest difference. You can find the link in the show notes.
and if you have enjoyed today's episode, please could you do me one small favour? Share it with one woman who you think needs to hear it, because one conversation really can change the way someone thinks
about their business.
And remember, you get to do this your way. See you next week for the final episode of season seven.
