0:00:02 - Joanna Newton
Welcome to the Her First podcast, a platform to help online business owners, coaches and creators gain the confidence needed to build successful businesses while creating sustainable lifestyle balance. We are here to help you prioritize yourself in your business and life. In this episode, Michelle and I are discussing the ways in which we invest our time reflecting our self-worth, how to change your own narrative on your value and, some time strategies to help you prioritize. But before we dive into it, I know you've been working on some really cool things, Michelle. I'd love to hear what you've been up to this week.
0:00:35 - Michelle Pualani
So this has been a really big week for our new business. So of course we have our coaching business. We actually have a side-buy business of health and fitness but we are launching a product business and it is a non-alcoholic, hemp-infused spirit line. So we're starting with what would be considered a gin quality and it's a bottled product. You use it in replacement of a spirit in a cocktail, so it's like a mocktail, so it's non-alcoholic but it's got that CBD hemp-derived aspect to it for calm and relaxation. And we're in launch mode technically speaking. So we are trying to get everything up and running. We're on a timeline of when we're waitlisting, pre-selling and then hosting local events in our San Luis Obispo community. We'll be hosting pop-up events in which we are guest bartending and sharing with the community and we'll be doing a pickup party and so much there.
So this week has been all about solidifying the brand and I'm working with this amazing graphic designer that I absolutely love.
I just have had such a dream client relationship as her client to be able to facilitate what it really looks like for our brand to come to life, which I think is such an important piece of a business, and I know that there's a lot of business coaches in the online space who are like you don't need a logo, you don't need a color palette, you don't need this, and, whereas that's true, you can go out and make money without any of those things, I think that setting the stage for your brand, which includes determining who your ideal client is, being able to define your offer, thinking about the struggles or the pains that they deal with and what it is that they want out of your product or service really, really critical.
So I feel like it's actually a step that I missed in formulating my coaching business and originally formulating the health and wellness business that I'm so grateful to really embrace through this process. It is like chef's kiss I know that's a term that people are using these days. It is so freaking good and I just love the visuals, I love the design and I'm just so, so excited about it. It just feels like it's all really coming together. It makes it feel more real, more tangible and really imbues the brand with that excitement and passion that I feel like we're bringing to this new product. So that's what I'm up to.
0:03:06 - Joanna Newton
That's really amazing, and I'm sure that for you, creating a physical product versus basically always being in the digital world must be so different it's incredibly different.
0:03:18 - Michelle Pualani
It's really nice because it feels easy to be fairly honest, which is actually the name of the brand, to be honest.
So being able to bring a physical product to market feels so simple and easy compared to a service or coaching. A lot of times it can be really tough to define who it is that we help and how we help them, because a lot of times I think as a coach, you feel like I can help a lot of people do a lot of different things and you're really working on goals and accomplishments and accountability and being able to do certain things in your life, and it can be hard to clarify that message. And when you have a physical product, it just feels like here's the thing, this is what it does for you, it's my one thing and you can drink it or not drink. It just makes it feel so simple. So it's felt really good to do a physical product launch because it has challenged me in a lot of ways, but it's also opened up the opportunity to be like oh, this feels so much more casual, this feels so much more simple than I feel like my brand and business has been for a long time.
0:04:23 - Joanna Newton
That's so interesting. What, what am? I side business dreams and I still haven't formulated exactly what it is yet. But my town has the cutest downtown. It's a pretty small, just couple blocks of cute storefronts, shops, restaurants, anything, and the places, the locations are actually fairly affordable. Like I, whenever one comes up I look at the rent and I look at the place and the square footage and I always think about what I would put there and what I could create. Now I'm way too busy right now to take on any other sort of business venture. When my daughter's a little bit older and my business is a little bit more established, I totally just want to open a storefront selling something and sit in my downtown, say hi to everybody, hang out.
0:05:10 - Michelle Pualani
That like idea of selling something physically and tangible is really interesting and I think it's something that I've never really wanted a brick and mortar, because the online space is so compelling when it can be location independent, scalable. There's so much in terms of the benefit of having an online business. That has always been just how I wanted to live my life Like today. We're talking about your self-worth, the way in you invest your time, and to me, that is a reflection of choice in my business and my business practices, your systems and the types of products that you offer, services that you offer. But, stepping into the physical product and what will eventually be, we're not necessarily launching e-commerce right off of the bat because we have such a successful community here at the local level, and so within three to four months from now, we'll be doing a true e-commerce launch.
When it comes to influencer marketing and digital ads, and that's, I feel, like almost a totally. It's almost like a second business to your in-person business. It's an interesting split in the way that I have to think about it in the marketing, because right now we're doing a lot of gorilla marketing. We're looking at print publications at a local level, we have partnerships with restaurants that we're putting together and we're hosting events. We're applying to different markets as we come up on the holiday season. So there's a lot included in that that. Obviously, when it comes to the e-commerce space, you're looking at a very, very different marketing strategy and a very different approach. So it is just interesting and it's helped open me up to other business foundational principles that again, I feel like sometimes we miss in the digital space. It's contributed a lot even to my coaching practice and my coaching business, because it's allowed me to think about things a little bit differently and think about things a little more tangibly than I would have maybe beforehand.
0:07:07 - Joanna Newton
Yeah, that's great. I kind of beg thing. I've been focused on this week, which is not nearly as exciting as launching an entire new business.
But this week we are. I've been training a new account manager for Millennial Marketer my business and what we do at Millennial Marketer we help people create, grow and scale their online courses, primarily using the platform Kajabi, and it's a fascinating business. We have tons of different clients, all from different industries, and I have been doing all of the account management. So, along with working on people's marketing strategies, creating content for them, running the business, our finances, project management, for everything I'm also our account manager, handling billing, reviewing things with clients like that point person and we really felt as a company that we needed someone to take that for me so we could move our company to the next level. I can't currently focus on like big picture, future driven, new product ideas, new things, if I'm in the day to day of my business, but what's been really interesting? We brought this person on. She is absolutely amazing, doing a fantastic job.
I've realized it's really hard to just take my brain and give it to somebody because we have SOPs and we have templates and stuff like that.
Like managing a client's life cycle is so intricate and nuanced, even with an SOP right. Different people need different things and they're different pace and teaching to that to someone is hard, like it's hard to do, especially to when you have clients mid-cycle right, like clients that are like they've been with us for a while, they're part way through a project how you incorporate someone in that. So it's actually been really fun, though, because I've had to really think about what I do and why I do it to help translate that to a new person. But I'm just excited because this is a big step for us. We've brought on a lot of creatives people to edit videos and build web pages and build things but now we're bringing on stuff to help run the company, which is a very different kind of role and really starts to feel like, oh, we're like legit. Now we have this whole team that's gonna be able to run projects without me watching every single step of the way at some point. So it's pretty exciting.
0:09:42 - Michelle Pualani
That is exciting and congratulations.
That's a big move to bring on someone who's really gonna help with the operational delivery of your service or of your product and what you offer to clients. And when you were speaking about handing things off and really having that person fully understand, what comes to mind is intuition, and there's a certain level of intuition and sense that we bring with experience If you've ever read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell is there's just a certain level of split second or awareness that comes to what you have to offer based on your knowledge and your experience with being able to make decisions and being able to make choices with and for your clients in that way, which is not necessarily something you can teach and train. So there is a certain level of that person then starting at a point and being able to grow and expand with you and they're never gonna be exactly like you and we actually had a recent experience. So I was working with a client who were onboarding a marketing agency to run digital ads and scale our funnels and great sales process really excited.
We know they're reputable, we've seen their work demonstrated in other places but the onboarding process was very stressful and made us question whether we had hired the right service, and that was not necessarily due to any one particular person, but that first initial strategy and onboarding session really really set the tone for how we perceived the entire company and the entire team, and things didn't exactly go as we would have liked them to, and so we've provided feedback. We've since remedied the situation. We had an additional long hour and a half meeting to follow up on that initial strategy session, and it really allowed us to, I feel like, get off on the right foot. But that's a concern when you're bringing on team members is how are they gonna set the tone for your business? How are they gonna connect with clients and ensuring that the face of your business and brand is represented really well with them and through them? Congratulations and I'm excited. So we're both doing a lot of things, which is really fantastic, all the things.
All the things podcast content and, speaking of content, the topic that we have today is really about self-worth, value and how you invest your time. So the reason we're discussing this today is I got a video that got some attention recently, with some comments and people's feedback of being like, wow, I didn't realize this or, you know, I've heard this before, but it didn't click until you said it this way, and the topic was really about how you see yourself, determines and dictates the actions and choices that you make, which, when you hear it, it's like, oh yeah, I guess that makes sense, but what we don't realize in all the ways in which our self-worth and our self-value and sense of self is inhibiting our ability to do, take action or change in all the areas of our lives. So the way that this really comes into play and this is something that I was noticing in myself is there were certain things that I wanted to do, certain either self-care activities, ways in which I was running my daily schedule, or even the work priorities that I had. There were things that I thought that I wanted to accomplish or that I wanted to do, but I wasn't. For some reason, I was procrastinating. For some reason, it was always on my to-do list, but I wasn't checking it off. I would do these other smaller tasks instead of focusing on this big task, and I had to really step back and question and wonder why that was the case.
And, through some self-reflection and also starting to see it in others, or starting to see it in students and clients, I started recognizing that they had the same perspective. Oh yeah, I've been wanting to do that forever. Or oh yeah, that's something I'd like to do, but I don't really have the time or the energy to do it. What I found was that if they didn't recognize their own value, if they didn't see their own worth, if they didn't care for themselves enough to take the action, to make the change, to do the thing that they quote, unquote wanted to do, it wouldn't happen. And so I had to start thinking about how I valued myself, how my energy showed up in worth, how I thought of myself in the world, and then that allowed me to start making changes in which I wanted, in which I desired, in which I envisioned and imagined for myself.
And so today we're gonna talk a little bit about what it looks like for you if you struggle with this, or whether maybe it's something you haven't thought of before.
We don't often sit around and think do I value myself, do I value my own worthiness, like, how does that show up in my time, how does that show up in my energy?
And with this platform, of course, we have this initiative of putting yourself first in business and life. This is a really great representation of that, but you can't always put yourself first if you don't believe that putting yourself first is an even an option, and so it almost feels like a little inception, like a little meta is that we're speaking about something that most of us probably haven't realized, that most of us probably struggle with, and that until we identify and acknowledge that this is something that underlies, you know, our actions, our belief systems, our thought patterns, the way in which we run our time and schedule, then nothing will change and nothing will happen. So that's what we're gonna chat about today. Joanna, I'd love to hear kind of your initial thoughts on this and if you have any personal stories that you can bring to this conversation of self worth and valuing our time, our energy and what it is that we do throughout the day.
0:15:46 - Joanna Newton
One thing that really sticks out to me is this idea of choice over your time.
I think that sometimes it can really feel like you have no control, that things happen at you right, like that.
There's all of these external factors coming in, controlling your time, controlling your day, controlling your choices, and that leads you to think I will work on my business when all of these other things are done, or I will focus on that ultimate goal when this is done or that is done and there's a reality that we have needs we have to take care of.
You might have a family, you have a certain income level. Sometimes, just throwing everything out and only tunnel vision, focusing on that like big dream goal, isn't possible. But you know, what I'm hearing you say is that the first step in this is actually just like discovering like I'm worth going after my goals right, like I am worth doing that and really, really believing that. Then you can sit down and set priorities, then you can sit down and look at what happens, because you might need to have an income, you might need to do certain things, you might have a child that has needs or an elderly parent that has needs, but where is the time for you to look at what you're going for and something that I think about, when my first big dream was to be an actress I don't know if you know this about me have I told you about, like, my acting days?
0:17:25 - Michelle Pualani
We talked a little bit about how you were involved in music and you did some acting, and so it definitely piqued my curiosity.
0:17:32 - Joanna Newton
So this is just a very interesting story because, yeah, my first big goal was to be an actress. I did dance lessons. I did every show I could do at my high school. I did not grow up with a lot of money so, unlike a lot of the people I worked with, I didn't have like voice lessons, dance lessons, till I was six.
I got a job working at a candy store so I could pay for my own dance lessons when I was like 16, right, Cause I was like I need to learn how to dance. And so a lot of people actors, actresses in this space they have all the lessons, all the things, all the clothes, all the whatever. But I did everything I could do for free. So every acting class my school offered every show, every little thing I could do I did and I was like successful, like I didn't get paid for what I did but in my, you know, I would get parts in leading roles and did community theater and things like that and did, was able to get into a BFA acting program in New York City that only 35 kids get into.
I was elated. I was like I'm moving to New York City, I'm going to be an actor, this is happening and Then it didn't, and there's a really interesting story for this. I thought I was going to get financial aid being out from a not affluent family. I was certain I was going to get a lot of financial aid.
And about August I get my letter of my financial aid package and it comes to me and I was going to owe $25,000 for the upcoming year. So I'm the first person from my family to go to college. My parents and I are looking at this and we literally have no idea what to do. I'm like what do I do? And my parents are like they had a business. We went bankrupt at one point as a family and they were like we can't take out loans. We don't have the credit to take out loans.
I had no idea what I was going to do, and what's fascinating about this is I convinced myself, as an 18 year old kid going to college, that I didn't want to do that anymore, and I think what happened in my brain is that I looked at this goal that I wanted, I had the path to achieving it. I felt this impossibility, which is something I probably could have figured out, but it felt impossible to come up with $20,000 plus and I convinced myself I no longer wanted to be an actress in that moment and I did figure out my life and I'm very happy with what I'm doing now. But looking back at that, I think it was what you're talking about. I didn't believe I was worth it to take that risk on myself and make that move. I'm a different person now than I was when I was 18, but it's definitely something I reflect on and think, man, if only I had taken that risk, figured that out, but it just felt so impossible in that moment.
0:20:50 - Michelle Pualani
And that is such a reflection of how you view yourself and what you feel like you're capable of. And we don't realize that these underlying belief systems and thought patterns, they embed everything that we do, from the little to the big stuff. That's a huge decision. You've gotten into this amazing school. You had this wonderful opportunity in front of you and I get it. Coming from the financial struggles, I feel the same way of what was possible for you felt limited. What happened was not only did it change your idea or perception of what was possible, it made you shift your goals. It made you shift who you were as a person. If you identified as an actress, and now this was something that wasn't possible for you, you said that nope, I no longer want to identify in that way. And, yes, you probably could have figured it out. Yes, student loans, yes, whatever the situation was.
But the external circumstances aren't as important as the fact that it shifted your sense of self. It shifted the way in which you show up in the world. We have to recognize all the ways in which we're giving away our power in that way, in which we're giving away our identity and our sense of self. Now, if you had decided internally yes, this isn't for me. I've decided that I've given it the go. I recognize this is not what I want out of my life, but because your external circumstance changed the way in which you thought about yourself and changed the actions that you take. That's huge. So much of that comes from this doubt and insecurity that we have and I feel like, as women, we struggle with this a lot Doubt and insecurity. We doubt our own abilities, we are insecure about our physical Just starting with the insecurities in which, physically, we are expected to show up, in the way in which we have to present ourselves, and just our ability to accomplish a goal, to work on something.
So today we're talking about time and scheduling and we're talking about how this shows up in our day because, ultimately, your seconds make up your minutes, make up your hours, make up your days, make up your weeks, become your months and your months become your years, and that is your life. So if you were to break down your life, it is time, and time is the most important resource, tool, thing that you can imagine investing, and we have to start thinking about our time in terms of value. In terms of worth, and I'm not necessarily saying put a dollar value on it? Yes, absolutely. If you're doing work, you need to consider that type of thing.
But what we're talking about today is seeing your time as incredibly valuable. We often, you know, when we take on clients, maybe we do that extra little thing, that here, there, maybe we've compromised. Oh yeah, I'll help out with this, and though I don't really want to, or even though I don't really have the time or space for it, but we do that. We compromise, we sacrifice, we give up in so many ways, personally and professionally, and what that does is devalue our time. It shows and demonstrates that we don't feel worthy of choosing differently, and I think that's such a big part of this puzzle.
0:24:17 - Joanna Newton
And so many people, so many of our listeners. They're online business owners, they're content creators, they're women trying to move up in their company and be executives, right All of these high powered people who've maybe made decisions to live a life as a woman that's maybe not as conventional right, and we may have not been taught or been modeled how to manage our time in a way that reflects that. But I think about at least for me my mom always worked part time, was a stay at home mom, and that was her choice. That is what she wanted to do and how she wanted to live her life, and she lived the life that she wanted. But when I look at how she spent her time, it was often dictated by the needs of the family and she was happy with that right that fit her goals, that fit her lifestyle. So her time was managed by us. But then, all of a sudden, you have someone raised by a woman who picked that lifestyle, becoming a different type of woman with different goals and dreams and aspirations, with no real home model of how to be a mom and how to run a business and how you manage your time to be effective with that. I've worked on a lot of different time management strategies to figure out how to make this work, because I am ambitious. I do want to spend time with my family, I do want to spend time with my husband and I spent a lot of last year starting a business while having a full-time job and executive leadership level full-time job while starting a business.
And how I did this, like how I managed to do this. First, to be perfectly honest, I didn't sleep that much. I made sure I slept, but there was some lack of sleep there that happened and I knew it was a phase of life. Do you know what I mean? I knew it was like this is for short term, so that I can be a business owner. I'm there now and I sleep now, but for some reason, I could not sleep last night. No idea why, but that is not very normal. So one thing that I did was started making sure like I set up pockets, like while I had a nine to five and doing my own business, I set up pockets of time where I focused on my business, no matter what, and it had a because I had so much going on. It had very specific start and end times.
I was like okay, when my daughter goes to bed, I'm going to take two hours and I would pre-plan what work I was doing in those two hours. I would say, okay, the priorities are this and this, that's what I'm focusing on for those two hours. So when I sat down for those two hours, I wasn't thinking about what I had to do for two hours. I think that's a huge thing. Is people sitting down to work, not sure what they're doing, and you're taking like an hour to think about what you're going to do? When you only have two or three, you can't do that.
So I have really put that sort of concept towards time management into my day to day as a business owner, and one of the things as a business owner is that you can be pulled in so many directions.
You have administrative tasks, you have your own personal brand, you have your team, your service-based business, you have your clients, whatever it is. You have different buckets of things that you have to focus on, and one thing I find really helpful is, throughout my week, I carve out certain sections of days to focus on those different things, and for me, that makes sure I'm not letting something go. Do I always get everything I want done in a week? No way, I think. If I did, I wouldn't be where I am today because I wouldn't be being ambitious enough. But what that does, if it might say, okay, this half of my day I'm focused on client work and this half of my day I'm focused on my business that makes sure that both business and client work gets done. Because for me, if I don't do that, what will fall away is my business and my personal brand.
I know I will always do the client work Like I will always get that done because I have a person that I'm answering to other than myself, because when you think about that, that goes to that whole self-worth thing. I think that client is more worth getting their project done than me. They are paying me, so there is some truth to that, like there is some balance there. But that's why I think for me, bucketing time makes sure that I don't let the things I would let fall, like things that push my business forward and things that promote my personal brand, and make sure I don't do those and completely forget about them and let them fall out of the basis. So some people for that strategy is like time blocking, right, setting up different times of your day.
The other thing that helps me with is when you have to switch, like when you're switching back and forth between different types of tasks. It will take you longer, versus if you're like okay, I'm gonna focus on my client list. I have two hours. I'm gonna get through as many of these client projects as I can in two hours. Okay, now I'm switching gears. I'm gonna go create content. I have two hours. I'm gonna create as much content for my TikTok as I can in these two hours, versus letting the external control you bouncing back and forth based off which text message, which email, who's calling you, and all of that. So I find I can be more efficient with time blocking.
0:30:08 - Michelle Pualani
The priorities is such an important part of that because there is something to be said for decision overwhelm. So if you start your day wondering what you're gonna do, if you start that time block wondering what you're gonna do, you're gonna get lost. You're gonna get lost in all of the external influences, the notifications, the emails, planning and strategizing. So you really wanna focus on prioritizing in advance and then exactly what you're talking about in terms of context switching as well, and the focus that we're able to create or do or execute on one level, it's best if you stay in that level for a period of time. So all of your creative time.
If you're writing, try to get all your writing in within a certain window. If you're filming, try to get that filming in within a certain window. Don't try to go back and forth or mix up your day too much so that you're being pulled in different mental capacities. That's really the thing. If you're in meeting mode, staying in meeting mode and just trying to think about it as the psychological effort or the mental effort that you're putting into something is really critically important and being able to distinguish between the activities that you're choosing to do at different times.
0:31:20 - Joanna Newton
And I think that when you take a step back and you think about that, you can really structure your time in a way that works for you. Your day is not coming at you. You don't have, you have the control. And of course things happen, emergencies happen, things come up, sometimes things do come out. So there is that reality. But if the majority of your time is really well scheduled, really well thought out, then when those things happen and it's not gonna throw you off as much as if you're always in chaos. The other thing too, when you time block yourself, say you have a goal of growing a TikTok following and you've set your times up to film.
One thing I think happens with tasks is when you don't have a ton of time to do everything you wanna do, then you don't do it at all. So say you're like I wanna be posting twice a day on TikTok pretend for a second, that's your goal. And you're like, hey, well, I'm not gonna sit down and film until I find the time to make 14 videos for this week in one sitting. Well, it's gonna be hard to find time for 14 videos in a sitting. But say you say, okay, I'm going to take Tuesday and Thursday mornings to film and I'm gonna do it for an hour and a half and I'm gonna edit it right there. Maybe you won't get to 14 videos, maybe you'll get seven in those two days, but otherwise you would have had zero. So I think when you think I'm going to have this time, it's way better to have seven videos than zero. So I'm just gonna do as much as I can in that allotted time.
0:32:56 - Michelle Pualani
And I was just talking to a client about this because we're setting exactly this up in terms of how do we schedule in the content creation, because it seems silly, but it's one of the things that will inhibit you from actually doing it Is not where do I set up, what does my format look like, what I'm gonna be talking about, how am I going to dress?
All of those things can be little barriers to actually doing the activity or the task. So being able to give yourself that space is really important and also it allows you to practice. When you think about quality versus quantity, we'll talk about this parable in another episode, because it deserves an entire episode but ultimately, the long story short is that when you are given the task of quantity, your skills will improve. And no, not your entire 10 videos, not your entire 100, not your entire 1000 videos will be the best videos ever, but one, two, 10, a handful of those are going to be better in quality than if you focused on one video, because you have the practice of doing it, you have the ability to show up, you have the consistency, you're getting in the reps, and that's what really makes all the difference.
0:34:13 - Joanna Newton
I think the other thing this is a really new thing I'm thinking about, so I'm still formulating this one, but I've been starting to think about this concept of cycles. I saw this TikTok and it was about laundry, and it was about like having to do laundry and how laundry feels overwhelming because it never feels like it's done, right. And then the person talked about laundry. They were like you have to think about laundry and cycles. You have clothes. You have dirty clothes. You have clean clothes. You have clothes that are in the washing machine. You have clothes that are in the dryer, right, you have clothes in all different cycles. So do all of those clothes have to be cleaned and put away all at the same time? No, that's never gonna happen.
What does need to happen is that all of that clothing needs to go in a cycle in a way that makes sure you have enough clean clothes at any given moment, right? So some of that's how many clothes you have, some of that's your schedule of when you're doing it. But if you're constantly looking for this ultimate moment where all of your laundry is done, you're setting yourself up for stress and failure, and I think the same goes for content creation. Our business, like your work, like the reality is your work at home, at life, in family. It is never gonna be done. So how can you set yourself up in life with cycles that get you towards your goal? You don't have to be at your goal today, you don't have to be done tomorrow. How do you set your life up that pushes everything forward? You're moving in the direction of your dream, of your goal.
0:36:07 - Michelle Pualani
I love that analogy and to think about it in the laundry, in terms of cycles and phases and moving from one to the next and knowing that you're always gonna have something in a certain phase but that it's not necessary, you have them all in one phase. That's a beautiful analogy and it makes me think of, obviously, as women, cycling as women, hormonally, physiologically. There's so much to be said about this and I love a lot of the habits content out there. I'm a big habits person. You know my feelings and somewhat about self-discipline We'll talk more about that and I do believe there is something to be said of self-discipline really tying into this self-worth and this value, because I really feel like Flynn, if you were to look it up, is about punishment. It's about disciplining or punishing yourself into action, and I really don't believe in that model necessarily. But if you do care for yourself enough, you will do the exact same things that self-discipline could accomplish. If you care for your body enough, if you care for your mind enough, if you care for your work and your mission enough, that's when you will take the activities and it's less likely to peter out or less likely to diminish over time, if you can actually stay consistent over the long run.
And what that also looks like is cycles and phases, and there are times in which, hormonally, we are going to have higher energy levels.
There are times in which we're gonna wanna be more social. There are times in which we're gonna wanna show up in front of the camera. There are times in which we're gonna wanna strategize. So all of those things really fill into how we, as women, show up in our work, show up in our day, show up in our time, show up in our life, and it's very distinguished from the masculine energy of a 24 cycle, of being on all the time and when we can identify that and recognize that and then also give ourselves permission not to fill into that heavy demand of that 24 hour masculine schedule drive, drive, drive, go, go, go. That's when I think it opens up the opportunity for all of these things and you will get everything done, just maybe not in the timeframe that you envisioned yourself getting it done. So I think it really does come back to that self value, that self-worthiness of understanding how you can care for yourself, and that shows up in the cycles and the phases and the ways in which you act.
0:38:35 - Joanna Newton
I know for me how that has showed up in my life is. I am clearly a goal driven, ambitious person, but there's actually a lot about my life that an outsider would not necessarily think that I'm not an early riser. I don't have the exact same schedule every single day, and when I was working a nine to five where I was commuting every day, the act of getting up at the same time, getting in the shower at the same time, doing my makeup at the same time, getting in the car, like that very specific morning routine I hated it. I loved working, but there was something about that morning monotonous routine for me that crushed my soul and honestly, way before COVID went remote, when we went remote my everything was so much better because the routine of getting to work and getting from home to work just was so awful. Some people love that routine and that consistency and that very specific every day, but some mornings I wanna sit in my pajamas on my computer by myself and write content or look through tasks or do my financial spreadsheet, and I want to be able to have that flexibility. You get that with remote work, with working for yourself. You have some of that flexibility.
I actually work a little bit on the weekends, like in the morning in my pajama, kind of wake up early, get a few things done, or do a little bit of work in the afternoon, because I like working when no one else is working.
There's certain tasks I like to do in that timeframe. That doesn't always work when you have a nine to five. And then some people look at me and I was like you work seven days a week, you work all the time. And I'm like no, because some mornings I walk to the coffee shop and have coffee with a friend after school, drop off right, or I'll go do an errand at nine in the morning, because I'd rather do that. I'd rather work for two hours on a Saturday afternoon and do my shopping on a Wednesday morning, because that's what works for me. And I think when you put yourself first, when you realize your self worth, you can say, oh, I can create a schedule, I can be productive and create a schedule that I love, that works for me, that works for my cycles, that works for what's going on in my life.
0:41:11 - Michelle Pualani
There's a lot to be said about routine and consistency and I see where people are coming from. Cody Sanchez actually just put out a video about this, so I'll link it in the show notes. But when it comes to routine and consistency and having come from her healthy habits, which is the health and wellness side of my brain and where I was as a wellness professional for over 10 years working with people, when it came to habits and consistency and exercise and routines and showing up and being dedicated and committed and I got to the same place, Joanna I felt like I couldn't anymore. And for me, when I was teaching in coaching and personal training, that was like waking up at four o'clock, 430 o'clock in the morning, getting to the gym by five, teaching, coaching, training over the course of that morning time doing my stuff right. I had my tea. Sometimes I've had my little morning meditation sessions, Like things were there, I was still eating well and everything else, but that wasn't for me. That regimented schedule, that early morning, was not for me.
If I wake up between seven and eight, I'm very happy. That is what is a quality start for me and you're right that everyday, consistent, doing the same thing every single day. Again, it does help because if you struggle with decision overwhelm throughout the day, that decision fatigue that comes in when you wake up. What am I gonna do this morning? How am I gonna spend my time? Where's my effort and energy going? That can affect you. But when you give yourself the space and the opportunity to say I'm leaving a two hour window in the morning to be able to connect with someone and you fulfill those other needs of your life, it does mean that you can theoretically work seven days and be happy and comfortable. I'm trying to work on. There's another book and resource I'll actually link in the show notes and I think it's called 24 six. I'm gonna have to double check that. It's about spending time in the digital space but then taking a 24 hour period in a seven day cycle away from all of technology. So zero phone, zero internet, zero computer, zero everything. And I think that is actually really healthy to kind of like a break. But I completely see where you're coming from when it's about finding what works for you in your schedule and when you can identify your value, your worth. That's how that shows up.
And then the one thing that I wanna share and impart here is that we're not talking about a toxic, productive, time-managed, totally minute by minute type of energy. You have to get everything done. You have to use these time management techniques in order to be more accomplished, in order to be more successful. But how can you show up in your life in the way that you want, in the way that you dream of, in the ideal situation for you? What does that look like?
How are you investing your mornings? What does your calendar look like when you're scheduling out meetings or working with clients? Are you putting in the right time and energy to, like Joanna was talking about focus on the business tasks and activities that are going to actually move your business forward? I know that I get into the trap of now I have a bunch of clients on my plate and now I'm not creating content consistently. Now I'm not actually focusing on marketing on a larger level or creating that brand impression, and so I've really had to think strategically about how I'm investing the time throughout the week in order to a lot for each of the things that I need in my life. And again, it's not about being overly productive and getting everything done within that timeframe. It's about what do I imagine my life to be, and how can I effectively use my time to accomplish those goals?
0:44:55 - Joanna Newton
And I think, when you think about how do you move those goals forward, how do you use your time in a way that moves their goals forward? Not how do I do this in an unrealistic amount of time? Right, like not, how do I have this thing done in a week? That really healthily, would take six weeks, and I think that can get really hard as a business. If you're an ambitious, you're a business owner, we can create stress for ourselves, like we can create deadlines for ourselves that are unnecessary.
Brandon, my business partner and I we were working on a project, something we wanted to do. We had like two really big things we wanna do and we sat down and realized, like let's just do one of them right now. Let's do this one first, let's focus on getting this thing done, and then we can add the other thing. We have a profitable, successful business right now. It exists, it is working for us, it's providing what we need. If it were to be like this forever, that would be okay. Do we wanna grow? We wanna scale? Yes, but we can scale with one thing at a time instead of trying to do everything, working through ourselves to the bone, possibly letting the quality of our work go down because our focus is to spread thin.
In the corporate world I've seen companies also do the same thing to themselves. They have such a great base and then they want to do way too many things. That's just unrealistic. Employees are stressed. It becomes a toxic work environment. People leave right Like people don't stay when they are overly stressed, have too much work. And I think as a leader of, if you're a solopreneur, you don't have a team yet, you have to think about how you treat yourself, like I should treat myself with that respect. What's realistic? What is the realistic timeline to hit this goal? And then how do I fit that into my life? And then, when you have a team and you're growing in that way, you have to start thinking of what's realistic. Or our whole team, how do we move forward in a way that isn't toxic, right, that isn't that toxic productivity, constantly working life that leads to burnout.
0:47:22 - Michelle Pualani
Really, I think what we're trying to accomplish through this conversation is not leading to that burnout, not getting yourself into a place where you're sacrificing, not compromising your time, your energy, how you're investing yourself on a day-to-day basis, and we believe that where that comes from is really understanding your own value. So I think the best way to start to accomplish that is really sitting down and writing, maybe recording a video or an audio note. How do you value yourself? What does it mean for you to have self-worth? Do you feel worthy of the goals that you're working towards right now? What is it that's inhibiting you or keeping you from having what it is that you're working towards in the present moment and starting to reflect on some of the things that we're talking about today and really identifying.
How would you measure your self-worth If you were to sit down and say one to ten, how valuable do I think I am? Where does that come up? And this shows up in your pricing. It shows up in how you deliver your services. It shows up in the offers and products that you're creating. It shows up in your content creation and whether you show up doubtful and insecure and unsure, or whether you show up as an expert and as an authority and as someone who speaks from a place of knowing their own value, knowing their own worth and identifying that you are worthy of being here, you are worthy of taking up space, you are worthy of presenting your ideas and your opinions.
You are worthy of being heard and you're worthy of selling and you're worthy of showing your genius and expertise in the world and demonstrating everything that you have to value and everything that you have to show and everything that you have to deliver to the world, and the world needs it in a big way. So don't let those external things impact you. And I know, joanne, you have some thoughts about how, when we start to shift this sense of identity, when we start to shift our own value, start to shift our own worth, how that affects everything else in our lives, so external circumstances as well as, possibly, relationships. So I'm going to let you take it away with relationships.
0:49:49 - Joanna Newton
So there's definitely this interesting thing that happens that once you start to really own your own self-worth, you start to own your time. You start to set boundaries and stick to them. If you have been someone who's put yourself last, or people please are, or any of those things in the past, people in your life will likely struggle with you being different and can cause a lot of tension. So you're going to have people who you knew you one way and they're going to have opinions on your life, decisions and your choices, and I think that can jump in a couple of ways. One you can get actual criticism right. You've made a decision, you want to do something, and there will be naysayers that say your idea is not great. I remember I had a family member when I first started talking about becoming a business owner to laugh at the idea that a business I owned could make more than $100,000 in a year. You know, make that kind of comment when my husband decided to be a stay-at-home dad. This was the decision we made for our family. We had multiple people. Some stay-at-home moms criticized him about what he was going to do all day right as a stay-at-home dad. We made that decision because we believed that my career was what we wanted to prioritize as a family in terms of our focus, Because I was very driven. I had big goals. In the first six years of my daughter's life as a corporate person, I more than doubled my salary and started a whole business. That's because of the choice we made as a family that my husband was going to stay at home. We could talk all about that concept because there is a lot of truth that men with a stay-at-home spouse, they tend to out-earn everyone because they have someone at home taking care of all of that mental load, home labor, care tasks. That's a whole other topic. But when we made that decision to put my career first little unconventional, right in terms of our general view of society, how family should run we received a lot of criticism from our friends and family.
The next thing is you're going to decide on these boundaries, these time blocks, these things you're deciding for your life and then requests are still going to come in, so people are going to ask you to meet with them at times that you've decided are no meeting times or focus on a task that's not your choice and you have to stick to those boundaries. If you say I'm dedicating this time and you get 10 minutes, 10 text messages during that time. You cannot respond to them, you can just not respond and people will likely not be as mad as you think they will be for setting those boundaries. Some people will be mad but some people will just not even think about it. So you have to not let your need to please others and put others first come above your schedule and your choices and your boundaries.
And that can be very hard and create tension and do all of those things in your life. So a lot of times these, like personal shifts in your mindset, create outside tension and you have to be prepared for that. Know it's going to happen and just know if I set this boundary, Okay, the first time might be awkward, the second time might be even more awkward, the third time that person might get mad at me, but then, fourth, the sixth time that person is either they're going to learn to respect your boundaries, your time, or maybe that's not someone who should be that deep in your life if you can't set those boundaries with them. So I think one thing to be very aware of if you go on this journey to put yourself first and to prioritize yourself and to prioritize a goal, there will be issues with the outside world and you're going to have to learn how to deal with it.
0:54:10 - Michelle Pualani
That is going to happen big time and I've seen it happen with partners, with family members, with coworkers or your team members, with friends and even with strangers who have nothing to do with your life. Everyone is going to have an opinion about the choices that you make and it's really going to question your sense of self worth. Am I worthy of taking this time? Is it important enough for me? Should I be spending more time with my kids? Should I actually be investing more time in my work? Am I meant to be taking this time for my partner and helping them out instead of focusing on myself? All of those things are going to come up as a part of this process and really a boundary is not about someone else changing or doing anything different. The boundary is for you and you have to hold strong in, just like Joanna is talking about. You have to really decide why this is important for you, that it is important and critical enough for you to stick to, and all of that will come with that belief system of value and worth. Truly, that boundary is for you to hold in place and it is going to be awkward, like she mentioned. It is going to be odd to be able to exert, but it's so important for you to stick with. That's something that I'm actually doing in my schedule. Right now. I'm not booking any meetings on Mondays, and then I'm also technically not really booking any meetings on Fridays, and as of this next month, that will be solidified in stone. I'm focusing all of my meetings Tuesday, wednesday, thursday, and someone will be able to flex on that in some way and we will make it work. Whether it happens this week or the next week, or it has to be put out a little bit further. That is a priority that I'm making so that I can better manage my time, better manage my energy investments, especially as we're launching a whole new brand in business. It's really important for me to start thinking and focusing more critically about where am I investing that time and that energy and being really cautious, being really protective of it and guarding it to a really huge degree.
So thank you, Joanna, for sharing that, because it's something that I don't necessarily think about is what is the ripple effect? Because when we talk about these things, we are thinking about okay, how does this affect our lives? How does this show up in our schedule? How does this show up for me in my business, in my content creation. But with all of those changes comes the external influence, comes the relationships, comes the what's happening as a result, and those things will start to make you question, or make you start to wonder, whether you're making the right choices, and so you have to be really strong and really solid in that. So, as we start to wrap up today's episode, really the important thing that we want you to walk away with is understanding for yourself what that means, and no one's going to be able to tell you, no one's going to be able to dictate it, no one's going to be able to say this is what's worked for me and this is how I figured it out.
It really has to come from that internal sense, it has to come from that self reflection, it has to come from identifying what it means for you to feel worthy, to have value, and then, resultantly, how that shows up in your life.
0:57:36 - Joanna Newton
I just want to thank our listeners for joining us today for this discussion, and I hope that you found some inspiration as well as some just practical advice so that you can start to make the most of your time, and I encourage you that, as you make choices to focus on yourself, prioritize your time, set those boundaries that you don't let the external factors negative thoughts of others keep you from protecting your time.
0:58:05 - Michelle Pualani
If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, share it with your friends and leave us a review. We'd absolutely love to hear from you about what you took from this episode and how you're going to implement it in your life Remember your time is precious, and so are you.
0:58:21 - Joanna Newton
What is one thing you can do today to prioritize you in business and life?
