Episode 106 Transcript

Heather (00:03.186)

Hey guys, welcome. Welcome back to episode 106. How are you guys? How's it been going? I still can't believe I passed a hundred episodes and you guys have been along for the ride. Are you just joining me? If you're just joining me, welcome because I've been speaking a lot lately and I know that I picked up some new listeners. So I'm talking to you new listeners. All right. So here's the deal. I am leaving in about five days. Yes. Oh my gosh. Five days less. Wow.

 

to London for three weeks. And I thought I would share with you guys, business owner to business owner, what I am doing to prepare to be overseas for three weeks, trying to work as little as possible. So why am I going to London? Well, my partner who's been with me, we've been together 16 years. We just worked that out. That's insane. My God, 16 years.

 

He's my lead developer. His name is Neil and he's the lead website developer in our business. Now, he's been in London for two months. So he's been working opposite hours of me. It's been a bit of a struggle. I must be honest. It's been challenging and I miss him. And he's over there because unfortunately his mom who is in her nineties, young like young nineties, has dementia.

 

And it is an appalling disease. It's horrible. He lost his father to dementia like five years ago as well. So his sister lives with his mom in London. That's where he's originally from and has been caring. She cared for the father until they had to put him into a care home. And then she's caring for their mom now who's progressively getting worse. So he went out there to support his sister.

 

to give her some time off to sort of see what this situation is like. And it's been really full on. I don't know if you guys have been affected by somebody with dementia, but she doesn't know who he is and she needs care all the time and it's hard. So he's over there and I couldn't afford to be over there for three months and I was just gonna be a third wheel while he's there with his sister. So.

 

Heather (02:31.09)

I've been over here, but I'm gonna go and join him. And I'm gonna be there for three weeks. And what is the plan is this basically, I have a girlfriend, Ellie, who I've spoken about in previous episodes. Now her father is Hungarian. So he lives in Hungary. He was in Australia for a long time, but he's now in Hungary. So she tries to visit him once a year as well as he's also getting older. The joy of getting older, right? And having aging parents.

 

So she is going to come with me. We have a ridiculous wake up call. We have to leave at like 2 .30 in the morning or three in the morning from our places. We're gonna go into the airport together and our flight's out at 6 .30 a .m. We're flying through Dubai and then off to London. So she's actually coming with me. She's gonna stay in my partner's, Neil's mom's house. So we have another spare room. She's gonna stay there. We're gonna do.

 

some fun thing, girly friend things together around London that my partner would not like to do. And she'll stay out of my hair for obviously time so I can work and also see Neil and hang out with the family as well. So she's doing that. And then we're going to go to Greece and take a little bit of a holiday. So she and I are going off to Greece for four days together. We're going to Mykonos. Yay. If you've been...

 

Um, I've heard it's cool. We're going to have fun. We're going to do the beach vibe and cocktails on the beach and dancing and DJs and all that. And then she's leaving to Budapest. Um, actually, no, she's going through Athens first, Neil's then joining me in Santorini. So I'm kind of doing Mykonos and then Santorini, Neil's joining me. And then I know it sounds cool, right? It's going to be fun. It'll be fun. And then we're actually coming back through Athens, catching up with Ellie for one evening and she's off to Budapest. And then I am going back to London for about five days before we come back to Australia.

 

Pretty fun. As a business owner like you guys, I am busy. So I thought I'd just share with you guys how I'm preparing for these three weeks ahead to the best of my ability to have downtime, to have connection with the family, to have a holiday moment as well, and to take good care of my clients while I'm away. And I put a spanner in the works, my head project manager,

 

Heather (04:53.746)

Kim is on her way to the Olympics, hopefully, knock on lots of wood. So she's actually off as well during this time for most, for half the time I'm away. She's off to one of like the World Cup sort of qualifier events that they're doing. By the way, you're gonna meet Kim soon. I'm interviewing her. So you'll be able to hear about her journey in the Olympics and what that's like. So crazy times. So how am I preparing? So number one is I'm being...

 

realistic about what I can accomplish. Now I have learned this from my interviews with guests in this podcast, right? You've heard this from some of the guests where they're literally like, be realistic or you're going to stress yourself out with not being able to accomplish things. So,

 

I've really kind of embraced that mindset on the work that I'll actually be able to get done. And I realized that from traveling to the Philippines recently in the Gold Coast, going in with best of intentions of what I could accomplish, but not being able to accomplish that. So I've kind of had a reset on what's possible. So be realistic about what I can accomplish. And I'm sure I'm not speaking to you as well, right? At all with that little piece of advice, just reminding you as well on that.

 

Next is moving all proactive business building activities to when I get back. So anything that involves strategy and brain power is happening when I get back. So for example, um, a while ago, I sort of beta tested a new coaching division or area of our business and we call it the unicorn collective. And, um, I was going to do some work on that, but I'm like, no, no, I'm going to push that back. So I've.

 

push back the calls with my team member and a podcast as well. I'm going to interview Adam on that and what that coaching looks like. We've pushed all that back. That's proactive business building. I had all these ideas of turning back on my YouTube ads and meta ads because I'm going to ramp up our marketing and Google ads and I'm pushing all that back. So all these things that's been kind of percolating floating around all go back. I'm also even revamping some of our funnel, our marketing funnel.

 

Heather (07:11.314)

Um, our website, there's a lot of projects that I'm working on right now to, to, I guess, ramp up for the second part of this year and all of that. I just have to clear out of my head completely because I, I need to focus on it in a really solid way. So everything's been bumped back. So that's the second thing. So number one is being more realistic with what I can accomplish. Number two is move all proactive business building activities back until I get back. Next is plan and book the important things. So everything.

 

is almost booked completely on the entire trip. Tickets, dinner reservations, shows. We're going to the ABBA show in London and probably a couple of other things as well. Hotels, transport, ferries in between the Greek islands. Everything's been booked in advance. The reason why is I interviewed recently Rebecca Flint on the Canva, Canva strategies and stuff. And

 

That episode literally has just come out recently. So you should watch it by the way or listen to it. And she said something I really loved, which was remove brain calories in your design. And I thought, I want to remove brain calories from any sort of planning when I am overseas. And I actually do that a lot with my own food and meal preparation. Like I order something called Marley spoon, which is like a meal, like a recipe card and

 

ingredient delivery service, anything where I don't have to think in those ways. So I have removed all of that because then that all that stuff of just trying to work out where you're going, booking dinners, whatever it is I want to do, it will be done by the time I get there. So that's good. And that will allow me to be more present with the people around me as well as deal with any fires that come in because my PM is

 

going to be also overseas, like I said, my project manager, and I want to spend time with Neil. I haven't seen him in two months and all of that. So I really want to allow the normal fires, day -to -day reactive things that do happen when you run your business, room for them to come up, as well as the maintenance and care of our current projects. So that's another thing. So plan and book the important things in advance. Next is working out the best way to communicate with my team.

 

Heather (09:34.449)

So I use a tool called Slack and I also have a project management tool called Asana. And so all of our projects are in Asana. So we're always going to be in there. I have the app on my phone. I also have Slack on my phone. So when I'm traveling and, you know, out and about, if there's an absolute urgent emergency, I can easily just pop on my phone to manage the situation. So all that's good. You know, I have my roaming SIM card in and ready to go. So people...

 

They need to reach me. I'm available wherever I'm traveling as well. So that's another one. And then this is a big one. Don't feel guilty about taking time off and be okay to clock off completely. That's the mindset I want going into this trip. That's why I've pushed proactive things totally aside. That's why I am getting really clear check -ins with the team.

 

So they know when I'm gonna be online. So I can force myself to manage myself out of working at certain times during this trip. Because I am not there yet, you guys. I'm not there to the point where I'm like, yay, I'm gonna take three weeks. And the business runs itself. I'm just not there. I'm also growing. I'm also scaling just like you guys. And some of us are there and some of us are not. And obviously that's the ultimate goal for most of us is to allow the business to run.

 

without us where we step more into a leadership growth role. So that's a big one for me because I'm definitely one of those people is like, I need to be on the computer. I need to be working. I need to be supporting things. But because I completely cleared my calendar, by the way, it's completely cleared for three weeks. Now I have the space and capacity to manage the things that come up. And that's all I'm looking to do at this point is sort of those things that I know are going to come up just from client work and our business. So.

 

Those are the things, be realistic about what you will accomplish. Move all proactive business activities away from your holiday moments. Plan and book important things in advance to save on the brain calories so you can be more present in those moments and work out the best way to communicate with your team whenever you're away, how that looks in advance. And then obviously don't feel guilty about taking time off. And I'm telling you this because I want you to take time off this year too. Take a trip.

 

Heather (11:59.89)

take a staycation, whatever it is, these moments in life are so important, you guys. A friend of mine that I met when I was 18, I went over to Hawaii on like a trip, a high school graduation trip, and I met him and he was 30, I was 18, and he taught me a lot about personal development at the time. And basically, first Wayne Dyer books he introduced me to, a bit of a mentor in that space.

 

before I would say even know who Tony Robbins was or worked with him. And he just sent me, he DM'd me a reel in Instagram yesterday and it was about how truly short your life is and how he kind of, it's outlined with the weeks you have to live and the months you have to live in your life and how you want each box, as they say on the reel, each box or each moment in time to be memorable and beautiful and something that you look back on and can remember.

 

And so I really am taking that to heart going ahead. And when you have these moments, you guys in your life, be proactive with them, work through them and make sure you take care of yourself and have these really beautiful moments in your life. So hopefully there's something in there that will help. And whether it is you also are dealing with somebody with dementia, my heart goes out to you. It's horrible. Or you're just feeling overwhelmed and overworked. You don't think a...

 

A trip is even possible. It is even if it's just local staycation sort of stuff. It is. You just have to plan in advance baby steps. Thank you guys for being here as always. Thank you for listening. And I will talk to you in the next episode. I'm actually going to do a couple more right now planning so I don't have to do any podcasts when I'm overseas, but you'll hear about my adventures when I come back. Okay guys, talk to you soon. Bye.