Ep 91 Transcript: The Real Reason You’re Exhausted in Business and the Simple Shifts That Change Everything

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Shauna Lynn Simon (00:00)

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business Podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon, and today we're going to call out one of the biggest profit leaks that I see in specifically in women run businesses. If you feel like you are working harder than ever, not just physically, but mentally as well, you're probably not imagining it. One of the biggest profit leaks that I see in women run businesses. It's not pricing. It's not marketing. Do want to know what it is?

It is emotional labor. This is the invisible work of carrying every decision, every doubt, every relationship, every fire drill, every outcome all alone, all by yourself. And today I'm breaking down the emotional tax that no one really warned us about when we entered into entrepreneurship, right? And we're going to talk about how to finally set your business up to support you instead of draining you. This is a conversation that I've been having over the last several weeks with clients who are

just exhausted, feeling just burnt out and drained, not because they're lazy, not because they're disorganized. Yes, could we have some more efficient systems in our businesses that would give us a little bit more energy and revive us a little bit? Sure. But that is just a fraction of what the challenges that they're facing. The problem is that they're carrying everything. I can't actually count how many times in last few weeks I've had conversations about people

pleasing specifically. And so we're going to talk about the emotional load that comes with running a business, serving your clients, serving your family, taking care of everyone and basically keeping it all together. It really adds up and most of us don't even realize that it's happening. I actually had a conversation recently with someone about my experience with burnout, which I have talked about on this show several times. This happened back in 2017 for me and it took me

three long years to recover. And I've talked about how burnout can sneak up on you. So I have conversations with women all the time, every day, different women, usually women who are running businesses and especially women in the creative fields. And one of the big conversations that often comes up is just talking about their energy levels, talking about their passion, talking about their mental health. And a lot of what I'm seeing, I'm telling them, you know, I feel like you are

on the verge of burnout or you might might actually already be burnt out here and it's starting to manifest itself physically for them. But for myself I didn't I didn't see the signs. I didn't see it coming and I was actually talking about this recently with someone about how burnout doesn't always warn you. So in my case I wasn't tired before I burnt out. In fact I was actually pretty energized. My business was

thriving, but I was burning the candle at both ends, but I was loving what I was doing. I was, you know, manifesting all these great opportunities for myself and, you know, taking advantage of every single one of them as they came along. And each one did align with my true vision. And I really saw myself building something and even had a team of staff. So I had people who were doing some of the tasks for me, but it didn't change the fact that I was still doing a lot and I wanted to be doing a lot.

I was what I called a self-proclaimed workaholic and I was having the time of my life. My revenue and profits had never been higher. My team was doing amazing work and doing so quite autonomously as well. And so, you you would think with all that energy that burnout isn't something that would actually, you know, end up manifesting itself, but...

The challenge was, like I said, I was burning the candle at both ends. So I was running myself ragged. I wasn't prioritizing my health as well as I could have been during that time. So sometimes burnout really sneaks up on us. But other times you're feeling a lack of energy. You're feeling a lack of passion. This is often caused by a little bit of a misalignment as well in terms of the tasks that you are taking on. And chances are you have said yes to things that you probably shouldn't have said yes to. And a lot of this is coming from the emotional labor.

I want to show you how that actually shows up, what emotional labor actually looks like. So one of my clients, for example, she was bending over backward for a client of hers who kept changing their mind. This is an interior designer. This is her interior design client. She didn't want to disappoint that client, of course. So she absorbed that frustration. She took it all in, no problem. So of course, client facing, very calm, very understanding, which is, of course, how you want to appear to your clients.

But she's keeping it all in. She's not telling anyone just how frustrated she is. She reworked the designs multiple times. And here's the kicker, she did not charge for that extra time. So now she's feeling resentful as well for the extra work that she's done. When we calculated it all out, she had lost nearly two full work days that week. Not because she had a lack of skills, but because of her empathy and her consideration for them.

She really wanted to make sure that they felt comfortable with the designs, which yes, that is the role of an interior designer, but they were changing the scope. They had completely changed their minds from what they had originally directed her to do. That is something that does require payment. That's emotional labor and it's costing her real money because she's absorbed all of that. Another example of this is a client who felt guilty enforcing her policies and her expectations with her subcontractors. I know it gets a little bit tricky.

when we have these subcontractors also in the US known as 1099s, ⁓ also known as freelancers, because we don't feel as though we have the same sort of quote control over our subcontractors. We don't feel as though we can really direct their work the same way. And my client didn't want to seem overly demanding or nitpicky. That is a word I hear from women all the time. You know, I don't really want to be nitpicky. We've been called

nags our entire lives, right? Women are known to be nags. So we don't want to be a nag. We don't want to be nitpicky. And she ended up actually just redoing parts of their work of what her subcontractors had done. She ended up just doing it herself to keep the peace. That is a classic emotional labor trap because she's protecting other people's feelings at the expense of her own capacity. Now, another one of my group clients, they were told this is one of my group coaching clients. They share that by the time she sat down,

to actually work on her own marketing, she was absolutely emotionally drained from managing everyone else's needs. Her clients, her own team, her family, she was taking everything on herself. And I remember doing this with my team at times where if I could feel that they were feeling a bit overwhelmed or stressed, especially if we were in a crazy busy season where it's all hands on deck, I would take on extra work myself. Now, of course, as the boss, and especially in a busy season,

It is all hands on deck. So of course I'm going to take extra on, but I took all the hardest stuff off of their plate. And meanwhile, they were potentially not always doing things as well as they could have been, but because I knew they were already stressed, I wasn't addressing it with them and then I'm fixing their mistakes. And this is similar to what my client was doing. It wasn't that she was lacking time management. She was just she was lacking that emotional space. She wasn't giving herself the space that she needed. And I'll admit.

I am single and I live alone with a bunch of cats. Everybody knows this. I can't even imagine what it's like for some of my clients who have spouses as well as animals. And then on top of that, numerous kids running around as well. Anywhere from it could be one kid to six kids in the house, not to mention adding all their friends and their activities and everything else. And there is a lot of things going on. And so I see this over and over again. These women business owners who

think that they have a time problem or a money problem when really they have an emotional bandwidth problem and no spreadsheet is going to be able to fix that. And I know it sounds easier said than done of like you shouldn't be doing the tasks that are not designed specifically for you, but that takes such an emotional tax on us and really drains us. So if it's not your forte, if it's not your strength, I want you to think about offloading it sooner than later. But then you've got to set some boundaries for it as well. So

Let's talk a little bit more about what some of this looks like and how to start protecting your time, your energy. And of course, the biggest thing here that we want to protect is your profit. So when it comes to that emotional labor for entrepreneurs, what is this? How does this show up? One of the ways that it shows up is overthinking every single decision that you have to make. Now, keep it in mind, a lot of entrepreneurs here are running pretty much solo operations. If they do have team members.

You might not necessarily feel comfortable speaking with your team members about some of the big decisions that you're making for numerous reasons. For one thing, they probably don't have all of the data. So the idea of like, I've got to fill them in on all these details. By the time I do that, I might as well have just made the decision myself. Another reason why you might not fill them in is because they see things from a different perspective than you. You are using a CEO brain for this, and they're using more of an employee brain. That's not always a bad thing.

But sometimes their lack of management understanding could get in the way of things and their lack of big picture ⁓ vision could get in the way of things. So you're thinking, I'm just going to take this all on myself. And so you end up overthinking all of your decisions because you don't have a solid sounding board. You might be feeling responsible for all of your clients' emotions. So this is a big one. This goes back to the people pleasing.

You can't control your clients emotions. actually, for anybody who doesn't know, I do still operate interior design business. I'm very selective about the clients that I take because my primary focus is my business coaching and my online training courses. But I do still like having, you know, a little bit of a toe, so to speak, dipped into this creative field of interior design that has given me so much joy over so many years. And so I will do a discovery call occasionally with clients who are looking to start a new project.

And I had a client recently who I did a discovery call with, and I could tell that there were going to be some ups and downs to their emotions throughout this project. And like I said, I get to be very selective about who I take on. I'm very fortunate for that. And so I chose not to take on their emotions in that project because I do like my interior design projects to be a lot more fun. There are always going to be challenges and stresses that come up with every interior design project, of course, but I don't need on top of that.

to manage emotions that are not necessarily related to my project. And I can spot a red flag when I see it. I can tell when someone has potentially some anger issues that they're going to be very up and down with their emotions. And to be honest, I deal with a lot of emotions with my clients already. This is a part of my role as business coach. Most business coaches will tell you we are part therapist, part friend, part business coach. We're wearing a lot of hats with that. And so we do take on

our clients emotions, but it's important that we don't internalize our clients emotions. It's not about me. I was speaking with a friend recently and we were talking about relationships, ⁓ know, partnerships and saying how it's funny how often we assume, like, let's say you haven't heard from whether it's your significant other or even just a good friend of yours. You haven't heard from them in a little while. How often do you internalize thinking,

I wonder if I did something to offend them. Meanwhile, they've probably got a lot of things going on in their life and it's not that they don't want to reach out to you, but maybe they just haven't had the bandwidth for it. Maybe they're dealing with something personally very emotional that they're just feeling a little bit more reclusive. So let's offer a little bit of grace and not immediately internalize it. But this is what we do and when we internalize other people's emotions and other people's challenges and we start thinking that it's about us.

That takes an even bigger emotional tool. And again, this is we're paying for this in emotional labor. It is taking up prime real estate in our heads. And so when it comes to decision making, we're overthinking those decisions where we're overcompensating for it. We're feeling responsible for our clients emotions. We're saying yes in order to avoid disappointing people. We're feeling guilty when we're trying to not only set but enforce our boundaries. And we're probably carrying all of the anxiety.

that our team has that our clients have. We can't be everything. We can't be the everything person. We can't be, you know, the strategist, the executor, the therapist, the cheerleader, the firefighter. I think that's probably one of the biggest ones is, you know, anytime there's a crisis, instead of letting your team resolve the issue, you're like, I'm going to take it on. And I've heard this from my clients more than a few times. Well, if I let them resolve it, they're going to do it wrong. But done is better than.

So they might not have done it exactly the way that you would have done it, but you want to give credit for the fact that they got it done without you thinking about the tax that you are paying. If you are taking that on as women, we are conditioned to be caregivers, so we don't always notice when we're giving away our emotional energy and giving away emotional energy that we don't even have. We don't protect our reserves. We dip into our reserves. We clean them out and we keep digging even further and there is nothing left to give. Unfortunately.

OK, so we're going to be covering why this is such a big profit issue in just a moment after we take this short break. All right, welcome back to the Real Women Real Business podcast. are talking about the emotional labor tax that women business owners specifically tend to pay and how this is causing one of the biggest profit leaks that I am seeing in my clients businesses. So why why is this affecting our profit? Why would I say that this is affecting our profit and

I think one answer is kind of obvious. If you're not showing up as your best every single day, if people aren't able to get that best from you, you're not able to drive the revenues you need to drive. You're not able to lead the team efficiently. You're not able to build that sustainable business that's going to keep you going. And instead, you're just, again, tapping into reserves that you don't even have. And that emotional fatigue that you're feeling, that's going to actually lead to poor decision making. How many times?

have you had the, for lack of better way of putting it, the effort decision-making tool, where this is the, you're so exhausted, you're like, ah, screw it, I don't care, let's just go with this. Like you just make a decision for the sake of making a decision. And I mean, kudos in terms of making a decision, because again, done is better than perfect sometimes. But some decisions require more...

involved work. And the problem is that we've spent all of our time putting out fires every day. Let's say one day, you we've put out 16 different fires from our team. We've taken on all their emotional baggage. One person's complained about another team member not pulling their weight. You're trying to address all of that. Your clients are changing their mind constantly. You are trying to navigate the sales aspect of things. And now you have some really big decisions to make for your business. And what do you end up doing instead of a

attacking that decision first thing in the morning. You spend your morning taking care of everybody else. You're like, I'll deal with this when I have time. Right. This is classic. When I have the time as opposed to making the time and working everything else around it, we're to say I'm going to deal with this when I have time. So now it's a big decision that we need to make. And here we are at seven, eight o'clock at night and like, shoot, I've really got to make that decision.

We're not in the clearest head space to be making it. We're not even in the clearest head space to be evaluating our options and perhaps thinking of options that we hadn't thought of yet. We've got to say A and B options, but there's probably C, D, E and F options as well that we haven't even considered because we simply don't have the bandwidth to do it. So that emotional fatigue, that pain, that emotional labor is going to lead to poor decision-making. It's also going to lead to scope.

creep with your clients because your boundaries are not being held up, right? And you've got that sort of nice girl conditioning, right? We've all got that nice girl conditioning. We don't want to be seen as aggressive or demanding or ⁓ inflexible. I think that's one of the biggest things. We don't want to seem really rigid. So that results in us undercharging and over delivering, which

causes us to not only exhaust ourselves mentally, but get a little resentful too. So that that takes a toll mentally as well. Right. And that emotional load causes confusion. It causes delays. It can stall momentum like those big decisions that you need to make where you're like, listen, I don't have the bandwidth for it. You waited till eight o'clock at night. Still don't have the bandwidth for it. Try to make some moves on it. I've been guilty of this. And I've done a previous episode on procrastination. If you haven't listened to it, go back and check it out.

Because your procrastination is telling you often that there is there's different signals that you can be paying attention to and listening to when you're we're hearing yourself telling yourself that you don't want to do something or that you're going to do it later. That is your procrastination voice generally sending you some signals about what you should be paying attention to in terms of where you should be spending your energy. And we want to make sure you're spending that energy as much as possible in your zone of genius. Let's go back to why you started this business in the first place. What were you building?

I have one of my clients right now. She is going through a beautiful transformation where she has been running herself ragged and chasing the next dollar, chasing the next sale and just trying to keep everyone happy, keep her team happy, keep her family happy. And she has finally gone back to why she started this business in the first place. She had lost complete sight of that and was just basically caught up in the day to day.

When she went back to her original vision, I don't want to give too much away about this. It's a pretty beautiful process that she's going through. But when she went back to her original vision, she realized that the business that she's currently running was intended to be a stepping stone to a much bigger vision that she was working towards. And she's got this beautiful idea of ways that she's going to be able to support her community in a really profound and meaningful way. And while she can't do all of the things that she wants to do for this

bigger picture vision just yet because it does take time to get there. She can be doing small things that contribute to it and that helps you bring her back into alignment with why she started this in the first place. She is more energized. She's feeling better and she's going to be able to set better boundaries because of this because now she understands what she really wants to say yes to and what she wants to say no to. And I can't say that that completely eliminates the people pleasing.

inclination, of course, we still have that drive to let me just make sure everyone is happy. But it is helping her to better identify what things she really wants to attract. And the more she's putting it out there, the more those opportunities are coming to her. When you burn out, you're going to reduce your capacity. So we want to keep you from burning out in the first in the first place. And what ends up happening is your growth ends up stalling. The more exhausted you get.

the more of a toll this takes, the more you're thinking, geez, I don't want to grow this any bigger because growing it bigger means doing more of all the things that I'm doing and I can't do any more of these things. They're just taking everything out of me. So it's not about working harder. It's about carrying too much of this alone. Now I've actually got one of my clients really, really excited about this, but she's got, she's currently in beta testing phase for this new program that's going to be coming out.

And it's going to be a game changer for interior designers. Interior designers specifically have had this island kind of mentality for years, as in no one gets at me like the way that I do. And I don't want to collaborate with other interior designers. And so I have to come up with everything myself. And most interior designers are solopreneurs. And they're feeling a bit lost. They're feeling a bit

lonely, frankly, and she's got this great platform that is going to give them the support in numerous ways, whether it's through resources, colleagues that they can call on, and accountability and a full platform for that, as well as help to actually match them with their business coach. So stay tuned for information about that. I think you're really going to love it. signs that you are

paying the emotional labor tax. Let's do a little bit of a quick rundown. If you relate to three or more of these, chances are you are paying a high emotional labor tax and this is dripping out of your company, whether slowly or quickly in terms of profit. So here's our kind of rapid fire list. You feel guilty charging what you're worth or you feel like you know you should be charging your worth, but you easily allow the scope to creep. So you're not charging that.

You are mentally tired before the day even begins. You're the emotional shock absorber for everyone in your life, whether it's at work or at home. You over deliver in order to prove your value. Do you feel like you need to validate your fees and so therefore you end up over delivering? Even when you feel like you're charging enough, you up the ante and you end up giving more than you had planned to. Maybe you resent your business. You don't really want to admit it. If someone asks you how things are going, of course, my gosh, they're fantastic.

But the reality is you are resenting the business and questioning at times whether why you even got into entrepreneurship. And maybe I should just screw it. Go back to you. Nine to five type job. Let's just go back to the corporate world. Maybe you worry that stepping back means everything falls apart. Do feel like everything hinges on your ability to serve? And if you tried to take even one day off, whether you're sick or you want a vacation or you just want to spend the day with your kid, do you feel guilty?

doing that because you worry that everything's going to fall apart. And maybe you're questioning like, am I even cut out for this? What made me think that I could actually be an entrepreneur? And just know there's absolutely nothing wrong with you. You're not failing. You're just overloaded and overwhelmed because you've been taking too much on yourself. Okay, so. ⁓

What are we going to do about all of this now that we know the toll that we're paying? And so I'm hoping stay stay with me here because I'm going to help to bring you out of it as well. Because if you're feeling like it's all pretty hopeless and yep, I'm reading you like a book here, then stay tuned because we're going to cover some tools right now. Okay, so tool number one, emotional boundaries equals business boundaries. Okay, so.

How often do you have someone reach out to you, knowing what you do and asking you maybe for some free work or free advice? As an interior designer, the way that this often manifests is, my gosh, I can't wait to have you over for a glass of wine so you can tell me everything that I can do with my house. Let me tell you that unless that is a classic bottle of wine that's costing you thousands of dollars, it's probably not going to be, that glass is not worth my time to give you all the ideas you need for your house.

So maybe you've got people who are asking you to do some work for them. Maybe they didn't say they're going to pay you in a glass of wine. Maybe they just haven't indicated they're going to pay you at all. So now you're stuck in this emotional turbulence of, ⁓ do I even ask them to pay me? Are they expecting to pay me? Should I be giving them a discount? I probably give a family and friends discount, right? And so we kind of tiptoe into those things or we just don't even know how to respond to them or we end up just saying like, yeah, yeah, like I won't worry about charging you or whatever, you know, or

can just give you my discount at stores and stuff like no no no you want to make sure that you are setting those business boundaries regardless of how you know them so listen I'd love to support you let me explain the process to you here's how we normally work does that sound like what you're looking for perfect let's schedule you in for a consultation or maybe it's a client that you're already working with and they're texting you at midnight they're they're texting you non-stop throughout the day

But you've already got a call scheduled with them in two days. And the questions they're asking you aren't that urgent. So maybe you're saying to them, you know, we'll handle that on our next call. I've made a note and we'll I'll make sure that we address that at our next call. Or if you don't have a call scheduled, maybe it's a matter of saying, you know what, this sounds like we could probably use a phone call or a Zoom call or a site meeting or whatever that looks like. Let's get something on the calendar. And then you're protecting your time and your energy that day. If you allow yourself to get derailed, which I have been guilty of this,

You find yourself multitasking and they say it takes approximately 20 minutes to get back to a task. That is a ton of time you are wasting. So again, we all think we just need to be more efficient with our time. We need to be more efficient with our emotions. How about someone who's asking you a question like again, texting you or calling you and expecting an answer on the spot and maybe you're not feeling comfortable doing that. It's taken its toll on you. They've caught you at a bad time.

You can say to them, maybe I don't make decisions actually on the spot. Let me review that and respond more thoughtfully for you tomorrow. I know when a client asked me a question like, hey, I was just out shopping and I found this flooring. What do you think? I'm usually going to respond to them. You know what? I don't have your file in front of me right now. I want to make sure I'm providing you with the right information. So let me take a look at things as soon as I'm back in the office and I'll get back to you and give them a time frame of what that looks like. But.

Therefore, their lack of planning does not constitute your emergency, right? So just because they happen to be out shopping for something doesn't mean that you have to give in on a whim. Now, I have my one-on-one clients get access to me through an app called Voxer. If you're not familiar with it, they call it a walkie talkie app, but in all honesty, it's just an audio app. And I am super, super grateful to my dear friend, Luanne Negara. She runs a podcast called Well Designed Business.

and she's the one who got me onto the Voxer app and I love it so much that I've got my clients onto it because what it allows us to do is essentially have a conversation without having to type out all of our thoughts and edit things and did that make sense? We can just do it all verbally. But what I love about it is it's on your own time. I have clients in various time zones so we might not be as aligned. I'm personally on the East Coast and I am up at 430 in the morning.

which is essentially 130 most of my clients times because they're on the West Coast. So I don't think they really care to respond to it one thirty in the morning unless they're still up from the night before, which is possible. But I can easily share my thoughts. Not that I'm usually doing this at four thirty in the morning either, I should mention. But whatever time I feel comfortable sharing my thoughts, I can. Maybe they have a question that seven o'clock at night, their time. I'm long gone to bed at that point, but they don't want to lose that idea.

And then trying to communicate in emails, always challenging. So we use Voxer for that. So I love this app. And theoretically, my clients get to have access to me in between our calls more frequently. But what I love about it is it's not immediate. This is different than doing a phone call. So while they get the support that they need and they value, I can still have boundaries with it because I can choose when I'm ready to listen to those messages and actually reply.

So if I'm out ⁓ running errands or something, the client's voxering me, I'm probably not going to take a listen to that because I don't have their file in front of me. So if they're asking me something that's specifically related to their business, as much as I try my best, of course, to remember all the details and all the ins and outs and all the players in their business, let's face it, with the number of clients that I have, it can be really difficult to keep track of this sometimes. So I love the Voxer app for that. So this is something you might consider with your clients as well. OK, so.

Emotional boundaries equals business boundaries. That is tool number one that you're going to have in your toolbox here for protecting your emotional labor. Tool number two is to neutralize emotions before making decisions. OK, this one I really, really love. I'm to tell you about a conversation I had with a friend of mine recently. We were actually talking about road rage. I don't know if this is something that you experience, but when people drive with me, they're often commenting about how

calm I am when someone cuts me off or if something's not quite going my way. Don't get me wrong. I have my moments just like everyone else does and I'm not proud of those moments. But most of the time I don't spend any time getting outraged by something that someone else does. I actually had the other day I was driving down a street and a car was pulling out of a parking lot and he looked in one direction but not in the direction that I was coming from and pulled out right in front of me. I did have to hit my brakes relatively quickly.

But I was watching him and I sort of saw what was happening as it was happening. As soon as he pulled out and saw me, you could tell his heart just sank. He felt so bad. So he's, waving to me apologizing. I could tell he felt bad. There was no harm done. I was fine. I didn't hit him. I wasn't rear ended in the process or anything. No harm, no foul. These mistakes happen. And what I find we're often doing is just saying, I don't understand why this person is doing this. Like, let's say someone's driving really slow down the road.

They might be looking for an address. Maybe they're not comfortable being out at that time of night. Maybe they're ⁓ trying to figure out what their next steps are. You you never know what it is that's causing them to slow down. But instead of getting frustrated thinking that they're just slowing down just to drive you mad, maybe we give a little bit of the benefit of the doubt because haven't you been that person before? And so this is the conversations I have with myself whenever someone cuts me off or does something on the road that

isn't ideal for me. There's a lot of us on the roads these days. We're all trying to share that space and not everyone's going to be perfect at all the things that they do. And so I always just take a beat and just reflect on benefit of the doubt. What are some reasons why this person might be doing this? There are times where I think someone's just trying to be an aggressive jerk, basically. But even that, why am going to let that ruin my day? So this is a great opportunity to

introduce my dad's 15-minute rule. And I have talked about this on previous podcasts as well. So some of you who are avid listeners and loyal listeners might remember this one, but my dad lived with MS for about 30 years and he was confined to a wheelchair for over 20 of those years. So his day, every day, was incredibly challenging. There were days where literally the day before he was able to do something and then today, nope, can't do it anymore. And it was

frustrating for him despite the fact that this was a progressive disease and he knew that it was a progressive disease. I could just see him and he would actually even vocalize it like I don't understand. I was able to do this just yesterday and he gets he get frustrated sometimes which is completely understandable. But I would say that majority of the time over the 30 years that he lived with this I rarely saw him upset and this was shocking for me and I remember asking him about it one day was probably.

few years after he had found himself confined to the wheelchair. And I asked him, like, Dad, how do you do this every day? Like, you get up, you've got just this great view on life, this great energy. You seem to approach things just from a very upbeat way. Like, aren't you mad? Aren't you frustrated? Aren't you angry and annoyed? He's like, yeah, of course I am. Like, then how are you doing this? How are you always so upbeat? He said, because I give myself 15 minutes every day. And I was speaking with a colleague of mine recently. She called it.

She's actually you would have heard her on a podcast recently, Candy Lee. She calls it a five minute funeral and I love that. My dad had his 15 minute rule. He says I get to spend 15 minutes a day just feeling sorry for myself, being angry and being upset. It's all on him. He can't take it out on anyone else and he can't bank it either. If you don't use your 15 minutes up, you don't get to bank it for the next day. You get 15 minutes and that's it because you miss out on too much if you stay there. So feel it fully.

Allow yourself to feel the emotions fully for 15 minutes tops and then choose how you're going to move forward from it. This is a choice you get to make. So I want you to neutralize your emotions before making decisions. If something is frustrating you, do not make that decision on the spot. Spend your 15 minutes being angry or whatever, but then with a clear head, then you're going to move forward on making that decision. OK.

So tool number one, emotional boundaries equals business boundaries. Tool number two is to neutralize your emotions before making decisions. Tool number three is CEO support over solo emotional management. What does this mean? Well, I kind of touched on it a little bit earlier when I spoke about my client who's creating this amazing platform for interior designers. This might look like business coaching, for example, whether it's group coaching or one on one coaching. This might look like some sort of coaching or membership.

It might be an accountability type of community or an accountability partner of some sort. It might be a mastermind group. It might be about using systems to keep you accountable for certain things that you find especially challenging as opposed to relying on your willpower for it. Let's face it, if you're on a diet and you don't have willpower to say no to the chocolate bars in your house, then you might want to get rid of the chocolate bars in your house, right? That is your system.

for ensuring that you're going to have the willpower and the discipline as opposed to forcing yourself to have it. So what systems can you create in your business to help to manage your emotional labor and help you to feel more supported on a daily basis? And maybe start learning how to ask who can support me here. You've got a lot of people in your circle, I'm sure. Even if it's not about maybe you can't afford employees right now, great. But can mom take the kids for a day or something or, you know?

Again, what kind of things can we be doing that can help to alleviate some other challenges and stresses in our life to give us the bandwidth that we need to deal with certain things? And if you do have a team, lean on your team. I cannot stress this enough. That's what they're there for. So instead of you taking on all of their emotional baggage, how about you lean on them? You let them take some of some of the load off of you as well. OK, the fourth and final tool I have to share with you is that rest is a part of leadership.

So this is, you know, yes, we want to be busy. They say busy is good. We want to have a business that is thriving, but we need to ensure that we are incorporating solid rest. So for me, that what that looks like is I often go for a walk in the middle of the day. Your rest might look different than mine. Maybe your rest is reading a book. Maybe it's snuggling with your cats. Maybe it's just having a cup of tea, whatever your rest looks like. And I am not talking about sleep.

Sleep and rest are two different things. Yes, you need both. Sleep is incredibly important, but I'm talking about times where you are awake, but allowing your mind to rest, to not consume a business book. For me, I often consume a lot of books, but they're usually business books. Well, that wasn't allowing my mind to rest now, was it? We wanna be able to allow you to have those CEO ideas, and the best way to do that is to rest. Okay, so.

Those are the four tools that are going to help you to protect your emotional labor. You don't need to build a stronger business by being stronger. You're not trying to build an extra muscle necessarily. You build it by being supported. So when you have more support in your business and when you can actually seek out the support that you need and acknowledge that you need that support, you're going to have more clarity in your business. You're going to make better decisions. You're going to bring in higher profit margins.

You're going to have cleaner boundaries and your cleaner boundaries don't only only make you happier, they make your clients happier as well. I know you don't want to feel like you're being too rigid, but clients often appreciate and respect the structure that you have and having that clarity of what is expected of them and what is expected of you. And with that, you're also going to have more confidence in everything that you're doing, which means that sales are a lot easier for you, right? Because you feel more confident in the things that you're doing.

and you're gonna feel lot more at ease in your leadership roles as well. So this is all exactly why I created the Real Women Real Business program, by the way. It is a community of women entrepreneurs who are supporting each other while we're also ensuring that we've filled in any of the foundational gaps in our knowledge as we're building our business. So ⁓ I built the business specifically for accidental CEOs. These are my women who followed more passion than plan. And what happens is we skip some of the steps along the way

that are really important for ensuring that we're building a sustainable business. So we're not running as efficiently as we could be. Profits are leaking for us. So we figure out, we spend the first little bit of our time together identifying where those profit leaks are happening, where those emotional leaks are happening, where those energy leaks are happening. And we ensure that we have the right plan in place to fill in those foundations and build a business that's going to be more sustainable. Because building a business shouldn't mean carrying every task, every responsibility, and every emotion.

on your shoulders alone. So in this program, you don't just learn how to run a profitable business. You learn how to run one without sacrificing your own health, your own sanity and your own well-being. So if this episode is hitting home, if you're realizing that you've been trying to carry your business alone, this is the exact time that you should be joining us in the Real Women Real Business Mastery Program. I said it's where women entrepreneurs finally stop doing business in isolation and start building systems, building confidence, building boundaries.

and getting the community support and of course the coaching support that they need to actually feel like they're supported. So if you want that clarity, if you want that accountability and structure and a circle of women who get it, I would love to welcome you into the program. So feel free to check out, of course, our show notes for a direct link to the program. You can also go to real women, real business dot com to get all the details. If you want to set up a call with me, if you're not sure if this is right direction for you, go to aboutshaunalynn.com/coachme ShaunaLynn.com/CoachMe

coach me and we'll set up a call, a free 30 minute call. We'll review your business, what you're working on, where you're looking to go with it and how I might be able to support you, whether it's through group coaching or one on one coaching. Okay, so listen, you don't have to be the strong one all the time. Remember you deserve to have some support too. So I wanna thank you so much for joining me for today's episode. I hope that you found it helpful and useful and that you're going to take advantage of the resources that we've provided you here today, the tools that we provided you with.

And if what I'm saying here resonates with you, then I hope you will continue to allow me to join you on your journey each week by tuning in each week. We drop new episodes every Tuesday morning at 7 a.m. Eastern time. And so if you if you subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform, of course, you get notifications every single week when we drop a new episode. Don't forget while you're there to leave us a review. And I cannot stress this part enough. Remember, we've got a whole community of women here and I want you to continue to thrive in that community.

And the best way that you can support not only the show, but to support your fellow women entrepreneurs, please, please, please share this episode with someone that you know is taking on too much emotional baggage, too much emotional labor that they're paying for in their business, in their life, and share this episode with them. It would mean a lot to me and it will really help them. If we help one more woman in this episode to be able to move forward with less emotional stress.

and less pain, less emotional tasks and feel clearer and more confident in what they're doing and get paid their worth. It is all worth it to all of us. So thank you so much for tuning in today. I'm Shauna Lynn Simon and I hope to see you again next week. Same time, same place. In the meantime, keep thriving.