Unveiling the Illusion of Perfection: Embracing Joy and Alignment in Business

It first starts with asking some really big questions of you and your business. And the questions aren't what should we do? It's how do I think about my life and my work? What is enough for us? Enough time, enough money, enough freedom. Instead of saying let's have more and let's have an abundance. You know, there's abundance that is born from scarcity mindset of I need to have more, to have more. And then there's abundance that is from an internal safety mechanism of I have enough, I have what I need. There's, I would say, somatic discussion about that, like what feels safe in your body? And then there's the actual math, like do you know what you need to have coming in from your business to survive, save and thrive? Those are the numbers we really want to talk about. And then after you assess what's enough, then we have to start talking about the role you want to play in your business. Do you want to be the coach or do you want to be the leader of coaches, for example? Those are two different business models and two different ways to show up with your clients. Then I think we have to talk about the responsibility to your team, your clients and your community. Could you scale your programs up? Sure. Does that provide a different experience? It does. None of these are questions that lead to scale or not scale, but these are all things to consider in what is the business I am trying to build and run? For what purpose?

Oh my goodness. Our conversations on this podcast go to such beautiful, unexpected places. Because yes, Jessica Lackey is a strategy and operations advisor who's on a mission to radically disrupt mainstream business culture to create sustainable, sustainable businesses with a human centric approach. Yes, she has a background in corporate leadership, she's worked with McKinsey and Company, Harvard business degree, and she knows a thing or two about wholesale culture because she has lived it and knows what it feels like to judge success by the bottom line at all costs. But now she combines her deep experience in consulting, Fortune 500 ops, leadership and coaching to help businesses grow without sacrificing the well being of their clients, team and community. This conversation went from a bit of a startup conversation. Jessica is two years into starting building growing her business, even though she's got all that other business experience that she's pulling through. And we talked about the startup mode, but we also talked about seasons of change and evolving as your business shifts and your life shifts and how do you show up and navigate these changes and how do you watch out whether you're starting up or you are 14 to 16 years. I got to double check my math there. Down the road, how do you navigate the change and stay open to the possibility of the magic of your calling because it's right on time. This conversation was so right on time. I can't wait to see what you think of it. Be sure you let me know in the reviews or tag me in on Instagram because it's both strategic and so very right on time. Let's do this. Jessica, thanks so much for being here today.

Super excited to be here.

Oh, my gosh. What are you loving spending your time on these days?

I'm loving spending my time outside of business making these little crochet figures. They're called Amiguri. I found a kit on Instagram and I've been loving spending time not doing something digitally.

Yeah, I so get it. We spend so much time hands on keyboard. Hands on cue. No, I want to do something else. Something else creative. There's a lot of creativity coming through the keyboard, but it's different when you're. You're touching, feeling. Seen it. That was so sweet. You lifted up one of those for everyone who's listening. Can I see this again?

Yes. It's Billy the Unicorn.

Oh, my gosh. Billy's adorable. What got you into this?

I love grafting and hand. Basically, I needed something to keep my hands busy and I've loved to knit. And the company that I bought them from is an Aapi local business in North Carolina. They were on Shark Tank and I saw these things and I'm like, I can make these little creatures and it's so much fun. And it's something that keeps my hands busy, keeps my mind busy. And it's not on the phone.

Oh, my gosh, I love this. Do you spend a lot of time on the phone also?

I do. I'm trying to get better at it, but the pull of social media is just so addicting.

It really is. And you say something on your website that draws me right in every time I look at it. The perfect business has us hustling and overwhelmed. And when you mentioned social media, I'm like, yeah, like, there are so many places. The perfect business has to show up and be present. And as leaders of these businesses, there's a lot of pressure. There's a lot of pressure. Can you explain what is behind this statement? The perfect business.

So let me start with, like, what the perfect business. I put this in air quotes. The perfect business is it's professional looking reels on Instagram or it's those Reels that are unprofessionally scripted. You know those.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it's the needing to feel like you have the course and the program and the. And. And. And. And it all has to be done perfectly. But you have to not be able to work so hard on it that you can talk about how you only work three days a week while you're making the seven figure lifestyle. I mean, those are all the things we're sold, and we're kind of them all together. And of course, you need to do it overnight and fast. Right. That's what doing a perfect business looks like. It's kind of having all the things, doing all the things and living out. Many of the stereotypes were sold on social media. Almost all of our marketing, you know.

As you were talking, I'm like, oh, man, this almost sounds like an Onion article. And I'm thinking of that, because if anyone who doesn't know what the Onion is, it's basically like news. But it's all like, is it satire? Or it's all just all one big joke? And someone posted something in a travel expat group I'm in, and someone said, this reads like an Onion article, but it was real. Apparently there's an airline. I'm not going to the airline. I'm not going to call anyone out here because I didn't see this firsthand. I just saw the graphics. So maybe it's not real, but one of their offers read like an Onion article in that you don't get miles with this purchasing of this flight. No miles, no choice in your seating. You might not be together. And it was like, is this a joke? And as you were reading, like, this sounds like a joke. Like, do it fast. You have to have all of these things. But it is exactly what it looks like. Sometimes on social media and marketing, sometimes.

What they're doing is telling you what your business should look like, even if you know in your core that's not really what you want to be building. But we're bombarded with messages of new tools and new techniques and new strategies and new things we didn't even know we wanted until we were told we wanted them or saw other people wanting them on social media. I say social media a lot because it just expands. Like, instead of comparing yourself to the Joneses in your backyard, you're comparing yourself to the Joneses worldwide.

Yeah, right. It just got exponentially larger.

So even if you have the ability to slow down, there's still this incongruence inside of, am I doing it wrong. Am I the only one who wants to do business differently? So even though we're not hustling towards a thing, we're always doubting ourselves and thinking like, okay, well maybe, maybe buying that one program is going to be the solve for all of my problems. Even if it's a program that until I was sold, I told about it, I was like, I don't think I needed it. Oh, but now I do. I do now.

Yeah. Also, one of the things and the words that's used a lot when we're thinking about growing businesses is scaling scale up. Like it comes in with that faster grow, like keep going bigger. What are your opinions and what do you think about scale and what is that costing us?

I think scale is a double edged sword for some businesses. It makes sense, right. If you're doing, if you're podcast pitching agency, for example. Right. Having additional people on your team that can help do some of the work makes a lot of sense. If you're a strategist or a graphic designer, someone whose work is the craft, scale doesn't make a lot of sense. You can scale by hiring junior designers or building a program to teach other people how to do design, but ultimately you're building a business that requires you to do more marketing in order to support your team members. So I think we are conflating scale with business design and I think we need to decouple what is the business you're trying to run and what are we optimizing for versus the top line financial revenue.

Yeah, I love this. I love this. Which gets us to something a little bit of a tangent here. I just want to come right back to what we're talking about. Cause this is important. But could you tell us a little bit about your background? Because the words and the way things are coming together already, I'm like, okay, yeah, we gotta make sure we touch on your background and how you got to where you are today.

Yeah. So I did not start an online business. I started at the creme de la creme, blue chip business, kind of heart of capitalism at McKinsey and Company Consulting. Got a degree in business from Harvard Business School. I worked for seven years at Nike, a Fortune 500 company. And I was kind of schooled in the. The purpose of business is to make growth for shareholders. Like that's the, the social proof of business. That's the social requirement of business in this era. And I got kind of creamed by it. Because if the purpose of business is to make more money for shareholders, it's not to staff up teams properly. It's not to put guardrails on deliverables. It's not to really take care of your people and do things that maybe decrease the profit a little bit, but are serving the communities of business. And I got creamed by it. I ended up burning out, realizing that my life was my work, was my life. I had no other identities. And that's when I was like, all right, something needs to change. I no longer can continue to kind of put my soul at the corporate altar.

Yeah. Yep. I'm feeling all that. Just taking that in, because there's a lot there.

Yeah. And it was the great on paper job. It was the golden handcuffs. You know, the amount of deferred compensation I gave up to take a step away from that path. That's, you know, that's how they keep you grinding. And in the. On the hamster wheel of just work till the next bonus, Just work till this next deferred comp comes in, Even while you're losing out on your health, you don't have your friends. I had no roots. I literally worked and then recovered from work for the first 15 years of my professional career.

And how long have you been operating and consulting with business owners?

I've been doing this for about two years now. I had a bridge job in between, which was a promotion, actually, where I moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, where I live now. This is when I kind of grew up and put down roots, got married, bought a house, got a dog. And then, oh, yeah, the pandemic happened. And then I realized that it was the perfect time to. I could never go back to the office at that point. So I was like, all right, let's bounce. The COVID pandemic taught me that there really is no other time but now to take control of my life and work destiny.

Ah. Love it. I know you are not alone in that, and I know you are not alone in what you described as that, like, I've got these golden handcuffs and just wait till the next bonus and wait till the next thing. And I think this can happen to business owners as well. Right. Wait till the next launch, wait until the next year. I'll change it. It'll be different. Right. And you talked a bit at the beginning, like, do what is aligned for you versus the course and be on all the social media. And. And. And so how do you work with your clients and what's your perspective on, like, how do we get to that alignment? How do we get to the heart of it?

Yeah, I think it first starts with asking some really big questions of you and your business. And the questions aren't what should we do? It's how do I think about my life and my work? I am talking about four big questions we should ask, like, what is enough for us? Enough time, enough money, enough freedom, enough creative license. Instead of saying let's have more and let's have an abundance. You know, there's abundance that is born from scarcity mindset of I need to have more, to have more. And then there's abundance that is from an internal safety mechanism of I have enough, I have what I need. There's the, I would say, somatic discussion about that, like, what feels safe in your body? And then there's the actual math, like, do you know what you need to have coming in from your business to survive, save and thrive? Like, those are the numbers we really want to talk about. And then after you kind of assess what's enough? Then we have to start talking about the role you want to play in your business. Do you want to be the coach or do you want to be the leader of coaches? For example? Those are two different business models and two different, like, ways to show up with your clients. Then I think we have to talk about the responsibility to your team, your clients and your community. Could you scale your programs up? Sure. Does that provide the people in your community a different experience? It does. None of these are questions that lead to scale or not scale, but these are all things to consider in what is the business I am trying to build and run for what purpose? And I've got clients that are like, I want hundreds of people in a room together because the community is the point. And I'm like, that's great. I have other clients who say, I want to work with three to four organizations a year, being embedded in their organization. Great. I love that. Those are two very different businesses. We gotta start there.

Yeah, that's so good. Okay, I've got. Wait, what is enough? The role that you wanna play, the responsibility to team, clients, community.

Yeah.

What? I missed one in there.

Oh, I forgot to say it. It's the impact you want to have.

Oh, so good.

So. And again, there's not like, I want to impact lots of people. You might want to be deeply impacting a few people in really life changing, transformative ways. Or you might want to write a book or create a podcast where you don't necessarily even know who you're influencing, but you're influencing tens of thousands of people. So again, it's what is Your calling, and I hate to say the word calling, like, okay, do what you're passionate about, but how do you want to serve and what's the impact you want to have? At what scale?

Yeah, I love the word calling actually, because there's this voice, there's this inner knowing, call it whatever, right? But this inner knowing, this inner voice, like, this is what I need to be doing, right? This is it. And I think that gets to some of the alignment too, that when we're out of alignment. Do you think larger businesses, companies, organizations also have a calling?

I think they can, but again, that requires setting aside the quarter over quarter profit conversation for the calling. Like Patagonia is a kind of poster child for this. They may have to make different decisions to balance truly their mission and their calling as a company versus quarterly stakeholder profits. So I think it's important to have that conversation. We think about it in like esg, Environment, Sustainability and governance investing, you might have to make different choices about where you invest your money, which may not result in a cash buyback for investors, in dividends for your stakeholders. And that's a decision that should be made thoughtfully based on the true mission and objectives of the company.

So good. So good. There are some cool stories about Patagonia and I was trying to think of one and I just came across one of their statements. We're in business to save our home planet. Like, oh yeah, like there is purpose, there is calling, there is mission and heart in that and that's going to influence how we make decisions. And I'm sure there are some things that like this would make us more money, but this is what's right for the home planet. So we've got to act this way and move this way. And that happens for us individually too. Where do we get caught up as leaders and business owners which moves us out of alignment? What do you see happening that's like, oh, guys, come on, back on track here.

I think it's that we're all swimming in a soup, right? You've got the Hustle bros over here telling us that you just need to work a little harder, work, you know, better, faster, stronger. We've got people telling us, well, we have these business tropes that we're kind of sold and taught that are marketed to us all the time. You just need a new copywriting course. You just need to have that next team member just need the next tool, right? It's the cycle of, if we didn't buy, we wouldn't need to work so hard to Pay for what we bought to generate the money to buy more things. Right. That is.

Yeah. Little minimalism business mindset there. Yeah.

But when you're swimming in the soup, it's what you talk about. There's not many business books that have been written yet. There's some that talk about truly sustainability and sufficiency as a strategy.

Yeah. And what you're talking about in terms of sufficiency and being enough, that is a question that I find even hard to answer. Like what is enough? Oh, I have enough. Like I have enough. So what is that question? Like what is it that's enough? Right now I feel like I have enough and I still can't answer what is it that's enough.

Right. You know, there's the math component to it. There's a great book by Bill Perkins called Die with Zero, which is not about necessarily dying with zero, but it's about the concept of in every stage of your life, how are we thinking about the trade off between time and wealth and truly how we're using our wealth towards the end of our lives? How do we need to think about saving for individual retirement versus systemic solutions that we should be thinking about like insurance? But again, that's not a dialogue that's going to make people more money. So I think that's a dialogue that's not quite as in the forefront. Nor do I think that in order to have the luxury to talk about enoughness, there needs to be a modicum of safety. And knowing that, we know that, you know, less than 10% of women business owners make more than a hundred thousand dollars a year in their businesses. And we know that's a general requirement of kind of sustaining here in the United States. No wonder, like the conversation about enough is not coming up as frequently because for 90% of business owners, we're just trying to survive.

Yeah, yeah. 90% of business owners are not at that it is enough point.

Right. Especially if you're having to pay for housing, take care of dependents, balance care responsibilities. There's a lot of juggling that happens to, especially for women where there is no inner feeling of security and safety because there is no outer feeling of security and safety because there just really isn't. I mean, you think about it, when you make a hundred thousand dollars at top line, you're going to take home maybe 50 after taxes and operating expenses. And that's just not really enough for so many of us living when high cost of living environments.

It is a truly. Yeah. High cost of living environments. Oh man. There's so much there. So I want to break down. You're already stepping into it. The survive, save, and thrive element of what is enough and survive. Right. I'm thinking and I'm hearing, like, basic requirements.

Yeah. Save starts talking about, all right, let's put something towards our retirement. Let's start putting something towards the more of the wants, some of the investments we'd like to make. And then thrive starts to be, how do you want to have your money in your business, create a legacy for you, for your family, for your community? How do you think about divestments and kind of giving back? And how do you think about building in more accessible options to your work? Right. Once you've been generating enough money to invest in the things you want to build your own personal wealth, what's the responsibility that you want to take on as part of your business and your life to kind of pay it forward and especially if you're someone. And again, this sounds so like, I'm on my soapbox, but if you're someone who has benefited from privilege, how do we think about our responsibility to recognize that not all of that was earned?

Yeah. I'm reading a book right now, and they just spoke on this. The book is called the Second Mountain.

Oh, yes, Great book.

Have you read this? Oh, my gosh. Someone just recommended it to me, and I dove in the first couple chapters like, oh, I'm hooked. And in the first couple of chapters was speaking to joy and a different season of life. Like, we're building our foundation. We're going after it. There might be a lot of ego at play. Could look like different things. He was sort of describing what that first mountain that we climb in life might look like. And then second mountain, more about fulfillment and joy. And there is confidence and an ease and a knowing that comes with this. And what occurred to me as you were talking is in this book, oh, my gosh. Brain fart. Shoot. I just went down the rub. What did you say? What did you say? You said. You remember what you said?

I mean, really, it's the book that I remember talking about is going from me to we.

Yeah. Me to we. Oh, and it was the privilege. They talked about the privilege of knowing things if you got a knowledge. I oftentimes think, as you were speaking, even the financials of it. Right. Like, okay, if I have privilege of having, I need to give. Like, where am I giving back with financials. Right. Very tangibly. But then there's also this other very tangible side that if you have a knowledge, a knowing that someone else may not have. What obligation do you have to share that? Yeah, I thought that was a really interesting shift in perspective on that.

Yeah. You know, like I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars a fee. I'm like kind of embarrassed by. To go to a Harvard business school and I have taken courses and read books and have classes and I can't. I mean, I could gatekeep that knowledge.

Right.

I want to be fairly compensated for it in some ways. But I think it's my dharma to break down the ivory tower of business education to those who might otherwise be able in. In a way that's consumable. That a way that's lets people kind of choose their own adventure with the work I do, but breaks it down because not everyone has the, the ability to have the time to read all the books and take all the courses and do all the things. And how can we kind of boil it down for people in a way that's consumable and accessible?

Mm. So stinking good. I was just thinking how incredible it is where conversation goes and I was not expecting where our conversation has gone. So I wanted to just acknowledge them, put that out there in spirit of transparency with you and you who are listening as well. I actually have a question that I think I know the answer to. I'm just going to ask it to put it out there and see where things go. You're two years later left. Great career, like you said it blue chip, like career path. And a career path that so many people would look at me like, that is cool. I want to try that. I want to do that. I want to work for those companies. And you left and you're two years later. Do you have any regrets?

Zero. Zero. Now to be fair, there's some things that I did during the first two years that we don't talk about also, you know, because it's the, the myth is that, you know, you're just going to build your business. Right. One, I came from a business background. Two, I've been working on my business on like the financial elements of it, you know, like getting the LLC and getting the website and having the mechanic setup while I was in my full time job. And then I spent the first year to year and a half supplementing my income with fractional consulting jobs like subcontracting jobs and contract gigs. I didn't have a full book of business that was kind of my own and I would say my target clients probably two years. So I took bridge jobs. I was like, all right, I'm going to leave. But also I, I know that's not going to take me six months to like go from zero to a hundred. And I wasn't willing to work, continue to work more to like build up that like cash buffer. I was like, nope, nope, nope, I'm done. And I think we all talk about like part time jobs and contract gigs and these interim bridge opportunities that allow people to have the mental mind space away from like my soul sucking, full time corporate job to begin cultivating those relationships, putting my thoughts on paper, developing those hard skills for entrepreneurship that I didn't have in my business world. And so it looks like two years later, everything is great, but I'm like, well, I was only really, I was doing this for two years, but I spent the last year and a half supporting myself, you know, 50% through kind of unrelated work because that was what I needed to do to build up that reputation in a way that was sustainable for me.

Yeah, there's a phrase out there that you may have also heard called leap and the net will appear. And I think, yeah, and I've heard this in the context of entrepreneurship, like take that risk, take that, take that leap. And I'm thinking as you're talking, you created a net and you looked for opportunities to be the net while you're like leaping into entrepreneurship. Like, I'm going to watch out for my net. And I think that phrase can sometimes be perceived sometimes as like, just go all in. You're like, yeah, I'm going all in. But I'm going to like, we're going to be strategic about this.

Yeah, I think there's the leap in the net will appear if you're looking for and creating the opportunities for the net.

Exactly.

You know, some people are like, no, no, no, I'm gonna leap and it's going to be this exact business. I thought about when I left. I'm like, what about all these other cool opportunities that are showing up? I was talking with one of my clients yesterday. She's like, well, I think I want to be a one on one coach. And I'm like, that's great. And then she's like, I really. But my heart is in groups. And I'm like, all right, well, one on one's gonna make you more money right out of the gates because it's really hard to build up enough audience to form groups that will be sustainable. And then she came back the other day and she says, well, I really want to do. I think my heart's in corporate training. Cause I'm like, that's amazing. And so we don't really know what we're gonna build when we, like, set out to leap. And. And how do we give ourselves the grace and the time to plant different seeds in different aspects of the garden and tend to them, knowing that, like, our mission is deeply known, but the form is pretty unknown when we start. And we gotta try a bunch of stuff quickly so we can see what we like, what we don't like, what works, what doesn't work, how do we give ourselves permission to experiment quickly versus hold fast to what we think it's going to look like?

Yeah. And I think sitting here, you know, 14, maybe more, 16 years into growing my businesses, some of those same things still apply. Like, all right. Because things shift and you're molding this and you're creating this, and your vision becomes clearer. And this is why we talk, like, right on time podcast. Like, you got to watch for those opportunities because they're going to appear right on time, but you got to be open to the possible possibility that that's going to show up for you.

Yeah, I love that concept. Right on time. It does happen right on time. It just maybe doesn't on the schedule that you want it to.

Yeah. Jessica. Yep. We get it. We get each other. We get each other. This is really beautiful. Oh, man. There are so many other questions I have, and I feel like anything I ask right now would keep you here so long. So what I'm going to propose instead is that we keep this conversation going and we let people know where to find you so that everyone can continue walking this path with you.

Yes, you can find me@jessica lackey.com backslash welcome. It has links to my newsletters, other podcasts I've been on, and a link to my services and social media.

Oh, my gosh. We'll link that up in the notes. We'll also link up the books that we talk about and the recommendations. And my last question for you is, if someone were listening to this right now and thinking, man, I need to get in alignment, what resource? What would you share with them, say to keep walking that path?

I would say the best resource is your journal in some time and really take some writing time. I think Analog is fantastic to really kind of journal on what it looks like for you to be sustainable and what are the beliefs that you picked up about how to run a business and what your business should look like that you question? Because I think questioning is the first step to seeing where there's an incongruence and deciding where to do it differently.

I frickin love it. Thank you so much for your time today, Jessica.

Thank you.