023: Determine Your True Capacity with Ashley Gartland

With Venmo Stash.

A toggle on one hand and ordering a ride in the other means you're stacking cash back with Venmo Stash.

Get up to 5% cash back when.

You pick a bundle of your favorite brands. Earn more cash when you do more with Stash. Venmo Stash terms and exclusions apply.

Match $100 cash back per month.

See terms of Venmo Me Stashterms.

This is your time. How can we earn twice as much in half the time with joy and ease while serving the highest good? That is our guiding question here at the Freetime Cafe, your home for Heart Based I'm your host Jenny Blake. Join me for conversations with authors, friends and fellow business owners as we explore ways to free your mind, time and team to do your best work. Now onto today's show.

Hello my friends. I am so excited to be here in conversation today with Ashley Gartland. She is a woman after my own business Heart who coaches and mentors service based business owners. She helps them streamline and simplify their business so they can scale sustainably and build a business that makes the life they desire possible. You can see why we were friends at first podcast combo when Ashley interviewed me for her show Better Than Big. On her podcast she shares stories, strategies and solutions to help small business owners run their business with more ease and intentional. She herself runs a six figure business in about 25 hours a week, leaving her plenty of time for the good stuff outside of work. Ashley, welcome to the show.

Oh thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here.

I am so happy to chat with you. I love that we both share this philosophy. I don't know about you, I've ranted about this already on this podcast, But I think 25 hours a week really is a full time week. That is the sustainable, healthy way to work. I mean I want to say for everybody, but especially if you're the one running the business.

Yeah, I think so too. And I think what it does for me personally is it provides a lot of space outside of work to do the things that actually allow me to show up for work energized, you know, take care of my health, to spend time with my family, to do deep learning and reading and those things are important too. And if I can achieve business and Design it for 25 hours a week, sometimes 30, you know, in those seasons where we're doing a little bit more and sometimes a little bit less in seasons when we're not doing as much in the business, you Know, then life happens and life works, and that serves the business, too.

Tell us how you set up your week. Which days do you work? Where do you fit these 25 hours in? And also tell us a little bit about your current team setup.

Yeah, so we're, you know, recording this about what, a year ish into the pandemic. And so what my schedule looks like now is a little bit different than it did before because I'm a mom of two and there's been all kinds of changes with their schedule throughout the year. But really what it looks like for me is I do client work, like heavy client work and calls and everything on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Mondays I do a little bit of discovery calls. I sometimes record some podcast interviews. And then Thursdays is a day that I keep free from calls. And that's when I do a lot of content creation in my business and just have flexibility. So if I want to take a yoga class at noon, you know, when it's not the pandemic, or if I want to, you know, enjoy some sunshine and go for a walk, like that's available to me on Thursdays as this nice little break in the week. And then on Fridays, I have either open for big picture projects or I will do coaching intensives on that day. And it depends on the week. It flexes back and forth. And then the other thing that I've done with my schedule is I have decided to give myself that last week of the month, just free from appointments and calls. And that has honestly been a game changer. I used to have the whole month open for calls and people could schedule whenever. But protecting that last week has allowed me to have deep creative time for projects. Like, I just created an audio course and that gave me that time to do it without interruption, or it creates time for freedom and flexibility and vacationing and those types of things. So that's the week. And then you asked about team.

Yes. And before you tell us, I have to say I also block off the last week of every month. And it is a game changer. It's like it just allows you to flex, go on vacation, do big projects. I'm so happy. I block off the whole year in advance of the last week of every month. Monday, Friday, the month of July, August, you know, So I just love that you do that too.

Yeah. And it is really helpful. Like you said, it's helpful for the deep work. It's also helpful if you're in a service business where you are on all the time and, you know, you're serving and you're giving, it's helpful to have that little rest built in for you so that you can kind of replenish for yourself and then go back to giving to others. So you've got that like three week on and one week off cycle. So it works really nice. So team and.

Yeah, tell us about your team.

So I am someone who was reluctant to hire and I want to be really transparent about that. I previously ran a freelance writing and editing business and I don't think that I ever outsourced a thing in eight years. You know, I, I did a lot of recipe testing so maybe once in a while I would ask my husband to go get the ingredients at the grocery store. But I really did everything myself. And looking back, I can see that there were a lot of opportunities for me to outsource, you know, individual projects or certain tasks that really would have helped me take that business further and work less. So when I started my coaching practice, I was still kind of in that I'm a little bit skittish about hiring and for all the reasons that everybody, you know, brings to the table, the fear, the responsibility, am I a good leader, all that stuff. And so I decided to take it slow and I found someone who I could hire to do some project big based work in my business just to take on some like backend tech stuff like setting up email funnels or you know, working on landing pages, like helping me with those types of things. And we did a couple of projects together and I found that I loved working with her and she is now my right hand gal, she's my obm and she does a lot of the back end stuff in my business so that I can focus on my, you know, best skill set, which is content creation and coaching. And she and her now expanded team handle a lot of the other stuff, you know, the podcast production, the social media, posting, like those types of things. For me it looks a lot like me starting and then passing the baton and they finish all the stuff up.

Yeah, I love that. And do you know about how many hours a week or month she works?

She works. I'm not sure how many for me or for just in general for you. I think we're at about like 20 hours a month right now. And she's what's really interesting about our situation because there's so many ways you can set up team, right, is that she actually also runs my team. So she's kind of also my go between, which is really helpful so that I'm not also talking to all the contractors. Like, I certainly have channels of communication with the podcast editor and the designer who does the graphics and everything, but she's letting them know, here's what needs to be done. And she's running that. And that also frees up a lot of my time.

Yeah, I think that's such a big shift, is not just delegating, but no longer owning the thing. Like, that was really important to me with the podcast too, especially the new one. I just didn't want to own the life of the episode anymore. I didn't want to be the conductor on that train for every single episode. And between Brenna, who's amazing at project managing, and Lisa, our incredible producer, finally, finally, six years into having a podcast, we have achieved what I call nirvana, where I show up, I do the interview, and I have to do very little after that. And I'm not the one saying, brenna, have you done this? Lisa, have you done this? Brenna now wears that hat. And it's just such a. A shift and such a relief.

Yeah, I'm still with you on the podcast stuff. I don't think I would have ever got mine out the door if I was in charge of what happened once the recording got uploaded. You know, I don't think I would have been able to do all those tech things, and I just didn't have the time for it. It would have taken me away from other important things.

So for eight years, you were completely solo, the true solopreneur. And I can so relate to that as well. What was the breaking point or the shift that led to you being willing to take the risk of starting to delegate and bringing someone on? Like, for you, was it just finally reaching some comfort around it, or was there a point where you felt like, oh, just complete frustration or burnout with how you were working?

Yeah, I think there's a couple things. Like, it's interesting cause I went through a pivot in my business before I started hiring support. So in my past business, it was really easy for me to argue with myself and improve. Like, I had all this evidence that, like, I was the best person to do all those things, and I knew how to do all the things. Like, my freelance writing and editing business wasn't very complicated. So there were a few things I could have outsourced, but, you know, again, not very complicated. So it was very easy for me to be like, it makes sense for me to do all of them. When I switched into coaching and entered the online space, suddenly there was a lot of extra stuff Happening that needed to happen in the business too. And some of it I didn't know how to do. You know, I don't know how to edit a podcast. I am not great with email service providers and setting things up. And I started to see that I could spend, you know, 10 setting things up or I could hire someone to do that, which would not only get the task done, but it would also free up my time for again, those things that I like to do. But I also started seeing that like I could spend 10 hours setting up my website or I could spend a few hours coaching and then a lot of time with my family. So I guess I started to see the opportunity cost there and really started to see the evidence tipping towards hiring out.

And did you say in the previous iteration of your business, were you actually making recipes? Was it food related?

Yeah, I was a food writer.

Wow, that's so fascinating in and of itself.

And it's really, I mean, it sounds really different to what I do now, but I did a lot of collaborations and stuff too, which was about pulling people's stories out and helping them simplify. It's interesting to see the parallels, even though they sound like two radically different businesses.

Yes, it is so. It is so interesting. And I feel like. So right now we're staying with my friend Ann, who grew up in, she's Italian and she grew up in her village in Italy. She has this whole way of operating and one of those ways is that in the morning when she makes and has her coffee, she makes the meal for the day, for dinner, one pot, usually the Italian starter pack, like garlic, olive oil, onions. And I asked her, I'm like, oh, you're cooking dinner at 9:00am, you know, or 8:00am what's that about? I always like feel this pressure that I cook right before we eat. So it's hot and therefore I never cook because I'm really tired by that time of the day. She goes, nobody has time for that. Like the women in my family were always had to work the farm, they had too much to do. Like nobody has time. So seeing how she created this little system for herself to still have healthy food, to still have home cooked meal, but by just changing the time of day that she cooks it and the way she does it, one pot less mess, it just completely freed up her time and energy for the rest of the day. To me, this like blew my mind.

That's one parallel. But you're right, there's so many. I'm curious, do you have a favorite? Favorite? Go to dinner or like, in fact, let me ask you this as running your own business, and I don't know who cooks more in your family, but do you have any little tricks or systems for how the family eats?

You know, I, I would love to say that I do. It's like, it's a complicated thing feeding four people with different tastes and, and preferences. But I will say that that's one of the things that's important to me. So it is important to me that there is time for that. That not that we're not. That I'm not working so much that there's not time for me, I am the main cook in my family. That there's not time for me to make a fun meal when I want to and to make sure that there are breaks to eat nutritious food throughout the day. Like, those seem like small things, but I believe business should make that possible. So that changes how you do your schedule and it changes, you know, I try and get off work by three, four o' clock each day so that I have time to reset and then, you know, enter into caretaking mode for family and fe everyone.

Yeah. What you're describing is really such a saner way of running a business. And I, I brought this up several times on the podcast, this term lifestyle entrepreneur. And, you know, what does that really mean? And it's almost like we, I don't know why anyone working or running a business of any size really shouldn't have time for those things, you know, other than just like pure capitalist, like grow, grow, grow. I guess some people, if you're just obsessed with growth at all costs and really winning the market or something, but you have purposefully chosen this moniker for your podcast and within your business of Better than Big. So how did you come up with that name and tell us the ethos behind Better than Big? And if you have ambitions to grow, what those look like within this philosophy of business ownership?

Yeah. First, I want to say I love what you've said so far in the podcast. I hope everyone's heard it about the lifestyle business, because I think there's almost this reclaiming that's happening where it's like, it's, we think it's a bad thing because it's kind of been labeled as this, like, lazy, not as interesting a thing as, you know, the big entrepreneur. But it is like if you have a lifestyle business that pays you a good salary, that allows you to support a few other people and their passions, and that allows you to live a rich, fulfilling life, like I really see nothing wrong with that. So I think that's the first thing better than big. So I wish I could say that I came up with that. I am real crap at naming things. And I happened to work with a great mentor on my podcast and I was describing the work that I do and I was describing, you know, what I help my clients with. And she's like, it sounds like you help them build better than big businesses. And I was like, hold on, I have to write that down. So that became the podcast name. And what it is, really is what I think of as a business that's better than big is something that is simple and it's sustainable and it's life giving. And to your point about growth, it's not anti growth. It doesn't mean that you just stop, you know, achieving and striving and, you know, having ambition. It's about how you do that. It's about how you go about achieving the growth. And it's about doing it without the hustle and the stress and the overwork and the overwhelm and instead doing it with intention and ease.

I love that term and I use that as well. Like, is your business life giving or life draining? And if it's life draining, it's not sustainable. It just, it's not going to work. And whereas life giving, it is, as you said and as you've heard from previous episodes, it's like it's life giving and resource giving to everyone involved. It's not like, because it's not like, oh, the owner is thriving but everyone else is burnt out and a mess.

Yeah, it's a whole thing. Yeah. And so many of my clients come to me when it's. They're in the life draining position. And honestly, some of them come to me because their business has been so successful, like right out of the gate and they didn't have time to set things up to allow them to enjoy intention and ease. Like, they entered into this period of overwork and overwhelm and hustle and stress because they simply like filled their service, you know, filled their capacity really quickly. And so it's about making these small changes over time to the back end of the business and the way that they're operating in the business so they can move toward it being life giving and away from that life draining peace.

I'm really glad you brought that up because you and I have been at it for a long time now, so we can make all these adjustments along the way to get to the point of this conversation, but I totally Remember days where I was just so stressed and I, I don't think any of us set out to create a stressful business or set out to feel like we're living paycheck to entrepreneurial paycheck. And yet it is such a reality. And for some reason, you know, especially in the early days of running a business, no matter how much information is out, it does take time to adjust. And I guess what do you tell somebody what's like, the first thing when one of your clients comes to you and is completely overwhelmed, but and yet is maybe not earning enough to where they feel comfortable cutting back? What do you do?

I think the first thing I do is really check their expectations. Right. Because I think it's very easy for us to see, you know, people like you and I talking about having a life giving business and think, okay, I'm going to get there overnight. And so the first thing I do with my clients is say we're going to be in the messy middle for a while here and I'm going to be here with you to hold your hand through it and to provide resources and suggestions and to tinker with your business. But this is not going to be like next week. You're going to be in intention. And so that's the first thing. The second thing I like to do with them is, you know, if they're in that place where there's not a lot of room to scale back, it's looking at what are those small changes that we can make? You know, there might be some small changes we can make to their services or to their systems to start freeing up just little bits of time here and there, there and getting them on that path to, you know, working less and living more and enjoying that ease and intention. But it really, it really is a small steps. I think that's the biggest thing that I point out to people is it's not an overhaul. It's one small step at a time, which can be hard. Right?

Yeah. You, you also mentioned capacity in there, that some people fill their capacity too quickly. I know on your show you've talked about how you gauge what your capacity is in the first place. And I think that's a step that people often skip. We just. I don't know about you, but working in corporate and even in high school, I was used to just cramming my calendar to the, to the ends. You know, like capacity was just, where is there another block that a meeting can get inserted? And it was not till way later that I was very intentional about setting how many clients, how much time for each one? Now, I don't even do one on one. So for you, whether for your own business or how do you counsel others to identify their true capacity, whether that's for delivering services or all the buffer that surrounds that to even land the clients to then deliver those services.

One of the things I like to do with my clients is ask them to take this life first approach to business. So actually like looking at their schedule and saying, if you were making space for the things that are really important to you in life, for the morning run, for the volunteering at your kid's school, if those things were in your calendar or then what would you have left? You know? And for me, that's how I ended up with, okay, I've got, you know, back then when I first did this, it was like 20 hours a week. And then as my kids got older, I got like 25. And then it's like, okay, you have constraints then and you can figure out how to design the business with that. What I think happens then is people see those 25 hours and they think, okay, I have 25 hours of client work available. And that's not really true. Right. Like, because there are many other things that business owners are doing. And so it's important to figure out how you want to divide those hours among those most important tasks in your business, among the marketing and the content creation and the networking and like the other things that you're doing. And then I like to figure out what client hours are there. So for me, I know that I do again, like that Tuesday, Wednesday, I have clients then I can see up to four clients on those days. I prefer to have it three, because while I can see four, my energetic capacity is generally, you know, three clients a day feels really good. So that helped me start to see how many clients at a time. And then I can work backwards and see, okay, what's my capacity? How many clients am I calling in? What does marketing need to look like to support those goals? So it really was taking that kind of big picture view and working backwards from the schedule from that life first perspective.

Yeah. I love how you look at the macro of your life, then of the business and then within a given day, what is your energy reading? Because I'm same as you. By the fourth call or like really intense one of the day that I'm spent.

Yes.

It's too hard.

Yeah. And I can do the fourth call and I can show up and I can support that client and it's great. But then I don't have as much energy left for, you know, family and you know, the other people who are very important to me. And so for me it's like that question of when you're looking at your capacity, it's not necessarily what you could do, it's what you should do. Right. That difference. And that's where really paying attention to your energetic capacity makes sense.

We'll be right back just after this.

Hi, this is Deechen Lachman and I am here to tell you toyotathon is on. So stop by your local Toyota dealer for incredible year end deals on the cars, trucks and SUVs known for their legendary reliability like the stylish and efficient Camry, the Ready for anything RAV4 or check out a rough and rugged Tacoma or Tundra, all with great financing and lease options available to qualified customers. Visit buyatoyota.com to find out more. Toyota let's go places.

I wonder if you could tell us your business pie, your revenue pie, what percentage one on one makes up. And then I know you've talked about how to scale even when you run a service based business and I would love to hear what that looks like because another thing I think we hear a lot in the entrepreneurial press is like time is money. You know, like one on one doesn't scale, services don't scale. And there's a whole genre of why the owner shouldn't be doing any services at all in their business. And I know that that route is not for everyone either. So I'm curious. Yeah. What percentage of the services involve your time directly? Maybe it's 100%. And then how you still think about scaling. I know you talk about scaling slowly, what that looks like within a service based business model.

Yeah, I think that's such a good question because we kind of have almost demonized the one to one service and made it bad that you know, trading time dollars or you shouldn't do one on one services. Like I remember in when I did my coach training, like they were like do it for a little bit to get some experience and then get out of there as fast as you can. And you should be doing memberships and courses and group programs and I tried some of those things and all of them are great for some people. But for me and the work that I do and how deeply immersed I want to be in someone's business and for the fact that it involves strategy and mindset like the one on one just makes sense. And so while I experimented with some other things in the first few Years, I really landed on two signature offers. @ first I was just doing long term partnerships, six months, one on one coaching, pretty classic coaching model. And then when I looked to scale to your question about how do you scale from that, I realized that I could do some short term stuff here and there in my calendar. And so I started offering coaching intensives to help people simplify and streamline their services. And so for me, that's how I've been able to increase my revenue without taking on more long term one on one clients. And the energetic support that I need to provide to somebody for a deep dive intensive isn't the same as, you know, a six month client. And so I was able to add, you know, I do about three a month. So I was able to add quite a few more clients, more revenue, serve more people with that. And then so that's been 100% of the revenue for the first six years is all one on one services. Save a few little experiments, a few little groups here and there. And then this year I started playing around with what would it look like to add in something that does involve my time. And for me, like it had to be super well aligned. I played with a lot of different ideas and it just, it took me, you know, months to figure out what I wanted that to look like. And that's when I decided to do an audio only course. Because what I know about my audience is they love listening to podcasts, they learn a lot through those and asking them strategic questions is super helpful in getting them to simplify and streamline their business. And I also know they're not interested in signing up for something that's going to add more to their plate. So they're not interested in, you know, workbooks and attending workshops and group coaching calls. And you know, generally they're busy and they need something simple. So doing an audio course as kind of this next level and playing around with that as something that doesn't involve my time really made a lot of sense. And you know, revenues, we just launched it in early May, so revenue is starting to come in from that, but it'll be a slow burn and I'm totally fine with.

That. You mentioned coaching intensives. Can you tell us a little bit about how you set those up in.

Particular? Yeah, so at first, you know, I've probably been doing them three years now and at first it was very general, like, I will do a coaching intensive with you and you just let me know what you want to do during that time and we'll do it. Not the best, you know, practice. Not very well defined outcomes, not very well defined. And so as I started to think about what I would want a specific intensive to look like with very clear results that we're creating, I realized that almost always I work with my clients starting with their services. And I also realized that when we streamline their services, you know, whether, whether we're taking a service away or changing the features within them, you know, the things that we're doing to the services, I realized that they had a ripple effect in all the other areas of their business that was really positive. And so I started offering that as an intensive. It's a standalone thing where we jump on zoom for two hours. They do a lot of pre work to help me get caught up to speed on where their services are now and what's working and not. And then we jump on and we refine and we redefine the services and then I do hang out for a week after that and for just follow up questions. So, you know, light support after that. Not a lot of heavy lifting for me, but I wanted to provide them with something because I know sometimes questions come up. So that's what it looks like for that. That's my main intensive. I've played around with some other ones, you know, around simplified marketing plans and helping people set up their systems. I've even done someone learning how to do podcast pitching. But the services one is the one that people come back to and, you know, sells really well and people seem to really love. So that's been the focus for the last bit.

Here. I love what you've said too about just, yeah, piloting, listening to your community, what they most, right down to how you format the course and that people don't want a lot of homework. I've been experiencing that more and hearing it more and more too. People, if anything, want to just see how you do something or what are the shortcuts. It's like I don't know for when I sign up for courses, I never participate if there's a community. And so I did have a community for five years and I love them all dearly. And we still have one that's for podcast supporters that kind of merged into that. But I remember thinking like, I never wanted to set up all these intense things because I myself didn't participate. So why would I create something that is not even what I would do? It's interesting what your coach training too. I wanted to come back to that because when they say something like, you know, get the practice and then get out as fast as you can. It's like. But the reason at least some people will go to coach training is because they want to be a coach, that this really energizes them, it brings them joy. And isn't this the whole point of thriving in our business? Not everybody wants to be only in an operational role or, you know, so much talk about a flagship course. I've run so many courses, they never give me as much energy as other things in my business. They're okay, but it's a lot of work to build and market and maintain a course. It cannot, it just simply cannot be the end all, be all only way to run a scalable.

Business. Exactly. And I think it's really, I think there's so much permission here around like doing what works for you. Right. If you're somebody who loves one on one coaching, then figure out how to do that in a simple way, streamlined way and figure out how you can scale that and, and also recognize that you may have landed at your, you know, perfect place. Like maybe you don't need to scale. Maybe you're exactly where you want to be and you can just rinse and repeat indefinitely. If you're somebody who loves, you know, running a community and you're okay with your main role being like content creation or something like that, then do that. Like, I think there's so much out here about there's, this is the only way to do it. And I really don't believe in that. I believe you really should do something that's aligned for you. And that's what I love about the services intensive is no two people come out with the same services. They all look very different and it's a match for them and it's a match for their clients. And that's so important to land.

On. I want to stay with this scale piece for a second because I can hear maybe someone out there listening saying, well, if I'm only going to work 20 to 25 hours a week and I want to do one on one coaching, very quickly, they will hit a sort of ceiling and of course pricing can change it a little bit of how much demand and how much they're earning. But I wonder, is it possible to scale and how you define scale within that context of a majority of, you know, one on one type work? What does scale even mean in that context? Given that there is such a kind of fixed ceiling with time and number of clients and energy? And then the other side of what I used to worry about as a solopreneur, and I wonder how you think about this. So it's really two totally different questions but is if I needed to step back from the business, what would happen? How would it keep earning money? So that was the other part of scale for me that was so important was not just let me get out of trading time for money. That was never really it. It was that if I need to step back for creative reasons or a family emergency, I didn't want the whole thing to grind to a halt and be only resting on my shoulders. So I wonder how you approach these two in your.

Business. Yeah. So first one, like what scale looks like, right? It doesn't necessarily look like adding, you know, going from six figures to half a million dollars in revenue at all. Like I probably, like there are things that I can do to continue to scale. But hitting the half million dollar revenue mark or the million dollar revenue mark with my business model would require a drastic price increase that probably wouldn't make sense. So for me, like I have to look at the trade off. Like I can change business model, I can scale in that way and but the trade off would be maybe I'm not doing the work that I think is the most useful and impactful and that I love trade off of sticking with one on one services is yeah, I can scale and I can add more things in and I can experiment with little things like my course, but I'm not going to add 100,000, 200,000 a year. I've been able to substantially increase revenue year after year. But I know that I'm also at a place where that substantial increase is not going to keep, keep being as substantial. But I'm okay with that because, because I like the trade off. Like I've agreed to that and I've decided on that. So that's the first thing about like what happens as a service provider if you have to step back. I think that's been a really interesting question for a lot of people this year. And it was certainly like as soon as the pandemic hit and I think everybody went, I have no idea what business is going to look like now and I have no idea what my schedule is like and what my availability is. And so I think for me that's when I started thinking more about that question and stepping back a little bit. So for me it looks like if I was in that base, that case where I needed to step back a bit, now I have the course to rely on and we could more heavily market that. But it's a lower ticket item so you need to think about that a little bit. But there are things that I could do. Like maybe I would step back from the long term one on one client work, but maybe I would still do intensives, which doesn't require as much time and energy. So there's some pieces there. But yes, that's the problem that I don't think that I fully solved. And also like, that's always been the case in my business. So I think I've just gotten comfortable with.

It. I love what you said too, that. Right. Switching to intensives might make sense where at least if you're trying to ramp up or carve out the space, you're carving out three days in that month instead of the multiple days a week, multiple weeks a month.

Yeah. And the ongoing support and everything. And so that's actually something that I did this year. I used to serve eight or nine clients at a time and last year I also had a Voxer coaching offer and I also had, you know, I had the intensive. So, you know, as the pandemic hit and schedules changed and I needed to be more available for life, the voxer coaching went away because it already had some issues. And then I raised my prices a little bit for the one on one services because it had been a few years since I'd done that and that allowed me to take six clients instead of eight or nine. And then I just ramped up on intensives because that was much easier to schedule for for my.

Family. When you say the Voxer coaching had some issues, I'm curious what they were because I love Voxer and Marco Polo. Like this past year those came in really handy for me working with friend tours and mastermind groups and I always thought it'd be fun to do Voxer coaching. I've done a Voxer AMA with people as a bonus, like for joining, let's say supporting the podcast. But I wonder from a services and scale perspective, what, what were the pros of Voxer coaching and what were the sort of cons, things you'd want to.

Change? Yeah, so the pros were, I love the real time, like that a business owner could like have an issue right then and message me right away. Like I loved that and I hated that. Right. Like, it was great that they could like really dive in and just tell me what was going on right away. And that voice to voice communication, like is a little bit different than sending a message over. So I liked that. But it also creates, you know, there's a lot of boundaries there and I found it really hard to figure out what the boundaries were like. It never felt right to me to say you get five minute voxer a day or you get one message a day, but no more than that. Like I could have set those boundaries. And I think had I seen it as a really good option for me to continue my business, the next evolution of it would have had to have some more boundaries so that it didn't get out of control with messages. But for me, the real reason I changed is I found that dividing my attention between three different services with three different types of communication happening was just too much for me. Like I didn't, I didn't like having the messages coming in from all the different places. And you know, I would finish my coaching for the day and then I would need to move to the voxer coaching. And so for me like, it just became like too much. And so that's ultimately why I stepped away from.

It. You mentioned boundaries part of running this kind of business. Better than big. Of course we have boundaries around time and energy. And I'm wondering what boundaries have you set recently or what have you found more challenging to set but that have been made a really big difference for.

You? Yeah, I'm gonna answer this in a way that's probably not what people would expect, but the biggest boundaries I've had to set are the boundaries with myself. Because I am an ambitious person, I'm a high achiever, I'm an idea person. And so it's really easy for me to see something fun or to have an idea for my business and just want to go all in on it. And so a big boundary for myself has been expanding my timeline or time spans for certain activities. So I'm not rushing and also being willing to put a lot of stuff in, you know, the parking lot and say it's there, it's safe and I can get to it when needed, but I cannot pursue all new ideas at once. So those are the biggest boundaries. Like honestly with myself and also with my time, like not doing that thing at the end of the day where you say I'm just going to do, you know, work's supposed to be wrapping up at 3 and not doing that thing where you're like, I'm just going to do one more thing and then suddenly you up and it's 4:30 or 5. Like those are the boundaries that have been the most important for me and also most impactful in running that life giving.

Business. Yeah, it's so true that it's the boundaries with ourself. And I feel like, I don't know about you, but that there is a transition to where you have to try to enforce those boundaries. And then there becomes a point where you're like, sorry, but nothing's going to pull me away right now. Or. Or for me, with. With like, a lot of, you know, email or text, as you've heard me say so many times on this show. But it's like, everything can wait. I think I just adopt these little mantras, like, everything can wait. Nothing is urgent. I wonder if you have any mantras like that that remind you why you have these types of.

Boundaries. I don't think I have any mantras, but there's just, like, this real. Like, I have a real awareness about what's going on. I. I work in a little. What we call it the annex, the little office up in our backyard, and I have a real awareness about what's. Whether it's really great weather, and I know I would love to read a book outside or I know that my family is hanging out and I would be missing out if I do that. Just one more thing. So I have a lot of awareness around. I guess it's like the cost, right? The trade off, of continuing to say yes to things beyond what I. Beyond the boundary that I've set. So for me, that's the biggest thing is really, I think, the awareness more than, like, a.

Mantra. Yeah. It's like FOMO for your family.

Or the weather or, you know, whatever it.

Is. Totally, totally. I'll get that. Yeah. Good weather or. Or, like, I don't know, something fun is happening with Ryder or something. And I'm like, I just hear them having fun out there.

Oh, my goodness. So, Ashley, if you could give fellow business owners permission, you could just write them a permission slip in their business, what would it be.

For? I. I mean, there's so many. There's so many ways I could answer this question. I think. I think the biggest permission that I would like to give people is to do less and less. And because so much of business is about doing more and more and more, and that's where you get into the hustle and the stress and the overwork. And it's funny, like, we named my course do Less, Live More, because I really want people to see that it's possible to do less and still have a successful business. And so doing less might look like.

Defining your capacity and realizing you're over it and you need to scale back a little bit. Doing less might look like honoring your boundaries. Doing less might look like pausing on some projects and letting them sit instead of feeling that false urgency around them and going with it. So I would really encourage people to ask themselves, I guess, like, what's maybe one thing you can stop doing? And I bet it won't have a negative impact on your business because everybody always has one.

Thing. Yes. So well said. Thank you, Ashley. I'll put a link to that in the show notes everybody. Definitely check out Ashley's podcast Better Than Big. And Ashley, is there anywhere else you'd like to send.

Listeners? Yeah, Better Than Big. If you enjoy conversations like this, definitely head over there. I interview lots of great business owners about how they are building their Better Than Big business. And Jenny, I don't know what episode, I can't remember the number that you're on, but you came on and talked about how you quit social media and that's one of our most popular episodes, so I would definitely recommend starting.

There. Oh cool. Thank you. I'm so happy to know that that one resonated. And I remember we recorded before you launched, so that was really an honor to be part of your show in that first batch. And yeah, I'll go find the link. I'll put that in the show notes.

Too.

Perfect. Awesome. Thank you so much, Ashley. Thank you everybody for.

Listening. Yeah, thank you.

Jenny. If you've listened this far, you get a gold star. Thank you. Word of mouth is the most joyful way we can grow this show, and it helps us land interviews with the luminaries and insightful guests that you would most love to hear from. Please send this episode to a friend who might find it helpful. And for show notes and related links from this episode, visit itsfreetime.com while you're there, make sure you're subscribed to the Time well Spent newsletter. You'll get instant access to my Tech Toolkit, a continually updated list of all the software I use, along with the total monthly spend to run my business where no one works full time, Even me. Visit itsfreetime.com join Remember, you are running the show. It's time for radical reimagining and everything is up for grabs. Let it be easy, let it be fun, and build with love.