133: Hire People Who Are Better Than You with Terri Trespicio

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People want to be seen as experts. They want to be promoted. If you want to be promoted or at least acknowledged for efforts, you have to be the expert on what you do, which is, hey, we ran out of space. Here's the two options. This one is a better deal. I would Recommend this. I'm 9 times out of 10 going to say fine, but it has to be that you're the expert. So we all want to be experts. We all want to be treated like experts and authorities and be respected by. Well then you can't raise your hand every second. You have to take it as far as you can go. And you will impress people when you make recommendations rather than requests.

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 business. 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. Hello everybody. I am back with Terry Trespicio. Terri is an award winning writer, author, speaker, advisor. Her book Unfollow your passion, how to create a life that matters to you came out in December of 2021. Her TEDx talk Stop Searching for your Passion has more than seven.

HubSpot named her one of the top 18 female speakers who are killing it. She's been on the Pivot podcast twice today. We're continuing the conversation because we're lucky enough to record in person.

Yay.

Welcome back, Terri.

Thank you.

All right, so you kind of teased some changes that you've been making since reading free time, which is really exciting. And I have to tell listeners Terri hosted the Fireside Chat for the free time book launch party here in New York City.

We had that was an incredible honor.

Soho works down in Meatpacking and she was amazing. Michael is like, who is this person? You need to do more with her and I actually it's a big part of the reason that we're here even recording in person because I thought it's so fun. And we're neighbors practically in the grand scheme of things. And, like, what's the point of paying all the rent that we do in New York City if we're not just gonna get together in person.

Yeah.

And create things.

And that is what we're doing today.

So welcome.

It is our job today, as you would say.

This is our job today. And you know what else you were saying that it's so much more relaxing when we don't have to get anywhere afterward.

I know what I have to do tonight, but no one's caring when I get back there to do it. You know, I can just do it. Free time. Free time.

I know it's the middle of the day on a Tuesday, and I really appreciate that too. It's nice to just get in the zone, come in person. Sometimes I'm shy about asking people to come in in person because plus travel time. It's just a bigger commitment than doing. I use Riverside fm. But anyway, I'm so glad you said yes.

I love it. I think it's a fun opportunity. It feels very legit to come to the stud. But I will say this. I listened to Free Time from beginning to end on a drive I had to Massachusetts and back. And because when I started to read it, I was like, this is the reference I'm gonna have. I wanted both. I wanted the print so I could go back and look at different parts, But I wanted Jenny to tell me herself what to do. And I needed to hear your voice because, look, this is not news to you that you're miles beyond most people in the way you think. And part of me thought I'd. I love this. I'm gonna want or wish I could do it, but it's probably a Jenny Blake thing that I said, this is gonna be a Jenny Blake does this, but the rest of the world cannot that. She's a systems thinker, and she sees things so clearly, and I feel like I'm not like that. But listening to the book, chapter after chapter to be walked through. No, I'm not. It's not cut and paste. I'm not gonna make everything I do exactly like someone else's. However, there were so many moments I thought, oh, my gosh, why am I not doing that? Oh, it's like when you don't take advantage of any kind of system or any kind of delegation, you are leaving money on the table, and you are throwing time down the drain. And that is exactly what was Happening. And so I've made some changes to my business since the book.

And did they seem as hard as you anticipated going in that?

No, I think it wasn't just do this little thing here. I realized I have pushed myself and my one team member to the limit. And so it wasn't like a leisurely, let's change some things. It's part of what is becoming an overhaul in the way I treat the business and how I structure it. You know, we're not just band aiding it. I can't do that because it's not just me. It wears on. I see now that it has worn someone else nearly threadbare to be depending just on one person. And like when you have company over, it keeps you honest and open. Like you have to systematize if you're gonna have more than two people talking.

That's true.

So I could cheat for a long time being like, oh, just do this. And we had no real system in place. And so can I just list out for you the things that I've done since it's not nearly as many as I want to do, first and foremost, have someone else. Right leading the charge. When we get speaking inquiries in, I don't answer them first. I love that I'm not answering. I go, you talk, go through the thing. I don't have to jump. I would jump the minute it came in. I don't do that. I don't jump into. Well, until recently, customer service questions. I would leap right in. Cause I wanted to help. My helping doesn't help. It hurts because I get in other people's way. I have hired a va, which I have never hired. I have someone who's a little higher level than that. But I hired someone who's starting in September just to start. If she doesn't stay, we have a system for someone else. So it's not even like I'm marrying the va. It's kind of like we're going to be someone who has a VA now. So I have a va. I hired a writer to help. So I wasn't personally designing, writing and posting in real time every morning. I couldn't do it. So when I had this summer camp, which is a week long virtual series of events I do for free now, it's the second summer in the row I had someone else doing it and I could actually live my life. Last year I couldn't do anything, could barely eat because I was promoting all the things. This year I had someone writing the post, sharing it. I couldn't believe It. Now the other thing is, and this is not something you said we had to do, but I have invested, made the biggest investment I've ever made in a marketing professional who can see things about my business that I can't see and do the kind of research that I don't do. This is an up level moment. But because I was up leveling with someone in a big way, like where you're paying a lot for six months of work and consulting, what are you going to do? Not hire the writer, not hire the va. You can't hire someone and then not be able to pay attention to what he needs from you. So I said to him, my biggest fear is I've now dug just a bigger hole and it's going to be harder to cover it. And my fear was, what if I build out this whole system and this whole business in a different way and now you just have more trouble covering the expense. And he said, that's why we are gonna make sure that you're earning money to be able to pay for it. Someone might go, well, I'd love to do what Terry's doing, hiring this and a that and a writer, but I don't have the money to do it. I don't have loads of money in the bank. This might sound incredibly irresponsible and Jenny, I don't even know what you'll think of it. I don't have all the money to pay all those people right now. It is an absolute terrifying thing. But the answer in my mind is this is the option. This is the one thing I'm dying to do. This, all of this, I don't wanna not do it. There's no going back and I'm gonna have to find a way.

This is completely the chicken and the egg conundrum of delegating and hiring. Because often you actually need to hire to get yourself out of the weeds to free up your time to earn more money in the business. And yet there is often, I find I've had this many points in my business where I don't technically have the money to sustain the team growth unless it works, unless hiring the team actually frees up my time. And I do find that one aspect of entrepreneurship is the forcing function of, well, now you just gotta make it work.

You have to.

So every time you burn the boats, you burn the boats. And every time, my mom told me this once, cause I was afraid to move into a new apartment by myself, the rent was double. And actually every time I've moved, the rent or mortgage has been double. And she always says, you know what you'll get in there and you will figure it out. And it's true. I always have. And especially paying the rent and or mortgage and my role of running my own business, they kind of go together well. It's like, well, now I need to get even more strategic in my business to fund the change in my lifestyle or to fund expanding the team in the ways that you described. And it is scary. But I like to know that I've tried. Sometimes I'll expand. I've done that with expanding even the team behind these podcasts, these two shows where the podcasts aren't necessarily direct line earning the revenue to support that. But I will always be stuck if I don't see at least what it's like to free myself from many, many, many hours of work every week. Cause it's a very intricate part of the business. So I love that you're doing that. I love that you're setting that challenge for yourself. And I feel like the worst that happens is it doesn't work and you run out of money. And that's not great. But it's also not the end of the world.

That's right. And so the way I look at it, and again, privilege plays into this. Now I don't have like a trust fund, but I have been set up in life, understandably with some advantages, but still my bank account isn't any bigger just because I decided to hire people. But I hear people saying, well, I gotta earn more and then I'll hire people. I go, if you could earn more on your own, you wouldn't need the team. So like this has to happen when you're like in a. The word is not desperate. I set up this situation from. I applied this pressure to myself because if I'm not gonna do it, what else am I gonna do? What's the other option you mentioned?

This marketing person is helping you see things you weren't seeing in the business. Can you give us some examples?

First of all, what's interesting is you never know who you're going to work with. This is not like I googled marketing professional, right? This guy hired me to work with his clients and I worked with them for years. So I already know him and trust him from years of working together. And I understand how he thinks and he is a perfect compliment to me because I'm the visionary type. I change my mind. I want to do this, I want to do that. I can iterate quickly make lots of content. He is like A knows the metrics, does the research, moves at a slower pace, is very measured, says, this has to make money. You have to earn back what you're doing. We have to do it in a focused way. Because I've been shooting from the hip going, let's try this, let's try that. My whole business of content is like one small village after another, that everyone just who did it and ran and we went to the next village, let's do a party over here. And it's just not focused enough. And he's gonna help take all of this energy I have and focus it in a place where using tools of his own trade that I don't have access to, don't wanna learn, have no interest in.

When you say focus in one place, meaning one platform.

No, meaning what am I gonna offer? You know, what am I offering to whom? Cause I'm doing kind of a little bit of a lot of services. Yes.

Who.

Who are the people? Where are they? What is the thing that, given his research, he says you should really lean into this. Cause I teach a lot of different things. If he says, turns out you should be leading writing workshops for women over 50, I'll be like, okay, well, I kind of do that already. But, like, is that the thing or is it this other direction? I mean, when my book came out, they positioned this for millennials. The people in my workshop are not always millennials. So I don't know he's going to take a look at all that and I'll have more information next year or next winter. Yes. About what happened. But I don't see the other option to continue to go how I was doing it and be exhausted and wear everyone out and not have enough of the regular income. The goal is to have some kind of semi passive system going because I've been living big bass client to big bass client catching and, you know, doing the work and then, oh, when's the next one? And I'm wearing thin on that.

We'll be right back just after this.

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I just recorded for the Free Time podcast before you came here today to the studio five streams of recurring revenue in my business, and some are more positive than others. But that shift from one off ad hoc to recurring is so crucial because recurring, whether it's monthly or annually, it's more calming. You can at least predict what's coming in.

I know, but I don't like to do the same thing over and over again. But I could train myself to do it if I'm earning money doing it.

So for example, with the private BFF community, yes, it's the one thing the community. But then I get to express myself freely within the community and in fact I find it more creatively freeing because it's private. I'm willing to share more than I sometimes am out loud in the moment on the podcast where I try to be a little more measured or I'm nervous or I have to get my courage first. And so I love actually it's kind of my sandbox. Yeah, but the community is set up and that's the thing. I'll put that this book subscribed. I mentioned it in that episode. Oh gosh, I wonder what number 122 I think.

Oh my God.

Yeah, because like, I don't know, I'm crossing timelines across two shows.

That is crazy.

I'll put it in the show notes. Anyway, the point is I mentioned this book subscribed and he talks about actually one of the benefits of setting up subscription based services or revenue streams is that you develop more of a relationship with your clients.

Oh absolutely, yes.

Because the whole model is built on keeping people happy and engaged over time, including yourself. You also mentioned changing the structure of your business. So when it was just you and one other person, it sounds like the business was a little more ad hoc. So can you just ad hoc? What do you mean when you say what was the before and after of what ad hoc looked like to now where you're trying to create more ad.

Hoc looks like when I say, hey, let's do a workshop on this. Here's a landing page. Can you design it by tomorrow and make sure all the PayPal things connect. And let's sell it, let's just sell it. I just want to like, let's try this. And it's just too short. I wasn't looking further enough. And so now I'm planning for like the launch of something in January, like, look a little further out on the note, on the membership thing. I actually did launch that for the first time. When the book came out, I said, come and do a free book club with me. And then after that I said, okay, who wants to stay and hang out with me longer? And so I developed something called the club, which is still taking shape in my mind, but same thing. It's the place where you can develop stuff for people who've already signed up to be there. So I've had these places, you wanna tap the part of you, for those of you who sound like Jenny and me, who like to come up with things and try things. It's not that you do away with that part of yourself, but it needs to be toward an end. And I know that doing this within a community is important. And what it looked like before was last minute, try this, do that. And it was just like you're trying to avoid tree branches as they're hitting you in the face. That's what it felt like.

And also probably the before is a little more reactive. So whatever. People reach out to you for whatever services they want, whatever coaching, consulting, media training, do that, speaking, writing, you probably just kind of made a custom. I call it bespoke. Like it's bespoke for every single person. You haven't yet productized the service?

I did a little, but you're right. I tend to think that the value comes in a bespoke. Like a bespoke suit is nice, right? Is nice to have. So I feel like part of the service to private clients is creating that bespoke thing. So it feels really special. So that is part of the business that I like, but I want to do it selectively and I don't want to depend on it. The thing that I want to make sure that I'm doing now, based on all of these things that you've taught me, is to be able to plan further out, no surprises. People know what they're getting, what they're buying, and be able to do this in a way that uses the best of what I'm good at in a focused way long enough to measure, to see how it's doing. I just don't stick with anything long enough to do it.

Yeah.

How do you Think you'll keep your creative fire lit, like the part of you that loves having ideas. You mentioned the phrase visionary. There's a book called Rocket Fuel he talks about. Some people are visionaries. They have all the ideas. Integrators, often too many. And then the integrator keeps the train running on time.

That's what this marketing guy is. He's my integrator. I'm the one who's like, let's do this.

Well, how do you think you'll keep that part of you happy? The one that is always thinking of new ideas? Cause it can feel constricting when you feel suddenly, oh, I'm just happy.

Oh, I'm still gonna do new stuff. I just need to have something that's running. Everything was a handmade. I made one shoe, she made the other shoe. We would sell the shoes like it was too much by hand. Cause I love the by hand. But it is costing me time and money to do it. And so now I can start. Like you're saying multiple streams rather than just like drip, drip, drip and waiting until it rains. It's just stressful. I want to build the thing, the machine a little bit, build it out more and give it some time so that I can keep iterating and coming up with stuff for different groups. I'm never going to stop doing it. And the way I'll continue to explore it is through writing. Because that is my sort of mode of choice. So maybe I'll write another book. I mean, who knows?

You mentioned hiring a writer. This is easier said than done because I've hired copywriters in the past and had mixed results. People just were asking actually in our BFF community about working with a copywriter. Sometimes it can be tricky because your voice is so unique. You're so unique. How did you find this person and what's your process like so that you work well with them and you don't get copyback and feel like, oh, I would never write like that. I would never say that.

Yeah, I've never been able to do that with anyone before. Or they would. Someone might start it and I would, you know, do it. This woman is a bit of a unicorn, I will say. And everyone who's found a great writer will say that. I will say that. What astonishes me is there are so many people trying to make a living as a copywriter in this one world. I see tons of them. And then there's this whole world are going, where are the writers? I know, I don't understand why they can't meet up.

You're in both. Cause you teach a lot of writing and take a lot of writing workshops.

I don't know why that's so hard. But this writer is a young woman who is on staff at a college where I help, I volunteer. And she, I know, is a writer. Like, oh, she's so good at this and this and this. She's good at lots of things, but she's also a writer. So I know there's this creative part of her that, outside of her office job, she might like to indulge. I also have had the chance to get to know her through my volunteer work and know that she has a wonderful sense of humor. She's really sharp. But I didn't know what her writing was like. I didn't know. And I said, let's just try it with summer camp. Let's just see. And I was ready to go in and fix everything. Cause I was like, eh, let me do it. Oh, I did my own assets. I go. I started these. And I looked at hers. I go, yours are way better.

What was she doing?

Oh, my God. They were way better.

Like writing email copy.

She went into Canva, designed the asset. I was like, she designed Instagram stories with moving parts. I was like, how do you even do this? She is younger, right? She's in her 20s. These people were raised on this. I showed her how to use my email system once I go, here's how you do this. And schedule. She knows it, but she's also young and has a whole career ahead of her. But I know she wants to be a writer. And I said, honey, you want to be a writer, you're always going to need clients. And I, for as long as I have money, will pay you. So you stick with me. Because people are like, who's your writer? I was like, off, Back off. You know, like, she's mine. No, no, no. Of course not. I would support her, but. And it's not that you have to. First of all, you do not have to hire a young person. I happened to meet her, but there are tons of writers she happens to. She and I have similar sense of humor. I didn't have to almost change.

That's amazing.

But I do write my own emails. I am not gonna have someone writing for me. It's more like I want her to take what I'm doing, pick up the copy, run with it, put it in different formats and put it out there, schedule the post so that I'm not doing it all. And she's doing it. And she will learn more about my voice. But she's also been consuming some of my stuff for a while. So she knows. And that is what a great writer does. They just take it on and they take what you're doing and keep it going. She's doing a great job.

That's amazing.

This is a first for me.

So happy for you.

I'm the writer people hire, so to hire a writer was like, why would I do that? Can I let go of it? And I don't have to totally let go of it. But it feels great to have someone else helping with that.

Especially when you find someone like that, that not only that you trust, but that elevates your work that can do things.

Oh, I was so happy to be the crappy one. When I looked, I go, oh, you're way better at this. Like I'm letting go of that. But listen, there's tons of writers. This is like a psa. One place where a lot of writers take classes are awaiting the American Writers and Artists Institute. There's so many people, they all go on LinkedIn. They all follow my friend Elise Bennen. There are so many writers out there. Have a bunch, try a bunch and pay them to do an assignment and just see can you work with them because you shouldn't have to do all yourself.

That's what I am going to do next as well. Because I've often gotten referrals even from friends for writing or VA Project manager. But I'm just going to design an interview sequence, even if it's paid part of it. That involves actual project work like design a one page overview of this or write three emails in response to these three customer situations. It doesn't have to be a mystery what somebody's skill set is in these areas. You can design an onboarding set of experiments that will show you what someone can do.

And they're not gonna guess it right on the first shot. Usually, I mean, that's Kayla on my team is unbelievable in that way that she gets it quickly. However, really strong copywriter learns through revisions. You can't just say, give me that, I'll fix it. You have to say, here's how I would wanna do it. Here's they have to learn through editing. That's how I learned to write. The editor would take my story, sit down with me and go, here's where I would change this, here's why I would change it so that I could understand what she was doing. But you can only learn it by working with a writer.

Yeah, I always try to give my logic as well. So there's the comments or feedback and then the logic. So if I say change this, and here's why. Yes, here's why I would do that.

We'll be right back just after this.

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Tell us about hiring a va. Because I think a lot of people, even if they're working full time within companies, can benefit from a va. Even if it's not. You don't run your own business. So I'm just curious, what are some of the first things that you've been able to offload and where did you find your va?

The woman who I've been working with the longest, who's my business manager, she said, you know, we could really use someone like so and so. And she goes, why don't I just ask so and so? This is a woman she'd worked with, but she was working with other people. And she wasn't free until September. And at the time of this recording, it's still summer. And they're like, well, can you wait? I said, I've been waiting my whole life. I'm pretty sure I can wait till the end of the summer. So we don't know. She kind of. She roves about the world. She does her VA work from wherever she is. She seems incredibly sharp. And here's a question I asked during our first call interview type of thing, even though I knew I was gonna give her a try anyway. Cause she came so highly recommended. I said, what's the thing that annoys you most about clients? What will set your hair on fire like that they misunderstand about you or something that will really get you mad? And she said, oh, I get so mad when someone Thinks I dropped the ball because I don't drop the ball. I was like, you're hired.

That's amazing.

It's a great answer, though, because if she was like, I hate when people do this, she could have said anything. I wanted to see what could set this person off or make it harder to work with them or me harder to work with. And I realized, you know, when I hop in and help, sometimes that is read as an insult to people who you've paid to do a thing. Oh, I'll just do it. It's like you don't trust me to do it. So she said, I hate when people think I drop the ball and go and duplicate the effort. And I was like, lesson learned. Like, so I haven't started that either, but I'm excited to be able to not create a spreadsheet on my own. Have someone help with the system. It's gonna make us get our system in shape so that I am ready for any va. But this came through a recommendation. But I would always ask for recommendations.

I love the question you asked her. What annoys you about your clients? Do you have a pet peeve, like, what's a deal breaker for you of people you work with?

I think I'm very communicative. I talk to people that I work with on Voxer, whatever. If I don't hear from you at all now, that will bother me because I assume you're checked out. I'd like someone to just say, hey, I got this. You know, I'm on it. I don't like when things vanish or I don't hear. Being ghosted by anyone is smart.

Absolutely.

I think that's the thing that's the most important thing.

I think one of mine is impeccable commitments that I got out of a leadership training. Early days at Google. There's a book called Conscious Business. Long story short, it's kind of stating the obvious. But there's a deadline. It's either yes, no, or renegotiate. And give me a heads up, like, often, if you're not gonna make the deadline, just renegotiate with me. That's usually never a problem. But I can't stand if a deadline comes and goes.

Nothing.

And there's nothing to your point about ghosting.

Also excuses like, why did your teacher not want to hear the reason why you didn't do it? It's not that I don't care about your life. It's that when we're talking about something that didn't get done, it's not A life situation. When we wanna talk about our lives, we'll talk about our lives. But excuses make my skin crawl. Because you're trying to make it now my problem, like, well, I couldn't cause this. I'm like, ah, ah, ah. Don't give me your excuses. Just own it. Like, when I find myself giving, you know, well, here's why I go, you know what? I didn't do this. Here's, you know, I'll get it to you by this time. I don't need to know all the contextualizing. I don't want too much contextualizing because it makes me think that you think I should change my opinion about your behavior because of your circumstance. You know what I mean?

I remember I was coordinating a dog walker for my grandma through one of the apps, Rover, I think. And it was for 30 days. It was for a long stretch of time because she needed a substitute. And it was quite a young person. And this person wrote and said, I'm sorry, I might not make it tomorrow. And there was an entire paragraph of backstory. Like, because my car broke down, and then my friend called my friend, and then my friend didn't show up. And then because my friend didn't show up, then the tow truck took a couple hours, and so then I didn't get enough sleep. And so I. I might not wake up in time tomorrow morning. And I was wondering, I was thinking, is this a generational thing? Because this is tmi. I read it out loud. My grandma thought, oh, well, at least they're being responsible and checking in and saying they may not be there. But I thought to myself, listen, just either say, I'm not gonna be there or I am. Like, make a choice. Make a decision. And then if you're not gonna be there, scent coverage, or it's okay. Like, you could miss a day and the world's not gonna end with this dog walking situation. Grandma will figure it out. But that level of backstory was actually awkward.

It makes it more awkward because now it's meant to deflect attention. Like, don't you feel bad about my tow truck situation?

Or I really tried my best, but all these events kept happening.

I'm just, like, very leery of that kind of behavior because it tends to be someone who refuses to own what happened. It's not your fault that the tow truck didn't come, but it is your problem, right? It's not my problem. So tell me early enough. I don't like being told things at the last minute when I could have.

Been told earlier, one of mine that I put in the book is, as you know, the owner is not the owner. And also the question ping pong. And I learned that question ping pong. It's not anyone's fault. It often just requires a little training. But what I realized was that as soon as I had more than one team member, I didn't really mind question ping pong when it was one person. But when I grew, and I grew quickly, all of a sudden, all day long, I was getting people who would just hit a small roadblock, like a career Roomba, not career business, Roomba style hit a small roadblock and ping me the question. And it felt like there wasn't critical thinking happening about I bumped into this. Here's what I'm gonna do instead. It was like I bumped into this, what do you think, Jenny? Or what do you want? And I'm sure it's my fault. It's always the owner's fault. Like, it always rolls up to me. Either I hadn't trained them on how to get through, or I was jumping in too much. Therefore, they weren't trusting themselves, you know, or if we're feeling nervous about what I would say. But I realized only as the team grew and grew quickly that ping ponging questions to me without critically thinking through or making a recommendation was starting to really annoy me. And so, again, it's not any one person's fault. I just needed to say, hey, before you come to me with something, think it through. I don't want a question. I want a recommendation. Yes, yes, you're closer to it. An example I give is, oh, we ran out of whatever capacity on this software. Should I upgrade? And I'm like, I don't know. What is the cost? What do you think? What's the current cost? What's the next tier? Can we wait five days? What's going to fall apart if we don't upgrade? So I don't know, should we upgrade? I can't do anything. I need people to anticipate that I'm going to at least ask, how much does it cost to upgrade? Right.

I think it's kind of a knee jerk. I don't know how to handle it. And then on the same token, people want to be seen as experts. They want to be promoted. If you want to be promoted or at least acknowledged for efforts, you have to be the expert on what you do, which is, hey, we ran out of space. Here's the two options. This one is a better deal. I would Recommend this. I'm 9 times out of 10 going to say, fine, but it has to be that you're the expert. So we all want to be experts. We all want to be treated like experts and authorities and be respected. Well, then you can't raise your hand every second. You have to take it as far as you can go. And you will impress people when you make recommendations rather than requests.

I love that. So, zooming out as we start to wrap up this conversation, I have so much fun chatting with you. What was the permission that you had to give yourself in order to grow your team in this way without necessarily having all the funding lined up and then some? What was the shift for you to just go out on a limb and try this?

I'm tired and I'm feeling like it's always on my back. And I was like. I had a scare in January when I had spent so much time launching the book that I hadn't cooked up any business. And for a month and a half, I was like, oh, my gosh, this all comes down to me. If I don't earn the money, I can't pay any of these things. And I said to myself, this will never happen again, and the only way is to grow. I was always like, I don't need that. You know, I don't need all these people. I can just do it myself. No, no, no, I can't. And I take no pleasure or pride in doing everything myself. And free time was the kick in the butt that I needed to realize that it's worth it to make everyone's life better. And here's my thought on money as we zoom out. Yeah, I don't have all the money to pay them right now, but money, unlike time, is out there to be had. Time disappears. The second this comes, it's gone. But I believe there's money out there. And there's too many people who I don't think deserve it, who have it. And so there's gonna be some of it that I can channel into my work, and I will.

I love it. I've so been there. I think it comes from that point of burnout and exhaustion and burn it all down mode where you're like, the whole thing is gonna collapse if I don't change, if I don't do something differently. I'm so glad that that's what I wanted to do, was demystify all this stuff. Cause it's not like all of it came naturally to me either. I've been studying, reading, learning, experimenting. I just wanna give people in a way that people could hear it. Some practical strategies. So if you could give fellow business owners permission to do something differently or drop something altogether, what would it be?

I'm not saying you should spend five figures that make you nervous if you're not ready. But look at how you are spending your time and check in with your energy level every day. Is what you're doing sustainable? And as you have said, what's one thing that you're doing that when you're doing it, you're like, mm, I don't have to be the one doing this because probably you shouldn't be doing it.

I love it. Even when I take some of those things back. I just think to myself, when I hand this off someday, what do I need to have figured out? Automated Documented Stop clinging to work. So it's like, even if you don't know who you're gonna hire yet, imagine that they're coming and get ready for them. Terri, this has been so fun. Thank you for having me back. Oh my goodness. Thank you for being here. Where can people find you if they want to keep in touch?

You can. Well, I was thinking my name is a pain, right? You can go to unfollow your passion.com unfollowyourpassion.com, we'll take you there.

I love it. Unfollowyourpassion.com do you also have terrytruspicio.com?

Yes.

Okay.

Yes. We'll bounce you to both places.

We'll put that in the show notes.

I'm the only one with my name. You'll find me.

And I'll put the previous conversations with Terri in the notes as well. Terri, thank you so much. Always such a joy. Thanks everybody for listening.

If you've listened this far, you get a gold star.

Thank you.

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