159: Time Blocking Together with Jess & Dave Radparvar

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I was talking to a friend about the need to take some time off and it felt like a real impossibility, especially the way that my business is set up. I am a bottleneck, honestly, in many ways. And so I actually have been working toward this for the past six months and setting up the systems and making sure the right people are in the right seats in making sure that I could take the time off from a position of strength. And when I was talking to this friend about it, she said it's not that you can't afford to, it's actually that you can't afford not to. And I really took that to heart because I just can't keep going the way I've been going. I'm in the sustainability world.

It's not personally sustainable.

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.

Welcome back Free Timers. You are in luck today because we have two for the time price of one. I am so delighted to be here with husband and wife power duo Jess and Dave. It's a really fun story how we got connected. Jess did an interview for a newsletter called Dense Discovery. That is dense of me that I.

Didn'T know about it, but I had multiple friends forward it and say she mentioned free time.

And so I emailed and she said.

That she and David had been enjoying the book and pointed me to this.

Great tweet Dave had done about free time. And so now here we are, we're going to have a conversation about systems for helping their family run smoothly in a two entrepreneur household. And before we record we were talking about them moving to Amsterdam six years ago, almost six years and doing remote winters traveling. And so not only are they both running businesses, raising a small baby was probably past the baby stage now, but they're just such an inspiration in terms of the systems that they're setting up to also enable their next moves. So, last quick thing before we really get into it. Jess is a social impact strategist motivated by the belief that doing the right thing should be as easy as humanly possible. She's the founder of Reconsidered, a boutique consultancy and content platform that helps leaders drive bigger, bolder, more sustainable change. And Dave Radhparvar.

I forgot to mention their last name.

He's an entrepreneur who I have followed for a very long time myself. He's a dad, amateur skateboarder. In 2009 he co founded a company you might have heard of called Holste that offers inspiration and tools to help you live a meaningful life. I got their first edition of the Holstein manifesto poster back in the day. It was when I had just early years of blogging and I remember thinking it was just so cool that I.

Got this poster in the mail from this awesome company called Holstea. It made my day then and it makes my day now to chat with them. Dave's now working on a new project, Reflection app.

Dave and Jess, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much.

We've been cheesing for like the last, like, I don't know, couple minutes, so that was such a kind intro. We were holding back all of our excitement.

That was it just had to come out in like a shriek. We're so excited to be here. Jenny, we love your work.

You've inspired us so much and yeah, we're excited to dig into free time as a family.

I love it. Well, I have to give a special thank you to Britt as well, who wrote in and said, you know, I'd love to hear you share how more people are applying free time because there's.

So much meat in the book and I'm always shy to bring up the book or assume that guests have actually.

Read it, but you both have and it's been such a joyful connection point and I don't even know the half.

Of what you've done. I would love to hear what has.

Jumped out or what actual systems or changes you've put in place.

So many. When I think about our family life though and kind of the day to day because like you mentioned, we're a two entrepreneur household. I have my company reconsidered. Dave has his companies, Reflection app and Wholesea, and we also have a little maybe think of it as a business. We're trying to grow a child at the same time and so Systems for us are professional but also deeply personal because the more we can save time on, even the, as you put it, the adulting tasks that we have to do on a day to day basis, the more time we have for each other and for Shiloh, our son, and for also the ideas that we've yet to birth so many systems. I would say first, I think the first one that came to mind was less a system and more of a mindset. And that was the one that you described in the chapter on let it be fun, let it be easy, and you gave this great example of baking a cake or cooking up a meal for somebody.

Oh, yeah. I love that.

It's such a good one. Actually, it comes up a lot because.

We host a lot of dinner parties.

And I'm a little bit the one sometimes who can get a bit frazzled by, like, oh, my God, they're gonna.

Be here any minute.

And Dave's usually a bit more like, cool as a cucumber.

I kind of love, like, the Iron Chef challenge when it's like, oh, we only have 30 minutes. And it's like, oh, this is like, I love that challenge. So I love to, like, make a huge mess in the kitchen, cook as fast as possible. And I'm like, I don't like chasing.

After him trying to, like, wipe the thing.

Yes, that sounds exactly like my house. The kitchen is like an absolute tornado, but Michael's having a blast, and then I'm just the cleanup crew behind it.

But, you know, to your point, in.

That chapter, it can be. Even though, you know, it's a lot of work preparing meals, doing the day to day work of running a family. So much of it is about the mindset that you bring into it. And I feel like there are so many narratives around what it's like to raise a small child that kind of like those terrible two toddler years. And if we go into it with more of that let it be fun, let it be easy mindset, we can actually enjoy the ride and realize how many magical, awe inspiring, beautiful moments we get to experience on a day to day basis. And, you know, this is maybe a.

Practical one because it's also.

Our son picks up on our moods. He's so perceptive to any changes in the emotional environment surrounding him. And he also gets triggered when things are very stressful and also free up time than you would otherwise spend being in, like, toddler tantrum combat mode.

Yeah, I love that you brought up this chapter and that baking anecdote in particular, this chapter and the Notion of letting it be easy and working less hard with a capital H. I would say this is one that I continue to have questions or almost gremlins around, like, am I doing the wrong thing by minimizing the idea of hard work? Because at the end of the day, don't we all work hard? And we all have been building each of our own respective projects. And you know, Glennon Doyle's talking about we can do hard things. And I was just heard. Who was it? Who's the really hardcore guy? Oh, yeah, David Goggins. That is like, he's as hardcore capital.

H as it gets.

And so sometimes I get self conscious. Is this the. It's not that anything's right or wrong, but is it the right message? Is that true? Don't we all work hard?

So I'm curious, like, I don't know.

Dave, if you have any thoughts. You've been in business such a long.

Time on that relationship.

Yeah. I recently was thinking about the idea of letting things be easy and the kind of, like, idea of easiness. And I actually had a personal realization. Is that what I don't always want? It's easy. What I always want is strength to face the challenging things. And the way we build strength is the way we build muscle is kind of like building up those muscles. And so I guess I have, like, two conflicting thoughts there. It's like, I love the idea of letting things be easy, but I also love the idea of putting in the work to build the strength. So when things are tough, I'm ready for them. And one thing that I think works with both examples, though, is the idea is let it be joyful. And so I think the perfect example is, you know, I go to the gym and I'm working out and I'm building muscle, which allows me to build strength, to kind of, like, build strength in my body and improve my physical health. But I also really enjoy it. It's also really joyful. And so the idea of building joy while also kind of building strength, whether it's mental or physical, to kind of face whatever challenges may come. And the challenges always do come. So I feel like having that in your back pocket can be very helpful.

Building on the gym metaphor, it is true that there's probably some types of workouts that each of us would find just dreadfully boring and horrible. And then others that we enjoy, even though they're challenging, we enjoy them. Like, I prefer yoga and Pilates to sitting at a machine lifting weights. Like, I don't know why I dread.

That form of strength training so much.

But then other things I'll enjoy. So then maybe the business metaphor is like, yes, there's challenge and we do want to build our muscles, and yet you can still choose a joyful path.

To get there on the whole, even if it's going to be hard.

It's like hard but joyful. Probably like parenting.

I'm not a parent other than a fur baby parent, but there's that book about parenting called All Joy and no Fun. I think about how meaningful it is, but stressful in the day to day.

I haven't read that, but that title sounds. Sounds like it could be accurate.

Yeah.

I also have some business examples of things that we definitely took away and applied on the business side from the book. One thing that definitely came up was revisiting things that don't feel right. And kind of combined with that, the idea of remembering that in order for something new to grow, you often need to cut something else. Because Wholesi's been in business for 13 years, we've had to really be very thoughtful about how we grow and how we persevere as a company. And one thing that we often came back to is, does this feel right? Is this how we want to grow the business? And for a long time we've been kind of evolving our community and evolving our membership. But also over time we've continued to add things to it. And I think at some point we had the moment to think, oh, do we want to keep doing all these practices that we put in place just because we put them in place? So we actually had a moment, Mike and I, my co founder at Holstea, to think back on our community and our membership and what we want to offer. And we also made some big changes. Starting like 2023, we really changed what was like a physical membership to a digital membership and really focusing on the community, because those were the things that really brought us joy and brought us energy. And it really felt like a scary change. And we were actually talking about that change while I was reading your book and I was like, Jenny just gave me permission. I was like, this is scary, this is challenging, but we can do it because we know this is where we want to go. This is how we want our community to grow. This is what we're hearing from our members. So while some people might not be thrilled, while we might get some pushback, we also feel like this is where we get the most energy. And so that really resonated. I also want to take a moment to like, thank you for giving permission to people to say no to what feels really challenging at the time with the understanding that it will open up something else and something more beautiful in the future.

Yeah. I'm so happy it was helpful in that moment. And I continue to be fascinated by this. Even a big theme in Pivot is that you have to say no often to something that's good in order to create space for what's next. And I had the same type of moment in my business. I want to say it was at the end of 2019.

So in a way, it was good that I gave everything a haircut prior to the pandemic, because that threw everything.

For such a loop. But I wrote down everything I was responsible for, and it was just the sheer accumulation over time of products and courses and revenue streams. And if you don't actively say no, they keep growing. And I don't know if you found this to. For either of you in building your business. The other thing I'm really fascinated by are business owners who kind of expand to meet demand team wise and infrastructure wise, and then later contract like, realize, oh, actually I don't need to have so many employees or I don't want as big of a footprint on the back end that's powering the business. Has that been true for either of you in your business building? Or are you happy with the rate of growth and the size? And maybe you're somebody who actually enjoys building something bigger.

That definitely resonates with me, and I can speak to that. But I just wanted to comment. I love that analogy of the haircut, like, grooming your business. And I thought that was such a great analogy. I actually gave myself a haircut two days ago. So I was like, oh, yeah, before the haircut, I'm always like, oh, do I need a haircut? I'm not sure. But then at some point after I gave myself a haircut, I was like, what was I doing with that mop on my head for like the last two weeks?

I'm so long overdue in a literal sense.

And then you feel so light and.

Free and you feel like a new person and you've shed the old, like, even some would say old energy, especially.

Women, like we carry around.

I don't know. It's like, what do I have? Almost a year's worth? My hair is grown out too long.

And it's true. And yet it's so. I think it's so much more challenging in business because like you said, Dave, it sometimes means letting people down or disappointing some of Your community and customers.

Yeah, yeah. And I had a similar thought actually just a couple months ago where I think because the way I've grown, my business has been a bit haphazard, a little bit of background. So I started Reconsidered initially as a brand for my personal freelancing. I had been working in corporate social responsibility for a major apparel conglomerate and then had left in order to strike out on my own, but hadn't really thought about it as building a business. Had thought about it more as, okay, now I, I'm now an independent consultant. And Reconsidered was the brand that was kind of enveloping me. It was even one of those kind of weird companies where I would, you know, do I say I do. I say we, you know, I don't want to smoke and mirrors this whole thing. But for a while it was just me behind the wheel. And then opportunities came up. I reacted to a lot of inbound inquiries, ideas came up that we just, I would feel a creative impulse around. And at a certain point, the complexity of the operation really started to make me feel paralyzed. And I think right now I'm still a bit in the process of figuring out where to go from here. I have contracted my delightfully tiny team a bit. I had four contractors who were kind of on as part time employees and we've slimmed that down to two. And I'm also taking a bit of time in the coming months to take a mini Sebastian. I was inspired actually by how you take a month off every six months or two months off, two separate months off a year just to kind of not have meetings and to do some deep thinking. And I'll be doing that over the winter break. The complexity I think around growing, especially a business and the ideas economy, there's just so many opportunities out there and.

Yeah, how do you focus?

How do you slim down? How do you operate in your zone of genius? Yeah, still an inquiry for sure, but what you just shared resonated a ton.

We'll be right back just after this.

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That's so exciting that you're building in sabbatical time.

I find that when those moments arrive, if I've scheduled them in advance, it's like they can't come soon enough. I even start itching.

You know, I have one coming up too, and I just start, like, almost can't wait.

Like they can't come soon enough. And I find it so interesting that sometimes we don't give ourselves permission to do that. But then when it comes, it's like a fish dropped in water. Like, oh, I needed this quiet time or time away from the grind and even podcast production. I love producing the two shows, I really do. And I love connecting. And yet I can feel now, as I approach a mini sabbatical, where I go, oh, I really could use time to step back because when I'm in the process of producing it all, there's no like high level strategic visioning happening.

I'm just trying to keep up with the schedule.

And so it's just interesting how necessary these times feel, but only once they arrive. It's such a gift to our future self completely.

I think what also shifted things for me too is I was talking to a friend and about the need to take some time off, and it felt like a real impossibility, especially the way that my business is set up. I am a bottleneck, honestly, in many ways. And so I actually have been working toward this for the past six months and setting up the systems and making sure the right people are in the right seats, in making sure that I could take the time off from a position of strength. And when I was talking to this friend about it, she said, it's not that you can't afford to, it's actually that you can't afford not to. And I really took that to heart because I just can't keep going the way I've been going with this level of complexity, trying to juggle family life, business life, partner life, friend life, you.

Know, all of these different balls we.

Have in the air. And it's like if you don't take the time to take a step back and think about what stays and what goes, I'm in the sustainability world.

It's not personally Sustainable.

Yeah.

It's like such a driver for your business and it is so interesting. Just like when you're in your 20s, you just don't have the same number of tabs open at any given time.

And everything you just looked at, just like it's true.

It's like there's the self running the business, then there's trying to be a good partner, then in my case, be a good dog mom. You have Shiloh. Like the number of open tabs that are all super important and require quite a lot of attention and energy and presence that, I mean, is so much of the inspiration behind Free time for me was actually, I cannot work in another way and expect to show up well across the board across these areas.

Be one thing if I only cared.

About running a business, but I don't.

You know, like all the things you just said need me to be at my best. Two, I don't want to just give any one of those areas the scraps.

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Dave, you have just made a big transition within the broader Holstea umbrella. So you're doing something of trying to remove yourself as the bottleneck, but for a little bit of a different reason.

To support a pivot in progress of moving over to Reflection App.

Can you share your process of like, what did you need to do in the business and in the back end in order to free you up to pursue your next set of interests?

I have to say, so much of it was the timing of just finding your book and then recommending to me was so perfect. So we had gotten some early traction with Reflection App. Earlier this year we got accepted into an accelerator program run by Apple and that gave me a lot more confidence in the app and its ability to stand on its own as a separate company. And so that was kind of the first step was like, okay, there's something greater here. There's something I want to transition to. That combined with the fact that I just love working on the app personally brings me a lot of joy. Journaling has been so pivotal for me in my own personal life and how I kind of reflect on the past and look to the future and thinking about how we transition from Holsey to Reflection App. I'm very fortunate to work with my brother, he's my co founder. So we have a very close relationship and we've been working very closely since Holsey started for 13 years. So we started just documenting everything that I was doing. We started having more frequent one on ones following the suggestion from your book. We started documenting everything in the company with as many screenshots and videos and text as possible. And instead of me transitioning that work to my brother Mike, we had hired in someone new, and she was able to help take on many of the tasks that I was doing. So we sort of delegated most of the things that I was doing so my brother Mike could take more of a strategic CEO role at Holstein. So I feel like that was also a really nice way of transitioning. So instead of kind of dumping my work on him, we were able to kind of think strategically about how we can separate and spread out some of the work I was doing. And it was also an interesting transition because I'm the kind of person who gets very deep in a lot of things. And so I found that through this process, I was actually the bottleneck in a lot of things that I didn't realize. And so it also brought that to light in a way of, okay, how can we improve systems in general at Holsteak as we make this transition? So documentation was a big part of that. And then also kind of training, bringing people into the loop and also trusting other people for me personally to be able to do things as good or better than I could do them.

Yeah, that's always the tricky part.

You mentioned there were certain areas you.

Were a bottleneck and didn't even realize.

I wonder if you can share a few examples, because that's so interesting that you didn't even know they were there until you started turning over these different.

Rocks in the business.

Definitely. One example is on for our website, for example. I'm quite interested in kind of the technical code of things and the design of things. So I was really became a middle person between new designs for the website and then implementing them on the website, and then anything technical that was happening related to the website. So we had a developer we work with, and we have designers on our team. But I was always still doing the design work and didn't really think much of it. You know, I always loved doing it and didn't cross my mind to kind of tap in the other designers on our team because they were doing more product design. But they're incredible designers. Carrie and Nicole are much better designers than I ever was and probably ever will be. So this was an opportunity to bring them into the loop, have them do designs, and then work directly with our developer. And I didn't even realize how deeply I had ingrained myself in that process.

I had a mentor tell me that.

I think someone had passed to him.

Which is that your Biggest strengths as a business owner are probably the business's biggest weakness.

Shout out to mbs.

And it's so true. It's like the things actually that we love are what the business is probably most anemic in, because we haven't even.

Thought to delegate it. It's like, oh, no, I'll keep that.

I really love it. So I can see that. And you always did do such a great job with design, and you probably enjoyed those pieces of it.

Yeah, definitely. Now I get to do the designs for reflection, so I still get to fill that need for myself.

I love it.

And then it's such a cool opportunity for Mike, too. I love just how you described not.

Just dumping all of your role and.

Whatever you couldn't figure out on him, because anyone would find that to be somewhat burdensome.

Even though if he's happy for the.

Move you're making, I just love the idea of freeing him at the same time that he steps into even more.

Responsibility and an expanded role.

Yeah, that's something that we're actually. Of course, we had a lot of conversations about, but I'm so excited about how that evolved because Mike has kind of full reins over Holstein and now can really guide the company to his own vision and to the opportunity that he sees. And it's been really cool in the conversation we've had recently. His vision is so beautiful for Holstein, so inclusive and so community driven. And me as a designer, I was always so product driven, product focused. And so it's cool to see how with this kind of change in leadership, the kind of evolution of the vision, and I can see now how the community's responding to it. And it's really cool to see how this new version of Holstein is beginning to blossom.

That's awesome. And congrats on the Apple incubator, too. That's awesome.

So exciting.

Thank you. Yeah, that was a really nice. Not that we need external validation, but sometimes it feels really good to have someone else point out, be like, oh, yeah, there's something special happening here.

Yeah.

So going back to the family unit.

The household perspective on this, it's hard.

Enough to run one business and to have one entrepreneur in the family, let alone two. Although we could say maybe it's much easier because you both have time, autonomy, and also ostensible freedom. How do you both juggle that, the two of you?

Again, I'll come back to this line.

That Jess sent to me about systems that help your family run smoothly. How do you reconcile if there's just any sense of Time conflict or. I mean, being a new parent is hard enough of just where you. Maybe you're both feeling tired or you're both feeling like you're not getting to put as much time as you want into the business or into home life. I'm curious to hear how you approach. Approach this, knowing that it's always a dynamic system that's evolving.

Yeah, a lot of trial and error in this space. You know, I think one of the biggest things is just making sure that the boundaries around our time are extra clear.

And we're big.

Google Calendar.

I was going to say we're big.

We're big nerds.

We're big nerds.

We're power users on Google Calendar. Yeah.

We each have our own color coding.

System and being really clear.

Okay, this is my time with Shiloh. This is your time with Shiloh, as well as this is my time to rest. This is your time to rest has been incredibly important because when we each also have our downtime and when we encourage one another to work out, or in my case, go to spinning classes.

That are Mamma Mia themed, which is my version of the fun workouts.

And they're so good here in Northern.

Europe, it's definitely a perk. It's all of the ABBA everywhere.

But I think we're really good at encouraging one another to take that time. We realize the importance that that downtime has, that regeneration time has for ourselves as parents, ourselves as partners, and ourselves as business owners. And so, yeah, definitely getting very comfortable with Google Calendar's different features and setting kind of recurring invites so that we don't need to reinvent the wheel at the beginning of every week has been really key.

Though I do have to note, it's kind of funny, like when we are visiting family and spending longer periods of time with them. It can also be funny because they see our systems and they're a bit like, you guys are nuts. It works for us. It's what allows us to kind of stay sane.

Yeah. And I can give it a kind of shedding more kind of detail into the types of things we're putting on the calendar. You know, of course we're the time we're with Shiloh, but also who's on dinner duty. We also have, you know, family dinner is blocked off every night, and we love to have dinner together, but then not having to guess last minute or ask in the morning, hey, who's cooking dinner? Or even who's kind of responsible for making sure that there's food for dinner at the beginning of the week. We have that on the calendar. So I know I'm cooking dinner three days a week, and Jess is cooking dinner a couple days a week. And then we kind of have a day where we both cook together or kind of trade off. So kind of having that clarity has also allowed to bring a lot more joy into the process. On the days that I know I'm cooking, then, you know, I think ahead, I think of something delicious I want to cook. I also don't need to ask Jess, like, hey, is this something you want to eat? It's my day to cook, so I can go nuts. And that's a lot of fun. I think kind of similar to in a business, when there's one person who's clearly responsible, it takes a lot of the guesswork out of it and allows that person to really take ownership over it. So it could be ownership over dinner, but it's also we have on our calendar who's on bath duty and who's on bedtime duty. And duty makes it sound like work. And I know some people could be bothered by the fact that caring for your child shouldn't feel like work. But I think coming to grips with the reality that this is a time commitment and an energy commitment allows us to help better allocate our own time and energy, and that's something that's very important for us. So the nights that I love joining for bedtime, so does Jess. So we're typically both there for bedtime and story time. But then if Shiloh is not really in the mood to go to sleep yet, well, we kind of know who the point person is because there's one person who's responsible for that evening. If I have an evening call, for example, with someone on the east coast or West Coast, I know I can still make my calendar available for those time slots. And Jess will be responsible for Shiloh.

Yeah. We also have, by the way, quarterly spa dates.

Oh, fabulous. Same morning.

We're trying to do date nights, but, yeah, we're not quite there on the recurring date nights.

But at the very least, we know that one day when Shiloh's at daycare, we're going to take the afternoon and go to the local spa and sauna.

We also have a weekly coffee morning. It's also we had one this morning to kind of prep for this conversation.

How fun.

And one thing we actually just added last week. So I hope this doesn't sound too.

Nerdy specific the better because I'm getting so many ideas. I love hearing what you've set up. So yeah, continue.

The last kind of thing that we time blocked and this is a recent addition was kind of a weekly one on one that's more logistical excited. So much of our conversations as a couple now is about logistics. Like oh, you know, can you do this? Can you pick up that? Have you heard from the plumber? Have you heard from this person? And there's just a growing list and typically, you know, it's an instant WhatsApp message that would otherwise break Jess's flow or break my flow. So the idea of having a container where we can list out all those things and then kind of plow through them together and have a conversation about them without eating up kind of that more meaningful one on one coffee where we're really just trying to enjoy each other's company to kind of deepen our relationship and kind of strengthen our own bond as a couple to have a separate meeting where we can talk strictly logistics. And if something comes up in the middle of the day, we just add up that list and we can address it once a week. So that also has been a nice addition.

Yeah.

And it gets captured somewhere so it doesn't just nickel around in your brain.

Right. And then spill into or infect the joyful moments.

Exactly.

I love it if they have a container. I've been thinking lately about so I've been watching Yellowstone corralling like they're always lassoing these animals. You know, I'm thinking about corralling things.

In our calendar and just putting them in their proper place. And I just love hearing all these.

Containers that you've created.

We'll be right back just after this.

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There's one book I've read called Life Admin that actually outlines how much life admin exists, but especially once you have a child and then together, I mean, there's all kinds of life admin. You have to check in on certain visa things and then there's tax time and then there's preschool or daycare or childcare for Shiloh. And there's just so much life admin that also needs to be handled as a couple. So it sounds like one container is that there's at least a logistics meeting.

That recurs that can free your energy and your time and your mind during your kind of couple times.

Do you have any other systems for just dealing with the annoying logistics of life?

I mean, definitely the documenting frequently done things. I think you talked about in the book the House Manual. And we used to be Airbnb hosts.

Actually, back in the early days of.

Airbnb, Dave and Mike's apartment in the East Village was one of the first New York listings.

I think maybe one of the first East Village listings.

One of the first East Village listings.

But yeah, in the Airbnb game for a while, especially in our 20s when we lived in New York. And so the idea of having a house manual came out like quite practically from there. But lately we've been adding to. We just got out of a heavy season of hosting friends and family visiting Amsterdam, and we updated it and really gave it an overhaul to also include our recommendations on things to do in the city and the kind of almost an onboarding. Like here are the first things you should do once you get into town. Like, first make sure that your SIM card works. If not, we have another SIM card to go rent a bike and go do it here.

We've kind of nailed the whole guests arriving and welcoming them into our world. Not that it's a task, but, you know, there are many tasks that could.

Come out of that beautiful hosting that can, you know, add up after a while. So definitely having all of that stuff documented, even down to a text message.

And hopefully our friends and family who have received this text message, don't get offended, but we do have a standard.

Text message that we send before someone arrives to kind of be like, hey.

We'Re so excited that you're coming.

Do you have any dietary preferences?

Like, you know, do you do coffee or tea for breakfast? You know, just to kind of like welcome them in. We started using the same.

That's amazing.

They probably feel so taken care of.

I bet they must compliment you on how the whole flow like you're giving them a true guest experience. Experience as if they're staying in a boutique hotel.

But that's true too, is like, you want to know, you're right, that something as seemingly simple as do you drink coffee or tea? Like even just, do you stay up late, do you wake up early? Like, I don't know, just understanding a few things that helps them settle in quickly and helps you have what they need. It's so smart.

And we usually end up having to remember it or talk about it at some point anyway. And so I just love hearing that Airbnb. I do think that being an Airbnb.

Host would teach a lot of systems.

Like a lot of this type of thing because, you know, you're repeating it over and over, so you're like, let's make this easier every subsequent guest. So, as you both know, permission is a big theme of the book and of the show.

If you could give, let's say, fellow.

Business owners and or parents permission to do something differently or drop something altogether, what would it be? And we can go in any order.

I would give, especially entrepreneurs who are new parents, the permission to accept where you are in your journey and realize that nothing's ever fixed and it's never too late to change course. It can be easy to get frustrated that you're not able to accomplish everything that you were in the quote unquote before times. So for me, so much of my journey has been about redefining what ambition and success means to me. And that's required enormous amounts of, of self compassion and self forgiveness and self love. So just that acceptance and know that this time is temporary.

That's such a huge one. Thank you, Jess. How about you, Dave?

As Jess was talking, I was thinking about something that I personally struggle with, but I also found so valuable is giving myself permission, especially in the morning, to do the things that I need to do to set myself up for success. And when I say success, I really mean mental wellness and physical wellness. And for me, that means taking time to go work out, taking time to journal. And the morning feels so time pressured often to quickly get to work. You know, we only have a limited amount of time today to get all the things we need to get done. And for a long time, I actually struggled to make time for those things, knowing how important they were for me and how much they helped me think clearer, how much they gave me energy. But despite knowing that, I still struggled to make that time and give myself permission to do it. So it was actually I was talking to a friend and she was saying, you love working out. Like, you know that working out makes you feel better, like, why aren't you going to do it? And I was like. She was like, most people don't like working out. You've got a gift. Like so that actually gave me permission. Shout out to Susan. That gave me permission to really make time for that in the morning, thinking about how important it was not just for me, but for the people I work with and the people in my family. For me to put my best foot forward, I first need to really do the things that I know set me up for success.

I love that Susan reflected that for.

You because I was just saying to someone the other day, why is it that something that makes us feel so good working out, we get such resistance to do it?

You know, it's like one of the weird things about being human. Something so good for us that still we all encounter that resistance sometimes.

I'll add a permission that everyone listening has permission to give yourself and or your business a haircut.

Kind of building on both of you.

But like accepting that in some seasons we don't have the capacity to do all the things and nor should we. So both of your examples have been so inspiring of just navigating your lives together as a couple, as parents and as entrepreneurs and business owners.

I just love hearing all your geeking out of systems and calendars. So thank you for sharing.

Let's give some links of where people can learn more and keep in touch. So, Jess, how about you first and then over to Dave.

I'm very grateful to you for holding space for all of the geeking out. We love it.

It's the best part.

Yeah.

So my baby, I think from a content perspective is my newsletter. So it's basically a vehicle for sharing the most creative, inspiring, thought provoking ideas related to sustainable business that I come across in my work. So if anyone listening is interested in how businesses can do better by people and the planet, you can sign up at Reconsider Co and you can also follow me on LinkedIn. Jessica Marathiradpravar. That's my main social channel at the moment.

Awesome. Thank you, Jess. You know what? Okay, Dave, hold your links for one second.

There was something, Jess, I forgot to.

Ask you about your belief that doing the right thing should be as easy as humanly possible. Can you just enlighten us? What do you mean by that?

Yeah, so unfortunately, I think the way that sustainability and social impact is positioned in the world is it often comes from a negative perspective, one that's more informed by risk and fear and obligation and responsibility. But I believe sustainability and social impact can really be a huge unlock for a new way of being that's way more regenerative, joyful and just all around better for everyone involved. It can be hard. It's a tricky journey and I think especially when we're thinking about our own day to day experiences, trying to become more conscious consumers, more sustainable in our day to day habits. There are so many bumps in the road and obstacles, obstacles in that journey. And so through my company, through Reconsidered and our consulting practice, we often work with companies who are trying to become more sustainable and our big goal with them is just to make the whole journey as easy as possible. And I would say that also free time principles play into this because there's so much inefficiency that's happening in these big corporations when it comes to their corporate social responsibility ESG journeys. And so we try to bring in that simplicity, that kind of ease that we hope and we trust that the journey can be like.

Beautifully said. Thank you. I love that line, even from a systems design perspective that we want to design the system so that doing the right thing, doing the thing that we value is as easy as humanly possible.

It's just so beautiful how you said it.

Thank you for that explainer. And Dave, where can we find you on the Internet?

Yes. If you are interested, if you're journal curious, if you want to start a practice, journaling practice to learn from your past and kind of chart your path ahead, you can check out Reflection app, the website's Reflection app. We're also on iOS, Android and Mac if you want to find us in the app stores. And if you're interested in joining a community to help you live a more meaningful life. And some products around that, check out Holstea.com and then if you want to connect with me personally, similar to Jess, I'm not really on the social platforms. You can find me on LinkedIn so you can search my name. Dave Radfavar.

Yeah, if I could just like shout out too.

The Reflection app was recently featured in.

The global Mac App Store.

It could be a little bit easier to find it these days because it's right there on the homepage and I'm very, very proud of David and the team.

That's so exciting. I hope you took a million screenshots.

Definitely. I still know podcasters who still experience a boost from being featured on the front page, so that's awesome.

Congratulations. I love that we can't really find either of you on social.

That's free time conversation for another I.

Feel like you gave us permission in free time also. I also, I mean, this is a kind of throwback, but I felt compelled to be on Twitter. For me, that was like the last social media channel I was on. And then at some point I was like, I don't want to be here. I don't feel better about myself. I'm not really making meaningful connections. So I was seeking them. And so free time gave me that kind of extra nudge. I was like, you know what? This isn't filling my cup.

I'm so glad. And it gives the permission right back to all of us and in this moment. And I know that's why, again, like permission, such a theme, because I honestly think we know the things that bring us joy. Sometimes you just need someone else to say, I stopped doing this and the world didn't end.

And I have found that so helpful.

When other people have said that or.

Modeled things like that for me. So I just love hearing how the book impacted both of you.

Thank you again for just kicking this whole thing off with your dense discovery mention. And Dave from you and Mike 12.

Years ago with the work you were doing at Holste was so inspiring to.

Me from the beginning.

So just a joy to be here with both of you. Thank you so much.

Thanks Jenny.

Thank you so much, Jenny.

Yay. Thanks for listening everybody.

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

Thank you.

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