How to Adapt Your Business Model When You're Living With Chronic Illness | Laura Reeves

Have you ever had to turn down work, cap how much you'll take on, or say no to growing or taking on more clients? Not because you didn't want it, it's because you knew exactly what it would cost you. Laura Reeves, our guest today, made that call over and over. While most of her competitors were showing 20 and 30 dogs a month, she capped hers at 10, and she didn't stop there. Because capping the work was the easiest part. The harder thing Laura did was decide years in advance exactly when she'd walk away from the whole business and actually build toward that date on purpose. Most of us don't even let ourselves think that far ahead. She did, and it changed everything and, and how she ran things. So in this episode, you're going to hear exactly how she did it. One, what capping the work actually looked like in real numbers month to month. Two, how she picked a retirement age years before she needed to technically have one, and what she did differently because of that one decision. And three, the strange thing that happened when 30 years of competing against other women in her field turned into something else entirely. If you've ever had to say no to growth because you knew the cost at the way you've done it before, this one is for you. Thank you for being here and stay tuned. And if you want to keep this conversation going, check out the show notes to join us inside of our free community. I'm Nikita Williams and this is Business with Chronic Illness. Stay tuned.

Are you tired of hearing business advice that completely ignores what real life looks like when you're navigating chronic illness? Autoimmune disorders, flare-ups, medical appointments, and just life— lifing. Business with Chronic Illness is for entrepreneurs who know they're capable of building something meaningful but need a way to do it that actually works with their body, not against it. This podcast brings you honest conversations with founders, CEOs, and other bosses sharing their strategies, adaptations, and lessons they've learned about building businesses alongside chronic illness, including what worked, what didn't, and what they wish they had done differently before burnout forced the lesson. I'm your host, Nikita Williams, a globally ranked podcast host and entrepreneur who's built my business while navigating chronic illness and helping others do the same without sacrificing themselves. I created this show to open up the conversations most business spaces avoid. The promise of Business with Chronic Illness is simple. To show you that you can build a thriving business with chronic illness and autoimmune disorders without sacrificing your health, your peace, or your profit. You're not behind. You're building differently, and you're in the right place.

Hey everybody, I am on with Laura today. I am so excited. Welcome, Miss Laura. Thank you for being here.

Welcome to me. Thank you for having me, Nikita. I really appreciate it. It's You know, I have my own podcast, so saying welcome is like, no, no, I'm supposed to say that.

No, I get it. It's, it's really weird when you're on the other side. It's totally weird. Well, I was so excited that you like raised your hand and was willing to come on and have a conversation with me about what it's like growing a business while caregiving and living with chronic illness. And what I'm especially excited to talk about with you too, is that you've been doing this a long time before the internet and before Like, not before the internet, but like before social media. I'm old, y'all. And I just think it adds so much perspective to where we are with things changing, because things are always going to be changing. But tell us a little bit about how you feel that your chronic illness has affected your approach to business. Let's start there.

Oh, wow. So I was originally diagnosed with Crohn's disease in 1997. So y'all do that math. And at the time, I had just quit working in marketing at a credit union and started a freelance business doing freelance marketing and freelance writing and stuff like that. And so I had all these plans and all these ambitions, and then I was diagnosed and I was in bed for, you know, 3 months. And when I finally kind of— anybody who's been diagnosed, you understand what I'm saying? You come out of that cocoon, you come out of that crash, and I found that I didn't have any clients left. And yeah, so I had grown up showing dogs. I know this sounds very strange to most of your listeners, but I showed dogs as a child.

Well, it may not be so strange because a lot of my listeners love animals, like a lot. I guess so. Like they're all animal lovers. I gotcha. So.

I'm here for you. I absolutely got your back. So, I showed dogs and I had just gotten a new dog and I, was showing my own dog and I just started taking on clients showing other people's dogs. I was a professional dog show handler. That was my job. And it had not been my intended job. I went to school, I get, you know, like I have a degree, like this is what I— but I found that I could travel to dog shows in my own motorhome so that I had a bathroom available at all times and a bed available at all times. And that was really important.

Yeah.

And so I was able to sort of create, curate, however you want to say it, a life for myself that enabled me to do a job that I liked, that I enjoyed, that I was good at, running my own business, which is 100% what dog handling is, very much a self-employed sort of deal. And, um, Yeah. So it was a thing. It was a journey.

So let me, let me like ask a clarifying question. So you said that when you woke up from the haze, and I think we all have known that there's different phases of that haze of being diagnosed with something and you didn't know you had something.

Just so you know, that first one's not the only one.

Yeah, absolutely. You said you woke up and you had, you didn't have clients. Were you already working?

Like, I had been doing, so I, let's see, 92, 94 is when I had left the credit union.

Okay.

So I'd been doing freelance marketing and freelance writing for several years at that point. And I was just, you know how it is, you got to start a business. You're growing it from the ground up. This is pre-internet, pre-social media, pre- anything kind of days and women entrepreneurs, it was just not a thing then. Like everybody went to work for the credit union and you stayed working for the credit union until you died. And that's what you did. And so it was hard. It was a struggle. I had been showing a few dogs, you know, during that in-between time. But it was, you know, I had lost all but one of my marketing and writing clients, and that client stuck with me, but you can't, you can't live on that one client. Yeah, it's not gonna work.

So were you showing dogs like on the side as a fun hobby kind of thing?

And I started off showing my family's dogs. My parents bred a breed called Clumber Spaniels. You guys can Google it. They look kind of like a Saint Bernard, you dropped a piano on it. They are long, low, and substantial. They are white And they have long white hair and they were developed as hunting dogs. They were flushing spaniels in England. And so I showed all of my family's dogs and, you know, I was still, I was kind of showing my own dog and doing the thing, but I hadn't, I had never intended to do it as a living. It's a hard living. It's very physically demanding, which is maybe counterintuitive to doing it with an autoimmune disease. Yeah.

I was going to say, how did that work out? How is that?

And it worked out pretty well for about 30 years because I was my own boss and I could do my own thing. And I could say, I'm only going to have, I'm only gonna show 10 dogs versus most of my competitors that were showing 20 or 30.

Okay.

Um, you know, and so, and I'm only gonna go 3 weekends a month instead of 4 weekends a month. I was able to accommodate my job to my situation. Yeah. With the knowledge from the beginning that I wasn't going to be able to do it forever. And so that's the transition. I knew that my body was not going to hold up to this into my 60s where a lot of my compatriots are still showing dogs. I am not.

Okay. I retire. So interesting. I, this is such an interesting thought to me because anytime I talk to people who like their hobby turns into their business because of their chronic illness, the opposite usually happens. I usually like clients come to me usually having had built their business completely not in alignment with their life living with chronic illness. And I'm like, how have you done it this long? I don't know how you've done it this long. Right. So what I'm hearing is that you really did intentionally design And how, and you, you were okay. I don't want to say, okay, I'll ask you this question. How did you feel about having to restrain or limit the amount you were doing? Did that create more stress on your situation? How did you counterbalance that?

So like many of us, you can understand I'm a little bit on the stubborn side.

Yes, we are. We are so stubborn.

Like, as I feel like as a community, stubbornness is like a requirement.

Yes. In a more positive— we are very determined.

Okay. Devoted, determined, committed.

You know, stubborn.

Stubborn. Yeah. So I would frequently overdo. That was particularly early on when I was, when I was just kind of getting my, if you will, sea legs under me with the concept of what I was dealing with, I would frequently overdo and then I'd be sick. And so I cycled a lot. And so keep in mind too, this has been almost 30 years, almost exactly 30 years I've been doing this. And so where I am today is not where I was then. And so sometimes thinking back to what it was like then, kind of makes you a little weepy because you're like, oh yeah, that kind of sucked.

Yeah.

And so, you know, I can remember, this is just one of my memories, gassing up my van in Washington, getting ready to go to a dog show. And I was so— the fatigue, you understand the fatigue? The fatigue was so bad, I would— I could barely clamp down on the gas handle. To, to run the gas pump. Like, that was exhausting.

Yeah.

And I just remember that level of exhaustion.

Yeah.

And I would— I had to drive a lot to go to my, to go to my events. And so I had a motorhome or a vehicle, you know, that I could sleep in, and I would drive until I couldn't drive anymore, and I'd find a rest area and I'd sleep for 10 minutes or 20 minutes or an hour or whatever it took, and then I keep going. Yeah, I always had kids that helped me. Young assistants helped me. I was fortunate. I had a lot of really good friends in the industry that would cover my backside when I needed it. Yeah, because you need support system in there. There were days that I would just, you know, I'd crash. Yeah, I remember. I can't tell you how many times just I can't get out of the motorhome. Y'all gonna have to go show the dogs.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, we are all here listening to this and we all are probably nodding our head and remembering a moment in our lives specifically, especially when you're just starting or you're trying to figure out like, how is this really affecting my body? How does it really look like when I overdo it? What does that mean when I overdo it? I mean, I'm, I haven't been doing it for 30 years, but I have been doing it for 20 and I still am constantly like, oh, well, this is an older body doing what I used to do. And that don't work now. Like there's A whole lot of— there's a lot.

That's a whole nother conversation.

Yeah, like it's a whole nother— like, I just did this last year or 5 years ago and this was not like this hard. And now it— but anyway, I hear what you're saying. I also hear like when I hear us talking about this, I also just like want to go back and tell Laura, I mean, like, you did it, girl, though. You did it, right?

Like, I did do it. And I think that if I, you know, one of your questions is, how is you, how have you coped or what? I'm like, you gotta just do it. And, and I explain this to people and, and sometimes they get a little grumpy with me because, you know, but I finally decided after I'd been laying in bed for 3 months that I had 2 choices. I could lay here until I died or I could get up.

Yeah.

And I got up and I'm not saying I did it all great.

Right. No, none of us are.

I, I, that was the decision that I had to come to. And I have continued to make that decision for 30 years.

Yeah.

And it is a decision, right? I love that you're saying it's a decision every day. To me, it's like love. Love is a decision. I think the idea that just love is just like this thing that flows or you got it and you just go until you know, no, it's a decision. It's, it's still a decision. And to your point about decisions. Other things happen in that affect those decisions, right? Like, so you are dealing with what you've got going on, then you have family. At some point, did other decisions like taking care of, you know, parents or friends or family come into the play on top of what you were already managing?

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. So I think we all know that the basis of autoimmune disease is genetic.

Yes.

So my father had lupus and died with complications from lupus. My mother had scleroderma and died with complications from scleroderma. They died almost exactly 3 years apart. Wow. Like, like practically to the day. And I had— life is life is life. Anyway, I had come back to my, not my hometown, but my Oregon, where I live. And my dad was living in Roseburg and my mom was living in Grants Pass. And I spent a lot of time shuttling back and forth between them, helping take care of them, eventually helping them transition into the next life. And, and a lot of other things that were really a lot, a lot, and a lot on my body and a lot on my various disease process and Yeah.

Yeah. We always talk about chronic illness. Like, I find it so frustrating when I hear people talk about chronic illness, like it's just a one-dimensional thing, right? Like, it's like, oh, it affects your sleep. It affects, you know, and I'm like, it amplifies all of the things that everybody else is going through. Like everything that we all have to go through.

Just times 10, right?

Like it just intensifies all of those things. And on top of that, you have to find some way to make money. Like you have to find some way to like support yourself. Like it's, it is, it is so, is so, you know, so diversely complicated and complex. So, and I, again, like I said, I'm—

I had 2 bad marriages that I got into just so I could have health insurance.

Oh goodness. Oh goodness.

Yeah.

So, oh goodness. Complications, complexity, right? And so how, while doing all of that, you know, part of the, the show and this particular approach we're taking this year is like looking at hindsight 2020. It's so much easier to look at hindsight 2020, even though it's still like, not cry about it, cry about it. What are some things that you think you are appreciative of that you did for yourself, or that you, you put space in for you that you look back now and be like, yeah, that was great. Or, you know, I would have did this differently because of this. You know what I mean?

So I'm really glad that I made the decision that I knew I was going to have to retire from handling because it is so physically demanding.

And okay.

I, it was just not gonna— I had the start of RA coming, so I've been diagnosed with multiple additional autoimmune issues since the first, and I, I just knew. And so I planned for it. And so I was— I'm, I am very glad today in the career that I'm doing today that I planned and made this decision on purpose instead of just flying by the seat of my pants. I'm really, really glad of about that?

It sounds like this is hard for chronic illness people. I think I like— and I don't say this like in the context of like, this is hard to make this decision. There is this like, there's this really fine line between acceptance and like resigning that this sucks. Like, yes, it sucks. Like giving up, right? There is that. There's a— there's this line that's in between like, this is my reality and I'm going to plan for it. I'm going to do what I can. I talk about this with, I don't know if you've ever listened to her show, but her name is Nikita Williams. And she talks about, we talk about this often where there is those of us who are on this line of like, we accept it. We plan for it. We go with the day with how sucky it is and how great it is at the same time. And then we keep going. And then there's that other line of, Some days we don't do that because I'm not going to sit here and say like, I'm every day I'm on this right side of this line because I'm not, right? But the majority is on the other side of this line of like planning. How have you done that? How have you done that?

So I don't know if this is the case for everybody. I don't spend a lot of time in autoimmune disease support groups. That's just not who I am. So I'm not sure if everybody is like this, but for me, what is my trigger is not work stress, it's not being busy, it is personal emotional stress. So my mom dying was bad. Anger, right? Anger at a situation, at the political thing or whatever it is, right? Anger is really, really, really, really bad. Rage, particularly bad. And so as someone who has a lot of passionate feelings about things.

Yes.

My times that I've been really, really ill over the course of time have been times that I have not taken the opportunity to de-escalate my own self. And, and I have had to learn that if I don't want this giant hoo-daddy in the middle of my head— was a, a lupus lesion that exploded— and hi, I make my living in front of a camera, this is really pretty. And it's because I had an anger thing and I didn't manage it and it got away from me and my body got away from me and So, and this is like last year. Okay. So it's not like y'all, like, like I got all good at this.

Yeah. Right. Yes. The process. Yes.

So my solution to most of these things, I am very blessed to live about an hour from the giant redwoods and the sequoias and the Oregon coast. And I recently felt another one of these situations building and I just threw everything down and said, I'm leaving, I'm going to the coast. And I went and I— Fruity Art Major alert, Fruity Art Major alert. I, um, I talked to my trees and I can't explain it, but physical contact with these 2,000-plus-year-old living beings, I cannot— like, buckles my knees. That is not an exaggeration. That is not a joke. It isn't even something I say out loud very often. It is, it is the, the sensation of like sucking poison out of your system. It's something I can't even really describe, but that is, that's basically what I've found works best.

That's your healing.

That is my healing.

That's your release. That's your healing. That's your center. That's beautiful. I think we all have, I think we all have something.

Everybody has something.

Everybody, you have to, right?

You have to make it, man. Yeah.

I say this often in my, I'm like, with my clients and on shows, I'm like, for me, it's my faith. You know, for me, it's faith. For me, it's the ocean. For me, like, you know—

So you go to the trees and then you go to the ocean.

Yeah, like, it's— and for me, it's my fur babies. And sometimes my fur babies don't do enough of that because they stressing me out. So I go to the ocean. Like, you know what I'm saying?

I usually take the dog with me to the ocean.

Right, right. So like, there is a—

Dogs, you know, here's the thing about pets, and we talk about it a lot on my podcast, the human-animal bond is real and it helps people live longer, better lives. That is just simply a fact. Now, there are days that I call my dog bad words because she has done something so foul I can't even discuss it.

You're so right. Oh my goodness.

So I'm not sure what part of that improving the human-animal bond that is when I'm calling her things I can't say on TV.

Uh-huh. Yes, I know what you mean, though. I know. It's amazing.

But it's real. You know, it's real. It is. I have my step tracker. And even on days that the weather's too gross or I feel terrible or whatever, I still get in the vast majority of what I should have for a step limit in a day simply putting the dogs in and out and feeding them and, you know, doing whatever needs to be done with them. They keep us moving. And that is what I will say. When I was like, that very first diagnosis was in November of 1997, and in December of that year, I had my first litter of puppies in my own house. Like I'd done it with my folks and stuff, cuz I breed dogs. Breeding dogs is a lot of work and it's very exhausting.

Oh yeah, I can't even imagine.

And this particular litter had some complications and at one point I went 72 hours without sleeping because I had to bottle feed 11 puppies. And when you have to bottle feed 11 puppies, you finish bottle feeding the 11th one and you start with the the first one all over again. Yeah.

Oh my goodness.

So, and you, you learn that these animals that need us, that need our involvement in their lives, who need us to eat and, and go outside and have a drink of water and get snuggled and whatever, That is the, when you say you have to get out of bed, even though the 50-pound bags of flour are definitely lying over your entire body, right? The fatigue.

Yes. Okay. Yes.

That you still have to get out of bed to do the thing. And so, you know, in that case it was 11 puppies that were going to die if I didn't get out of bed.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, I agree with you. I mean, I love my, I love my Zoe. I love my, we have a cat. We have, we used to have 2 cats, but now one of my cats and we're, every time he does something, I'm like, we have you because we love you. Right? Like we have to remember that. Right? Like we have to tell ourselves when they do this stuff that you're like, gosh, but we love them. And I can't even bring my heart to say that. He won't be here one day. Like, it's just a horrible thing to think about. And so the same thing with my Zoe, you know, fibro with fibro. There are times where I was like just coming from the hospital or something like that, and I'm taking care of my pets. It's the thing that makes you say you gotta move and you could almost like never move again, right? And it's, it is helpful, I think, And it's, I think we're designed in that way that they need us and we need them. I definitely feel like that.

That is absolutely scientific evidence of co-evolution. It's really fascinating. The co-evolution of people and dogs specifically, um, that they evolved together to meet each other intentionally.

So interesting. So I'd love to hear. In the seasons that we're talking about, like, as, like I mentioned, in the business world that you've kind of grown, how did you plan for that transition from like, I'm not going to be doing this forever, I can't do it forever, how do I plan for this doing it forever, along with like the stream of time has changed, like how we do business is so different than what we did in 1999 versus what we're doing now.

Like how's that?

It changes every day.

Like I'm trying to, I'm trying to learn how to do reels. I mean, come on, y'all. I am a dog handler. I am not— what is this? I need a 12-year-old. Can somebody recommend me a 12-year-old to come do my Insta Reels for me, please? Because I am sure I'm not doing it right. So yeah, I had set my mind that I was going to retire from handling at 50. That that just was when— that was my thing. That was what I was going to do. So I had started several years before that kind of thinking, talking to people, poking at ideas. I knew I wanted to do something in my space that I was in and in an educational type of concept and mentoring and stuff that was, was really a gaping hole at that point in time in our sport and in our community and in with the people. And so. I was writing a column for an online newsletter, online magazine kind of thing at the time, and, uh, started talking randomly at a dog show to some random person, and we just continued this conversation. Turns out she was a stunt coordinator in Hollywood who showed Norwegian Elkhounds, and she and I both were talking about different educational mentorship, you know, all this kind of stuff. And finally she said to me one day, she's like, I want you to host a podcast. And I'm like, what is a podcast?

I understand.

So I mean, 2015, 16, right?

Hey, that's about the same time I started. Yeah.

And, um, cause it was right after my mom had passed away. So I mean, there's a whole thing about the. Journeys and all of that. But this was right after my mom had passed away and I really needed a thing to put my head around, you know? And so I looked up the podcast. Now this, I'm not going to startle your audience, but when I looked up a podcast, the only thing I could find that wasn't like finance or tech or stuff that I thought was boring was the podcast Savage Love by Dan Savage. Who I had known in Seattle working at The Stranger and other underground newspaper rags. When he worked for an underground newspaper rag, I knew him. And so I saw that Savage Love had 500 episodes, and I didn't want to listen to any of them, but I saw that they were there, and I'm like, "Hell, if Dan Savage can do this, I can do this." I have— Wow.

Uh, yeah. Wow. You're like, well, if he—

look, serious, serious.

You had— we had a very similar realization of this. My husband said you should start a podcast. I said, I don't know what a podcast is. I looked it up. I saw these dudes do it. I'm like, if they could do it, I could do it. So let's do it.

Like, actually, exactly, 100%. Okay, so I'm not giving gay sex advice, but I'm saying Goodness. I'm just saying, I figured if Dan Savage could do it, I could do it too.

So, um, so you said yes. So she asked you to start?

She—

was it for her company? No, she created it.

We created it out of whole cloth. And I kept telling her that I didn't want to be the host. I, I— this is a face made for radio. And I had worked with a company doing self-guided audio driving tours for national parks and national forests, who was one of the top sound design companies in the country, maybe in the world. And he did trade show sound design for Nike and Nintendo and Coca-Cola and Motorola and, like, Fortune 500 companies. And he was very, very, very well known. And he had told me once, years before, working on some project I had requested, recorded something and he's like, don't ever do this again, you have a terrible voice. And so I—

No, he did not. Yes, he did.

Yes, he did. 100% did. And so I had that in my heart. And I mean, we could talk a whole another podcast about the things we carry in our heart from the people who say things to us that they shouldn't probably have said. Anyway, so I told Mary, I can't, I have a terrible voice.

I can't do this.

And anyway, she continued to encourage me and she finally flew from LA up to Southern Oregon, plopped down at my dining room table in my guest house with a mic and a pop filter, the same pop filter that you can see right here, and sat me down in front of the microphone and said, go. And she did a lot, you know, some really basic voice coaching and acting coaching and just little stuff, you know, that got me confident enough to do it. And it took forever. Our YouTube is so far behind everything else because I refuse to be on video. Like, I'm like, no, I'm— no, no, that's no. So I still kind of like struggle with it.

Well, Laura, you're not behind. You're not behind. I wouldn't say you're behind on the YouTube. I think a lot of— I feel like a lot of podcasters are like, do we have to? Yeah.

Like, audio is so great. You don't have to wear pants. It's fine.

I'm like, do I have to do that?

Like, I don't want to put a face on. I don't want to brush my hair.

Half the time when I'm doing solo episodes, I'm in bed. Like, what are you talking about? Like, you know, so I get it. But I love that you had a champion. This is what you sound like. You had a champion in your corner. It sounds also throughout your whole story, you've had some champions in your corner, like supporting you through this, right? Because we can't do this by ourselves.

Nobody can do it by themselves.

I have been—

my mom was my biggest champion. It's why losing her was such a blow. She had been my biggest cheerleader for my whole life, and, um, that was really hard. But I've had a lot of really good— I've been really lucky. I, I'm not gonna, not gonna lie about that. I've been very fortunate and not Not everyone who starts in business stays in business. Not everyone who starts in business stays in business without going bankrupt. And, you know, I'm like, I'm 30-plus years into self-employment, never been bankrupt, never lived under a bridge. Like, you know, I mean, there's a first time for everything, but I'm doing all right.

Well, I think you're— and living with a chronic illness, to me, like, I'm like, multiple, multiple chronic illnesses. Okay. We're not talking about one. None of us live with one. Like, that's not a real thing. And if you only have one, I'm sorry, statistically you will have another one. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry.

I just was diagnosed with RA and lupus about 2 years ago. So it's been a whole nother, whole nother journey because, you know, you're learning, right? Here's the thing, you get used to what you have to live with, right? Like, I'm used to the fact that I have to use the bathroom 6 16 times a day, and I wouldn't know what a solid bowel movement looked like if it bit me. Um, you know, I'm used to that. Like, I'm used to these— this level of criteria. I am not used to this level of criteria. Over— this level of criteria over here is unacceptable.

Yes.

So you have to go through the whole thing all over again.

Yeah. It's just what I call the OG phase. Like, this is the OG phase of chronic illness. You learn that you're always in a phase. Like, you're never just like, you're never not a newbie. You're never not like kind of in the middle. You're never like actually so know-it-all. You just don't. You just go. You just kind of going with the flow. You know what I'm saying? You're learning how to flow with it. But But I think those are aspects that makes us really good business owners because of this, I, this, this, this truth, right? Because we have to be able to flow with the changes. We have to be okay with figuring something new out.

Willing to stand up on your own two feet, willing to take chances.

Yeah.

All of the things that make us able to survive at some level are designed disease also make us able to be successful in a business setting. Determination. Did we talk about determination?

Yeah.

I mean, we talked commitment. I mean, so I'm saying, right?

Yeah. I would love to hear what you feel like when it comes to marketing in this day and age of like how we grow businesses and things like that. How does that feel? Different? And how does it feel different than you've— like, now, than it used to feel?

So marketing is still, at its core, at its essence, and it's very stripped-down basic. It's telling people your story. That's, that's all marketing is. How you tell your story, who you tell your story to, is still a basic truth. The words you use, the tone you use, the attitude you bring to it represents who you are as a business. So, so telling that story, okay, used to be you could only tell your story on the telephone with a wire that went to the wall or in person or in a, like a printed piece of something. Paper, newspaper, magazine. That's what you had.

Unless you were really, really, really, really, really richy rich and you could do TV infomercial.

Right. You could do TV or maybe radio. Okay.

Oh yeah.

Right. The last 25 years have exploded the opportunities, the channels, That's, that's not news to anybody unless of course you didn't exist before 2000.

Right, right, exactly.

25 years old, let me help you.

Yes, yes, yes.

And so it continues today, right? Like this whole concept of me trying to figure— like, I finally got Facebook figured out, now you want me to do Reels? Come on. Or, you know, like, why can't somebody just go do me a Tikki Tokki? Because I'm not doing a Tikki Tokki.

Do me a Tikki Tokki.

Not happening. So not happening.

Oh my gosh.

It's just not a thing.

Okay?

So help me to understand.

It's just— That's, that's one for the ages right there. Someone do me a Tikki Tokki. I won't tell my husband that, he's gonna die. Okay, okay. Oh, okay.

All I'm saying is some of us don't transition as well into the newest of the new media.

Right, right. Okay.

And so trying to do something, and that is, that is a struggle. But again, welcome to being someone who's been challenged their entire lives and having to figure it out. And so you do. I mean, like, what's the option? Get buried, get left behind, get whatever.

So I think you don't have to do everything. Like, I think that's a faux pas. I think everybody's trying to do all of the marketing, all of the things If anything I learned in my journey with chronic illness is that anytime I'm trying to do all of the recommendations that the doctors and the friends and the family and the Western medicine and the holistic, I'm in, I'm in trouble. Like I'm in trouble. I'm more tired than I need to be that I'm already can't help but be. And it's just too much. So for me, it's been a space of being like, I don't have to say yes to everything. I really do need to be super clear on where I can excel, even though it might be a challenge. How has that— like, what—

so drawing lines and boundaries, I mean, you know this, everybody listening knows this, is critical. So for me, again, again, this is my personal journey, busyness, doing stuff. Is not a stressor for me. It is when I'm, you know, I've got a bad situation with someone that I've been friends with that I'm going to have to take out of my life for whatever reason because their issues are now making me ill.

Okay.

That's taken me 2 years to get over that particular one.

Okay.

That's the kind of thing that I struggle struggling with learning or hiring somebody or figuring it out. No, I mean, I am a, I'm a huge fan of hiring trained professionals. Just going to say like, y'all trust me. It doesn't cost you that much. Hire a trained professional to do whatever it is. I have had a trained professional that does my audio production, a trained professional that does my website. Design, uh, train, you know, like this is a thing. And so I do believe that that is worthwhile. I, even if you're hiring someone to do a marketing plan for you on a commission basis, right? Like I'm doing that right now. Like I, I'm okay with the money I have. I could use more. So here's how we're going to do this. You bring in money, you get half of it. Figure out creative ways to get the professional help you need so that you aren't doing all of the things because you can't do all of the things. You just can't. That's basic self-employment, whether you're got a chronic illness or not. You can't. We are not good at everything. And I know very clearly the things that I am not good at.

Tikki Tokki is one of them. I'm gonna just— that's just gonna be the cutest thing ever. I need to put that on a t-shirt.

I don't know, I just— I can't get it. I don't get it, and I don't want to get it. I'm not gonna get it. So no, it's not a thing.

I appreciate it.

Anybody out there want to come do my Tikki Tokkis for me?

Excellent. Yes, yes. Like, I agree with you so much about Hiring help is not for people who are rich. Like, I mean, rich people do do it. Yes, obviously they know because they understand the, the, the most important part of their life that they cannot get back, which is time. Right. And we understand it. To me, time is, we can't get it back, but I can't also get my current capacity back either. Like capacity and energy.

Spoons. I talk about how many spoons you got. I don't have to do it all. I just— somebody out there got to get us somebody else's spoon.

Right. And I think we operate— I hear a lot of people trying to operate just focused on the revenue, return of revenue. And I think if you're living with chronic illness, you have two metrics that are equally important. It's the return of revenue and return of energy, like capacity, ability to do.

Return of revenue has to even come below that. Because if you're dead, you can't do the work.

So that part, I say this all the time. Exactly that part. So, and that includes if you're taking care of somebody, that includes if you're taking care of multiple somebodies, taking care of yourself is a whole thing. Then if you're taking care of somebody else, you have to structure your business around what you actually can do. And if you can't, you can't do it all. So you have to build a plan for having someone to do the things you can't do. With that being said, how does one, or how have you found doing, like, deciding, okay, well, this can wait and this is now?

The things that are now are the things that are structurally, fundamentally required. Like, the, the podcast has to go out every Monday and Wednesday, okay? Like, that has to happen. And that, that's the bottom line. If all I can do is crawl out of bed and drop a podcast twice a week, then that's all I can do and that's fine. And then the next one is recording the podcast, right? Like I have to have content. So, you know, booking people, getting people on air, getting people, right?

Okay.

So that's two. Those are two things that you can't not do if you're going to have a podcast.

Mm-hmm.

And so then after that. I, I am very fortunate. My producer came like at the beginning. Mary, the person who helped me start the podcast, had resources that found him. And so he's been there all along. And then his girlfriend, oh look, she happens to be a person that does websites.

Great.

Would you have me? So yeah, so it's, it has been like the, the website has been built. 100% from what Michelle has put into it. We're just going through a whole big overhaul. And so my, okay, it's another perfect example. I am not physically at a place where I can whelp puppies anymore. It's very devastating to me because it brings me a great deal of joy in my life. And so not being able to snuggle them and kiss them when they're 2.5 and 3 weeks old is really, really hard.

Oh my God. I can imagine.

But I also know that I will die if I chase 14 Wirehair Pointer puppies around my house at 8 weeks old going, bing! And yeah. So trying to still achieve a goal, which is breed this particular litter because it's very important. I have people who are looking for puppies and this is, a piece of a plan that I've had for 20 years, right?

Okay.

So that then you get to be creative and you find someone to work with you who will do some of the hard physical labor. So I am supervisory, right? Like I am the idea creator and the, and the putter togetherer. And, and you find someone who's willing, has a, uh, whatever, a dog in the fight. Yeah. Right. That, that's willing to and able to do some of the other pieces. And so that collaboration, it's, it's kind of interesting. I, I spent my entire life showing dogs, which is a career that is all about competition, um, and finding a way to transition your brain from constant competition to collaboration. It takes a little bit of work, but that, that is what has been the most important.

But you, but you're doing it and you have been doing it. You know, you have been, I feel like competition and collaboration are interesting. I'm sure you have very interesting thoughts about like how competition is different than collaboration, but in competition, there is a need for collaboration.

Yes and no. Um, in the way I did it, yes, absolutely.

Tell me, how, how, how so? How so would you say so?

So literally what we were talking about earlier, if I am get up in the morning in the motorhome and I can't do the dogs, I have to call someone and say, come help me. And so that was our own little family unit of people that were friends and kind of would help each other out. And we all had days. You know, good, good days and bad days. So yeah, it's collaboration, but when you're head to head, like, I want to win this group. And if you win this group, then I'm not winning this group. Right. So competition is, is a piece of it, but if you do it right, you understand that, okay, you won today. I'm going to win tomorrow. It'll be fine. And you go back to the collaboration.

Yes.

And, and where I see people fail in my industry. And I think in a lot of industries is they lose sight of that.

Yeah. You know, you bring up, that's a really good point. I'm glad we talked to, or talking about it because I do think in business, especially now, everybody does something that you do. Like there's, there's not a person under the sun that's doing something completely different than what you do. Like the only thing that's really different is how you treat people while you're doing it, in my opinion. Right. And I think that is what is what matters at the end of the day. And that's who wins the competition, right? Like, who's gonna win it? And so I think if we— and if we are all doing it, then we have multiple options and we are both served. Like, me making money serves you making money. You make— like, it's a—

like, in entrepreneurship, talk about this a lot. You, you asked, you know, who, who I admire, who I look up to. I work with constantly younger women that are doing something interesting in my, in my field. And I bring them on the podcast and I promote them and they, you know, most of them go on and have very successful businesses of their own.

Great.

Go for it.

Right.

Like that is my happy place. And, and I am, I just was talking to my attorney about a particular contract that I'm setting up with some, with a young woman that I want to encourage to do this project that she's doing. And my attorney's like, girl, you're not getting any money out of this. I'm like, yeah, it'll be all right. Because I'm not going to be here forever. None of us is, but I'm really not. So if I can't encourage these people to come up, there isn't going to be anybody behind me to do the things that I think are so important to have done. And have them done right.

Yeah.

With the values and hand care and kind of, you know, all the things, right? Do you feel that when you set out to do your own business, you have set out and you're still doing it. Do you feel like you have accomplished what you were wanting to accomplish in this journey so far?

Yeah. Yeah. I, I, when we started specifically Pure Dog Talk, that particular business, I saw a need, right? Like everybody, you start a business because you see a need. I saw a need for mentorship in my sport and in, in the community that I'm involved with. And mentorship and education were deeply lacking. And I have built a community and a product that provides those things 100%. And I get, I get, it's kind of, it's a little bit embarrassing sometimes. I get messages and texts or calls or people like accost me at the dog show. The only reason I'm breeding this breed that's more rare than giant pandas is because of your encouragement. You know, a breed that's going to go extinct if people don't breed it. The only reason she's doing it is because I encouraged her. Or I'm only here at this dog show because you gave me the confidence to do it. Or I changed my entire life because I decided I wanted to be involved in dogs because I listened to you, and now I live on a farm in Tennessee with my gay husband.

Right?

Like, whatever it is, I think that many of us who, who run our own businesses and the special niche of us that we're talking to today that are doing it with an autoimmune disease have a little bit of that, uh, I, I want to be a helper sort of person. And I believe that I have helped people in a way. I mean, when I was showing dogs, and it was fun, you know, I enjoyed it. And first, you know, my one client or whatever I was showing a dog for, I made their dream come true. You know, their dog got a best in show or their dog was a champion or whatever it was, but it was pretty fleeting and it was pretty individual specific.

This is a much larger opportunity to do a much larger And I love that you're doing it because you made a decision that you were going to plan a life where you could have the space and capacity to take care of you and what that looked like for you. And you didn't run away from it. You didn't give up on it. You just said, it's just going to look different and it's going to have to look like this for me to live the life I want to live. That's what I also just love too.

Yeah.

Like, that's awesome.

Those are real things. And I guess if I can, if I can say it, you know, encourage anybody, honey, honest, if I can do it, anybody can do it. It really is a thing. It doesn't have to, your, your truth doesn't have to look like mine, but it can look like yours.

Mm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So true. So true. You gotta embrace it as crappy as it can feel sometimes.

Yes. Well, um, can we once again discuss, I make my living in front of a camera and I've got like 4 hairs left, you know, to whatever medications. So yeah.

Well, I appreciate you coming on and sharing just your journey and your story and what you're doing. I mean, I don't know, like, I don't think I've had anyone on the show talking about like their business being showing dogs, talking about dogs.

It's a pretty niche opportunity, honey.

It's like so awesome. I love it. I appreciate you and I love that you are open to share it and you're open for people to hear about it. I just really appreciate it.

Everybody check out the Marty and Laura Show.

I was gonna say, please do, because as you guys know, I lost a kitty recently and I was just like, man, there's not enough resources out here for you to lose like a pet. And I, as an adult, it's a very different experience than as a child. And it really did. There's a couple episodes in there that I really appreciated. So definitely yes, go check it out. We'll have the link to everything in the show notes. Um, is there anything special coming up in this year that you want people to know about?

Oh, there's a couple of really cool things. We just added a kids corner. To— yep, The Marty and Laura Show. So there is a tab on the website where you can go and download a free coloring image, and if you pay $5, you can download a bunch more coloring images. And there will be a QR code that you can buy a whole coloring book. And it is a partnership with— because what do we do, right? Partnership with one of my patrons who's created coloring book drawings of every breed and now almost every group in the American Kennel Club.

Oh, wow. That's super cool. Yep. Oh, I love that. That's fun. I wanna color.

So you can go to the tab and download the Color Me Canine coloring page. And I'm telling you, for those of you who have not yet twigged to coloring as salvation, Coloring's fun. Yeah. And the images that she's drawn for the coloring book are so realistic. They're so beautiful. Like really, really beautiful.

Well, we'll have, we'll have all of that in the show notes so everybody can connect to it and everything. Anything you want people to know about starting a business with chronic illness that you feel like needs to be said before we close out?

Know that you can do it. Know that it might seem scary, and I know it seems scary to a lot of people, but to me, the scary thing was being stuck in bed for the rest of my life. That was terrifying to me.

Yeah. Well, thank you again. I appreciate you so much.

I did do it. I enjoyed it. It was good fun.

Yes, it was.

That's a wrap for this episode of Business with Chronic Illness. If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review. It helps more entrepreneurs living with chronic illness and autoimmune disorders find these conversations. You can check the show notes for links, resources, and ways to stay connected. And if you have a question or story you'd like to share, visit craftedtouthrive.com to leave a voice message for the podcast. I'd love to hear from you. Until next time, remember, you can build a thriving business without sacrificing your health, your peace, or your profit.