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I lead a thriving business while working 25-hours and being a mom and athlete.

In this podcast, I share how. I talk about the patterns I see in entrepreneurs who feel constantly overwhelmed & behind, and why I don’t think burnout is always about doing too much.

I also share specific things I’m doing right now to keep an empty schedule and focus on the things that move my business forward vs reacting to constant demands!

Key Takeaways

• Why being busy is keeping your business stuck
• There’s an invisible cost to trying to do everything by yourself
• How I delegate even before I feel ready (and why you should do it too)

 ___________________________________

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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Emily Hirsh:

People are going to demand time and energy from you and like the bigger the business you grow, the more actually that happens. It actually is your responsibility to draw the line and set the boundary of where your time and energy goes. Because what happens is you operate from a place of lack and scarcity. . So then you make decisions that you’re actually not aligned with.

Have to build in the buffer time for the unexpected, especially as a business owner and especially if you have a team. Because a big part of your job is jumping in where you maybe didn’t know you needed to jump in.

Embodied CEOs don’t chase trends. They pave the way they lead from within. Move by purpose, unshaken by noise. When you are the source, you do not need permission.

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I hope you guys are having an amazing week. I am feeling really great this week, really grounded, really centered. Shared a pretty vulnerable podcast yesterday. Recorded it yesterday, but came out a few days ago. And I, as always, appreciate the messages and the response and it’s always like you pour your heart out and you’re like, “I hope I make sense.”

Sometimes I feel like that. But yeah, I’ve had some really beautiful realizations lately, and I don’t know, I don’t know what it is. I think just a… You know when just puzzle pieces click? There’s an embodied, there’s an embodied understanding to something that is so much different than an understanding up here.

That’s where I’m at. I was having a conversation with a really great friend of mine today, and I was giving him advice and I’m like, “I don’t know if this helps. Here’s my advice.” And then I’m like, “Thank you so much. You just gave me an idea for a podcast,” because people need to hear this, what we were talking about.

So we were on the discussion of when you feel like you’re just responding to your life and your environment, like everybody needs something from you. You feel like it’s a race to the end of the day. You start the day and you have good intentions for what you’re gonna get done, and it constantly feels like you don’t have enough time.

A bunch of different people are asking things of you, whether that’s team or, coworkers if you have a job, or family and kids, all the things the demands. And every day you feel like you are not actually in charge of your reality and not actually in charge of your time. And then left with, “I’m not making progress.

I’m not getting things done. I don’t have… I’m not really living my life how I wanna live.” And I see this a lot in entrepreneurs, where they are wearing all the hats and they are doing all the things from marketing to sales to client delivery, and then also honestly personal ex- personal things like kids and house management and cleaning and cooking, all those things.

And as I was talking to this friend, I was like, for this situation, you can tell yourself…” ‘Cause I keep hearing this. It’s been a longtime friend, and so it’s this is a loop that happens, and it’s a story of “Once this is in place, then I won’t have that demand on my time and it’s gonna get better.”

But the reality is it’s always something It’s always going to be something like when you are somebody who is smart and an expert at what you do and good at what you do and, you provide value in the world, people are going to demand time and energy from you and responses from you and need things.

And like the bigger the business you grow, the more actually that happens. And it’s not their fault. It’s not oh, I need these people to leave me alone and stop asking these things of me and then I’ll be able to get my stuff done or then my day is going to go better. It actually is your responsibility to draw the line and set the boundary of where your time and energy goes.

And so as I was talking to this friend, I sent a voice message back and I was like, take or leave my advice. That’s what I say to my friends because I’m like, I don’t want to become a coach to my friends, but I can’t help myself but reflect things back and ask questions and challenge them instead of just being like, oh, it sucks, so take or leave my advice. But here’s what I think. I said, what would it look like if you operated from the energetic frequency? Like I’m going to get woo here. OK, what would it look like if you decided you made the decision? My time and energy is the most valuable thing in my life. My time and energy is the most valuable resource.

And I’m going to make that decision. And I’m going to like embody that decision and come from that place. It’s a frequency. It’s not a head decision. It’s an actual like state of being valuing yourself that much, valuing your time and energy. If you made that decision, then what would the actions be?

What would you start saying no to? Where would you have to go and get support? I think all those things then make sense. But when we come from a place of lack, that’s what I think it comes from. I think it comes from a place of either I don’t have enough money to pay for the support or I need to make the money or make the sales.

And so I have to say yes to everything. And so you’re coming at everything from a place of lack. You’re coming at everything in that sense from a place of I don’t have enough. And so I have to overextend myself and basically make decisions out of alignment because I don’t have enough. And so I said, what if you came from a place of your time and energy like you had that you made that decision and you showed up as that person at your time and energy is the number one most valuable resource.

Then what decisions would you make? Then you’d be able to go to someone and say, sorry, but no, I can’t take that on or. I need to hire help here. And as I was saying this, the reason I was like, “I gotta bring this to the podcast,” is because I see this in so many entrepreneurs where there is such a delay in getting support.

But yet I can tell you the most successful people I know, and I figured this out eight years ago, ’cause I used to be this person where I was doing everything and I was operating from a place of “I don’t have enough money to hire the help or delegate this, and so I’ll just do it.” It’s easy to play that narrative of “I’ll just do it.

I’ll just take it on. I’ll just do it. I don’t have… I- I’m in lack and I can’t afford this.” And so I see this with entrepreneurs, and at the same time when I observe my most successful friends, the most successful entrepreneurs I know, the seven, eight, nine-figure business owners, and I look back on the whole last, eight years of being in masterminds that I’m in and in communities with really successful entrepreneurs, hands down, every single one of them without exception is relentless with their time and with delegation.

And I forgot about this, but there was like a season where I figured this out in, in delegating things in my own home. And I wanna talk about that because I don’t think entrepreneurs understand the correlation of how much that can help your business. If you are a parent especially, you only have so much time.

And I know i’m talking about this and I’m like I forgot about the before, like how I was before. And I know there is… I know that there is an element of I have to be able to afford it, but you start with what you can afford and probably stretching yourself a little bit. But as a parent, you only have so much time.

You only have so much time in the day. That is true, right? That is actually a limited resource. Your time and energy is a limited resource. And if you can get support with either childcare or cleaning the house or cooking, doing the laundry, running the errands, like whatever you can outsource in your personal life, it’s not that you are just, sitting around with free time when you do that.

Most likely you’re freeing up capacity, both actual time capacity and mental capacity to put into your business. And when I figured this out, like I went crazy with getting help because I was like, “Oh my gosh, if I could set up my life where when I’m working I’m all in and I’m working, and then when I’m with my kids I get to be actually present with them and I’m not like trying to cook and clean and catch up laundry and like be working ’cause I’m behind, with my kids.”

And so for me, I built this up over time. Like we started… So when I started my business- very beginning before we could afford any help, I split the day with my husband. So I had four hours. I’d put my son down for a nap, he would work, and then when my son woke up from his nap, I was on until basically dinner.

that was at least the form of what worked for us at that time of how I could get focused time on my business. And then as soon as I could afford a nanny, that was the next thing I hired, is support in the house. I think my son was 18 months old. And did I have a lot of money then? No. My business was a year and a half in.

It w- I didn’t, but I immediately saw if I could take this time that I am with my son and have just a little bit of time back, and then you know what? I’m actually more present with the time I do have, even if it’s a little bit less of the actual hours, I’m more present because I was able to complete work.

For a long time, I only, I think what happened is we ended up getting a nanny and then my husband and I would work at the same time. I still would only have my nanny for a long time until 2:00 or 2:30, and I would stop working, and that worked for me for a while. Now today my nanny leaves at 4:30.

And so it’s evolved. It’s evolved over time. I think that only you can kinda answer what that ideal situation is and how much you work and how much you’re with your kids, and I know that there is guilt that sometimes can come with that. I get it. I think that parents, especially moms, you will essentially always carry with you the pull from both directions of at the same time, I feel it all the time.

I wanna work. I wanna be able to travel and speak and pursue this dream and pour myself into it, into something that is fully mine outside of my kids, and I wanna be with my kids all the time, and I wanna be present, and I wanna have experiences with them, and I wanna be with them as much as possible. And so that doesn’t really go away.

I think that you have to just find what’s aligned for you, and that, that could be different than what’s aligned for me. I have people in my mastermind who are like, “When my kids get home from school at 2:30, I wanna be done with my work. That is my dream.” And okay, great, build the life around that.

For me, my dream is actually get done with work at 2:00, 2:30, train and work out, and then be with my kids, a- and in this season of my life. And there’s… So there’s no right or wrong. But I am… I do think it’s important to see that the guilt will be there. And I think undoing the story, especially for women, undoing the story that you have to do everything, once you unlock that, you will never go back.

Cause it’s such a bullshit narrative. And I am telling you, my secret freaking weapon in my life… if you look at my life and you’re like, “How does she do it all?” It is my full-time nanny. I now have a full-time nanny, right? Built up to that. But I call her my wife, and she literally is like my wife because she does all the things that a wife would do: helping with my kids, she helps homeschool my kids, she does our laundry.

She… there’s two days a week that my kids are in farm school, so she’s actually at my house all day with no kids, and those are the days she’s doing organizing, she’s returning packages, she’s running errands for me, she’s doing laundry. She is genuinely like my wife. And I see in entrepreneurs too, like women, I see this in relationships where they want to turn their husband into a wife.

And I just came to realize men aren’t wired like us. They’re not wired to carry the mental load like we do. And I see women complain about it, and I’m like, “Honestly it’s what we’re great at.” I still carry a ton of mental load. I know all my kids’ sports schedules, I know the birthday party schedules, I know the appointments.

I know the deadlines. I know those things. My husband doesn’t know those things, and he’s a super involved dad in the way that he can naturally show up well. And I think we, we parent really well together. Anyways, I see a lot of entrepreneurs try to… they build resentment because they’re working, moms who are working and building their business while being a full-time mom without help.

And then they’re, they are mad that their husband isn’t carrying the weight of things that, in my opinion, n- naturally women are just… That, that’s what they’re good at. So my solution, hire a wife. Literally. I know that getting a full-time person is not accessible or doable for everybody, and that’s not what I’m trying to say here.

But my point is to really challenge you and say “What could I delegate in my life? What could I delegate in my life?” What I said to my friend. I sent another message and I was like, “If you had to operate from the place of your time and ener- the number one priority is your time and energy is the most valuable asset, and you could only spend time on things either only you can do or you want to do, and you had to do that for 30 days.

What would you have to change in your life?” Because what happens is you operate from a place of lack and scarcity. “I don’t have enough money. I can’t afford this yet. I’m not at that level yet. I don’t deserve this yet.” This place of lack. So then you make decisions that you’re actually not aligned with.

You start doing things in the business. You start building resentment for. You start not enjoying it. You start feeling that burnout. And it’s not because you’re burnt out of your business, it’s because you are doing things that are misaligned. And so when you are feeling th- that feeling of overwhelm resentment, frustration about how your days are going, about how your time is going, about how fast things are getting done.

It’s not a, an opportunity for you to be like, “This freaking sucks, and this is just my reality, and so this sucks.” It’s a, it’s an opportunity to go, “This is data. This is data, and this is feedback around what is misaligned in my life.” And guess what? You can change it. That’s the thing we always forget.

We have the power to change it. We are not victims to our environment and to our, situations. And if you stay in that mentality where you’re … If you’re even sitting here listening to this going Emily, I don’t have, the s- the multiple seven-figure business, so I can’t hire the full-time wife.”

No, you probably can’t hire full-time, but what help could you get? What is that little bit of stretch, that first step that you could get to change the reality of, okay, your time and energy is the number one resource, and you can only do things either only you can do or you like doing and you wanna do.

For me I want to finish my workday and be able to be present with my kids. I don’t wanna be doing laundry. I don’t wanna be cleaning my house because it’s a mess because no one’s cleaned it all day. I’m … Then I’m not even present with my kids. And so I quickly realized the more help that I had the higher the quality my life was and the higher the quality my time was with my kids.

So there’s this piece to it, and then the second piece is this: You have to create capacity in your life. I learned this recently. I have been really bad at this in … until this year maybe five months ago, is packing my schedule to the brim and going from thing to thing with no buffer room, with no white space, with constantly every single day too much to do, overcommitted, rushing from one thing to the next.

And I don’t know, I just made a shift. I just decided I am done rushing. I’m just gonna give myself extra time. I’m gonna give myself extra time. Right now I have to record this podcast, and in one hour like just over an hour, I have to start my run. And that’s plenty of time. This podcast will be 30 minutes, so now I have buffer time, and also I’m giving myself buffer time to go from finishing my workout to getting to soccer practice.

Just a little bit. Because just stopping being in that state of constantly rushing, never having enough time, rushing to the next thing, is exhausting, and- It is a decision I think high performers have to make because we don’t have a great perception of time. I have always thought I could do a lot more than I usually can, and I’m fast at doing things.

And so I just made that shift, and I think that’s another thing is you have to build in the buffer time for the unexpected, especially as a business owner and especially if you have a team. Because a big part of your job is jumping in where you maybe didn’t know you needed to jump in. Or something comes up and that’s the thing.

If something comes up and you’re already to the brim, and then something comes up, it’s gonna push you over the edge, and that’s when you start to have the, freak outs. And all of this has to be addressed to be able to get to the next level. That’s the thing. And so that was the thing I was trying to get to, and what I’m trying to get to in this podcast is it’s not once the external thing is in place.

It’s not once you have enough money to then hire that role. It’s not once you sell this many offers or once you get to six figures or seven figures or y- your kid is this age or your husband does this. Like, all those things are stories that are not facts. And you might even be listening to this and going Emily it is true that I can’t afford help.”

Okay. Is that really true? Can you really look at your life and say, what is a shift I could make?” Maybe it’s a trade. I don’t know. Maybe you trade somebody. Maybe you share support with another mom who’s building their business. Get creative. Instead of telling yourself the story, the black and white story of “There’s no other way to do this,” operate from the place of, ” My time and energy is the number one most important resource.”

And that is not a selfish thing to do. There are people who have a hard time with that, that think it’s selfish. It’s not, because if you were operating that way, and you were able to operate as if, valuing yourself that way, how would you show up for everybody else in your life? Your team, your family, your friends, your kids.

You’d show up better. So it’s not a selfish thing. So it actually should be, like, the number one priority. And as I was, talking to my friend, I realized this is something that separates very successful entrepreneurs from those who stay in the solopreneur just reacting to their day, allowing their environment to dictate their reality instead of taking charge of that.

Because when you show up from the energetic place of valuing yourself, valuing your time and energy, valuing what you bring to the world and going, “I am only gonna put my time into things only I can do-” Or I really wanna do and I’m aligned with. If you show up from that place, guess what the reflection back is?

It’s gonna reflect back like the big CEOs, right? That’s how they operate and people respect their time. And they don’t tolerate not respecting their time. And y- you’re the only one who can make that decision. You can’t be upset at people. You can’t be upset at your kids or your partner or your team or clients who are pulling you in all these directions and you’re like, “I just need them to stop.

I just need to leave them alone.” You are letting them do that. You have set the standard because deep down, you are not valuing your time and energy at the highest level. And if you are here to truly create an impact and live in the highest leverage place of your unique wisdom and experience and expertise, which I believe everyone has, when you are able to live in that place, the impact you can have and the, success and quality and depth of living that you can have is 100 times better.

But y- you have to make that decision. People are not demanding of you unless you let them. And a lot of times, like this looks like for me, I ignore a lot of stuff. I have text messages that are 10 days old that are sitting unread that I just haven’t been able to get to and, it’s not about the person, it’s just not a priority.

It’s not a priority yet for me. Maybe that’s, someone might think that’s rude, but it’s it’s not about them. It’s about the capacity that I have right now in my life. There are, a lot of times there’s team things that I let sit for a day. It’s I know that to that team member, this is the most important thing right now, but it’s not the most important thing and I know we’re gonna be okay if I get to this tomorrow, but if I put my energy over here, it’s gonna take from this thing.

And every day I am so ruthless with where my time and energy goes. And I don’t overpack my schedule anymore. And I operate from a place of knowing that the more value I place on my time and energy, the more value I can bring, the more creative and fulfilled and inspired I am. And I wanted to specifically bring in the personal life help because I have, I just haven’t talked about it in a long time, but I really do think it, it makes a direct impact on your business.

So thinking about those things that you could pay someone, $20 an hour. And if you spent that okay, how much would that cost you? Let’s say you did $20 an hour for five or 10 hours a week. Okay? Imagine getting five or 10 hours a week back for the cost of $20 an hour What could you do with that time?

You have to think that way. That is the way a strategic individual, a strategic entrepreneur thinks, is the leverage. And so right now you have to sit with what is it costing you? What is it costing you in that invisible cost to not have the support, to be trying to do everything, to be trying to be the one that’s holding everything together, that is not asking for support, that is not demanding support, and then valuing your time and energy like it is the, it is gold.

That is how you have to look at it. If you want to be the CEO of a seven-figure, eight-figure company, you have to start doing that now then those things come true. It’s not the other way around as much as we think. And something that you could do after listening to this episode is I want you to think about what I said to my friend, which is if I said to you, “You have to spend the next 30 days doing only either things only you can do or you like doing and you get joy out of doing and fulfillment,” what would you have to change in your life for that to become your reality?

And then I want you to think about, maybe make a list, like think about all the things that you have on your plate, that you’ve taken on that you don’t really want to, that you’ve allowed people to cross a boundary, to take your time, to take your energy because you can’t say no, because you feel bad or because you feel like it’s something you should do or you’re not asking for help or whatever the story is.

Make, take inventory of that and look at all the places in your day-to-day life. Look at the last few days. Just take inventory of today. Take inventory of yesterday. Where are all the places that you have allowed the external environment, people, messages, maybe even social media, like When we value our time, we scroll less. We put it into the highest leverage things because we are operating from that place of valuing our time and energy like it’s gold. Like life is not just happening to us. Your environment and your day should not just be dictating how you spend your time.

You’ve got to take charge of that. So take inventory of all the places that you’re allowing your environment and your external to dictate how you spend your time and energy. And if you wake up and you’re reacting, you wake up and you’re checking your email first thing and then your Slack and then you’re jumping over here and then someone calls you and then your friend asks you to do this and then your kids need you, like you’re just reacting.

You’re not in charge. You’re not in the driver’s seat. The beautiful thing is when you make the choice, you get to be in the driver’s seat. And if you catch yourself Going with the story of “Emily, I don’t have enough money in my business. I really don’t have enough money, Emily. I don’t have enough at the end of the month,” I want you to push a little bit and go, “Okay, how could I get creative?”

If I still had to fulfill that for 30 days I only did either what I could do or what I like doing, how do I get creative to accomplish that? ‘Cause you can. You gotta get creative. You gotta get resourceful. And also, there’s probably room where you could push it and you could go, “Okay, if I invested this much, what would it buy me back, and how could I get back the ROI?”

I see this with people’s marketing. It’s like they play the role of copywriter and tech VA and designer ’cause they’re coming from a place of lack. “I can’t afford marketing help. I can’t afford that.” And the winner is like… I just had a ca- a call with a client who was like, “I’m paying for speed.

I’m paying because you’ve already figured this out. I don’t wanna figure it out, and I know the value of that. This would take me months to do what you guys are gonna do in weeks.” And it’s somebody who’s already figured it out. They’ve already… They’re successful. That’s why they’re successful.

I’m telling you guys. There are so many people who are operating from a place of lack, scarcity, and fear. You gotta switch that, because guess what you’re gonna get if you operate from that place? More lack, more scarcity, more fear. You’ve gotta switch to operating from a place of abundance, of value, of alignment, whatever that means for you.

And I’m telling you, every single successful person, if you go look at how they’re running their life, this is what they’re doing. They’re ruthless with their time and energy. They delegate like it’s n- nobody’s business, and they’re unapologetic about it because you’ve figured it out. Once I figured this out…

I used to have all the feelings. I used to have the guilt. I used to have it all. Once I figured it out, I never went back. I’m like, “Let me give people as much as I possibly can,” because I know that then I get to put my time and energy into the best things and be the best version of myself. And also, I’ve hit a point where I’m like, “What is the point if I don’t, if I don’t enjoy my days and how I’m spending my time?”

All right, everybody. I hope this was helpful. Go take some action on it. seriously, take some action on it, and it’s just like that shift. You get to decide. It’s not your external that’s dictating your reality, ever. All right, guys. Talk to you next week.