The Ultimate Blog Podcast - 105. Having a Life While Building a Business with Suzanne Acteson

Episode Date: December 19, 2023

When you are building a business, it can seem hard to balance life and work. We had Suzanne Acteson on to share more about having a life while building a business. Suzanne is a business coach and she has created the life-first business model which helps to add in authenticity and joy into your life as an entrepreneur. We even chatted about the importance of nervous system regulation when building your business. This episode is one that you aren’t going to want to miss! Tune in as Suzanne helps you focus on life first!ConvertKit is the email marketing hub for creators like you. Check out our affiliate link for more information.Check out the show notes (link below) for more information including links and resources mentioned in today's episode!SHOW NOTES: www.sparkmediaconcepts.com/episode105

Welcome to the Ultimate Blog Podcast with Amy Reinecke and Jennifer Draper. We're on a mission to empower women who want to start or grow their own blog. This podcast is for women who want to learn blogging basics and who crave inspiration and encouragement. Whether you're just getting started or have been a blogger for years, we're excited to welcome you into this space where we are passionate about creating community over competition. We are bloggers who want to encourage you to believe in your potential, step outside the norm and step into a life where you create your own schedule, your own success and your own story. Join us for weekly episodes as we navigate blogging

and work from home life all while raising a family and having some serious fun along the way. all while raising a family and having some serious fun along the way. Today, we are going to have a really fun and interesting conversation, I think, here on the Ultimate Blog Podcast. We are talking to Suzanne Atkinson about her thought process of the life first grow model and how she coaches clients. And she loves helping women entrepreneurs create an outside-the-box solution to their business challenges and inspire them to step into their truth, power, and expansive thought leadership through her model, which is the Life First Business Model. We have had a really fun time just hearing more about this and are really excited to share this with you today.

So welcome to the Ultimate Blog Podcast, Suzanne. Thank you so much. It's really, really a pleasure to be here. I'm honored to be speaking to you both. And I can't wait to dive into this. Yeah, we are excited as well, because a lot of people listening are bloggers. And whether they're beginner bloggers, intermediate bloggers, I'm sure there's some advanced bloggers too, who have been doing it for several years. And we really do coach from a place of having a blog as a business. And as we know, businesses come with a little bit of stress.

And they come with a lot of finagling of schedules and time and what's important. That's why we brought you on today, quite honestly, is to share this idea of life first. And I think that that's something that many of us strive to do. That's a lot of us, how we got into entrepreneurship is we wanted to be more in control of our schedule. But what ends up happening is we fill that schedule because we are in control of it. And we say, Oh, I can do a little bit more. And oh, I think I can do this. And I can carve out some time for this. And before we know it, we might be working more than we were before when we worked for somebody else. And I would love for you to share your really courageous story with our listeners, Suzanne, because it was really inspiring to hear.

Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And you're exactly right. This is kind of how I created my business. I wanted more freedom. I wanted more flexibility. I wanted, and I'll tell you my story, and as I get into it, but one of the major catalysts to us making a massive change to our life was to have more time with our kids. And to not be like in my pencil skirt, like running in my heels down the, you know, what's it called on an airplane, you know, I'm almost missed my son's birthday once because I literally like shoes in my hand running and I traveled every single week. But I wanted that freedom. And then what happens as entrepreneurs, because we are programmed and conditioned through our lives to achieve and to do, and there's nothing wrong with achieving.

And that feels good to us. We get to a state in our entrepreneurial lives where we know no other mode. So I guess if I go back, I am Canadian. I'll explain the kind of country thing. I now live in the south of France. I'm visiting my parents in Canada right now as we record, but I do live in the south of France with my husband, who's English, and my three boys, who are Australian. So before we were in France, we lived in Australia for 20 years where I was a senior executive at an advertising agency, very male dominated industry. And I worked my way up to be pretty much the CEO, managing director by 35. And I loved it. I was like, you know, I was what's the

next rung on my ladder? Like I was always I've always been very ambitious. And I loved it. But I also came with a lot of sacrifice. I had this dream of actually creating my own business, this retail concept store that I had seen in the States, and on my travels, and I thought, this is what I'm going to do next. And so I dove in, had a lot of proving to do. And so I dove into that business, completely new industry, created this amazing business. And because I kind of felt like I needed to prove something, that's a whole other podcast in itself. because I kind of felt like I needed to prove something, that's a whole other podcast in itself. I wanted to do it by myself. And so I did everything. And

you know, in entrepreneurship, you wear all the hats, like literally, I was in a new industry, became a buyer, I was going to trade shows, buying products, I was selling online, I was learning, you know, every single hat. So I just completely jumped straight back into, you know, go mode and hustle. And it was the only mode that I knew how to operate in. So after three years, the business was doing really well, I was just about to kind of get into franchising the model and expanding. And I had my third son. And it was June in Australia. And it was winter, it's the opposite. And I remember my husband and I kind of for the first time, because my first two sons were born when I was in corporate. And I didn't really take much maternity leave, they gave me a little bit, but I jumped straight back into it. And for the first time with my son,

Charlie, I remember like lighting the fire and like actually pausing and going, I really liked this. Like this was the first time I'd kind of taken a breath and I realized how deeply burned out I was and how I had just been living and thriving and addicted to stress and anxiety. Because when you are stressed, you, you stressed, your body gets a cortisol hit and that actually feels good. And it's the only way that we know how to keep that feeling going is to keep going. So for this first time, I paused. And it was just in that month, that couple of months there where I paused that my husband and I started talking about this dream that we had always had. And that was to when we just got married, we were traveling around on, it was a bit

of a work trip for me, the Northern part of France. And we had been serial renovators and had renovated many houses. And we saw this like falling down French farmhouse back in 2006. We're like, oh my God, look at that. Imagine renovating that. The French, no one, none of the French renovate any of their homes because they know what a nightmare it can be. And it's all Americans and Canadians and, you know, English Anglophone people that go and buy these chip boxes, excuse my French, and try to renovate them. And so we said, we were like, let's maybe talk about doing

that. So that sparked our dream again. And within a couple of years, we had decided to pull the pin completely on both of our businesses. We packed our bags, put all of our belongings into a container that sat in the suburbs. We rented our home, which was a beautiful home as we rented it for an amount that we can live off of.

And we were on our travel adventure to France. That is incredible. And so courageous. I don't know if I could to France. That is incredible. And so courageous. I don't know if I could do that. That is incredible. Yeah. And the more you flex that courage muscle, the more you leap and you dream and you realize that, okay, the worst thing that could happen is not actually so bad, the better you get

at it. And I remember when I first started my business and left the agency, my banker, who I borrowed a quarter of a million dollars from, was like, well, the worst thing that happens is that you go back and get a job. And I was like, yeah, that actually doesn't sound like the worst thing. It's not like it's going to make me bankrupt. You've got to think about the worst case scenario. And our worst case scenario in going to France was, well, it doesn't work. It turns into a nightmare. We turn around in a year's time. We stack it up as an adventure. And surely it will be. And we come back.

The worst case was not so bad. So off we went to France. And kind of for the first time in my life, I had this blank slate or carte blanche, as they say in French. And this opportunity to just really reconnect with what mattered most. And I had forgotten, you know, both of us. It was our relationship, our kids, our family. We were both now in the Northern Hemisphere, so like near my husband's family in the UK

and my parents in Canada. And it just gave us that time to really reflect and then also start to really enjoy it and start doing things that we love doing. It was a complete privilege to have to not work for a little while. But as a, you know, I'm ambitious and I love to work and I have, I've got more ideas than I have time to do them. So I just actually a former client of mine asked me to start doing some work for her. And I was like, yes, it'll, you know, that'll keep me

going. And before you knew it, I was kind of like running for business and business coaching her. And so I realized that what I was doing was something that I could market and that I could actually do longer term. But what I also, so I just really reflected on some of the, not the issues, but some of the ways that I had gone wrong in my first business. And one of those was that I just wasn't living in my values. And I didn't know what my values were. So I kind of came back to my values and really grounded my new business in my values, which I, you know, live and die by now I make decisions on every single day.

One of them is travel and adventure. But when you live in your values, and you operate from that point of view, then everything is an offshoot of that. So I created this new business and I realized that when I was doing things and one of my values is joy and happiness and empathy, when I was living in that, and so what do you do to feel joy? Like I was out in my garden, going to the market every Thursday, you know, doing the little adventurous travels with my family. When I actually prioritized that first, my business seemed so easy

and opportunities dropped in my lap and clients came out of nowhere. And I was like, there's something, there really is something here. And I started helping other women kind of do the same and get it, what I say is, you know, get it the right way around. Get your, put your life first, which feels really counterintuitive. It sounds easy, but it's hard.

And so being in their back pocket, like as a coach, an inboxer, or having that really one-to-one kind of support, or even just, you know, some of my other programs that I have give you that support to remind you and keep reminding you and keep reminding you on a daily basis how to do that. Because it really does take reprogramming how to operate so that you don't feel guilty taking the day off. I don't work on a Wednesday.

There's no school on a Wednesday in France. I don't work on a Friday. I go to the market most Thursday mornings because the French markets are just amazing and that's why I'm there and that's where I want to be. And Thursday mornings because the French markets are just amazing. And that's why I'm there. And that's where I want to be. And I put everything else around it. I love gardening to an extreme extent.

And those are the things that I prioritize. And the more that you prioritize those things, the more true joy you actually feel. Because the frequency in your body, the vibration is like that of joy and gratitude and happiness. And there's no like fire frequency other than authenticity, which is like you living in your truth. So you can't, you can't fake it. You're, you're living your life. And then everything else comes off that. I want to talk about what people that are listening right now might be feeling. And that's this way that we're conditioned. Well, but I have this responsibility and that responsibility and I have

to make money and I have to do this and I have to do that. And there's just no way that I can let all these balls drop so that I can focus on these other things. And I think, you know, I think pretty much everybody's going to get to that point where they're rocking in the corner crying before they'll take a look at this, when the fact is, we could probably take a step back and start looking at it now, which is why we're talking today. But I think the other thing that scares people is, again, we're so conditioned for all these things that we have to do. We don't even know what we want to do. If I had all this time in front of me, I don't even know how I would spend it. What do I like to do? I think that's another thing that people are going to face.

So what would you say to somebody who's, even if you're not at that point where you're rocking in the corner crying yet, but you know, you want to maybe have a little bit of a different life and live a little bit differently. What are some things you can start thinking about now just to figure out if that's even something that excites you or, you know, to think about the things that bring you that joy. Yeah. So I would say that, and you're very right. Like, like what I've described is a very privileged situation where we had this blank slate and most of my clients come to me and don't have that. Most women, most people don't have that scenario. So what I teach is how to

do this with your busy schedule, with the kids hanging off your legs, you know, and with our existing lives as they are. And it takes a little bit of like learning that instead of like sitting at, so for example, if you sit at your desk, you know, in the morning, instead of just like plowing into your to-do list,

you actually, and so I have like a like a scheduling tool that I use where we actually look at how I want to feel in the week before I set my schedule. So I have this schedule called my soulful schedule. And this is very simple. This is one little tool. But I would think about what's going on in my life, I would think about how I'm feeling where I am in my cycle, I think about what's going on in my life. I would think about how I'm feeling where I am in my cycle. I tracked like what's going on with the moons outside for some people that's crazy, some people that's normal. So there's energy outside of us energy inside of me hormonally, like I'm coming in, I'm like late 40s. And so there's like a lot happening in my body. And so I touch in with my body and my mind and I say, okay,

like I'm feeling really good because I've just finished my period and I'm going into like my follicular phase and I'm ready. So I look at my actual schedule and I write that down. And on my schedule, I have, what do I need to do? And how do I need to be? And I then say, so when you think about how do I need to be, And I then say, so when you think about how do I need to be, you're like, okay, that's nice. But how do you actually do that? So I want to say, like, let's say I'm planning a speaking tour, or I'm, you know, I'm doing lots of creative writing, and I'm blogging. And, and I'm, you know, and I want to be in that kind of focus. I think, okay, what are the how do I want to feel this week, I want to feel excited, I want to feel motivated, I want to feel inspiring week I want to feel excited I want to feel motivated I want to feel inspiring I want to really inspire people this week because you know

that's how I want to feel so then you think about those those emotions and then you say how do I need to behave to feel those emotions okay so to feel excited I need to put on some music in the morning and dance with my kids or like send them out to school and have a little you know dance party by myself or get moving and go outside for like a 10 minute walk because I always feel better so it sounds really simple but it's actually a way to say then I schedule those things in so I say okay to feel excited or motivated or maybe it's like actually listening to a podcast that I really love or watching Mel Robbins on her story. It's like, okay, now I can do anything because I look like three minutes of Mel and then sit at my desk and I feel excited and motivated. Yes. Because,

and this is actually how you rewire your subconscious. So this is called embodying how you want to feel. So this is like a really micro level, right? Like, cause you're taking a little way you want to feel. So I also do this for, I scale that up and I take it from that micro on a weekly or a daily basis. And I literally, this takes so much intention, but with this schedule, I literally look at my schedule. I'm feeling like crap this morning. My kids driving me crazy but i still want to feel excited and motivated so what am i going to do to do that and that is actually when you get into it i don't want to you know lose your listeners but it actually is about nervous system regulation it's about regulating your nervous system at you know

which is what what's happening under the surface because if you are feeling really stressed and anxious and actually you just want to go i want to to burn my business down and I don't want to even sit at my desk and, and, and, and, and that's your body going into fight or flight. So that's your body's mechanism, your nervous system's way of going something's off. So if you then break it down to something really simple, how do I actually want to feel? Be really intentional about it. Write that thing down. That's how you can make

a change on a daily basis to how you are then feeling and how you're operating. And sometimes you have to do that like multiple times a day. When you scale that up, let's just give a quick little example. You're doing a launch and you're like, how do I actually want to feel during the launch? I write these things down. So there's a goal embodiment thing, you can say, I want to reach 10k. If I was reaching 10k a month, and how would I feel, then you start to actually embody those things now. How does a person who is making a quarter of a million dollars a year operate? Does she operate like I'm feeling right now walking in the corner? Or does she operate like she goes and makes herself a really nice coffee and she goes and takes a bath at two in the afternoon, even though she might only have 10 minutes or she you start to operate in the mode that you want to feel you embody how you want to

feel. So you can do that on a daily basis. You can do that for a launch, you can do that for your whole year. And you keep working at it and you keep working on it. And so then as you show up in your life, and you show up in your business, and it's not always easy. That's why having a mentor, having somebody like me being able to say, and you'd be on Voxer and go, okay, I'm feeling like crap and I really can't get out of it. You know, sometimes it's actually about just downing tools and not doing anything. So that's how I would start doing it on a very micro level.

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You said a couple things there. I wrote them down because I wanted to make sure that I said them back to you. One of the things was being intentional. to make sure that I said them back to you. One of the things was being intentional. And I think that our lives are so busy that we don't make the time to actually think about these things. We have lost sight of being intentional about the things that matter most to us,

or we've lost sight of what our values are. And so how can we be intentional about something that we actually don't even know what they are anymore? I think that that's a little bit where we're lost. I just think that's where society is in general right now, is that in order to have more, we have to do more. That is a lie that I think we've been told. And that if we want to make more money, if we want to go on more vacations, if we want to do X, Y, Z, then that means we have to work that much harder. And it does leave a lot of us very

burnt out and feeling like maybe this isn't all worth it. Maybe I don't want what I thought that I wanted. And so I think like reconnecting, like you've said, and asking yourself, like, what do you really want? And then going back to how you feel. And what I wrote down was we don't ask ourselves how we want to feel right now. Instead, we ask ourselves what needs to be done. When I start my day, I don't say, how do you want to feel today, Amy? I mean, that would be way better for me. Instead, I'm like, What has to get done today? And when you just say those two different things, as I was listening to you talk, Suzanne, honestly, just those two different thought processes, one feels a lot kinder than the other. One starts your day actually like checking in with

yourself, which I think especially if you're a mom listening, that's very hard to do. Because the mornings are busy, they're chaotic, they're hectic. And then, you know, working from home, then everybody leaves and then you're like, Oh, yeah, okay, now I can't. But why can't we start that intention prior? And why can't we bring our kids in on that process as well? Because when we heal ourselves, what we do in turn is help heal our kids. So I love that thought process about asking yourself how you want to feel. And I think that's huge. I think that so many of us could benefit from doing that. That really, I'm going to call it a simple exercise, but it's not simple at all, quite honestly.

It's super intentional. And it's purpose-based.based. What am I here for? What am I doing? And that whole, whether it's your values or your why or your mission, actually coming back to that. And so there's lots of different tools I give my clients that help them just write those things down and put them on their bulletin board and just revisit them. Those are the roots of who we are and what we're doing in our businesses. And everybody loses sight of it, you know, every so often. And just coming back to that is just it influences everything you do, and how you operate in your relationship, how you operate as a mother, how you operate with your family, it dictates how you're being as a human. So you've taken all these experiences you've had. And then you've also started working

with others who've been in similar situations and helping them kind of rearrange their lives to feel this way. And you've created something and it's called the life first growth model, which we talked about. Can you explain a little bit more about that and how that's helped you now that you are kind of living this life that you didn't even know was possible a few years ago? How has it helped you to reach the milestones that you wanted to reach? Yeah, so the life first growth model, like you said, is a model that I've created. It is research and science backed with, you know, so much neuro linguistic programming, you know, subconscious rewiring, like lots of lots of science. But then I've seen the client studies,

and I've seen the proof in not just my life, but many, you know, hundreds of clients to see how when you get it the right way around how it how it works. And, and it doesn't, it doesn't always actually take years, it can take just weeks and months. I had a client that I was working with in June, and I wrote down in my in my notebook, you know, we had a call together, and she wrote, I have $80 in my account. And she's a single mom, and she's lived in this like, cycle of survival, because she's literally in survival and like just making ends meet every single month. And she started figuring out and working together with me. And we unblock things that were blocking her and making her helper feel

more safe, earning more money, like that was a big thing. And these are things that we do at a, you know, for your nervous system. So there's some of the tools that I mentioned earlier, you know, around like scheduling, and that's very simple. But then there's, you know, the kind of help that I can, you know, give somebody at a nervous system level, which then changes how they are operating. So, but then together with that, I pair it with, you know, the strategy of how to build a business. And it's not just about like manifesting your way to six figures, you know, you do need a strategic plan. And without, you know, your goals set in place, you've got nowhere to aim figures. You know, you do need a strategic plan. And without, you know, your goals set in place, you've got nowhere to aim for. And without those foundational elements that, you know,

really understanding your why, your mission, you're, you're intimately understanding your, you know, ideal client, I'm sure you guys have done lots of stuff on that. Like, you don't know how she feels. So how can you talk to her if you don't have those foundations in place? You know, readjusting some of those things is the other half of the life first growth model, because you have to have that strategy. And you have to have, you know, the, there's kind of like six steps on the strategy side of things that I won't get into, but you have to have the strategy to go with how you're behaving and how you're operating. And together, those help you then, you know, set the goals, then reach the

goals, believe that they're possible. And that client went from, you know, in a very short period, you know, she was she had her first almost 20k month in like two months. And she's like, I cannot believe that this is even possible for my life. Like, and this is the thing that that drives the, you know, motivation for me, because this is somebody who had stopped dreaming. Like we, I like to sit with somebody at first and I'm like, what's your big dream? She's like, I don't know anymore. Like I really don't. She lives overseas as well. And she had stopped ever believing she could ever go and see like visit her family. She hadn't visited her family for four years. So we start to bring those like dreams back into her like line of sight.

And that's absolutely life changing, right? So we start with the micro being and the micro doing and it compounds itself to, you know, make you realize that anything you actually set your mind to is actually possible. And I've proven that to myself time and time again. I think that that's what makes you impactful is that you've done it. It's not just that you're coaching on it, but you've actually done it. Because I think it is scary when you're not in that space that you have that frame of mind and you're not being intentional in your business. And you feel overwhelmed all the time. You are burned out. Maybe you are at that point,

like we've said, you're in the corner, curled up like a baby and you feel like you got to shut everything down. I mean, you know how that feels. You've been there yourself. And so what would you say or what would you go back and say to yourself at that moment, if they're burned out? What do you say to that person who's at that point? What's the first step that you would tell them to take? Because I think that, one, it's self-awareness. Like, okay, you're burned out. And now it's time to be aware that this is actually where you are. But then two, a lot of times what happens when someone recognizes that is it's like they go into freeze. They don't know what to do next. So what would your encouragement be to somebody who is

maybe in that state who needs to have some rewiring and refocusing on what's important in their business? It's all about your nervous system. It really is. So if you've got high levels or even low-grade anxiety, we all live like this, like low-grade anxiety that we kind of just live and operate with. So anxiety, stress, burnout, whatever they might be, you're not sleeping. It's about nervous system dysregulation. And so you have to try to work to get your nervous system back into regulation. So don't worry about actually any of the to-do list. Of course, you're probably going to still want to do that, but you have to regulate your nervous system.

So if you are in, let's say your mode is normally to hustle. And so that's like a fight mode. I'm going to do this. I'm just going to actually do more. I'm going to stay up after the kids go to bed. I'm going to wake up early and I'm going to do, do, do. You're in fight mode. So what you would actually do for your nervous system, people would often think, oh, I need to like meditate. I need to do the opposite, but it's actually not to actually, you need to upregulate your, your nervous system. So you do things like you dance.

You put some loud music on and you dance. You go for a walk. You get actually, you push in the direction of what your nervous system is asking you to do, which is fight. And so go and move that energy. So you move the energy through your body. There's like shaking exercises that are really powerful. So let's say you're in shutdown and you're like catatonic and you're like, I just don't know what to do next. I really, I'm frozen. So you go the other way, then you actually want to downregulate. So you would do some breath work. So some breath work can be activated. So like some shallow breath work, not like the really activating gets you hot body kind of stuff. You meditate, you try to find some quiet, you go for a slow walk, like you're not going out there for a run to pound it out.

quiet. You go for a slow walk, like you're not going out there for a run to pound it out. You have to, and go online, like this is the stuff I teach. I have programs that do this as well, but you know, free resource, go online and look, learn about what you need to do for your nervous system to up or down regulate, depending on which camp you're in. There are things that we do in our businesses on a daily basis that you don't actually really probably realize are nervous system dysregulation. So procrastinating, self-sabotage, perfectionism, the overworking thing and the hustling is one. All of those things point to usually a nervous system dysregulation. So I would definitely start with that. I think that's great advice. I have a podcast myself, and I've had multiple people on

talking about nervous system regulation. And it's interesting. Those are some of my most listened to episodes. Because I think a lot of us are just trying to figure out how to do that. This is the thing that we're hearing more and more about. And I'm very thankful for that to understand that you're not broken, but that there truly is like your body is speaking to you. And if you lean in and listen to what it's trying to say, then we can come out of it. It's when we kind of say, just be quiet. No, no,

I don't actually feel that way. Let's not actually think about how I feel. And we try to shut it out, that that's when we get to a point that it feels unmanageable. And then we can't heal from it. And we can't do the things in our life that we're meant to do when we aren't in a state to welcome it into our life or even take care of it if we were to receive it. Yeah, 100%. And so it's, I find it really powerful to combine this with the business coaching, like because it's a space where we're so alone as entrepreneurs, and we come out of corporate, where there's somebody there, your boss or whoever people telling you you've done a good job, you deliver a project, you feel good about things. And then you sit there in your entrepreneurship,

in entrepreneur land, and you're like, there's nobody telling you you're doing a good job. There's no one giving you advice. There's no one, you know, you're the one that's self-motivating yourself on a daily basis. Plus, you know, playing all the mind games that our minds do and telling ourselves

and thinking about what the mothers are thinking about us at the school drop-off or whatever, like all the things. So we need community, we need women like yourselves, bringing people together in blogging communities, you know, memberships, we need that as women, because that is how we are. It's how we're designed and how we that's how we need to be and how we need to be operating. And I feel like so often we feel like we need permission to be able to make these changes from someone. And I know we've touched on a few of these things, but can we just talk about maybe some of the biggest mistakes that women make when they are trying to do all of this? And what are some encouragements or permissions that you

could help them change their mindset so that they feel like they can make these, at least start to make these changes to feel better on a day-to-day basis? Yeah, I think like we talked about at the beginning, it's about actually just starting small and trying not to get overwhelmed because there is such a gamut of things that you could do both in how you can operate and also do strategically on your business. So it's about like just trying to really stay simple. Like if there's anything that France, living in France has taught me just holistically is about like simplicity, like the simplicity of strategy. Like I love a simple strategy because it's just easy to execute. It's sustainable.

I had a big, biggish team and I was like, this is not simple. I don't really love managing 10 people and I actually broke it down and I have like two resources now and I'm 10 times more profitable than I was with 10 people. And what's more enjoyable to resources that I love and that are on my team and, and are just a part of my day to day, then managing 10 people to try to output more. And so like, keep it simple. And then I think so often, there's also this like, fix it culture also of like, shiny object syndrome, like, what's the thing that's going to fix? What coach is going to fix me? What program is going to make me the money faster? Throw that all out the window.

It's not happening. You know, yeah, there's success stories that people are like, I earned six figures in six months, whatever. Take those out as an anomaly. Like there is also Oprah. She's an anomaly, right? Let's just assume that like it takes longevity.

You're in this for the long game. So keep it simple, break it down, try to not get overwhelmed in all that you're doing and, and just keep at it. And that's why, that's why it's just, it's just so important to pair the two things together. So that, you know, you understand why you're doing this. You're not losing connection with the reason why you started it in the first place. I think that's a powerful, powerful thought to end on is, today, I want your exercise to be to reconnect with your why and ask yourself, are you living in alignment with your why? And Suzanne, you have given... This has been an incredible episode. I

absolutely love what you've talked about. It's given me as a business owner a lot to think about. I hope that people feel the same way. I think that they will listening to it, for sure. And I don't think I've ever really thought of it... I mean, you're kind of a genius, in my opinion, to combine the business coaching with the nervous system regulation. But those 2 things work hand in hand together. And when we recognize that as business owners, that that's a really powerful way to show up for ourselves and for our business, then I think that the world is our oyster. We can change things. And also we can change the environment that we live in. We can change the way that our kids, the way that our husband, our spouse feels about their own work too. And I think that that's a really powerful gift

that we can give those around us who we love and care for. So thank you for shedding some light on this. Will you please let people know how they can connect with you? Sure. So I have my own podcast where I talk at length about this. It's called Zero Wasted Days. So Zero Wasted Days is as it is described, it's about really redefining how you do business so that it is the business is the means to living life first. And so I've had some incredible guests on that podcast. I just launched it this year. I also have a range of programs from like self-paced, I have a membership, which again, like, you know, if you think about like how you can create programs that are going to help you like be in alignment with who you are, like how you want to show up,

my membership is a voice channel only membership. So it helps, you know, helps me be able to show up for it. It helps busy moms be able to get one on one coaching with me, but on the go. And it's not about showing up in a, you know, community. Sometimes we have little, you know, zoom calls or things like that. But that's an about showing up in a community. Sometimes we have little Zoom calls or things like that. But that's an example of a program that I've created that suits me, but also suits my clients and isn't necessarily the model or the mold. And so there's a membership, there's a mastermind, there's my one-on-one private coaching. Everything is Facebook, Instagram. My website is all at Suzanne Axison. I will send you guys, I have a couple of free

resources that could be really interesting. I have a planning document called the Almanac. So it helps you plan your business out like a farmer's almanac for your business. And then I also have my model kind of explained in more detail with some other like free masterclasses. If you are in that kind of hustle mode, and it's called the Unhustle Masterclass. And those are all free. So I can send you guys some, those links and you can put them in the show notes as well. Fantastic. Yes,

we will definitely put those in the show notes. I will be watching them myself. So I do hang out a lot on Instagram. I love Instagram. So that's my channel of choice. If you want to connect with me, I'm like, I love my community and I will come and talk to you when you're in the

GM's. I'm not trying to sell you anything, but I'll come and talk to you in the DMs. I'm not trying to sell you anything, but I'll come and talk to you. I just love IG. I just love telling the story. I love it. I love that you have a heart to serve. So thank you so much for being here today. This was awesome. Thank you both for having me. Thank you. Thanks so much for tuning in today. If you'd like to continue the conversation about blogging with us, please find us on Instagram at Spark Media Concepts. You can also sign up for our weekly newsletter where we share blogging tips and inspiration. You can sign up by finding the link in the show notes. For those of you who are ready for the next step and want to start your own blog, join the waitlist for the

Ultimate Blog Bootcamp. The link to join the waitlist is also in the show notes. Go out and make today a great day.