Working Light: The secret to a happier business
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Episode Summary:
Hi friends, many of you know I recently went on a 10-day international vacation as a single mama with two littles and I've been asked so many times how I did it – how do I balance work and life? I have this concept I call working light. In my Sell with Heart mastermind, my clients fill out a document that helps them scale their business that's called Take a Break, and I realized I've never really talked about this on the show, so I'm so excited to introduce this topic. At the beginning, after leaving my full time job and then through divorce, I created this business model out of survival, but I hope that you take it on just because it's useful. I'm going to talk about two different types of time you can take off in your business and, again, introduce this concept of working light and advocate on why it's so important to master this concept of working light and how I feel like it's really transformed not just how I'm able to take vacations and breaks, but also how I'm able to feel consistently positive about my work in general. I’m sharing a journal prompt toward the end of the episode, and I’d love to hear what you write and coach you through any blocks that come up. I can’t wait to hear from you!
Topics Discussed:
The two types of breaks that you can take in your business – 100% unplugged and partial breaks
Why Anna believes working lightly is one of the most utilized tools in business
Breaking from black or white thinking in life and business
Crafting boundaries and policies in your business that allow you to over deliver without burnout
How restrictive work hours can help you be more productive
Creating a business that you don’t feel like you need a break from
How Anna helps her clients plan for taking a break via scaling their businesses
Episode Resources:
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Anna (00:00.418)
Hi friends, many of you know I recently went on a 10-day international vacation as a single mama with two littles and I've been asked so many times how, how did I do this? And I actually did a whole podcast episode with my dear friend Stephanie who helped me plan my Ireland trip and I share more about this mindset but I've been getting a lot of specific questions around how I balance work and life. And
I have this concept I call working light. I actually introduced this to my mastermind ladies. They have a document they fill out that helps them scale their business that's called Take a Break. And I realized I've never really talked about this a ton to you guys. And so I'm so excited to introduce this topic because since the start, I feel like because I started my business when I was on maternity leave, when I had a newborn.
I've always kind of embraced this concept and made my business so that I could always put it on the back burner. But I realize, fortunately, not a lot of you were put in this situation. So I really feel like I've kind of made this business model out of survival, but I hope that you take it on just because it's useful, right? I think I'm going to talk about two different types of time you can take off in your business and just again introduce this concept of working light and almost try to...
sell it to you or advocate to you why it's so important to master this concept of working light and how I feel like it's really transformed, not just how I'm able to take vacations and breaks, but also how I'm able to feel with my work in general. And I would love to hear your feedback on this because again, I don't think this is a concept I ever talked to you guys about. And so I want to hear from you what you guys think.
Okay, so in my opinion, there's two types of taking breaks in your business, right? Type one is you're 100% off, right? You're in the hospital or you are in maternity and you have a newborn baby. For sure, when I had a newborn baby, I took a few weeks of being unplugged, right? I've shared before that during my divorce, I went to Tennessee and took a week literally off the grid to inpatient.
Anna (02:18.23)
therapy, they literally take away your cell phone. And it was very nice, right? Like there are times when it is totally fine and great to be off the grid 100%. Right. But there are pros and cons to doing this, right? When you go 100% out of anything in your life or business, you just have to do a lot of prep work for it and you have to really adjust. Right. So let's talk about that more in a second.
But type two is what I call working light, right? This means you are working maybe 30 minutes a day, you are checking in with your team, you are answering client emails, maybe you post a social media story. If you do that, you guys know that often on my vacations or even honestly in life, I'll take videos and photos throughout the day, but then I'll just post them later, not in real time. I'll either like upload them to my drive or just share them on my stories at the end of the day, right?
But otherwise, the other 23 and a half hours of the day, you fully unplug. And I really feel like the second mode of working, working light, is so underutilized. Number one, you really don't have to do as much prep. And I use this not just when I do vacations, but also once I take a week every single month in my business light, either on vacation or just working light.
But I really go into this lower, lower gear mode. Anyone else learn stick shift for their first car? I did. I don't know why I decided. Why, why, why did we do it? It's because the car I was gifted with stick shift. But I really feel like getting, you know, I feel like in life and business, a lot of times we have very black and white thinking, one or the other. We're either like,
working so hard that we like burn our brains out or we're completely unplugged and not thinking about work at all. You know, it was just so ironic to me. I had so many people ask me after I got back from my 10 day Ireland trip, like, how are you doing going back to normal life? Normal life, you know, it's normal to have like a little bit of sadness or depression when you come back and, you know, totally get how that could be the case for many people. But for me, I didn't experience that at all.
Anna (04:31.242)
You know, number one, I'm a creature of habit and I like my routine, even though I'm an Enneagram seven, like I love being home in my bed. I love being home in my sheets. I love my workout classes, right? Like I love my little life routine I have going on over here. But I also think it is this that I talked about that I never really stopped working when I was away. I just put it into really low gear. And so when I came back to work, it wasn't this like shock to my system.
And I think we think in order to rest or take a break, we have to like fully unplug. But for just for me personally, that just doesn't resonate with me. The other pro of doing, you might think like, oh my gosh, you know, you took a 10 day vacation, but you were working every day for 30 minutes. I also don't think you realize that my life is basically a light vacation, okay? During my normal work week, I am doing all sorts of personal stuff, right? I go social dancing with my friends. Like I take dance classes. I...
go do my fitness class in the middle of the day, I take Pilates, right? Like I do personal errands and chores. I do my personal budgeting. I go to Target. Like I let a lot of my life come into my work week, right? And so for me, that just really works and it feels like balance. Maybe it isn't for everyone, but I really, really enjoy it. Okay, so I wanna talk about some more nitty gritties of this, but again, this is the time I've had this.
first time I've had this conversation with you, I wanna hear from you and hear if you guys have any specific questions about this. And I can even do like a follow-up podcast episode. So what I noticed is the times where I have felt like I took more of like an official break from my business. It just felt like number one, I had to do so much work to prep my clients, to prep my team, right? To prep, you know, do a social media post. I'm taking time off, right? Like...
No one cares. No one cares and no one notices, right? Like think about it for a minute. Like for me, the times that I check in with my clients, right? Like I'm doing like little quick check-ins, it's taking me 10 minutes, 20 minutes. Like, and part of the problem is you haven't created good boundaries and policies in your business to where you can go into low gear mode, right? A lot of times when I start working with clients, I look at some of their boundaries and policies in their business and I'm like, what are you even doing?
Anna (06:51.914)
right from a place of love. I think we forget that we're not emergency service providers. And so we tell people like, I'll respond to you within four hours or something. Right? For me, my response time is I'll respond within 48 hours on weekdays. Ask any of my clients, do I sometimes respond on weekends? Yes, I do. Do I, do I always respond within like basically 24 hours? Yes, I do. But I really think we need to set ourselves up to like over deliver there.
Again, like I didn't have to change my client response time. I did let my clients know like, hey, I'll be an international in case there's any glitches or whatever. But really, I still responded within 48 hours, right? Like even with time zone changes, even with whatever. And I just think not, I don't just do that when I'm traveling or international. I just do that in my everyday life, right? And I think it's just making sure that you are making your business.
When you make your business doable for everyday life, it's also doable for vacation, I guess is what I'm saying. So anyway, people don't care. People don't notice, right? You're just checking in with them, you know, on your normal cadence. And what I find for me and what I find for some of my clients that I help them transition to this sort of lifestyle is that they are so much more productive, right? For me, like today, by the way, I teach bar class.
fitness as basically like a little hobby for myself, right? But I have to go right after I meet with my OBM after I record this podcast. And for me, that's great motivation because I'm like, oh, I got to do XYZ. I have my list. I'm super efficient and I got to get ready to go to my bar class, right? Having constricted work hours, not just during vacation, but during your normal life helps you be more productive, right? Okay. Um,
Another thing I wanted to talk about was just this concept of creating work that you don't need a break from and a life you don't need a break from, right? I did a whole podcast episode called Healthy Escapes, where I really talk about the importance of having things that give you so much joy in your life so that you're bringing that positive energy into your business. But I think
Anna (09:10.262)
vice versa, right? Are you enjoying, of course, every business is gonna have parts of it that are challenging, but are you enjoying the day to day of your business enough where you're not needing a huge vacation or escape from it? Right, for me, working 30 minutes a day on my vacation, I really enjoyed. Like I enjoy connecting with my clients. I enjoy helping out. I enjoy coaching. And this isn't to like guilt or shame anyone.
But this is just to say analyzing what you do in your business every day. Do you enjoy it? Like number two questions. Number one, do you enjoy the type of work you're doing? Right? For me as a coach, I really like coaching. Like I really like the art and science and craft of coaching. I kind of nerd out about it and I enjoy it. Whatever you are in your business, whether you're a website designer or an OVM, right? Or do you enjoy what you do?
There is no antidote for not loving that. I'm not saying you're going to love every single part of your business every single part of the day, but that sure makes it a lot easier. There are so many coaches out there that have started coaching businesses to make money, but don't actually enjoy coaching. That is not going to work for you long term.
right? And I'm not saying don't go after the money because 100% when I started my business when my babies were born, it really was a money move in a lot of ways because I was like, I've got to figure out a way to be more present with my littles. I think somewhere inside I probably knew that change was afoot. And so
I'm not saying don't make money moves, but I'm just saying you also have to like what you do in your business long term to be able to play the entrepreneurial game, to be able to stay in it and shift and all of that. But the other part is making sure you love your life and you are not investing so much into your business that you are neglecting parts of your life.
Anna (11:10.346)
And I think there have been seasons of my life where I've really had to look at, okay, how do I invest in my motherhood? How do I really make sure I'm investing in my kids' hobbies and passions? How do I invest in programs that are gonna help me feel supported as a mama? And I just think that's such a healthy, important balance to look at. Okay, so what I have my clients do when they are...
taking breaks and I really want you to think about the next time you are taking off in your business. When I encourage my mastermind clients to plan their quarter, when we do quarterly mapping, I encourage them to take off one week every single month. And this might seem kind of wild, but I really encourage you to block it out. Number one, because that's where your vacations can go. Again, when I went on my 10 day vacation, it wasn't really a big deal because I had already blocked out a week of the month where I didn't have.
client calls, right? You have to have a week out of every month that you have some margin for yourself, whether that is for a vacation or whether that is for more work, right? Different type of work, CEO work. You know, number one, we serve our clients, but then behind the scenes, we're doing different initiatives to grow and scale our business.
Maybe you're recording course videos. Maybe you're recording marketing content. Maybe you are working on something for some other sort of marketing outreach, right? But in addition to seeing our clients, we have these behind the scenes things that we're working on CEO time to grow and scale our business, right? And so you have to create margin for that. That's so important. And so I think that's an important thing to do, right? But also looking at if there's an extended period of time.
Right? For me, that was my maternity leave for a lot of my clients. They'll plan four weeks to go to Europe or whatever it is that you like to do. Right? But there's something beautiful about taking time off for your business because it forces you to scale it. Right? That's why, again, I have that doc called, what do I even call it? But it really helps you grow and scale your business by, oh, it's called Take a Break. Taking a break, what it does is it really forces you to look at...
Anna (13:27.43)
what you do in your business. Can it be made more efficient? Can it be batched? Can someone else take it over for you? Right. And helps you to loosen your grip and let go a little bit. Again, because I took a break so early on in my business for my maternity leave, I was batching content basically when I started my business, right? I was trusting team right when I started my business. I hired a support coach to take over one of my group programs.
right at the start of near the start of my business, right? And I did this because I had to, I was going away because I was having a baby. But the cool thing about that is from very early on, it really taught me how to take breaks. It really taught me how to unplug. A final part I wanna talk about here is just really looking at the boundaries you have in your business and the policies on a day to day, right? This is about looking at how you're running your business.
every single day so that when you do take a break, it's really not a shock to your system, right? That when you do take a break, your clients don't even notice, your team doesn't even notice. When you have your boundaries tight, when you have your systems tight, right? What I mean by that is like, what are you using to calendar? What are you using to task manage? Right? Are you working ahead in your business or are you working in the day to day? Right? Like
Is there enough delay that when you do take a break, it's actually not a big deal? Are there, like we talked about, the client response time, right? Are you scheduling clients every week of the month or are you scheduling three weeks out of the month anyway, right? No matter what. And so that's what I have to say. There's so much more to say on this, but I want to keep it short because I really want you to spend some time asking yourself.
what does my working light mode look like? And maybe make a piece of paper and put three columns on it. Normal work, working light, and completely off the grid, right? What does my M.O. look like in these quadrants? And for me, my working full time and my working light look pretty similar. The only difference is I don't have client calls and I'm not
Anna (15:50.914)
doing major projects, right? That's it. Otherwise they're kind of the same, but for a lot of you, they're gonna look really different because the way you've set up your day-to-day working is pretty intense, is pretty last minute, is pretty reactive, is pretty involved with your clients. And so if you get a little less involved with your clients in an ethical way, right? We still wanna be invested, right?
But if you pull back a little bit, number one, I find your clients thrive because they feel a little more empowered. But also again, it's going to be that same working light mode. And so as you adjust this, you can fry this fish from one of two ways, right? You can say, if I worked light on vacation, what would it look like? And can I move that into my normal life, my normal everyday work life? Or what do I want for my everyday work life? And could I sustain that on a vacation? Right. And if I can't sustain that.
What if I gave myself permission to consider that for my everyday life? Because what it does again, is it gives you more margin to live your life when you're working. It gives you, and when you are working, it's just more relaxed, right? So some of these words, I know this is conceptual, but I just want you to close your eyes for a second. And I want you to take in some of these words, okay? I'm gonna say one more time. Working in advance, responding and not reacting.
empowering your clients, right? Responding with a delay. You are not an emergency service, right? Certainly there are times where we want to have things be more time sensitive, but what if you set your business up with policies and boundaries to where you weren't checking your email 17 times a day? That way when you are on vacation, you can sustain it, right? Like I'm advising, like, what if on vacation you checked your email one time a day?
But what if in your normal business life, you checked your email one time a day? Is anyone going to die? I don't think so. Right. And so just really looking at how do I work light all the time and how do I work a little bit lighter on my vacations? Just one approach. And then what if that meant that I never had to have the shock to my system to like,
Anna (18:10.378)
really prepare. Like for me, I remember when I was working my day job, my therapy day job in order to take a break, I was so hesitant to take vacations because I had to like really prepare people and really notify my clients. And like, it just felt like so much drama and work. And the whole thing is that we should be taking little breaks from our work all the time, right? We should have those boundaries where it's not even a big deal to work like. Okay. So I would love to see if you make those three columns. Number one,
working normal, number two, working light, number three, completely off the grid, right? Right? What those modes look like. And I would love for you to share that with me if you're interested. And I would love to give you feedback on it. And I would just love to engage you around this conversation because I've helped clients operate in this mode in lots of different business models, clients that are like website designers, right? Like
It doesn't matter what model you're in. I really think all of us can be better at having boundaries. Two types of boundaries. Number one, the boundaries we communicate with our clients, AKA if you're a website designer, hey, you need to get back to me on these revisions within this date or you will get this sort of restart fee. I will respond to you within two business days, whatever it is. Having those sort of external policies but also having some internal policies and boundaries
What do you do when you're not working? Do you delete social media off your phone? Do you have access to your work email? Right? Like that is so much of it is not just what we're communicating to our clients, but what we decide within us for times that we unplug. And I talked about this in healthy escapes, but like there are so many times in my day that I'm escaping. I just took a walk this morning. I'm obsessed with that song, wish from the Disney musical. And I just listened to it on repeat.
for like 30 minutes on my headphones. And I just like walked around my block and just like listened to that song, right? I must be into this mood lately because my kids were away for a day this weekend. And I just like laid on my bed and I was listening to that Dear Evan Hansen song. I don't remember the name of it, but it's just so mesmerizing. And I was listening to it for an hour laying in my bed. I wasn't even napping, just like listening to that song, right?
Anna (20:32.714)
You guys know I also like love doing fitness classes almost every day. That's such a fun escape for me. I love dance. Like we just, I just want to advocate again for that escape for like taking a break from work probably more often than you are. And then I swear you'll be more productive. I swear that you'll love your work more. Right? Because when you sit down to do your emails or respond to clients, sure, you'll have more responses to do.
but you'll be focused, you'll be on fire, right? And this is why I talked about the whole multitasking thing. I really think multitasking bites us in the butt and doesn't allow us to be present in the moment and allow us to fully escape and enjoy whatever we're doing, right? Like for example, when I am on vacation, like when I am taking that 30 minutes to work, I'm really liking it because I'm like, ooh, I get to catch up and I get to be in that zone and be in that mode and really dive in and then dive out.
Right? Really being present, really being fully focused, being full in that moment. Okay. Hopefully this was helpful for you. And just sending you so much love. I know that these concepts are hard and complex, but I feel like as you grow in scale to multi-six figures to your million dollar business, like these are the concepts that I feel like make the biggest difference. And so I hope this is helpful for you.
Also remember, I am opening only twice a year, I open up space for my private mastermind. It's a super small, intimate group of ladies that are already making $2,000 a month or more, working to scale the six figures and beyond. And so if you fit into that category and are looking to grow and scale your business, I would love to help you do that in a way that you can put your business on the back burner and where you can learn to work light.
all of these concepts like yes to making more money, but also making money in a less miserable way. A lot of my clients come to me with the goal of like, hey, Anna, I'm already making this much money and I don't really want to increase my income. I just want to like decrease my work hours and be a lot more happier and aligned with my work. I want my income to be more predictable and then I want to grow it. Right? Like what if I made this?
Anna (22:38.778)
you know, maybe you're coming in, you're already making $80,000 a year. I want to keep making $80,000 a year, but I want to actually have time to like take care of my body. Right. I want to have time to be more present with my kids. Right. I want to be more productive in my work. I want my income to be more predictable. I want my team to be more dependable. Right. Like I think there's something to be stead for like stabilizing it and then growing it. And so I just wanted to say that in case that's the mode you're into. There is a 10 minute application you can fill out if you're
And also I have an open book if you have any questions. I love a savvy buyer, so just ask me all the questions you have, but would love to invite you into this group of women. If you are looking to grow and scale your business with lots of heart, with lots of integrity, with lots of good vibes and energy and sisterhood along the way, just reach out and as always, thank you. I'm going to go ahead and close the video.
sending you so much love. It is not easy to embrace some of these concepts that are in mind. I shared with you guys that, you know, I was been researching for the three day work week challenge that I'm making that Henry Ford invented the 40 hour work week in the 1920s, right? Because he did research to realize that they were working about 50 hours a week at the time. And he realized his employees working 40 hours were just as productive, right?
And it's like, oh, like maybe it isn't just about we're at putting more time in, but being more intentional with that. And I've just been thinking about that so much lately and just unwiring our minds. We were born into the 40 hour work week, right? So what does it look like to really create a business where you are only working around 20 hours a week? You are loving your work. You are having working light type boundaries all the time. And it is easy to go on vacation because you're
of always on vacation, right? You like your life, you like your business, like it's just this beautiful balance. And I just think it's an interesting but complex subject to unpack, right? Especially if you're someone like me and you like working, like I love working, I love coaching. Like when I had just had a coaching client call this morning and I was like,
Anna (24:46.122)
I just wish I could coach all day because I just love talking with these amazing women and they inspire me and I love to encourage, like, I love to coach. We love our work, right? So that's a good problem to have, right? Anyway, sending you so, so much love and wishing you the most beautiful day.
PS: In the midst of this challenging time I’ve been asking myself what I can do to help? One of the #1 ways I support my clients is by helping them simplify their business so that they can increase the flow of money without creating extra work. In this season simplified visibility and sales is needed more than ever.
So if you’re craving personal support as you reposition your free and paid work, I’d love to help you simplify your sales process so that you can produce income in your business even during a challenging time. If you want support you can check out my services and book a free discovery call here, or you can send me a DM on Instagram.