089: 7 Lessons Learned 1 Year Back From My Sabbatical

It's been a full year since I came back to my business after a 2-year sabbatical! I'm sharing 7 life-changing lessons I've learned over the past year that will help you too - whether you're coming back from a sabbatical or just looking to simplify your business!

Time stamps:

• 00:00:00 - Coming back from sabbatical 
• 00:07:55 - Lesson 1 
• 00:13:55 - Lesson 2
• 00:17:49 - Lesson 3
• 00:22:46 - Lesson 4
• 00:26:17 - Lesson 5
• 00:31:01 - Lesson 6
• 00:35:20 - Lesson 7 
• 00:40:49 - What's next

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Transcript

0:00

Welcome back to the podcast. I am really looking forward to this episode because I'm going to be sharing the lessons I've learned since coming back from my sabbatical. For those who aren't familiar with my journey, I started my business in 2014. I became a mom in 2021. So a large chunk of my business journey was pre motherhood. And I'll tell you what, when I became a mom, rocked my world. I think I've shared in a prior podcast about. the choice to, um, take a full time job. I've shared bits and pieces of the sabbatical journey. This episode, I'm not going to be reflecting a ton on why I went on sabbatical, things like that. Although I'm happy to do a dedicated episode on that if we feel like we need it. I really want to focus instead on just coming back from sabbatical and what the past year has taught me. Because when I did decide to come back from a two year sabbatical, My personal life looked extremely different than the last time I had done business. My goals for business were very different. Who I am, my priorities, all of it was very different. And I think that's why I've learned so much in the past year because a lot of old habits and old patterns got deconstructed during my sabbatical, but also had to get deconstructed coming back to business. And really consciously shifting how I do things and, you know, it hasn't been a perfect year. I've certainly made some choices, made some steps that I've learned a lot from, and I'm just excited to kind of share, share all of that with you. So just to set the context, set the scene, I came back from my sabbatical May, 2023, just to set the scene when I left my business and began what ended up being a sabbatical wasn't necessarily. Something I like decided to do and called it a sabbatical right away, but what ended up becoming a sabbatical I had just become a mom for the very first time Um, when I came back to my business after my sabbatical, I was now a mom of two kids. I had my two year old daughter and I had a son who was, I think like four months old, four or five months old when I came back to my business from sabbatical and at that point in between there, I had been everything from a part time employee, a full time employee, a stay at home mom. I had done a variety of things, but when I came back to business in May of 2023, I knew I was ready to come back to business. I was very excited to have something outside of motherhood. I was excited to have the benefits of it being your own business versus working for someone else. But I knew that how I wanted to do business had to look different. Prior to my sabbatical, I was absolutely a workaholic. I love business. I love work. I love the challenge of it. I love the game of it. I find it very fun and very rewarding and very fulfilling. And so when I look back at my business journey before maternity leave, there were a lot of cycles of burnout. There were a lot of cycles of, you know, being a workaholic and never feeling like there was enough time to work. Even though it's so funny as a mom of almost three now to look back and be like, you had so much time. Um, but you, you know, you live and you learn, but. I knew coming back to business as a mom of two last summer, that if I was going to do this, it had to look different. That old way of doing business was no longer on the table for me. I knew that my business had to be set up where my personal life came first. And not only from like a concept or like how many hours do I work, but more from a true Decision making lens and values and also making it feel good energetically. I had noticed in my life that there would be times where I resented my personal life because it meant I couldn't do something for business, which is not good and certainly not how I wanted things to look this time around. So when I say I wanted my business to really focus on my personal life first and put that as a priority, I mean that it also needed to feel good. I didn't want to allow my business to run my life to be something that makes me resent the other areas of my life. I also knew I did want to have legitimately like minimal hours at my desk. I wanted a lot of flexibility. I am still like the primary parent of Johnny and I. And so like if a kid gets sick. Like I'm doing that. I'm the one who's really responsible for making sure we have what we need for school or birthday parties or things like that. And I love that role and I'm totally satisfied with it, but again, I need it to be something that there feels like there's not only time for, but like spaciousness for, and it feels good. So I think the energetics of it was a big piece of this as well. It's not just like. I wanted to work very little. It's like I needed that to feel good. And there's some lessons around that that we'll dig into. But when I came back to business, I also kind of came back from my sabbatical with this idea that I was going to validate things first. I, Knew I, I wanted to go all in on coaching, which I think previously I never really allowed myself to go all in on. I have been coaching since 2017, but it always kind of felt like part of the business and I knew coming back that I wanted it to be like the thing. Like I freaking love coaching. It's where my zone of genius is. And so I was going to use private coaching in particular to Really verify that I did want to come back. So I have had conversations with some of y'all on Instagram DMs about like, how did you know you were ready to come back? And while that's not the main topic for today, I wanted to touch on it that I felt ready, but I really didn't know for sure until I started coming back. And so for me, I thought I wanted to come back, but before we invested in getting extra childcare support or anything else, I decided to take on my first round of coaching clients. I did 12 weeks. So that I felt comfortable I could commit to three months and reevaluate and I did that While I was a stay at home mom, and so I'm you know had a very Select number of clients I could work with, but I did get booked out. I tested it and very quickly was like, yes, consider it validated. I want to be here. I'm all in. And really then like the past year began. I feel like may and June was a bit of a like validation window. Let's see if we can get clients. Okay. We got clients. Let's see if we enjoy this. Okay. We enjoy this. Now let's, let's begin. And so let's think about the past year. I'm not going to sit here and make you listen to like a. breakdown of month by month, what happened over the past year. I don't think that'd be the best use of your time or my time. Instead, I really want to think about the holistic lessons learned that I think will also benefit you, whether you are considering a sabbatical coming back from a sabbatical, or you're just in a season where you need your business to Prioritize your life and not prioritize the business. Right? So if any of my story resonates with you or you're just curious, I think you're really going to get a lot out of these lessons learned. Cause as I'm sitting here recording this, I'm in bed, I am very pregnant with my third kid and everything I've learned just continues to be like, it's a double down. Like I, I'm sure that I'm going to feel even stronger about these things. Postpartum this time around as a mom of three, but let's dig in first lesson is to lean into your zone of genius and what makes you different. I think it's really easy in business to look around at what everyone else is doing. And the things that you do differently feel wrong sometimes. Right. So a great example is, you know, short form video content is huge reels, tick tock. They've been, it's been huge for a while now. Right. And so if you're the type of person who Uh, it's a podcast. 40 minute podcast episode better than a four second reel, then it can feel like that's wrong. Right? It can feel like you shouldn't be doing the long podcast. You should be doing short. And maybe you see a lot of talk about how you shouldn't be doing sales calls, but you really love sales calls. Or maybe you talk, you see talk about how, you know, no one's doing high ticket, they're all doing low ticket. You know, whatever the story is. It's so easy to look around and be told that like this is the path to success or this is what's popular and this is what's working. And so you end up looking at what makes you different as a bad thing. And I want you to know that this is the lesson I've learned. Over and over and over again is that what makes you different is actually your biggest Differentiator in a good way because that's how you stand out That's how you attract your people and I truly think that by leaning into not only your zone of genius and your strengths but also by like doubling down on what makes you different and what kind of goes against the grain of What everyone else is doing is how you find the most success in business and how it feels fun and simple and like it It's enjoyable. It's how you get out of the space of like looking around and comparing and seeking and always feeling like it's not enough or you got to change everything. It's like, how can you just double down on what makes you different? And so some ways that that's impacted me over the past year was absolutely coaching. And in particular, Calls with clients. There was a season over the past year. Um, I think it was when I just got pregnant at the end of 2023 with our third baby that it was like, Oh, well, I shouldn't have so many calls. I shouldn't be on so many calls. I shouldn't have this much on my calendar right now. In this season of life. And that was just like a belief that was not my own, but that like, was it came externally, not internally. And I think it came from logic too, right? Like, oh, you're gonna have another baby. You shouldn't have so many calls. And I tried like stripping a lot of the coaching calls and the live stuff out of my business. And I no longer enjoyed, enjoyed business because. I love coaching. I love doing things live. I love being on calls with my clients. I love the back and forth. I love, I love the live interaction. It's like what gets me going. It gives me energy. It doesn't mean I'm not tired at the end of the day. It doesn't mean I want to be on calls all day, every day, but it means I don't need to look at that as a thing I'm doing wrong. I don't need to have less time. just because someone said I shouldn't have client calls. Right? Instead I should lean into the fact that that's what's going to make me different. Hey, if you're a client of mine, we're going to get on calls and they're gonna be Amazing. If you're in one of my programs and we're going to get on calls, it's going to be so much fun. You're going to tell the energy is there. The momentum is there. If you're on a webinar, I do like we're there, right? If I do anything live, like, yeah, the energy is there. And that is not wrong. It's actually something that's kind of special. Right. Because that's not the norm anymore. Same thing with how I like to coach. There's so much talk in the coaching industry about how like the best clients are so self led that you don't hear from them. And like, that's fine. I'm not sitting here saying that that's like a wrong opinion of for someone else to have. Instead, what I need to not do is make that mean anything about how I view coaching because I view coaching totally different. My favorite way to coach is to be like deeply involved. If you are a, a one on one client of mine, if we've been working together and we're going to work together for three, six, 12 months, I want to be in your shit. I want to know what's going on. I want to be replying to your Instagram stories. I want to be chatting throughout the week in between our calls. Like I really want to be in partnership with someone. I don't need to view that as me over delivering. For me, um, like creating a dependent relationship with my client when I have the personal responsibility to know that that's not what's happening. Right. But do you see how easy it is to just like hear someone else's story or belief or whatever and to make it mean that your way of doing things is wrong when in fact my dream clients like the way that I coach, that's the kind of coaching they're looking for. So if they want the other style, that's great. They can go work with a coach who has that style. If they want my style, I'm here for them. Same thing with podcasting. Like it's just all about doing things your own way. And especially when doing it your own way, it goes against the grain. Stop making that be a bad thing. And instead make that be the thing that makes you stand out. It's like such a powerful shift. And so integral to having a business that's enjoyable, that is simple, that You really feel fulfilled by, but that also you're like taking action and moving through and, and finding those dream clients. The second lesson is imperfectly consistent. Is better than nothing. And I think the biggest lesson for this for me has been through content. I have not been consistent in my content even just the past year. And if I'm honest, if I look back at my whole business, I've never been perfectly consistent for a year or longer. And that's not something I'm saying is like good for me, but I do think it's a really important lesson to remind yourself that it doesn't have to be all or nothing. I talked to people so many times who were like, well, I can't launch the podcast until I have 12 episodes ready. I disagree. I, you know, is that cool and strategic? Sure. But like also, is that going to slow you down and hold you back? And then you're going to make 12 episodes. And by the time you publish episode four, you're already going to like hate the other episodes because you will learn so much. Yeah. So I think what makes more sense, especially when we're playing the long game of business is that you embrace That there's going to be some ebb and flow and life is going to life, especially as a mom in business, life is going to life. And that means that the metric for success is not perfect consistency and you embrace and allow for imperfect. Consistency. I was talking to some of my clients the other week who are moms who don't have child care for the summer because their kids are out of school, who are coaching, who want to be creating content. It's like, how do we make this work in the summer? And it's like, I think it's completely fair to just reset your expectations. You don't have to show up every Tuesday at 9 AM with a new podcast episode during the season of life. If it hasn't, if you haven't been able to get ahead on that, that's fine. Like you probably have other priorities. If you have a handful of hours at most a week, like I do think the priorities can shift. And so I've really seen that by just, you know, yes, strive to be consistent, but also releasing the pressure for perfection and perfect consistency is huge. Like this podcast episode, for example, is probably not going to go live. At a consistent day and time, you know, but it's going to go live. And this is the cool thing too, is I can look back at the past year and see that even though my podcast, for example, or Instagram, I haven't been perfectly consistent. I haven't posted on Instagram every single day for the whole year. I haven't posted one podcast episode a week for a whole year. Even though I haven't done those things, they've done their job. I have gotten clients from my content. I have gotten people who say they are binging my content before they decide to invest in working with me. My content is still resonating. I'm getting messages from people who are like, I listened to that podcast episode from months ago and it was life changing. And I think it really helps you get back to the point of all of this, right? Like the point of creating content and helping people and serving people is to freaking serve people. And if people still very much appreciate being served intermittently, if it's not perfectly every Tuesday morning, right? So I really have released the pressure for perfection and just embrace the fact that like, yeah, we're gonna strive for consistency. We're gonna strive to build systems where we can be Sustainably consistent, but we're, we're also not going to be all or nothing about it. I'd rather you post one podcast episode a month, like actually valuable in creating connection and know, like and trust with your ideal clients and your community. Then one podcast episode every week at the exact same hour every week. And it's like fluffy nothingness. You know what I mean? So I think there's a quality component there too. Lesson three is this idea of choosing and making a decision with confidence and then moving on. I will never forget when I had a conversation with my friend Ashley from Systems Over Stress about tech. If you know me, I love tech. I love systems. I could procrastinate for weeks and weeks and weeks and months just messing around with the back end of business with tech and systems. And she gets me, which I love if you're a systems person, you get it too. But that's also. not how I want to be spending my time right now. But I was having a conversation with her earlier on, um, maybe last fall. earlier on in this sabbatical journey, but it is what she shared with me has come up many times since then. I was like lamenting my decision of what platform to use for tech. Okay. Like y'all, I, I know I felt it too. Okay. It's easy to get stuck on decisions sometimes. I was totally stuck in this like feedback loop of like, should I do Kajabi or should I do this? Should I do this? Or should I do that? Should I do school? Or should I do a Facebook group? Or should I do this? Or should I do that? Like just totally in an open cycle loop of like not being able to make a choice or not being like fully satisfied with an option. And I was, um, voxering with her about it all. And it got to a point where she was like, look, no platform. You know, we're talking about tech specifically, but the supplies beyond tech, she was like, no platform is perfect. There's not a single software option out there that is going to be perfect. Ultimately, you're just going to have to make the best choice you can and choose with confidence. And when she told me that it was like, and I think that phrase choose with confidence is something that I now say to my clients all the time because it has been so life changing for me. So thank you, Ashley. Um, but this idea of, it's not just like decided, decide, move on. It's this idea of like choosing with confidence. And then closing the door and then like not opening the door again, not allowing the feedback loop to open up again. And for me with tech, like I ended up choosing Kajabi and that has been one of the most powerful decisions I ever made. Not because Kajabi is like the perfect platform and it's magic and it's going to solve all your problems, but because I did what Ashley recommended where I chose with confidence. I am now what I jokingly say, I'm a kajabi slut. Like I'm just, I'm just so all in with it that I have now just been able to move on and do things quicker and not second guess myself. And when another software has a new feature, I can like geek out about it from like, Oh, that's so cool. But at no point does it make me then question everything. And I get stuck in this feedback loop again. Instead, it's just like I've chosen and I am moving on to the things that matter. And for sure, for some decisions, there's like a window of time where it's like, okay, this is the product suite I'm going to move forward with. I'm not even going to question this for six months. We're just going to be, we're just going to choose with confidence and we're going to execute on this and reevaluate farther down the line, three months, six months, 12 months. And so this lesson has been so freeing for me. And like I said, it originated around tech and systems, but it's absolutely become an integral part about how I coach myself and coach my clients and run my business is just when you notice you're in these kind of like loops. Where you just can't seem to move forward and make a choice at some point. It's just choosing with confidence, closing the door on the decision and just moving on because there's a million different ways to do this. You can choose between YouTube You can choose between having a high ticket mastermind or low ticket members. Like there's all these choices to make. And the fact of the matter is that you can find success from any of it, but you won't. If you never choose and if you never move on with taking action and like going and seeing that through all the way. So choosing with confidence, closing the door and moving on huge lesson this past year. It probably deserves its own podcast episode, but we're just baking it in right here. But it's been so significant for me. The next lesson from the past year, being back from sabbatical is that sometimes we need to invest in education, strategy, trainings, and other times you need to actually just invest in mentorship. And I love investing in personal development and learning and growing, especially as a coach, I think. When you are a coach being coached by others is so valuable. Um, so incredibly transformative to help you keep growing. I also just am the type of person that I love to learn. Like when people ask you, what would you be doing all day if you didn't have this? It's like, I'd, I'd still be like trying to learn. I'm constantly like when I was a stay at home mom, I was constantly still trying to learn and optimize and systemize and simplify and improve my day to day life. And so. That's just who I am. I know not everyone is that way, but I am. But I've noticed over the past year that as I have sought to learn and grow and improve, that it's really easy to get stuck investing in, you know, 50, 100, 200, 500, 1, 000 courses and like micro offers to try to get something. And I'm not saying those aren't valuable. Absolutely. Every time I've invested in them and I've actually. Consumed them and implemented them. Yes, they are extremely valuable, but there are definitely times where I noticed that I, I'm just like kind of buying a bunch of different things. I'm not quite like taking action on all of it or going through it all, but I'm like seeking something. And it's like, you know, My money would be better spent actually just investing in private mentorship and that doesn't always mean long term Sometimes that's literally a 60 minute call or two weeks in telegram or you know, three months or something But there have absolutely been times where it's like, you know, this is when I should just be investing in actual mentorship Even though it's more expensive, ultimately it's going to be, if I just keep buying all these random courses, seeking something, that's not actually what I need. It's going to end up kind of being the same amount of money. Anyways, it's just going to be a longer journey, more DIY, more frustrations, whereas they could just invest a little bit more in personal mentorship and actually get the feedback and support. And. You know, shift that I'm looking for. So this is definitely a use discernment lesson. Not every time, you know, I'm not saying it's mentorship or nothing. There are definitely times where like a course, a strategy, a micro offer is exactly what I need or what you need. But I definitely have learned a lesson over the past year to just like use discernment. Don't let the investment of something higher ticket feel off the table because if you end up buying five, You're probably looking at the same amount of money if you had just hired a mentor. You know what I mean? So something that I have definitely learned is just use that discernment and question yourself of like, am, do I need the actual just education strategy to implement? Is that what I need? Or do I actually just like need a conversation with someone and to just make that choice from a place of like empowerment versus like that not being an option. The next lesson is to embrace the season you're in, which is like, obviously, right? I came back from my sabbatical with that whole intention. But what I mean through this is not just like embrace the season you're in, you're a mom, it's going to be busy. What I mean is within this, the choices you're making in your business, the strategies you're doing, how you're doing things, um, is, is to also not just. embrace it holistically, but embrace like that micro season. So for example, it's summer. If you have kids who are out of school and you usually have childcare and now you don't, instead of that being this like huge negative disruption, how can you like lean into that and work with it and like, accept that and. And sometimes there's preparation before then sometimes it's just changing up what you expect from yourself for me. This was really powerful when I was prepping for, um, maternity leave. This was earlier on in this pregnancy, I was having a conversation with one of my mentors where I was like, I'm really, you know, I want to come back to YouTube and I want to do YouTube every week and I have all these things and all these ambitions and all this stuff. And she reflected back to me that she was like, I don't think you're in the season to push yourself right now. I don't think you're in the season to like do all of this like new, crazy, big, hard stuff when in reality. You, you probably want to be in the season to like lean into the, like the simple, sustainable, what's working stuff. And as soon as she said it, it was like, yeah, that's exactly what I would have told my own client. If I was my own client, that's what I would have told myself. Um, but that's the power of, of coaching of course, is having someone else tell you that right. But as soon as she said it, it really clicked for me because I had been saying while I was back from my sabbatical, like my business embraces the season of life I'm in. And I definitely have been helping my clients do that. I was absolutely looking at it in my own business for me, more like high level holistic standpoint, but it was really helpful to also zero in on just like the season, like Maternity, like the prepping for a new baby maternity, like this is such a season and it doesn't mean I'm never doing YouTube. It doesn't mean I'm never doing A, B, and C. It just means right now, I'm not going to like add that to my plate. I'm just going to like lean into what works for the season, knowing that this season will change and it will shift into another season. And there are going to be seasons where you do want to push yourself. They're going to be seasons where you want to have like a growth. They're going to be seasons where you want to do more. And then there are going to be other seasons where you want to pull back, do less, do what's easy. Do it simple and just really acknowledging these kind of like micro seasons within the year and allowing it and, and letting it be okay. Not letting it be something that is a bad thing or something to resent or get frustrated by, but to just be like at peace with you, like, yeah, okay. Like this season, the next three months is a very special season of life and business. And it may mean I can't do these things that I'm really excited about yet. But. I can do them after. I can do them in the next season when it does work. That has been incredibly freeing mentally, emotionally, and very, very powerful to embrace not only the season of life holistically as like a mom with young kids running a business, but also the, like, it's about to have a baby or it's summer or it's, Christmas time when things get crazy. Right. So just really embracing those seasons and the seasonality of life and like working, making your business work with that. I'll never forget when I worked with one of my past clients, she's a dear friend of mine. I was a part of her team for a while. And her personal life is seasonal. Like she wanted to like take the summer off and take the winter off. And, um, I've had many clients be in similar boats and it's like, let's just bake that in instead of that being something that feels wrong. in the summer or wrong as you near the end of the year. Let's just like bake that into how we do things. So I think that's been really helpful for me, even within these smaller seasons of life to just like allow it and truly accept seasons, whether the season is a month or like a whole year, just like embrace it. Okay. Just a couple more lessons here to dig into the next lesson is that prioritizing self care is literally only up to you. This specifically as a mom who is pregnant, who has multiple young kids. I think when I came back initially from my sabbatical, I was like moving and grooving on this. I was like, absolutely. I have such a limited window of childcare and I'm totally at peace with, you know, a third of it. A third of my childcare being spent on self care and not business. And I would like drop Kelly off from our nanny would come. This is once we had childcare. Um, so my daughter goes to school and we have a nanny with our son. So the nanny will come. I would then take Kelly to school. I would then go work out. I'd come home and shower and get ready. And then I'd have just like two ish hours, two to three hours to work. And then I'd go pick up Kelly. A chunk of my time. Was spent doing self care and in this case specifically like working out and showering and getting ready and I think I started this so strong, but as soon as I got pregnant I really really let this go and To be honest like this is a lesson. I'm I'm really relearning again here In the present over the past month as I near the end of this pregnancy of just like, you know, pregnancy, whatever. I have not been as physically active as I would like to be during this pregnancy and I'm trying to prioritize self care in other ways right now. I am actually recording this in bed, and I'm I'm going to finish this episode in a couple of minutes and I'm going to take a nap. Even though there are things on my to do list, there are things I would like to accomplish right now. The nap has to happen. And so just really getting back to that place of like, I am in charge of my time, the window of time that I am in charge of, I'm in charge of, and no one is going to hold me accountable to taking care of myself except myself. As a mom, it's so easy to. Not prioritize taking care of yourself for a million reasons. And especially when you have a limited window of time where you can work and you are a past workaholic like myself, it's so hard to stop working to take care of yourself and to bake it all in. So all that to say, this is a very, very much a lesson I've learned multiple times. And I would say most recently learning again is just prioritizing. Taking care of myself is my, my responsibility. It's no one else's. It's mine. And I'm very proud of myself for reincorporating this over the past month. And I'm very motivated and encouraged to continue to prioritize this postpartum as I come back from maternity leave and just getting back into the rhythm for me. You know, moving my body is huge and making me feel really good. I know every time I move my body, whether it's a walk or going to the gym or whatever, that I have so much more energy after. So I can logic myself into why it's worth doing, but You know, you know how habits are, right? Like when you change your habits, it's sometimes really hard to get out of that. So definitely have relearned throughout the past year, just how important it is to really take the personal responsibility of taking care of me. Is my job and it's an important job and it's worth doing. And a part of having a business that fits into the season of life, that makes my personal life take a priority is also prioritizing myself. Even if it means sometimes business stuff is going to move slower than someone else. And again, just embracing that, allowing it and knowing that, like taking care of this body physically of my brain is It's so much more important than getting more done on a to do list anyways, right? Like yes. So prioritizing self care is my job. Big lesson. From the past year. And then the final lesson that I want to share with you from the past year is potentially a hot take. Maybe not. To me, it feels like a hot take. Um, but having fun in your business is the fastest path to momentum. And that doesn't mean, you know, you should only do things in business that feel fun. I know sometimes there are things we do we have to do that don't always feel fun, blah, blah, blah. But holistically, I absolutely believe. And this kind of maybe plays into the first lesson of like playing into your zone of genius and your strengths for me, I'm having a blast recording this episode. I don't think I would have a blast creating content and a lot of other formats. If I was sitting here trying to write an email version of this first, it wouldn't be having fun. But I was trying to do a live stream right now. Instead of. Laying in my bed recording this on my phone. I wouldn't be having as much fun And that's not saying you shouldn't do it that way. It's just me, right? Same thing with how I do business. Like I have fun coaching. And so if I can just lean into coaching and having fun, there's this organic momentum when I'm using my voice and creating content regularly. It's easier to do it. It's more fun to do it. I'm enjoying it. The momentum is there anytime in my business over the past year and in business in general where I've prioritized the strategy over the enjoyment, all the momentum falls apart for me. And I know that that's not necessarily like, again, only do things that are fun vibes, but I think There's a happy medium here where we started our businesses for a reason like you shouldn't have a business that you're miserable doing I don't think and I really think there's a part of your business. You're miserable doing I don't think you should settle for that I really don't now. I know there's definitely times where it's like, I'm not inspired I don't want to create content whatever like that's not the conversation we're having right now. I'm talking on a like regular basis I think you should have fun doing the main parts of your job, the main things you show up to do in your business to serve your clients and to grow your business. I think you should enjoy them. I think they should be enjoyable when you're executing on them and when they're not, I think that's very worth listening to and trying to understand because when you're having fun running your business. Everything feels so much more enjoyable, but there's a natural momentum that comes because you're having fun doing it. That means you're going to make other people have more fun enjoying, like they're going to enjoy receiving whatever it is you're doing. That means they're going to have a better experience. They're going to give you better testimonials. You're going to make more sales. Growing your business is going to be easier. You're going to be getting better feedback. Like It's going to be easier to show up. There's just going to be this true, like momentum and flow and like feeling like it's happening. Whereas if you're sitting there and you're just like trying to grind it out because this is how you think it's supposed to be. No wonder there's a stagnation. Cause you're, you're stagnant. You don't even enjoy what you're doing. No one's going to enjoy your content more than you. No one's going to enjoy your work more than you. No one's going to be a bigger fan of you than you are. Like I just truly believe and have experienced firsthand, particularly in the past year, that I Want to do things in business that I enjoy. And if I'm not enjoying it, that's worth looking into. Maybe that means I need to delegate it. Maybe that means you need to change the way I do it. Maybe that means you need to change the strategy. Maybe that just means I need to change the way I'm thinking about it. Right? Like again, you know, filing your taxes isn't fun, but we have to do it. Right. So I'm not trying to be naive about it, but I truly believe that you should be running your business in a way that plays into your strengths. And therefore, Is enjoyable and is fun. And that when you take action on the big things that move your business forward, you enjoy it. Maybe leading up to it, you're not enjoying it. Right. But like once you're in the midst of a podcast episode. You're in it. You're vibing. It's fun. You're in it with a client. You're loving it. It's fun. You walk away feeling fulfilled and excited and lit up and, and maybe talking about the things that light you up is a better way to describe this and having fun. But I really think the more you can tap into what lights you up and the more you can spend time doing things that light you up and choose to build your business strategy around the things that light you up, The better, the easier, the more momentum. So those are kind of the big lessons I've learned since coming back from my sabbatical. As far as where things are now going forward, the end of June, as I'm recording this, I'm about to go on maternity leave for baby three. I am just doubling down on everything we talked about. I'm doubling down on coaching. And individual programs. So my active energy is going to be spent towards coaching my high level clients, but I'm also. I love to teach. So also continuing to create individual programs that, um, maybe they're taught live, but eventually are like on demand programs and trainings. So that I have both, but that on a regular basis, my energy is being spent actively coaching my clients. I'm also working on my passive sales machine and need a better name for that. But basically, wow, I'm going to be actively coaching and running, you know, My coaching programs with my coaching clients. I also still want to have kind of what I'm considering this like passive sales machine running behind the scenes so that the content I create leads to sales of these on demand individual programs. And then the people who want to step up into coaching with me have the opportunity as well, but really. Viewing it as, um, I don't have to choose. I think when the, when I first got pregnant this time around, I felt like I needed to go all in on the passive course direction. And now I'm just feeling so grounded and solid and like doing both. Like I'm going to have on demand programs that people can buy at any time that my content can lead to and also put my active energy towards my coaching clients. And that's feeling so good. So good. And I want to go ahead and drop a little tease here. But I am planning on launching a mastermind. I'm planning on doing that this fall or winter. We'll see. I'm always going to be feeling it out as I get closer, but I very much love, love, love having a mastermind space. We're talking like five, 10 people, really intimate, really, really high level coaching. If that's something you're interested in, absolutely like, let's start talking about it because this is going to be something that I'm, um, probably going to be like, you know, it's not gonna be like a big launch, probably it'll probably be something that just like the right people come into. We'll see. But that is something I'm very, very excited to be bringing back after this maternity leave later this year, kind of curating this like really incredible true mastermind space. But that's where things are going. I mean, just continuing to just apply the lessons. I know when I come back from my maternity leave. Being a mom of three, life's going to look a little different, but I'm very excited for that season of life. I'm very excited to apply the lessons I just shared with you in that season as well. And, um, be sharing more and I will be doing a separate podcast episode all about kind of an update on maternity leave prep, uh, that will go out in a couple of weeks most likely. But. I hope that it was helpful to hear kind of this reflection on the past year and the biggest lessons I've learned since coming back from my sabbatical. If it was, I would love to hear from you. Please send me a DM on Instagram at simplify with Megan. I would love for you to share this and tag me on Instagram stories or whatever platform you're hanging out on. If you have like a big aha moment or a favorite part, like any feedback like that would be so meaningful. Of course it would also be so valuable and It's truly helpful if you left a rating and a review on whatever platform you're listening on just that the news can spread this podcast and that more people can see and hear about it for the first time. So thank you so much for listening and I'll see you in the next episode.