283: Your Energy Is the Most Precious Resource in Your Business

Melissa Henault:

I love this. The other thing that came to mind for all of you as business owners, can you reflect on this year, and what would you do differently, and what would you do more of? So one of the things I told myself I'd do differently this year, and I didn't, was that I would create more space leading up to my live event and more space post the live event for recovery. Right? And then I found myself, and and and it wasn't the wrong thing. It was the right thing to do. I ended up scheduling a ton of stuff in my calendar leading up to this live event. It was actually exactly what I needed as far as human connection with my clients for where I needed to go in the direction of the live event. I've literally already gone into my calendar for next year and blocked the entire week before the live event off, meaning no one can book a call with me. This is something that Sam talks about a lot, recovery on the other end.

Melissa Henault:

Like, so I'm flying home on Sunday and literally hit the ground Monday and have calls all day long after, like, literally pouring my soul out. I I remember how wiped I was last year. Right? I told myself I wouldn't do it again, and I fucking did it again. So do you have any scenarios like that where you're like, I will not let this happen again, where you need to be more aggressive with what you're doing with your calendar, with how you're managing your business and how you're managing your time. The other thing I've already fixed, not gonna let this happen again, teachers aren't nearly as organized I shouldn't say as organized, they don't plan as far ahead as business owners do. And I've found myself for the last 2 years in a row being so frustrated that the last week of school getting notifications of all the fun things that are about to happen, and I'm totally booked up. I can't cancel on paying clients to show up to the whatever event that's going on at school. And I've found myself so frustrated that I'm doing 2 things this coming year.

Melissa Henault:

Number 1, I've looked in the calendar to see when the last day of school is, and I've blocked out that whole week and said not taking calls during school hours so that I'm not booked. And I have a note to send a personal message to the teachers months in advance to say, hey. I know that maybe a lot of parents don't need this much heads up, but I would love to know because they've got that. They've got the dates and stuff. They just aren't distributing it to the parents. So, I'm gonna be proactive in reaching out to the teachers well in advance to find out when these days are even though they're not proactively communicating them so I can put them in my calendar and not be pissed that I couldn't make it. I want you to think about what scenarios have you experienced this year that you're like, I'm not gonna do that again? And then what are scenarios that you're like, I'm definitely gonna do that again? Yes, Ginger.

Ginger:

So I did my planning day late. I went to a hotel 10 minutes away, and I locked myself away for 2 days. There was nobody at the hotel. I was the only one there. I got a big suite, office suite. I had stuff on the walls. I mean, I I did all that stuff. The school was really good for us.

Ginger:

They created a link that you can subscribe to. So I put that in my calendar as a school thing, so I had no excuse. So I had it. So the kids had a half day. I will take that day off too because I had that information. So I did that this year and that was good. And I didn't get frustrated. I always this is the wrong energy, but I went at it was how dare my kids they're old enough to take care of themselves still from my work time.

Ginger:

That's what I did. Instead of saying, I'm a mom. I should be there for you. But I was like, how dare you? How dare you take that time? Right. And so it we didn't have that frustration. I didn't have to deal with the the guilt with that. And then the other thing, and I told you in Charlotte, I went through and planned vacation. I just picked random weeks here and there.

Ginger:

I was like, this is a good week and this is a good week. And then we got in July, and my husband says we have a vacation booked off, and we didn't do anything. And it was like 2 weeks before. He said, what should we do? And he at his job, he'd got a bonus with an with a seniority thing, and then plus they gave him extra week of vacation. He said, I have this extra week of vacation. Let's just go. We put something together, a road trip really quickly, but I don't know if we would have even taken a vacation if it wasn't there during that time. And we have another one in November before everything is gets crazy.

Ginger:

And I know we're just gonna go, hey, what should we do? And that's okay.

Melissa Henault:

I love that. Just to kind of reinforce that, it's a best practice I've instituted for the last 3 years now is planning the vacation in advance doesn't mean you have to buy the tickets and invest in it. What it means is that you block your calendar so nothing can get in the way. You can make that decision on what that level of investment is as you get closer to it. For me, it was incentive to really crush my business last year because I knew going to Bali was gonna be really expensive. So I didn't invest in it till I hit a certain revenue number. I made space for that miracle so that when it happened. Right? Same thing with the vacation to Ireland.

Melissa Henault:

I did we didn't book tickets to Ireland till the month before we went, but it was in the calendar for the whole fucking year. I can't even fathom trying to have Jake find that kinda time off within a month. Right? So that's a really good point. One other thing I 2 things I wanted to circle back on this is that energy of resentment with your children. I remember feeling this way too. I remember being so irritated that I was trying to juggle them and work at the same time, and I was turning into monster mom. It was that reality check of like, okay, wait a minute. I got into this business so I could work my own hours, and the only person in charge of this is me.

Melissa Henault:

I've let this happen, and it's not my children's fault. Right? So to your point, at the beginning of every year, I my calendar's blocked for when the kids have half days so that there's no resentment. It's something you get to do. Not you don't have to do, you get to do.