Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #50| How Prioritizing Fun Can Help You Make You More Money & Stop People Pleasing with Susan Hyatt
Transcript
- 0:04Michelle Gauther: Hey, I'm Michelle Gauthier and you're listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
- 0:09Michelle Gauther: Thanks for joining Overwhelmed Working Woman.
- 0:13Michelle Gauther: Today we have a guest that I am super excited about, Susan Hyatt.
- 0:17Michelle Gauther: I wrote down some notes to introduce her and you cannot do a short intro.
- 0:22Michelle Gauther: I will just tell you a couple of the amazing things about her.
- 0:25Michelle Gauther: She's a master certified life coach.
- 0:28Michelle Gauther: She's a self-made multi-millionaire, not just a one-time millionaire.
- 0:32Michelle Gauther: A best-selling author of the book Bare, which is one of my favorites and something I recommend to my clients all the time.
- 0:39Michelle Gauther: She's a patriarchy smasher, true story, who has helped just thousands of women at this point get more of what they want in their lives.
- 0:47Michelle Gauther: She's been in Oprah Magazine, she's done a TED Talk and now she is here with us today on Overwhelmed Working Woman.
- 0:54Michelle Gauther: Thank you, Susan.
- 0:55Michelle Gauther: Hi!
- 0:55Susan Hyatt: Hi, thank you so much, I'm so excited to be here.
- 1:00Michelle Gauther: Thank you! I wanted to have you on the podcast because I just followed you on social media for I don't know 10 years or something, and I just love what you have to say, you bring the best energy, and because I have previously worked with you - you were my business coach for a while.
- 1:17Michelle Gauther: There are so many things that you taught me - and this has been years ago now - that I still do, so I just wanted to thank you for that.
- 1:25Michelle Gauther: One of the things that you taught me to do that I did not know how to do before was to pitch myself.
- 1:30Michelle Gauther: When I was working with you, I got on a local TV show.
- 1:33Michelle Gauther: I started pitching myself to get on other people's podcasts and, just like you said, eventually it will turn around where people invite me to be on their podcast now.
- 1:42Michelle Gauther: So thank you for giving me that first courage to put myself out there.
- 1:47Michelle Gauther: And then, the other biggest thing that I learned from you was the idea that the more fun I have, the more money I make in business.
- 1:54Michelle Gauther: So I would love for you to just tell us about.
- 1:57Michelle Gauther: I know that's one of your big mottos in life, so I'd love for you to tell us about that.
- 2:03Susan Hyatt: Well, usually when I say that, people can't quite believe it, because it's the opposite of how we're raised.
- 2:09Susan Hyatt: We're raised to, you, know, you only get to play after you get your work done.
- 2:14Susan Hyatt: Dessert after you eat your veggies.
- 2:17Susan Hyatt: And the notion that fun can bring money isn't really part of our cultural narrative.
- 2:25Susan Hyatt: And when I became a life coach in 2007, I was coming out of a real estate career that was really profitable for me and rewarding in a lot of ways, but it wasn't really what I was meant to be doing, and I had just worn myself out.
- 2:44Susan Hyatt: I was quite burned out, and so, when I started this company, I asked myself what would the opposite be, because it was all hard work.
- 2:53Susan Hyatt: I was sleeping with my cell phone, I was always available for clients, not enough time off, and I came up with, what if it was possible to have fun and make money, and so that quickly became the more fun I have, the more money I make, and I claim that as a mantra.
- 3:14Susan Hyatt: I did not really believe it at first.
- 3:16Susan Hyatt: I just have to say that and I set out, though, to try to find evidence that that could be true, and over time, I started following my feel good and creating programs and writing and speaking about topics that mattered to me and making sure that I was having a good time while I was doing it, and I started proving it true.
- 3:38Susan Hyatt: And now, to this day, I mean I, I end things - programs offerings; I will shut down appearances, like we were just talking about, if it starts to not feel as fun anymore, if it starts to feel hustle-y, I will shift gears and find the thing that brings me the most energy to do and that has, over time, really proven to be effective for me as a business owner, which is just amazing because it is completely counterintuitive.
- 4:11Michelle Gauther: And I remember when I was working with you - again, this is years ago - I had my best month ever, and it was the month that I went to France, and went to the World Cup and was gone for like two weeks and I had my best business ever and it was like, how did that even happen?
- 4:28Michelle Gauther: But I just feel like you put that good energy into your job and into your life and somehow it magically comes back.
- 4:35Michelle Gauther: One of the things that is so much fun - I mean, you are just fun embodied, I feel like you're always having fun and always doing cool things.
- 4:44Michelle Gauther: So I'm wondering if you could just give us a little overview of just the places you've gone in the past year where you've done fun coaching things.
- 4:53Michelle Gauther: And then, as a second question how do you keep from being overwhelmed?
- 4:57Susan Hyatt: You're probably referencing what I'm now calling Three Continents and a Pilgrimage, which I think is going to be a new TED Talk.
- 5:07Susan Hyatt: I love to travel, and thank you for that compliment.
- 5:11Susan Hyatt: I just have to say that not everything I do in business would seem like fun, like writing pitches.
- 5:19Susan Hyatt: I love that you're like oh, I learned from you how to pitch myself.
- 5:24Susan Hyatt: I actually was working on a pitch right before we jumped on here, and that might not seem like fun, but you can always bring fun energy to it.
- 5:33Susan Hyatt: You are the fun, you bring the fun.
- 5:35Susan Hyatt: But I love to travel and it is honestly the thing that fills me the most, just about.
- 5:44Susan Hyatt: So one of the things that I do is I offer retreats for women and I pick places that I want to go, that my clients say, hey, if you ever do a retreat in Vietnam, sign me up.
- 5:57Susan Hyatt: And so I combine the accelerated expansion that travel offers, I combine that with coaching.
- 6:05Susan Hyatt: So this in the past year I've gone to Morocco, I've gone to Ireland, I've gone to Spain to walk the Camino and most recently, to Vietnam, and what that offers - I really think a destination can serve also as a master coach.
- 6:23Susan Hyatt: I combine things that I love with coaching that I love and that creates a really fun atmosphere for transformation to happen.
- 6:32Michelle Gauther: That's just so amazing.
- 6:33Michelle Gauther: Because, you know, if someone would have heard that idea, they would have been like, you can't do that.
- 6:38Michelle Gauther: You can't just be taking off all over the world and take women on these trips and help them change their lives wherever you want and you're like, yeah, I can, watch me do it.
- 6:49Susan Hyatt: Well, I will say that I started small.
- 6:52Susan Hyatt: I mean, I started locally, and then domestically in the United States and then once I felt like hey, this is something I really really like to do, I started picking out destinations all over the world.
- 7:07Susan Hyatt: And I'm somebody who had not left the country until my 15-year-old son - at the time, he's 25 now, so this was 10 years ago - talked me into going to Thailand.
- 7:20Susan Hyatt: That was my first trip out of the country and I held a retreat in Thailand and I credit Ryan James Hyatt for that audacity.
- 7:33Michelle Gauther: That is so great! How fun, oh my goodness.
- 7:33Michelle Gauther: So how do you keep yourself - because this whole audience, they're hardworking, motivated women just like you and just like me, but sometimes they're feeling really overwhelmed.
- 7:41Michelle Gauther: So when I hear that you've been to three continents and a pilgrimage in the past year and running this multi-million dollar business and I know from being your client the level of dedication you put into everything that you do - how do you keep from being overwhelmed?
- 7:57Susan Hyatt: That's such a great question and let me tell you something, because I came from burnout, I'm very, very aware of my energy and of my capacity and I'm very devoted to self-care, and I do think of self-care as a business plan.
- 8:14Susan Hyatt: I'm not saying I don't get tired, but what I am saying is I pay very close attention to understanding what my capacity is and I create the conditions for me to thrive.
- 8:26Susan Hyatt: So I know sleep is a real hot button for overwhelmed, overworked moms and women.
- 8:33Susan Hyatt: So I'm pretty devoted to sleep hygiene.
- 8:36Susan Hyatt: I'm very devoted to rituals, so something that I call big yes energy, or the celebration factor, which is practices that keep me in the present moment so that I can access gratitude and so that I can also ritualize celebrating everything, including the morning, the evening.
- 8:58Susan Hyatt: I'm pretty devoted to movement and hydration and eating well.
- 9:04Susan Hyatt: Also, I have great boundaries with myself around business hours.
- 9:12Susan Hyatt: In fact, I have, at the end of the day, I have something I call a desk blessing, where at three, four o'clock in the afternoon, I put my hands on this desk and say, "good job, that has to be enough, we're done".
- 9:26Susan Hyatt: I shut this door and I do not come back.
- 9:30Susan Hyatt: So that is amazing.
- 9:33Susan Hyatt: Oh my goodness, it's a ritual.
- 9:35Susan Hyatt: It's like, hey, there's always more to do, there's always a to do list that's never ending, but for today, this has to be enough.
- 9:43Michelle Gauther: Yeah, that's so wonderful.
- 9:44Michelle Gauther: I feel like when I first created my business, I defaulted into the way that I knew how to work, which was to try to work as much as possible and make it the least fun, make it as hard as possible, right, because I had a belief that I could make money, lots of money, but it had to be hard or it had to be like a beating somehow.
- 10:04Michelle Gauther: So I totally understand that and I think that's something that a lot of people listening probably feel like they don't have a choice, like I have so many things to do all the time.
- 10:15Michelle Gauther: But it's so good to remember you do have a choice.
- 10:17Michelle Gauther: There may be some implications to that choice, like, for example, if you're stopping working when there's more on the to do list, it's not going to get done, but there's always tomorrow.
- 10:26Michelle Gauther: Maybe that thing wasn't meant to be, I think, being able to walk away from it and prioritize whatever you're doing in the evenings.
- 10:34Susan Hyatt: I agree with you and I also think that we as women can buy into, like people, pleasing behaviors and also just this sense of urgency that our world has, and I have gotten better at being like, you know what, I don't have to answer every single person that decided to email me today.
- 10:54Susan Hyatt: Some of them can wait and, honestly, most of them should.
- 11:00Michelle Gauther: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
- 11:01Michelle Gauther: And sometimes our body even tells us it's an emergency, it's an obligation, and we have to be able to check in and say I don't actually have to do this.
- 11:11Susan Hyatt: I don't and I can ask for help.
- 11:12Susan Hyatt: I think that's the other thing that overwhelmed and over- worked women really aren't great at, because we're taught not to do it, but learning how to ask for everything: ask for help, ask for support, ask for a raise, ask for more money, ask for a testimonial.
- 11:30Susan Hyatt: L ike get comfortable asking so that it's not just you doing in isolation.
- 11:38Michelle Gauther: Yes, yes.
- 11:39Michelle Gauther: And do you have regular things that you surround yourself, like I know?
- 11:44Michelle Gauther: You have people who help you in your business.
- 11:45Michelle Gauther: You have people who help in your home, fitness, all that stuff.
- 11:49Michelle Gauther: Will you tell us about some of the support people you have in your life?
- 11:52Susan Hyatt: Yeah, I do and I think when I'm working with stressed out, overworked moms or women, I don't actually have a preference where you start.
- 12:02Susan Hyatt: If you feel more stressed in your home, then you do in your work life, then start at home, because I think, like getting help with your personal systems can give you the energy to do what you need to do business- wise, or it can work in reverse as well.
- 12:17Susan Hyatt: So I don't have a preference.
- 12:18Susan Hyatt: But in my personal home I have an amazing - I mean, listen, I would eat beans before I would not afford the cleaning company that I have, Totally Tidy, that comes to my house every Monday and keeps this house.
- 12:36Susan Hyatt: I have six animals in this house.
- 12:38Michelle Gauther: Oh, my goodness.
- 12:41Susan Hyatt: Three dogs and three cats, and two of those cats are Persians.
- 12:44Michelle Gauther: Okay, so they need to be here regularly.
- 12:48Susan Hyatt: I have a personal chef some of the time.
- 12:51Susan Hyatt: Although, Michelle, you're not even gonna believe it, because I know you know me from way back when in my non-cooking days.
- 12:56Susan Hyatt: I'm now in my chef era.
- 13:00Michelle Gauther: I saw you posted a few things.
- 13:01Michelle Gauther: I was like look at Susan having a domestic moment cooking some stuff here.
- 13:07Susan Hyatt: My friends are like this is gonna last till next Tuesday, but okay, make some scones.
- 13:11Susan Hyatt: Yeah, that's fine, but I do.
- 13:13Susan Hyatt: I do have help with errands, I have help with cooking, I have a personal trainer.
- 13:18Susan Hyatt: These are all things that helped me - I have doggy daycare - that helped me in my personal life and then professionally, I have a full-time executive assistant and several subcontractors that helped me with things like marketing and copywriting and social media, etc.
- 13:37Susan Hyatt: So over time I have built up a big support network.
- 13:42Susan Hyatt: I think, like you, can start with asking for the other people who live under the same roof to do things, so that you're not carrying the part-time job of invisible workload.
- 13:58Michelle Gauther: Yes, I would love for you to talk on that topic for a few minutes.
- 14:01Michelle Gauther: Your fury about it sometimes when you post just makes me so happy.
- 14:07Michelle Gauther: Like I just see that you're just infuriated with the ridiculousness of it.
- 14:12Michelle Gauther: I'm like, yes, exactly.
- 14:16Susan Hyatt: Well, it's just so absurd, when you really stop to think about it, how much we do.
- 14:22Susan Hyatt: That is an invisible part-time job and I'm an empty nester now and that has relaxed a lot of that load, as well as having the help that I mentioned.
- 14:36Susan Hyatt: But you'll notice that a lot of the subcontracted help I have in my home life are things that if I didn't have the money to do that would most likely fall on the woman of the house if she didn't have an equitable partnership.
- 14:52Susan Hyatt: And so I have an amazing husband who - we just celebrated our 30-year vow renewal - and he also says things like, do we have a sink stopper for this sink?
- 15:08Susan Hyatt: What do you mean?
- 15:10Susan Hyatt: You lived in this house how many years?
- 15:12Susan Hyatt: You don't know where it is?
- 15:13Susan Hyatt: Because he's never, hardly ever, washed any dishes.
- 15:15Susan Hyatt: I mean the absolute - so now he'll be holding his cell phone in his hand and say, do you know what the weather is?
- 15:24Susan Hyatt: And I'm like gee, I don't know, that phone in your hand might be able to tell you.
- 15:28Susan Hyatt: Probably tell you.
- 15:29Susan Hyatt: And so he's learning after 30 years of marriage.
- 15:34Susan Hyatt: But I do get infuriated by it because women are so bogged down with that additional workload, absolutely.
- 15:42Michelle Gauther: And it just automatically falls on us.
- 15:44Michelle Gauther: I mean, I'm a single mom and I noticed that the words that I use, even with my kids, who are 16 and 13 and very able and sometimes even willing to help - "could you guys help me out by bringing the groceries in?
- 15:56Michelle Gauther: I'm like, why are you helping me out?
- 15:58Michelle Gauther: We all three live here and we all three eat these groceries.
- 16:01Michelle Gauther: Like I just assume everything is my responsibility and that they're like my assistants and I need them to help me out, and it's like okay, "we're gonna bring in the groceries.
- 16:10Michelle Gauther: Could you please get some of the groceries and bring them in?
- 16:13Michelle Gauther: I can ask them, but I don't have to act like they're doing me a huge favor.
- 16:18Susan Hyatt: That's such a great example that I absolutely remember falling into.
- 16:23Susan Hyatt: You know, like help mom out.
- 16:25Susan Hyatt: The other thing that I've noticed now that my kids are empty nesters is still the emotional, invisible workload.
- 16:31Susan Hyatt: So, the role we assume with managing moods and personalities in the family.
- 16:37Susan Hyatt: And so recently we were all getting together for Thanksgiving in New York where my daughter lives, and she was texting me asking me if I would please inform the men of the family, so her father and her brother, about a certain political topic that she was not going to discuss with them.
- 16:57Susan Hyatt: And I said are you asking me to do the emotional workload for you?
- 17:03Susan Hyatt: Because I don't think so.
- 17:05Susan Hyatt: And she was like, oh, and she goes, okay, I'll text them.
- 17:09Susan Hyatt: Right?
- 17:09Susan Hyatt: But it's like, no, mom's not available for that.
- 17:14Michelle Gauther: Yes, and what a good lesson for her, that somebody won't do that to her now that she realized that she was doing that to you, probably without meaning too.
- 17:22Michelle Gauther: Yes, oh my gosh.
- 17:24Michelle Gauther: Well, I feel like I could talk to you for hours, but I don't want to let this interview end without talking about Bare, because that's another one of my favorite things that you've taught me.
- 17:32Michelle Gauther: So will you tell them a little bit about your book and just your whole outlook on women and their bodies and diet culture - your favorite, diet culture.
- 17:42Michelle Gauther: That's almost, I feel, as much passion about that as the invisible workload from you.
- 17:48Susan Hyatt: I tell you what, and I am on fire today about also the the ageist stuff, now that I turn 50.
- 17:57Susan Hyatt: But so Bare, for all of your listeners, is a book about loving the skin that you're in, and it's a seven step process that I developed over many, many years of working with thousands of women, of how to really bring a woman home to herself, to love her body, and to stop dieting.
- 18:15Susan Hyatt: And one of the things that I love to ask audiences to consider is how much time they spend worried counting, measuring the calories, and the food that they consume so that they can take up less space.
- 18:32Susan Hyatt: And it's, you know, whatever.
- 18:36Susan Hyatt: It is now a hundred billion dollar industry designed to convince us that we would be better if we took up less space.
- 18:46Susan Hyatt: And so the average age that a girl starts dieting is eight years old, and the domino effect of the loss of confidence ends up with more women dying in poverty than ever before.
- 19:02Susan Hyatt: So you have girls who start dieting at eight.
- 19:05Susan Hyatt: By the time they're 13, they have 30% less confidence than their male counterparts.
- 19:10Susan Hyatt: That results in girls and women not learning how to advocate for themselves, not going for the jobs they want, not asking for raises, earning less money because there's already a wage gap.
- 19:22Susan Hyatt: So think about it.
- 19:24Susan Hyatt: If you're over concerned, if you're using all your capacity for thigh gap, you're not worried about the wage gap and you're suffering from the confidence gap.
- 19:33Susan Hyatt: I'm not even gonna get into the orgasm gap.
- 19:36Susan Hyatt: And then, because you've earned less money over your years and you didn't learn about investing which is something else I'm big into, real estate investing, and you suffer during divorce, as something that you have experience with.
- 19:53Susan Hyatt: If you're not conscious to all of these gaps, then what happens is you have less money in retirement and you are much more likely to run out of money in your older age.
- 20:04Susan Hyatt: And so I am out to reach girls before they start dieting, through a program I have called BOLD, which I'm actually working with my adult daughter now, who's a grant writer, to get grants, to get it into schools to educate women about what diet culture is doing to them and robbing them of their energy and capacity they could be using to embrace their power and do amazing things in the world and really smash diet culture.
- 20:34Michelle Gauther: I love that.
- 20:35Michelle Gauther: Excellent summary.
- 20:36Michelle Gauther: Oh my goodness, so powerful, so much all wrapped into that.
- 20:39Michelle Gauther: I had a client tell me recently that if she wasn't thinking about her weight - like the way she said it is, "if I was skinny, I have no idea what I would think about, like to indicate.
- 20:53Michelle Gauther: That's just constantly playing in her head and it's like what a shame, a waste of your brain, you know, to do that, and the thing I love about your book, too, is that the approach is all about bringing pleasure and loving things and experiences into your life.
- 21:16Michelle Gauther: Like the thing that I took from that book that I do all the time, like 100% of the time is being really intentional about meals.
- 21:24Michelle Gauther: So you will never, ever find me standing at my kitchen counter eating out of a leftover, like something cold leftover.
- 21:31Michelle Gauther: I always heat it up, put it on a nice plate.
- 21:34Michelle Gauther: Sometimes I'll use a placemat.
- 21:36Michelle Gauther: I get myself a glass of ice water.
- 21:38Michelle Gauther: I sit somewhere besides my office, like I make the meal, so that I'm actually paying attention to what I'm eating and, you know, enjoying what I'm eating.
- 21:47Michelle Gauther: So that was something I took from the book that I have just kept and it's such a solid habit Now it's just, I'm just blind to it, like I just do it without even thinking about it.
- 21:57Susan Hyatt: Oh, that makes me so happy.
- 21:58Susan Hyatt: Yeah, I definitely, I think the Bare process is very much about adding amazing things to your life, instead of diet culture being about subtraction and deprivation.
- 22:12Michelle Gauther: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
- 22:13Michelle Gauther: Okay.
- 22:14Michelle Gauther: Is there anything else that you want to tell us about, anything that you're working on, where people can find you,
- 22:25Susan Hyatt: Sure, I think the latest thing I'm proud of is a community I have called Big Yes Energy, and we talk about all the things we've talked about here today.
- 22:33Susan Hyatt: There's also a great podcast I have called You've Got Nerve, which you should come on, Michelle.
- 22:40Susan Hyatt: , t's all about listen to the episode about how not to get jet lagged.
- 22:47Susan Hyatt: That is one of my most popular episodes.
- 22:50Michelle Gauther: That is a really good one if you're going on a trip and you want to know how not to get jet lagged, listen to that episode, that was really good.
- 22:58Susan Hyatt: Let me tell you how.
- 22:58Susan Hyatt: Three continents n a pilgrimage.
- 23:00Susan Hyatt: Do you know?
- 23:01Susan Hyatt: I did not have jet lag coming home from Vietnam, oh my god.
- 23:04Susan Hyatt: And it rea that stuff really works.
- 23:06Susan Hyatt: So you've got nerve is a great podcast about women getting up the nerve to make changes in their lives and do amazing things.
- 23:14Susan Hyatt: And if you want to have fun on social media, I'm at Susan Hyatt on Instagram and Facebook, and I have lots of fun Sometimes rants, but a lot of times comedic reels that'll make you laugh.
- 23:28Michelle Gauther: Yes, but your rants make me laugh too, because you're so right like, you're so spot-on, and I love when somebody tries to like talk smack to you or say something about your body or whatever, you just give them the smackdown.
- 23:43Michelle Gauther: It's so great.
- 23:44Susan Hyatt: Well, the latest insult.
- 23:46Susan Hyatt: So I did a rant.
- 23:47Susan Hyatt: For those of you who are Swifties, I did a rant about people being upset about Taylor Swift, just in general, and the men that have come out and do you know their favorite insult, because they love to go for you.
- 24:00Susan Hyatt: When they can't come for your intellect, they go for your looks, and so the biggest insult I get lately, since I turned 50, is, you're so old, and I'm like, oh my god, are you 12 and living in a basement?
- 24:12Michelle Gauther: That's what you got, oh my gosh.
- 24:15Susan Hyatt: I'm just like yeah, okay, try harder, because I raise Ryan Hyatt.
- 24:19Susan Hyatt: All right, Is that all you got?
- 24:21Susan Hyatt: Yeah, exactly.
- 24:25Michelle Gauther: I just love it.
- 24:26Michelle Gauther: Anyone could try to go up against you and you'd give them the smackdown.
- 24:28Michelle Gauther: I love it.
- 24:29Michelle Gauther: Yes, you are very fun to follow on social media, for sure.
- 24:32Michelle Gauther: Well, I just want to personally thank you.
- 24:34Michelle Gauther: There are so many things.
- 24:36Michelle Gauther: There are many things on this list that I made for myself about the impact that you've had on my coaching career and my life, not all of them that I got to, so thank you so much.
- 24:45Michelle Gauther: I really really appreciate what you're putting out in the world and just the impact that it's had on me as a person and a business owner.
- 24:53Michelle Gauther: So thank you, thank you.
- 24:54Susan Hyatt: Michelle, you are a delight.
- 25:01Michelle Gauther: Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
- 25:04Michelle Gauther: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at MichelleGauthier.
- 25:08Michelle Gauther: com.
- 25:10Michelle Gauther: See you next week.