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How to Take Back Your Time and Beat Burnout · Work It Like A Mum

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, I'm Elizabeth Willits and I'm obsessed with helping as many women as possible achieve their boldest dreams after kids and helping you to navigate this messy and magical season of life.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: I'm a working mum with over 17 years of recruitment experience and I'm the founder of the Investing in Women job board and community.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: In this show, I'm honoured to be chatting with remarkable women redefining our working world across all areas of business.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: They'll share their secrets on how they've achieved extraordinary success after children, set boundaries and balance, the challenges they've faced and how they've overcome them to define their own versions of success.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Shy away from the real talk?
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: No way.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Money struggles, growth, loss, boundaries and balance we cover it all.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Think of this as coffee with your mates, mixed with an inspiring TED Talk sprinkled with the career advice you wish you'd really had at school.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: So grab a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, make sure you're cosy and get ready to get inspired and chase your boldest dreams, or just survive Mondays.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: This is the Work it Like A Mum podcast.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: This episode is brought to you by Investing in Women.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Investing in Women is a job board and recruitment agency helping you find your dream part-time or flexible job with the UK's most family-friendly and forward-thinking employers.
• 1:34
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• 1:39
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• 1:48
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• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Now back to the show.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Work it Like A Mum podcast.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Today I'm delighted because I am chatting with Vicky Yaffe and we are going to be talking about how Vicky loved her job so much and was so overworked that she chose not to take a honeymoon when she got married a few years ago and has gone on a complete 180 in how she manages her time and attitude to work that she is now living the dream and taking a month off at the end of the year to travel around Thailand and Singapore.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: So Vicky is coming on today to give us some tips about how we can all best manage our time, so we have more time to do the things that we love.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: So thank you so much, vicky, for joining me today thank you so much for having me.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: It's such a pleasure to be here I mean, it does sound like you've had, you know, a complete personality transplant.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: If you, you know, didn't go on honeymoon.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: You chose not to go on honeymoon and now you're taking a month off to talk us through.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: You know what?
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: What were you like then, back when you got married, and what were you doing?
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, did you feel you couldn't take a honeymoon?
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: yes, I mean, that's exactly how it feels a personality transplant, because I do feel like a lot of the things about me I used to think were personality traits, like being disorganized or being indecisive or you know, all of these things.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: I was like this is just who I am.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: I can't change it.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: Um, but I was very.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: You know, I grew up with the narrative that things take time and I was hyper ambitious.
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: So things take time.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: How I was going to hack time then was by working longer days, working more hours, saying yes to all the things being overly busy, and this, to no one's surprise, led to me, you know, working 80 plus sometimes 100 hour weeks, led to three burnouts, led to daily anxiety attacks, um, and that all culminated in yeah, so 2019 was the year I got married, and it was also, um, our startup, our tech startup, got into an accelerator program in Austin, texas, that was starting the day after we got married.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: So, instead of taking any kind of honeymoon, we just relocated across the world, and I remember thinking it's so strange that people here don't know that we just got married like two days ago.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: Um, yeah, it's not been such a big thing for you, yeah it's such a big thing, you know it's such an emotional thing, and then go somewhere where nobody knows, and also to not be willing to even take that small break, even if we've not done something like go to Thailand and Singapore, even if we've done something more local, to just like decompress yes down, um, because I really believe that the answer to success was doing all the things yesterday.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: Um which, by the way, for anyone listening, if you are on that train, let me tell you what I've learned, having coached hundreds of people and lived through this cycle myself multiple times the more you overwork today, the more you are going to overwork tomorrow.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: There's no like completing the to-do list today.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: That leads to time off tomorrow that's.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's interesting and it's really.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Work can be addictive.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: It's it.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: I always say it's the and it's really work can be addictive.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: It's it, I always say, it's the trauma response.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: It's not only socially acceptable, it's applauded Like if we are overworking from a belief that you know we are not enough and we will be better when we are there, we will be more respected when we are there and we will be happier when we are there.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: Or when we are there, then, um, you know, that's how I describe hustle, by the way is wanting to um overwork or change our mindset through doing rather than being, and um.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: And yeah, I was that person that was celebrated by society, by peers, by managers, because I was willing to do all the things.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: But what did it really create for myself?
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: like I shared illness yeah, were you with your husband?
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Was your husband in the tech staff as well?
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: Then with you?
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: yes, and I'm going to be very honest here um, I remember specifically where we were, where I had my breakdown and realized the burnout was happening.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: We were on a hike, um, and I just like burst into tears and I probably would have kept going, and he was the one that was like we are, you know, closing this business or at least I'm not co-creating this, like I can see what's happening.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: And we have other dreams.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: Your dream is to be a coach, my dream is to be a pilot, which he is now, and so let's turn down the volume on this thing that we're doing.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: That's not creating the life that we want, and not healthy.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: Um and and backpedal and at first I was like I'll just carry on without him.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: And then, like a week later, I was like no, this is actually not sustainable.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: I think it sort of fueled that sense of maybe, when you work with your partner though because I'm guessing that's I mean I talk about my work with your partner though, because I'm guessing that's I mean I talk about my work with my husband a lot, he talks about his work with me a lot.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: We don't work together, but if we were, if we were obsessed over the same thing, I could see how that would just be all our conversation um, yes and no, I feel like I learned a lot from him.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: Um, in terms of balance, which was not something that I'd learned about before.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: Really, um, it's not something I even sought out, like I was very much like proud to be, like I'll sleep when I'm dead and like, yeah, I can do it all, like that was like a badge of honor for me.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: Um, so I I learned from him and I think he was shocked at who I was in a workplace.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: Um, because it just was not like I said.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: There was just so many red flags and it was so unsustainable that I cannot outsource the responsibility for my ways to him or to working with him.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: That was who I was, before him as well and was it just you two in that tech company, or were there other people?
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: so we had a platform of where we help people host intimate pop-up events in their home.
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: So we had like thousands of uh guests and we had 100 or so hosts um, so it was just us in the core team.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: We had a tech, you know, we had a few other people um, but it was mainly us in the founding team and then we had 100 or so people.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: I mean, I guess, if things went wrong they contacted you.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: So it's stressful yes, yes, well, it's not even that.
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: It's, you know, my insistence on not only am I going to be the CEO of this company, and you know we're going to co-manage the marketing and we're going to.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: He was, his background was hospitality, so he managed um, host training and onboarding and all of that kind of stuff.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: But I was like, oh, we should also host events every week to make sure it's up and going and we should also be at all of our host events that are in the area.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: It was literally like and I did like an online MBA at the same time and it was and I launched my podcast like it was like how much can I do?
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: Um, yeah, you know, I feel like it's like having a packet of cookies and you like really enjoy the first three and you get to like the end of the sleeve and you're like I didn't need that and now I don't feel great.
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: That was my attitude to work gosh, that is yeah.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: Were you ever getting any time off at all?
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: Um?
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: like yes, and it was always on my mind, like always.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: And I know a lot of people say, well, if you're a business owner, work is always on your mind.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: It's not true.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: Work is not always on my mind anymore anymore.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: And someone in my time hackers, my time hackers community just shared this today or I just saw it today that they said like they've stopped centering their business is not the center of their universe anymore.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: It's like I just love when someone has that realization that like it doesn't have to be the center of your universe to survive.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: Um, there's no other area in our life.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: I'm not like to my best friends, like my best friend must be the center of my universe to survive.
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: Even my child right, like I love him to pieces, he's in nursery today.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: Like he's not the center of my universe.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: He is probably the most important thing, but like I'm able to do other things and think about other things and be here today recording this podcast, and it doesn't take away from our relationship or his experience in the world oh, that's a nice thing to say.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: So you, you closed the.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: Did you close the business at this point?
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: And then what happened?
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: Then what?
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: So you know what?
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: I'm guessing.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: You went through a bit of soul searching and why.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: You thought about what you're going to do next.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: So what were you considering about to do next?
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: well, I was actually already certified as a coach.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: It was something I did in 2017.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: And I had a few clients because, again, not saying no to anything and so I decided to just go back in on that.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: I was hired by the school I certified in to coach their clients and I decided to close the business boom back in with my parents.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: And I decided to, you know, close the business boom back in with my parents and I decided to rack up massive credit card debt to join a program to build my business, while, you know, waking up at 5am to drop my husband off at like a minimum wage catering job, and within two months, you know, he was out of that job.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: We bought a car, he was into a pilot training school.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: I had to hand in my notice at the coaching school because my business grew so fast.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: I think maybe I shared this with you, but within six months I'd hit my three-year goals.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: Six weeks later, we doubled it again and what was crazy was I'd said to myself you know, I'm not going to be successful because I'm going to prioritize myself and I'm going to move slower and I'm going to do less and I'm going to prioritize free time, and there was a lot of time in nature and walking and just slowing down and it was like everything that I had been told that creates success.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: I'd like gone the opposite and said I just won't be as successful.
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: And then I was and it kind of hit me in the face things don't take time.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: It's not time.
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: Hacking is not about doing all the things today and often slowing ourselves down.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: Being more intentional, being more present which is another way of saying focused is, you know, the key to achieving more.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: I was going to say, because there'll be a lot of coaches listening to this and some people who have been doing it for years and will probably only still have the odd client and it feels a bit of slog.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: I mean a lot of.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: Whatever business you have can sometimes feel a slog.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: So what do you think was the secret, then, to your success so quickly?
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: so I mean this is time hacking.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: This is what I've got.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: A whole program around three things, I think drove my success, and I was lucky that it wasn't just I'm not just I'm seeing myself as client zero, but because of the container that I enjoyed where, by the way, I was an underdog and told not to apply and I didn't have enough business revenue to join and and hit the door down anyway.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: So I was in a room with 30 other more successful coaches, some of them already in the multiple six figures, when I'd made 9k and and so not only did I see what I did, but I saw what other people weren't doing.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: That allowed me to grow 30x um in life.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: And and the three things are centered around, like the brain, which, as you know, I call that our number one time tool is our brain and what was happening in my brain.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: Second is all around the decision the decisions that we are making, the decisions, more importantly, that we are not making.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: I was willing to make fast um decisions and learn through, you know, gathering data on the other side of the decision, whereas a lot of people are like, no, should I launch a podcast?
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: I don't know like, will it work?
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: Should I focus on LinkedIn?
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: Will it work?
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: Should I do that like yeah?
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: and the third is our relationship to fear and failure and, essentially, like, one thing I can promise you is I might have succeeded massively, but I failed way more.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: And I think so often, especially if we come from you know, successful career or successful, you know, getting good grades or a good college degree or anything like that we have been very well conditioned to avoid failure and then when you go into entrepreneurship, it's like that needs to be removed.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: You have to fail.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: That's how you are going to succeed and and that's what I saw as the three differences between me and everyone else in that room and that's what I teach people on now um, those are the biggest time hacks.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: Like, if you want to achieve more, you've got to start working with your brain and understanding it and know it and know how to optimize it.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: You have got to start making decisions and, um, fast decisions and imperfect decisions, and you have got to be willing to fail, to fail, forward, to move forward.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: You know I was speaking to a group of female lawyers last week.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: I was doing an event for them and you know some.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: At the end I offered some coaching and one of the things that came up was, like you know, essentially with a few of them is that you have to be willing to do something that you don't want to do, like it's not going to feel amazing all the time.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: And I think sometimes in the personal development world and potentially what these coaches are hearing is you know, you have to like, feel amazing and feel aligned and like.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: You know like you should feel good about what you're doing most of the time.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: If you are a human with a human brain that evolved for the last 40,000 years for survival, not for success, in our modern day world, everything in you is going to go against you going live on facebook or sharing something on linkedin or exposing yourself.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: You have to be willing to work against that programming and that means doing things before you're 100 ready, before it feels 100 amazing and that is true actually, even if you're in corporate as well, isn't it's like going for that promotion, if you know, if you think you're not ready, um, you know, putting your hand up in a meeting saying something, you think maybe other people are gonna think this sounds stupid.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: This actually is getting over yourself, really, in the nicest kindest possible way yeah, I saw this quote the other day.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: That was like, if you are, if it's not gonna work, if you're sure it's not gonna work, then prove yourself right.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: Earn the right to say it's not going to work, instead of just being in your own head saying this isn't going to work what a great quote.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so going rewinding a bit to the first thing about knowing your brain.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: So what would be some tips you'd give to people about how to really get to know themselves?
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: And you know, time picking within your brain yeah.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: So I have a free guide you can link to it in the show notes about the four steps to stop wasting time and the four biggest time wasters and they're all narratives inside our brain.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: So, for example, one of the things that I always speak about is like, whenever we're saying I don't have enough time, I don't have enough time, it's very counter to like the actual fact, which is we have time.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: Time is a resource.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: It's not like money in a bank account where it goes up and down depending on you know, like every day we wake up with time and I remember coaching someone years ago who was a mum, had a corporate job and a side business, and said I don't have time for my business.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: And we broke down what you're spending your time on and one of the big things that she was spending time on was time with her kids.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: And I said you know?
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: And I said to her well, you know, do you, do you want to?
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: You could put them in a daycare, you could put them in front of the tv, you could.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: And it was like no, I don't want to do those things.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: So it's acknowledging like we have this resource and we are choosing how we allocate it, and sometimes that choice means I don't have five hours a day for my business like other people.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: But we love that choice and owning that from like a place of confidence and feeling powerful is very different to feeling like a victim and feeling like life is unfair because you don't have it.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: And even that small switch means that when you do sit down for the 40 minutes that maybe you have for your business, you're not spending it fighting this victim mentality, arguing with yourself, feeling guilty, looking at what everyone else is doing, you know, and your brain basically gathering all the evidence for why it can't work for you, and instead you're going to be focused and clear on like I am powerful, I make decisions, I know how to use my time and you'll that 40 minutes will be a completely different 40 minutes.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: Oh, I like that.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: It is that, isn't it?
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: I guess it's just that owning your decisions and I've had that.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'll be honest, I've had that like victim mentality, like looking at the people, they all have all the time in the world to do xyz, but you know, like this, actually this lady that you coached, I didn't want to put my children in like really long child care and things, so actually, yeah, you've reframed my mind as well yeah yeah, that's been really helpful.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: So it's all about like I guess a lot of it sounds like it's coming down to that gratitude as well and being grateful for the choices that you make and actually that you can.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: You do have a choice yeah, I think you know, we have to remember, like, as women, as parents, as business owners, like there's a lot of narratives out there that intentionally make us feel smaller and less capable and like we are doing something wrong because we can't fit into a working world and ours and norms that weren't designed with us in mind, and so we're wrong, instead of the system being wrong, instead of the norms being wrong, instead of even the tools that are supposed to support us.
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: Because, as I think you know, like I don't teach traditional time management because it's not built with us in mind, and so that's why so many of us struggle with it, um, and and removing that to start to like, lean into your brilliance, your capability, your potential, your power, um, and that's a huge difference in how we problem solve, the bold decisions that we are willing to take, how we communicate what we're available for, what we're not available for, um, you know, and how we spend that time.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: Because, I promise you, even the person that has, and maybe some people listening to this, are full-time business owners working nine hours a day, and they're still not seeing the results.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: Because, to take it back to the very original lesson, it's not time.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: More time does not equal more success.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: Otherwise we would be able to like be on that trajectory of in two years time your business will hit x in four years time.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: You're yeah why?
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: Because you spent more time in it, yeah, yeah and that's not how it works no, and you know, I don't know if you've heard of this thing called park.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: Is it parkinson's law where time, where tasks expand to fill the time?
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: or as we say yeah.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: We say thing, can I swear on this podcast?
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: So we say things take as long as we fucking let them yeah, I think that is so true and actually when you give yourself less time, just like with through it, yeah, I mean the amount of people that we speak to that are like.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: You know, I had a two-month deadline and then I got it all done in the last 24 hours.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: I'm like great, what would be different?
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: if you did it in the first 24 hours and then put it down, didn't have to think about it for the next two months, so we're all capable of it.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: And again it's what's happening in our brain the fear of doing the work imperfectly, the fear of the judgment, suddenly switches to the fear of missing the deadline.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: The fear of failure becomes way more prominent in missing the deadline than it does in other people's opinions and the judgment and doing something wrong.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: So again it's all coming back to what's happening in our brain.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: It all makes very like logical sense as well when you know the brain I.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: Just for me, it's just a shame that we aren't taught.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: You know what I now know and what we teach inside time hackers at school yeah, I guess some people are probably a bit wild, like I'm just thinking about homework, isn't it?
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: Some people are.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: I was always somebody that would complete it, you know, as soon as we got it.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: But there were some people that, just like the night before, like, oh gosh, I haven't done it and they could have had it, like I said, for weeks, months, whatever.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: I guess some people are wired like that.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: But then there is that procrastination, isn't it, that some people obviously have?
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: yeah, yeah, and I also think there's certain things that we find very easy to do a very common thing with our clients, or companies that we go into is like everyone's a really fast email responder, like I'll respond to all the emails but put off, like the maybe the larger projects or the emails that require more thought or things that you know we're not sure about.
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: We want to do some research around.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: We're like, oh, this feels complex or complicated, so I want to create those quick wins, those quick hits of dopamine, of checking something off a list, even if it's not the most important thing, even if it's not important at all, even if it doesn't actually even need to get done, but it feels good to complete a task.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: Oh, you know, I think I'm guilty of that because I love to like.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: I remember when I used to work in agency, my goal at the end of the day would be to get to inbox zero.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm nothing in my inbox.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: Actually probably wasn't the best use of my time, but even now I'm like what can I get rid of out this inbox?
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: Um, yeah, it is probably.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: It's just those little things that actually really aren't properly moving the needles.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: What would you advise to people then that you know are ambitious, that want to move the needle, that maybe have limited time?
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: I mean we have a framework that we teach people about success, successful weeks, productive weeks.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: We can link that in the show notes too.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: But essentially you want to be consciously spending a few minutes being intentional, so you're not like the week's not dragging you along with like other people's minutes being intentional, so you're not like the week's not dragging you along with like other people's priorities and emails, but you're being intentional with like what is this week?
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: Like how do I end this week successfully?
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: What does it look like?
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: What's moved forward?
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: And then you make micro decisions each day based off of like your goal versus the busyness, versus what other people put in front of you, versus the conversations you happen to have versus like anything else.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: You are very clear on like your definition of success and how you are measuring it on a week by week basis, so that you are driving the train to the destination you want it to go to and other people can get on and off, but like you're clear in where you are going.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you because you've obviously taken your coaching business now to the next level because it's gone from you.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: You've got a team and there'll be a lot of coaches listening to this where it is just them and they probably are feeling a little bit overwhelmed how do you grow a business from you to you and a team, and then you're in a team that can then allow you to take a month off?
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: and I do want to preface this with like I um, because I think a lot of people will credit the team with me taking a month off, but I was put on bed rest when I was pregnant and had to take two months off.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: That was what led me to decide to create a team, but also I was willing at that point to kind of shut my whole business down and prioritize my health and I.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: I just want to say this to anyone like, if you think you have to do certain things in order to take the time off, you're wrong.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: Every business can survive taking a month off, like your clients can get by.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: If you're working one on one with clients, you can go away for a month.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: If you want to, it's we're the obstacle, right?
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: Like it's not time, it's not other people, it's's us, we're the obstacle.
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: Um, and so I just want to preface that because I really want, if anyone's listening and they feel inspired and they want to take a month, or even two weeks or three weeks or whatever it is off, I want to invite you to think about like, what if it's?
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: What if you're the only obstacle?
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: What do you need to overcome within yourself in order to make that happen?
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: Um, so, just just just that, because you know, now I do have a team of 17 18 coaches all over the world, um, and that's amazing, but I would have done it with or without the team.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: Where I'm at right now with my, like, balance and life and how I view it.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: Um so, but what happened was I was put on bed rest.
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: This was when I was pregnant and I was also living in France.
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: Um, it was a really scary time and I also, at that point, had already, because of my business growth, I'd already moved away from one-on-one coaching into like building community of time hackers that's what they're called um and I realized I needed someone to coach.
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: So I and I wanted, and then suddenly I was aware that I was going to be taking maternity leave like things that I hadn't thought about and I noticed the key woman risk in my business and I decided I had different options.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: One of the options was definitely to have a month of no calls, or a month of networking calls, or you know.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: However, I want there's multiple options.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: I just want to be clear on that.
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: But for me, as you and I have spoken about, I'm, I was always going to be an entrepreneur.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: I was always going to grow a business.
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: This is like what I want to do.
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: I was always the CEO.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: I just happened to do it through coaching and this was my opportunity to go back into the CEO role, and I decided to invite my clients, who were already experts in my tools, already had transformation through the tools, um, if they wanted to get certified by me.
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: I wanted to ensure that while I wasn't there, my clients had access to the best coaching, to excellent coaches um, better than me, honestly, um, because I really, I really believe in the value and the quality of coaching over the checkbox certification or the you know, I really think it's like the quality versus the time yeah right um, and I expected two or three of them to apply and we had 12 people and I was like
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: okay, all right, I'm game to do this.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: So I built the program as I run it live for four months.
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: We ended up bringing in like DEI experts, trauma experts, like it was really built from this, like nurturing place of I want the best for my clients.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: How do I guarantee that happens?
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: And that's something I will say is very different about our certification in terms of that excellence and the quality of coaching that we create and it's feedback we often get from our one-on-one clients now is like, wow, I've invested, you know, thousands or tens of thousands of dollars into coaching and this has been way more valuable um.
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: So, because there was 12 then it evolved right.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: Suddenly I have access to a team of 12.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: Well, now we're doing awful one-on-one coaching again, which is something.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: Again, I hadn't seen that when I first.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: So I'm sharing this, I'm sharing a bit more of the background for everyone listening.
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: So you can see, you know, I still practice what I preach.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: I'm still willing to fail, I'm still making different decisions.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: I'm still testing and experimenting.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: Like you know, someone could sit here and say I had this three-year business plan forecast.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: That was not my story, um, and it's not how I operate, even now, because I value that flexibility and and and that willing.
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: You know, that ability to adapt, even with our one-to-one coaching program.
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: Um, I'll share that we.
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: You know I really wanted it to be accessible, so I priced it starting at 47 pound a month, but then you could get four sessions for 130.
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: I can't remember what it was, but essentially after three months I was like, oh, we're losing money on this, um.
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: So, you know, I shared about it on my podcast.
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: I was very honest.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: I said it's going to go up to 97 pound a month or I think it's 187, 197 for four sessions.
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: Um, so it's still 50 pound a session.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: But you know, just thinking about that honesty, um, and then we had more people wanting to get certified by us and so last year we certified another 16 and, as I shared with you, we're currently opening up for a new certification starting January.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: Um because they pay to get certified with you.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: Then they're self-employed and just work under your umbrella.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: And how does it work?
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: yeah, so to get certified.
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: So it's an.
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: It's four thousand pounds to get certified by us.
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: It's a four-month program and then you can use our core tools in your own business.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, when you are employed, you know, it's really great for leaders, for people, um, and the people in hr departments, and also people with existing coaching businesses, as well as brand new coaches or people thinking about coaching.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: We had someone that was a social media manager, um, that thought about coaching and then realized, you know, so now she's doing both, so it's very complementary skill set.
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: I will say, um, and then people are self-employed, they pick their hours.
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: We ask for a minimum of three hours a week and a maximum of 15 hours a week.
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: We don't, you know, we wouldn't ask for more than that, and then people could work one on one with our clients they can coach you pass the business then is that how?
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: so we sell the one on one coaching package and then they work with our clients, yeah, but they can also have their own business as well, so they can do one-on-one coaching with us and not everyone, by the way, that does the certification is necessarily hired.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: It's not happened that we've ever said no to anyone, but I do want to stipulate that it's a separate.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: You know, there's the completion of the program and then there's the recruitment process, which I'm sure you can appreciate, um, but what I think people love about it is, firstly, someone just shared this on LinkedIn.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: They tagged us about being an entrepreneur can be quite lonely and they have this like community.
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: Um, you know, our team meetings aren't like formal.
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: They are business updates, but they are also if anyone wants coaching.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: What are we learning?
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: What are we sharing?
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: Like?
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: It's a very collaborative environment.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: Even our style of teaching is very unique in terms of, like I said, it's not a checkbox.
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: You're not going to be told to regurgitate or repeat information from my mouth to yours.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: That's not what webox.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: You're not going to be told to regurgitate or repeat information from my mouth to yours.
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: That's not what we create in our coaches.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: We want very unique coaches and we think that our clients love identifying the coaches that they want to work with, the different skills, and so on.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: I get that.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: I used to do color review as well that we've heard about, which is where you advise people what colors um, and actually that's a similar model, so you train through.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: Call me beautiful.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: You um.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: Then get featured on our website so you get leads through there, but then also you have your own business yes yeah, it's a lovely way to work and actually I missed that when I solved it completely on my own, because we used to have, like six months late every six months, a dinner and you know there'd be awards and things like that.
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: It's a nice way to work you feel part of the community, but also the autonomy of running your own business yeah, exactly that's exactly what it's like yeah, oh nice, I think, and it does sound like you got over that fear of like trying something and it might, may or may not work, and oh yeah, and what's funny is a few people from our organization have come into work for us, um, in different roles, um, aside from coaching, and when they get the behind the scenes of the company they're like, wow, you really practice what you preach, like you really fail a lot.
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, yes, how could I sell out there that the way to success is failing if I wasn't doing it myself?
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: It's so obvious to me.
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: But it's been a really fun thing to see people come in and be like oh wow, like you really do make fast decisions or you really do do this, or whatever it is you know yeah, I like that.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: So do you have a team then that work directly for you as well, in like the back office?
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think that's the thing, isn't it?
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: As well as the business going around?
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: I'm guessing you've gone through this.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: It's like oh gosh, can I make payroll, can I pay?
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: You know, that's the big fear.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: I think that was a fear that held me back for a long time.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: And then, once you get over that, then actually I find the business seems to grow because, well, it has to, doesn't it really?
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: And you take on more work and things, but that is a big fear that I think holds people back from hiring.
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think also, you know it's like what we spoke about before we hit record the skill set that like you and I have, and then the skill set that other people have, and I think I loved that time when I was building my business and I was doing it all and I knew what was going on in the website and the emails and the back end of the customer service and, like all, of it, but the size the company is now and the number of clients that we serve, like it would not be quality.
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: Um, if it was all me like, it would be.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: Like maybe you'll hear back from me in a month.
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: Like you know, I don't check emails very often as a standard, like you know.
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: So if I want that, then I and I want excellent customer service, then how am I going to provide that, for example?
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: Um, so, you know, as, as the company grows, if you want to maintain the standard, then I think leaning, you know hiring and you know letting other people do their expertise is, like you know, it's kind of an obvious, hopefully payoff and actually your email, and when you email you get an automatic response.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: It's quite refreshing that you only check it.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: What is it?
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: Two to two times a week, your email I mean sometimes I will check it more.
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: but the reason why I have that auto responder is to turn is to excuse me not responding when I don't want to respond.
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: So for example, for like, if I'm working with like a big corporate client, I'm available, but what that email has done has meant the number of emails that I get for the size business that I have is like tiny.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: What about?
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: social media.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: Do you go on social media a lot?
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: Yes, but I tend to go on to produce rather than engage, and maybe social media hurts me for that reason or whatever, but like I tend to more give value than like.
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: I can go on, create a reel on Instagram and be off all within five minutes yeah, go on to produce rather than just my mindless goal.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like, and I also just want to say, but sometimes I do want to mind the score.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: Sometimes I am really into a Netflix series, like I.
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: Again.
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: I think there's this narrative that's like if we're going to be productive, we have to be productive all the time.
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: But I see, sometimes this is like sometimes it's meditative for me to go on and watch like dog videos on my social media to calm my nervous system when I'm doing something big and scary.
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: I just don't engage, like I said about the brain, I just don't engage in beating myself up for it.
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: I don't engage in making myself wrong for it.
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: I don't make it mean that I've wasted the day.
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: I don't make it mean that I'm doing anything wrong like a big.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: So oftentimes in the morning, um, my husband will will do morning to the baby.
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: I do the nights and um, and I often like stay in bed till like 9, 9, 30, like I'll snooze, like there's a lot of narrative out there like snoozing is so bad and lazy and wasting time and like, no, for me snoozing is nourishing and refreshing and I wake up and I feel like, wow, I'm really ready to go now.
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: So I think you know a lot of technology gets a bad rep, but I think it's more the narrative that we have around it that's damaging so if someone's listening to this and is interested in not necessarily training as a coach, but how do you support individuals with like one-to-one?
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: yeah, we have like what I'd say is one of the most it's not the most accessible time and productivity coaching program on the planet with one-to-one coaching.
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: Like I said, it starts at £97 a month, goes up to £197 for four sessions a month and those are 20 minute sessions.
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: You can book and schedule however you want, you can reschedule when you need to and it's all on demand.
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: You select the coaches, you find out about all of our coaches maybe which time zone they're in, what their experience is, what you know they consider their expertise in time hacking, and then you can select them based off of that.
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: We have some people use the same coach over and over.
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: We have some people you know use different coaches and love that, and so that's a program that I'm really proud of.
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: And then the others is our flagship time hacker program program that I'm really proud of.
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: And then the others is our flagship time hacker program, which is a lifetime access um program and community where you get a portal and training videos talking you through exactly how to hack time, with bonuses such as like date your goal, which is what I used to create my first 25k month in business.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: Um and rest week and um most productive.
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: We all all these different bonuses, basically, and weekly coaching and a dedicated facebook community.
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: So, again, just combat that loneliness.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: We have a retreat coming up next week up in Manchester, but we also have done lunches and retreat days in Dallas and you know all that kind of good stuff written coaching, monthly challenges, all of the fun stuff.
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: But it's a place to be celebrated, supported, um, and challenged in the best way, like in a loving way.
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: Um, that's three thousand pounds.
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: Or we have a partial scholarship, right, it's a thousand pounds.
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: And this subscription, you know, monthly payment plan, sorry, um.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: So that's if you like are, if you're ready to like do the work, and that comes with some one-on-one coaching sessions as well, included um, if you are ready to do the work and you are all in and you are committed to like your life looking drastically different three months from now, and you're like now is my time.
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: I've done enough of like buying the fancy planners and color coding my calendar and like start saying I'll start again on Monday, like I'm in.
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: That's where you want to be.
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: If you feel like you want some support, um, and more private support around, like maybe something you in particular are struggling with, whether it's like feeling particularly overwhelmed, whether you are going back to work after having a child, or your child has just gone into nursery and you're like what do I do with all this time?
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: Whatever it might be, um, and oftentimes companies will also sponsor the private coaching and time hackers.
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: So if you are someone that wants support around your time, don't be shy to contact us and we can help you get that set up too yeah, let's see what sort of people you know um.
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: You know your customers and using the services.
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: I'd probably say it's still 70% entrepreneurs, but we are seeing more and more employees come to.
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: But I think you know, initially I think entrepreneurs know that their time is their result, so to speak, and they're really like, they're heavily motivated into investing.
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: But at the same time, we have seen this move in the past few years of, like, people wanting a four-day work week.
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: Like I'm not going to out them, but there's one of our clients who, um, cut her work week down to 20 hours.
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: She works remote.
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: The team doesn't know she kept winning awards and getting promotions and promotions and promotions because of how she was using the tools to optimize her time.
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: That's amazing.
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: So obviously won't mention her name, but yeah, it's great it's not the only one, um, so you know.
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: it's just to say I think we're all more aware of valuing our time, more of different ways of work, and I think we're really perfectly positioned to support teams, organizations and individuals as we navigate all of these changes around our work life.
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: What matters?
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: How do we get to what matters?
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: How do we use our time?
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, I don't believe time needs to be managed.
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: Time is a fixed, known resource to be managed.
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: Time is a fixed known resource we need to be managed and essentially, time hacking is all around how to optimize yourself for your performance so that you can optimize your time so how can people find you, connect with you and learn more about time hackers?
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: and you can connect with me on linkedin just vicky alfie will have the link in the show notes.
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: You can go to timehackersxyz, um, and then from there on that home page you can click into whether you're interested in the flagship program and bringing us to your team and one-to-one coaching or becoming a coach, um, and on instagram at vicky yaffe or at timehackersxyz.
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: And I also have a podcast called hack your time yeah, lovely, we'll put all the links in the show notes, plus the links to some of the resources you mentioned as well.
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: Oh yes.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for chatting with me today.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much for having me, and thanks everyone for listening.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to another episode of the Work it Like A Mum podcast.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review and subscribe, and don't forget to share the link with a friend.
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: If you're on LinkedIn, please send me a connection request at Elizabeth Willett and let me know your thoughts on this week's episode.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: You can also follow my recruitment site Investing in Women on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: Until next time, keep on chasing your biggest dreams.