Your First Hire
Hiring your first person is scary.
How will I bring in enough money to pay for them?
What if I have a lapse in contracts? How will I cover their salary?
What work would I give them? I like having my hands in all aspects of my projects.
Do I have to supervise? How does one actually manage?
What if they do something dumb and wreck my business?
It’s going to take me forever to train them and I don’t have that spare time.
What if I become reliant on them and they leave?
Then these worries link hands and dance in a circle in your brain and you push off hiring yet again.
At this point in my career, I’ve gone through seasons of hiring a bunch of staff and times when I scale back drastically.
Throughout, Komani Lundquist Cedano has been my go-to resource for growing and shrinking your team with ethics and heart. She’s a co-owner at Via Evaluation and has largely been responsible for Human Resources including hiring and managing staff. Like, the things that scare most of us about hiring and managing? That’s her full-time job.
Let’s pick her brain, shall we?
When to Hire
Stephanie: Most solo practitioners who eventually hire someone will say that they wish they’d done it sooner. So what kind of metrics should we be looking at to help us determine when to hire someone?
Komani: I suggest using an Eisenhower matrix. Draw a simple 4-cell table and fill it with the following:
1. what you’re good at
2. what you’re not good at
3. what you enjoy doing
4. what you don’t enjoy doing
Use this Eisenhower matrix to determine how much is in the ‘not good at’ or ‘don’t like’ – these items are the things to delegate.
Then, create an estimated employee budget (total estimated cost) of an employee to do the job you believe will best aid you in your growing business. Knowing this estimated total cost helps you set a baseline for the revenue you need to bring in to support them.
This cost should include expenses like their salary, benefits, and equipment, but also factor in the time spent managing them (instead of doing project work yourself) and related administrative costs. An old framework I heard about 15 years ago was $125k of revenue per employee. I suggest using a minimum revenue target of 2x their base salary or 1.5x their total estimated cost.
Then, determine a future revenue projection. You should know what you made in the past year, which can serve as your baseline, and then write up a list of what you currently have or expect to have in revenue for the coming year. This analysis will give you the information needed to determine if your revenue will cover both you and your new staff member.
Also, make sure you’ve exhausted outsourcing your other resources, such as your professional bench of an accountant or bookkeeper, lawyer, business coach, and financial advisor. Ensure you’ve maxed out the capacity of folks you’ve contracted to support your work.
Employee or Contractor?
Stephanie: I’ve only ever worked with contractors to fulfill the various roles in my company. When do you advise taking on employees versus working with a bench of contractors?
Komani: Taking on employees, versus contractors, should be a strategic, practical, or ethical decision.
Strategic: If you’re planning on having more than one employee (eventually). The return on investment is there to build the systems employees require. Or, based on your Eisenhower Matrix, you see that there’s a clear, full-time role you need to have someone else do.
Practical: You’re swamped and cannot complete work, or are already effectively using a single subcontractor nearly full-time. This is a clear indicator that they really should be an employee.
Depending on which US state you are in, you may be required to make this person a W-2 employee. This might also apply to having an intern that you realize you want to keep.
Ethical: You care about equity and see that employing folks and providing them access to a place to do work (an office), health insurance, paid time off, and other benefits is actually about equity. Not everyone can/is able/has access to be able to set up their own business/work from their house/pay for their own health insurance/manage the wild world of taxes/negotiate contracts.
Employers are required to provide many things for your employees, where contractors are really on their own. Second to this, it’s an ethical concern to ensure you can keep your promises to your clients – be reliable – even if an emergency arises.
When to Hire a People Manager
Stephanie: Say you’re one of those entrepreneurs that loves to do the actual work and, while you want assistance via contractors or employees, you don’t want your role to shift entirely to managing them. At what point do you need to hire someone to manage your employees? It seems like this type of hire would be a big step in organizational complexity.
Komani: Ultimately, knowing your own highest and best use (as a visionary? meeting with clients? writing reports?) is key. Recognize that you can choose what that is as you grow in your business. Your role in your organization will shift if you intend to bring employees in, and getting a manager will help, but won’t take away the burden.
When you make your first hires, seek folks who are great at taking high-level direction and can run with your ideas and plans. As your organization grows, you’ll find the need to bring in people with a greater variety of skill sets and increased specialization. You will need more guidance and structure for them, which is something a manager can help with.
Often, organizations get (or promote someone to) a middle-type manager after the first three employees. Someone who enjoys creating systems and processes and ensuring quality work products.
Three employees isn’t a hard and fast rule, but it’s often when I see small business owners struggling – keeping up with project oversight, business development, administration, and management of employees. This seems to be a challenge spot and time for a greater strategic move, which could be the hire of a manager.
It’s a big step in organizational complexity, and I suggest each entrepreneur know and be able to share what their organization’s overarching strategy (short and long term goals) and values are to help guide a manager.
With these elements in place, and a good deal of trust, and an ability to let go, someone else can help create a great structure for your growing team.
Reader, Stephanie is back. Isn’t it so helpful to get this kind of insight? Good news: Komani teaches an entire guest lesson on hiring and managing staff inside my Boost & Bloom course.
Even with Komani’s guidance, it’s still gonna be a bit scary to grow. It’ll be so much easier if you can run your thoughts and plans by a group of fellow founders. We’ve got your back.
Getting Out of Your Own Way
Downtown Kalamazoo got a new tenant:
What do you think is the name of this new business?
I had to look it up on Google Maps. It’s “Anchor’s Aweigh.”
But that logo is gonna drive their customers aweigh, amirite?
Don’t put so many flourishes in your logo that you render it illegible. People need to know the name of your business. This seems basic.
Yet we all do this.
We get between our clients and our services.
You might LOL at this and internally scream at me “MY PROVERBIAL DOORS ARE WIDE OPEN, WHERE ARE THE CUSTOMERS???”
Take a deep breath and let me rewind to August 31st to explain.
August 31st is my Independence Day – the day I quit my salaried job and started working for myself full-time. Every year I celebrate by opening my DMs to anyone with a question about starting or scaling a business.
Here’s one:
The answer to this question is the answer to about 65% of the questions I get:
Get out of your own way.
The biggest obstacle any entrepreneur at any level will ever experience: Your own damn mindset.
Our fears and worries keep us from taking a step.
We fear all the unknowns that go into starting a business, so we never begin. (When all you need to do is ask somebody who’s done it before and has a plan.)
We fear the trolls on social media so we never post. Even if we’ve never actually been trolled in real life. Even when there are ways to handle it. Even when that’s one of the main ways your clients will find you.
We’re scared that our clients won’t believe we have the artistic skill to develop amazing tattoos, so we totally overcompensate on the logo.
Our imposter syndrome keeps us from going after those big, dream clients – when, for all you know, your boutique shop is exactly what they’ve been needing.
Our mindset is “marketing is slimy” so we never actually inform the world that we have services to solve their problems.
Your customers are looking for you. Help them out.
How is your mindset in your way right now? Tell me about it.
If you find yourself thinking “I can’t do that.” the truth is probably actually “I’m too intimidated to do that because I don’t know how to do it well.”
And Babe I’ve got some good news: You aren’t the vanguard.
Other people have walked this path before you. It is well-trodden.
Any worry you have has done been worried already.
It’s been solved.
The answers are out there.
You just need to hook in to the people ahead of you who have plans and some hard-won lessons to share. You need a posse who will hold your hand while you take the next step.
Hang out with me, I’ve got you.
Just Don’t Call Me A Vendor
Don’t email me “Hi Stephanie, we’re soliciting details from multiple vendors… Would you set up a vendor profile and submit a proposal?”
I’m likely to put your reply at the bottom of my to do list.
If I reply at all.
Because that email tells me this potential client doesn’t actually care about me. They see me as basically the same as people they think are my competitors. They’ve taken no time to get to know me or how I work.
They probably just googled “data visualization workshop vendor” and emailed everybody on page 1.
You might choose a generous interpretation and suggest to me that perhaps this IS their way of getting to know me. That’s kind.
It’s just not true.
Because those emails are more like “Hey Stephanie, we’re interested in a data visualization workshop. I saw the information on your website and it seems like you’d be a good fit. Could we jump on a call and discuss our needs with you?”
That’s more personal. They did a tiny bit of homework. They want to mutually exchange more details.
But when someone calls me a “vendor” it’s a strong signal that I’m viewed as a commodity – essentially interchangeable with everyone else in my field.
Commodities can only compete on price.
Calling yourself a “freelancer” can project a similar vibe.
When I’m feeling super gracious, I’ll reply with a decline and an explanation.
“Thank you so much for reaching out. It sounds like you’re planning to collect multiple proposals and conduct a formal review process. I appreciate the invitation but I must decline. My experience is that these types of methods rarely surface the best candidate. Usually they’re only focused on price. In this field, you get what you pay for. We’ll never be the least expensive vendor. Far from it. Best of luck!”
This has often led to thoughtful exchanges. I get it – some people work under policies that require soliciting proposals from multiple vendors. But look baby I can send you wording for a sole source justification.
It’s just that I’m not spending my one wild and precious life writing up lengthy proposals where I essentially hand over my intellectual property only to be undercut on the budget.
I’m not a vendor.
When I’ve accepted this type of work in the past, I was treated with less respect. Expected to make late night last minute changes. Expected to let the client have creative control. Spoken to rudely. (Facebook was the absolute worst.)
Does that match up with your experience too?
I only want to work with clients where it’s a mutual and enthusiastic HELL YES.
“A mutual and enthusiastic hell yes” is a phrase also used to discuss consent around physical intimacy. Have you heard it used in that area before?
Makes sense, right? You want to date someone who is really into YOU, not swapping you interchangeably for the next hottie. You want someone who likes you because of your depth and personality not just because your peach is poppin.
So if you wouldn’t accept that kind of behavior from a potential mate, why would you allow it with potential clients?
A Cup of Tea
About 5 or 6 years into my career, I got a DM on Twitter from a guy, in which he told me he didn’t like me (of course it was on Twitter).
Curious, I ask what I did to offend him (quick side note: it’s fine to just block and delete these dudes, you don’t have to indulge them in any way).
He said he was insulted by some things I wrote.
My response: Well, I’m not gonna be everybody’s cup of tea.
In short, I’m not changing the way I go about things to please this dude.
The sooner you get comfortable with the fact that you aren’t gonna be everybody’s cup of tea, the freer, more creative, and more authentic you’ll be.
New ideas thrill some people (this is your audience!) and terrify others. So if you aren’t terrifying some people, you aren’t generating any new ideas.
When I first started talking about data visualization, many from the Old Guard got ruffled feathers. Because they had been writing 200-page picture-less reports for decades and here comes some new kid on the block suggesting that they change.
What am I gonna do – stop sharing my new ideas to keep them comfortable?
Of course not.
But women in particular are raised to be such people-pleasers that we often do silence ourselves for the comfort of those around us.
We desperately want to be liked.
Which means when someone gets mad at us, we’re devastated.
So we stay small. We say things that are so neutral and vanilla that no one could ever possibly be offended.
We never have anything fresh to say. We just keep repeating the socially sanctioned tried-and-true bullshit you hear everywhere. Never stand out. Don’t attract clients because we’re indistinguishable from competitors. And never make our mark on the world.
If those same tried-and-true ideas actually worked, we wouldn’t be socially crumbling under late state capitalism.
We need your ideas.
The world is waiting for your innovation.
These days I get a pearl-clutching email or DM every few months. Todd doesn’t like that I talk about the patriarchy or something.
My response: Then stop following me. You should unsubscribe, Todd.
I’m not Todd’s cup of tea and Todd is not my primary audience. Whew, thank goodness I figured that out! It helps me refine who I AM talking to, every single time.
You absolutely have to take the risk of not being liked by everyone in order to have your ideas improve the world for those who resonate with you.
Build-a-Coffin
Gerren Young will teach you how to build your own coffin. Long before you need it for that purpose, it can be a bookshelf. Or a coffee table (coffeen table? Stop me now.).
What a freakin wild idea, right?
90% of people are gonna be like, WTF? No. Weird. No.
But the 10% who want to have a hand in the construction of their final home? Absolutely geeked. Never a cooler idea. How fast can I sign up?
And that’s the power of having a niche.
The funnel between someone first hearing about this business idea and deciding whether to buy is extremely short.
This makes marketing very easy for Gerren. He just has to talk to the 10% of enthusiasts. Gerren won’t waste much time at all trying to convince the 90% to grow a desire to build their own coffin. You’re either in or out.
It’s akin to making your Bumble profile photo that one of you in the chicken costume at a pirate-themed bar. Many folks are swiping left but the few that swipe right have a really high potential of being your match because they understand your vibe.
Declaring a niche can seem so scary, like you’re just cutting off a huge pool of potential customers.
But all you’re really doing is cutting out the people who weren’t going to vibe right with you anyway.
And saving yourself a ton of marketing effort, worry, and dead end conversations.
Pick a niche.
Then expand later if you want.
For example, Gerren could develop a Build-a-Crib workshop and quickly hook in customers literally for their whole lives.
But if Gerren was like Hey I can teach you to make anything with wood! He could scream this from the highest hilltop in Kalamazoo and no one would care.
There’s nothing to hook in to.
A niche is not “I design data visualization.”
It’s “I create Tableau dashboards that actually work for public health departments.”
A niche is not “I teach financial planning.”
It’s “I teach millennial women how to invest in the stock market as an act of feminism.” Now we have something to sink our teeth into.
Your niche is your strength and your strategy for simplicity.
How detailed have you gotten about your niche? What’s holding you back from being even more specific? Email me.
A Day in the Life
Since “How are you so productive?” comes up so often, I’m gonna answer in this post. It’s due to massive time management and privilege.
So here’s the brutal honest truth about what my days look like.
But please hear me: A tight morning routine doesn’t make you a genius. Copying the morning routine of a Fortune 500 CEO is foolish. You have to figure out what works for you and that’s gonna be an ongoing process.
Early Morning
I used to wake up and jump onto my computer, before breakfast even, responding to emails that came in while I slept until my inbox was tamed.
But I was so fried and hungry at that point by all the urgency I’d created that I couldn’t do any deep thinking the rest of the day.
Midway through the pandemic, after I realized that YES I successfully replicated my favorite restaurant cocktail at home but OMG having one every day is not doing me any favors, I started prioritizing my morning time for myself. Did the pandemic make you rethink some aspects of your day-to-day too?
Now I need about 3 hours before I start work.
10 minutes of laying in bed looking at my phone, of course.
A healthy breakfast.
Time to relax with a coffee and a book.
Lots of deep stretching and physical therapy to keep the organs and muscles in the right places.
A regular meditation routine.
Plenty of opportunities to catch casual time with my teen.
Therapy.
Wordle.
Breakfast with a friend.
Volunteering.
I literally put my life before my work.
Late Morning
I front load my work hours so that the things that require my most creative energies happen first: developing new talks, inventing things, and writing.
It takes every ounce of my self control to avoid my inbox first thing. Answering email makes you feel like you’re being productive but in reality, the big stuff that will move your business ahead and really requires your brain isn’t in your inbox.
This means that when I’m in a heavy content creation period, it might take me a few days to get back to all my unread messages and I continually work on being at peace with that.
Late morning is when I produce.
I end my most productive time but listing out my next steps on the project at hand and then scheduling time in my calendar when I’ll get back to them. Which means there’s always a plan for how I’m going to use these hours.
I also schedule my virtual workshops to start mid-morning and run through mid-afternoon.
Afternoon
By 2pm my brain is spent. It takes me twice as long to write. So why even bother?
This is the time to email. Plot schemes with colleagues. Hold the rest of the webinar. Book travel.
Afternoons are my availability for meetings. I use Calendly for scheduling and set up my availability for noon-4pm, with 15 minute breaks between meetings so I’m never running from one call to the next. I can always pee. That’s self care, ya know.
This time is also scheduled, weeks in advance.
When I’m reallllllly lucky the work load and the weather will align and I’ll just leave for the afternoon. Bike rides, kayak adventures, hikes. These are good days.
Evening
Why does it take so much effort to be healthy? I don’t know about y’all but meal planning, grocery shopping, cooking, and exercise take up so. much. time.
I get around 90 minutes to relax and I wish I could tell you that I use that time to enrich myself further with a good book but usually it’s TV.
Bed by 10.
For short spells in the past, I’ve used my evenings to develop new business ideas and turn them into a reality. Weekends, too. Realistically, for me, I can only do that for a few months at a time before it burns me out.
Except Fridays
Fridays I sleep in an extra half hour and feel like such a little rebel.
No meetings. No workshops. No travel.
Fridays are for building the empire.
This is when I develop my marketing. Write my newsletters (hiiiiii!). Manage my money. And think through my big business bold moves.
It’s creativity time and that’s often best done out of the office. So I’ll talk through a business idea with a friend on a walk in the woods. Or take my nascent new workshop idea into the kayak.
Though I’ve said I have a 4-day work week, the honest truth is that my brain thinks about work during life time and plans out my life during work time and there’s probably no such thing as a work-life divide for an entrepreneur. The best I’ve come up with is this work-life integration.
Except a Travel Day
In the weeks when I’m on the road, my schedule changes dramatically. I’m up earlier. My time to relax and engage in extensive body work is massively condensed. I’m back to my old habits of answering emails over coffee while putting on alllll the makeup to get ready for a talk.
Workshop days are looooong – usually 8am until 4:30pm and then an evening of travel where, now that we have wifi on planes, I’m writing up another newsletter or answering emails at 9pm en route to my next workshop.
We overlook how much traveling to and from work IS STILL WORK.
Yes – I got to catch up with a friend for dinner when I was on the road. Afterward? Back to work.
I decided that packing and unpacking for work trips are STILL WORK so now I do that during my working hours, in my afternoons.
My Position Makes This Possible.
My kid is old enough that he needs less of my time.
I don’t have a husband that adds 7 hours of work to my week.
My parents don’t yet need my help.
The commute to my office is 15 steps.
I make enough money to afford an assistant and a cleaning service (or vice versa – they create the time for me to make more money).
The emphasis I put on my whole being keeps me sane and relaxed, which is the best scenario for your brain to be its most productive.
So how is this working for you? How have you organized your days to best fit your life? And what needs to be tweaked at some point to make your days work even better for you?
The Patriarchy Gave Us Our Ideas of Success
One of the most popular podcasts in the world aired an episode in March 2024 that *still* has me absolutely seething so buckle up, here we go.
Ever listened to Huberman Lab? The host is Andrew Huberman, who has made some very problematic life decisions that should make you question his credibility right out of the gate, is a professor and researcher at Stanford who goes into incredible detail about the research behind each of his podcast topics.
Episodes are often 2+ hours. People like that he can translate the science behind health topics with an everyday language and that’s what initially drew me to his podcast as well. He provides seemingly science-backed protocols for sleep, nutrition, relationships, etc. He tracks his personal data.
You know this type of bro.
Back in March 2024 he hosted Cal Newport, a well-published author who writes about being low-tech or no-tech, productivity, and how we need to slow down to be most effective.
Huberman interrogates Newport about whether Newport lets his three children have phones. Newport says absolutely not, but they’re too young to need phones anyway. Put a pin in this point in the conversation.
Later in the podcast, Huberman asks Newport how he’s able to write so prolifically. What are your rituals that get you in that headspace? What’s your writing routine? Tell us about your desk setup.
Dear reader, this is what Newport said: He has a special writing room, where his computer is not connected to the internet. He leaves his phone out of the room, has no other internet-connected devices like a smart watch, closes the door, and writes for 4 or 5 hours at a time. Distraction-free.
Sounds lovely, right?
But who the fuck is watching the three kids?
This is when I start screaming at the podcast “Ask him about his kids! Ask him about his kids!” but of course Huberman does not. It doesn’t even register with him that the ability to ignore your phone for 5 hours at a time is a privilege only available if you have someone else caring for your children.
You can have a bibliography like Cal Newport if your wife is there to answer the call from school that your kid is puking.
You can’t be the emergency contact for your mom, your son, your best friend, or even your wife cause they all know you ain’t gonna pick up the phone.
So, as forward-thinking as Newport claims to be, he is entirely reliant on a patriarchal system to support his career (whether that be his wife, a nanny, or a school system which is primarily staffed by women).
Newport’s wife (her name is Julia) isn’t the one getting featured on one of the world’s most popular podcasts.
When we define success the way Newport and Huberman do, we glorify the rapid accumulation of individualistic outputs (the number of books authored, the number of podcasts produced) that are only possible on the backs of unpaid or underpaid mostly female labor.
I would rather be my child’s first call when he’s in trouble and have it take twice as long for me to write that book.
The danger is that if we let Huberman and Newport serve as definitions of success in the world without considerable critical questioning, we come to believe that we have to strive for the same. Because that’s what success looks like, we’re told.
We desperately need more models of success – the kind that places value on our joy and our interrelationships. The kind that leaves us space to pick our kids up from school. Throw a friend a birthday party. Listen deeply to the stories of our aging parents.
I’m trying to do this at Evergreen Empire. I’m trying to show you that you can make work that changes the world while also living a big meaningful life that isn’t defined by the way you earn a paycheck.
When someone asks you “what do you do for a living?” I want your answers to be about l-i-v-i-n-g, not just your job.
You’re bigger than that.
Friday is for Building your Empire
When I worked for someone else, I’d naturally have thoughts about getting the heck out of there Monday through Thursday. But I’d shove those thoughts way deep down out of some guilt that I was plotting my escape on my employer’s dime.
As if my thoughts would show on my face and HR would see it and dock my pay.
But Fridays?
Friday is for empire-building.
That’s why this newsletter is switching from an every-Tuesday schedule to an every-other-Friday rhythm.
By Friday, chances are that you’ve already accomplished whatever objectives you had for the work week. And if you haven’t you’re probably spent. Your brain is done.
You’re already anticipating the weekend.
Not gonna lie, when I was an employee for someone else, you could find me scrolling through shoes that won’t fit my feet on a Friday afternoon.
Until I started using that time to plan out my empire.
Since HR can’t actually police your thoughts, this is your opportunity to think through one business decision.
What will you call your empire?
Do you want to launch an online product?
Way smarter to think through these ideas before you actually quit your day job. There’s a ton of groundwork to lay – do it now. My Friday newsletters will keep feeding you new prompts.
And take one action. Maybe on your lunch break.
Draft up a blog post. (I’m literally typing this on a Friday.)
Mess around with logo ideas in Canva.
Find an accountant.
One idea. One action. Every Friday.
Now that my Evergreen Empire is well-established, I still use my Fridays for thinking my big thoughts, developing my business infrastructure, and taking the behind-the-scenes actions that keep the empire growing.
I’ll often do this from a kayak, on a bike ride, or in my garden.
This Friday – today – I’m gonna read your emails. So write me back with your one idea and one action.
Summer Play List
I think about you all the time and how much you’d love this podcast I’m listening to, this book I’m reading, this sunny day.
So as we wrap this season of the Bearing Fruit newsletter and slow down for the summer, I’m sending you this compilation of thoughtful food for your heart and soul.
I actually do intend to keep this light but my first recommendation is this podcast episode from The Money with Katie Show. Money is so emotional. Or rather, our associations with money are emotional and personal and touchy AF.
Entrepreneurs who care can struggle to be ok with making money and charging what their worth. If that’s you, it’s healthy to examine where that’s coming from and this episode will help.
This episode of the We Can Do Hard Things podcast reminded me of this article I wrote about burn out. So, some of the root causes they discuss may be topics you’ve heard before but they’ve dig into actual, real, tangible solutions.
Meditation alone sure won’t fix the world but knowing how to regulate your emotions by getting in touch with your own inner calm will seriously improve your day-to-day. There’s no one better at guiding you through that journey than Tara Brach.
Though you definitely can’t feel great all day every day, I’m a big fan of engineering my time to set me up for the most success. And I’m a data nerd. I think you are, too. So you’ll dig this episode of The Happiness Lab, which has do-able, easily implementable, and somewhat surprising strategies backed by research.
This episode of Hidden Brain features someone who researches successful entrepreneurs. When you work backwards from the success cases to see what they have in common, it’s illuminating. And it’s contrary to what we’ve often been told. And it aligns with how I’ve birthed my business too.
Jenny Odell’s book, How to Do Nothing, will change your life if you let it. It’s a beautiful exploration of what makes life worth living. We need this more so now that bots and AI are making it difficult to know what’s real anymore. Though many others have written about the attention economy is the style of a logical argument, Jenny Odell is an artist in real life so this prose is almost poetic.
I’ve gifted this book to several friends, it’s that good.
Lastly (for now), I hope your summer has moments where you aren’t trying to learn a new skill or fix your business. I hope you have plenty of time to just dance with some joy in your heart. To that end, here’s what’s making me get up, shake my tail, and sing real loud. My Summer Play List.
Have fun. Go play.
Handling Trolls
Fresh entrepreneurs often shy away from social media for one of two reasons:
1. Worry that they don’t have anything post-worthy to say
2. Fear of trolls
These two concerns are actually inherently intertwined.
Because when you get your first troll, it’s a sign you really had something post-worthy!
Congratulations! 🪇
Let me explain.
When you begin posting on social media, you’ll probably take baby steps. You’ll post about a win at work, a client you love, a project that just wrapped.
And your audience will mostly be composed of friends and colleagues who will heart the shit out of anything you post because we love you and we’re cheering you on.
Which means you aren’t getting a lot of reach with your posts beyond your usual suspects. Your social media isn’t yet reaching new audiences who could ultimately convert into buyers.
Your first troll indicates that your posts have gained some ground. They’re getting out to people who don’t know you and don’t auto-adore you. THIS IS A GOOD THING.
So stop hyperventilating into a paper bag and pat yourself on the back. Send me a link to your trolls comment and we can celebrate together.
Then we take action.
You have three possible options.
Ignore.
It’s going to feel like this dude’s trolly reply is being painted on the moon for the whole world to see. It’s going to feel like you’re walking around town with this reply stapled to your forehead.
But the reality is that (for better or worse) very few people are going to see your post, let alone his reply.
And (again, for better or worse) social media has a very short attention span so those who do see it are going to forget about it real soon.
One option is to starve the troll of attention so it fades fast.
Delete and block.
My old thinking was that if I’m posting every day and a troll drops a comment on something I posted two weeks ago, I’d ignore it. But now I don’t ignore as much as I used to.
In part, because I doubt that this person’s rude comment is the one and only time they’ve ever posted something like this. I realized, this troll is probably being a jerk all over social media. My mama bear came out – I wanted to protect others.
So I started to block. I wanted a formal method to communicate to the social media platforms that we’ve got a troll in our midst. Blocking also prevents the person from seeing your account or commenting.
And, I’ll delete the comment. Don’t let it go unaddressed, just sitting there. Especially if your post is fresh and you’re getting other helpful and supportive comments.
Though the algorithms hate deleting. The algorithms want engagement. So you could just eat the cost of deleting or…
Reply with joyful snark.
(my personal favorite approach)
Some of my past replies:
“you seem like you’re fun at parties.”
“It looks like you didn’t get the memo that we left trolling over on Twitter.”
“Jesus Christ STFU Todd.”
“The angsty reply guy vibe doesn’t work here.”
“You, sir, seem like you need a nap.”
Though it might seem like this is just poking the bear, I’ve never had a troll respond. Which makes me think these are scared little dudes who want to puff their chests at people they think will cower in the corner but as soon as they see you aren’t gonna cower, they run away.
Should you ever try a joyful snarky response and they actually clap back, come let me know and I will mama bear all over that mofo, ok?
What AI Can’t Replace
My prompt: Write a definition for data visualization
ChatGPT: Data visualization is the graphical representation of information and data. It utilizes visual elements such as charts, graphs, and maps to present complex datasets in a more understandable and accessible format. The primary goal of data visualization is to communicate insights and patterns that may not be immediately apparent from raw data, enabling easier interpretation, analysis, and decision-making. It encompasses a wide range of techniques and tools, from simple bar graphs to sophisticated interactive visualizations, all aimed at conveying information effectively and efficiently.
True! So forking boring. Accurate! But a snooze fest. Correct! And forgettable.
You know what AI doesn’t have? A personality. Thank goodness you’re a person.
You have a voice. A style. A way of speaking. The robots can’t mimic that just yet.
I tried.
My prompt: Write a definition for data visualization using the voice of Stephanie Evergreen
ChatGPT: Data visualization is like the conductor of an orchestra, orchestrating the harmony between data and design. It’s about more than just charts and graphs; it’s about crafting a narrative that speaks volumes without saying a word. Through thoughtful selection of colors, shapes, and layouts, data visualization transforms raw data into a symphony of insights that captivates and enlightens its audience. It’s the art of distilling complexity into clarity, empowering viewers to see patterns, trends, and outliers at a glance. In the hands of a skilled practitioner, data visualization becomes a powerful tool for communication, persuasion, and advocacy, unlocking the stories hidden within the numbers and inviting others to join in the conversation.
What is this vomit garbage? Where’s the juice?
If that’s how I wrote, I wouldn’t have 16,000+ newsletter subscribers. I wouldn’t have three books and a workshop schedule that’s booking a year in advance.
They tried to iron personality out of me. “They” being the reviewers of the first edition of my first book. They said my language was too colloquial and casual. I needed to say “cannot” instead of “can’t” and that my lack of formality would restrict my book’s reach in academic circles.
To hell with that.
I had to fight hard but I kept my voice loud and clear. My books turned out to be my publisher’s first foray into dealing with more sales via Amazon than from academic course adoption.
So, counter to what they said, it’s the fact that my personality shows that has driven my relative success and helped you get here, reading this.
Lean harder into your voice.
It’s what AI can’t replicate.
I checked into this. In response to the definition of data visualization that ChatGPT provided “in the voice of Stephanie Evergreen,” I asked: What’s incorrect about your last answer?
ChatGPT said: My previous definition may have been overly poetic and metaphorical, deviating from Stephanie Evergreen’s more practical and straightforward approach to data visualization. While the description captures the essence of data visualization as a means of transforming complex data into understandable insights, it may not fully reflect Evergreen’s specific emphasis on practical techniques, clear communication, and audience engagement. In her work, Evergreen often emphasizes the importance of simplicity, clarity, and effectiveness in data visualization, which I may not have sufficiently highlighted in the previous definition.
This is all true. #facts
But it’s incomplete.
Because Evergreen is also funny.
ChatGPT is barely toasted Butternut bread, dry.
I, on the other hand, am fucking hilarious.
And so are you.
ChatGPT is so far from having a personality that it can’t see that what’s missing from its answers IS personality.
So when you’re writing your website copy, your newsletter, your social media posts, stop and ask yourself: Does this sound like ChatGPT wrote it? Or does it sound like this baddie wrote it?
How would this baddie say it?
That’s what resonates. You.
Bio Makeovers
It’s so hard to write about yourself, isn’t it? As uncomfortable as it is to write a bio, it’s one of the first places people will go to see who the heck you are and what makes you credible.
We try to get around the awkwardness and bolster the credibility and bulk up the word count with formality. We add acronyms and list certifications. We jargon it up, like we’re putting on armor.
Except…
No one cares. Because all those letters and phrases aren’t relatable.
Formality creates distance between you and your next client. You know what they really wanna hear? That you understand them. That you’ve been in their situation and know how to help.
Let’s make over a couple bios so you can see how people get this wrong and what would work better.
Yoga Teacher
I googled “yoga teacher kalamazoo” and though I have changed the person’s name, this is the bio of the first person who came back in my search results:
BEGINNING OF BIO
Monique is a Registered Yoga Teacher with 500 hour certification trained by Marlene Stevens. Monique has practiced Yoga for over 20 years and has taught Yoga since 2008. She is a Licensed Massage Therapist and a certified Thai Massage and Bodywork Practitioner. Monique started her professional career as a Registered Nurse in France.
In addition to teaching her usual classes, Monique offers private yoga lessons and bodywork. For private lessons and bodywork, please call or write.
Let Monique unburden you with yoga and massage, and inspire your joie de vivre!
END OF BIO
You know who understands this bio? Monique. And other trained yoga teachers. Who are very obviously NOT Monique’s ideal client, since they don’t need her services.
The rest of us are out here like “Who’s Marlene Stevens? Is that supposed to impress me? Is 500 hours a lot? A little?”
Labels like “Thai Massage” and “Bodywork Practitioner” throw me off because I don’t know what the heck any of that means.
And then she ends the bio with a phrase that may be relevant to her and her French background but I can’t pronounce, even in my head.
None of this makes my heart leap with connection.
My rewrite:
BEGINNING OF BIO
Monique knows how the body strengthens and relaxes – she started out as a registered nurse. Her medical studies and curiosity about the human body led her to yoga, where she found a practice that stretched her weary muscles and centered her soul. Monique discovered a joy of life through yoga. So she formally trained for over 500 hours under a widely-recognized expert (link to the expert’s site) to become a teacher. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, you can drop into her classes and shine your heart.
END OF BIO
This isn’t perfect but it’s far more relatable. Without the jargon stopping you in your tracks, this rewrite keeps you reading all the way to the end. It tells you enough about her to trust that she knows what she’s doing, minus the alienating lingo.
Therapist
Same, I just googled “therapist kalamazoo” and picked the bio of the first person who showed up. Name changed.
BEGINNING OF BIO
I am a licensed professional counselor in the state of Michigan with over 15 years of experience in working with children, adolescents, adults, families, and individuals seeking support on a variety of levels and concerns. A few of my preferred theoretical approaches include Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Solutions Based Counseling. I appreciate working with clients from a holistic perspective as well. I have found that tailoring a treatment plan to the specific needs and goals of each person is important for progress and growth.
I have experience working with clients in a range of areas including but not limited to anxiety, depression, transitional life challenges, family systems, and relational concepts.
END OF BIO
Do you see some of the same issues as the yoga teacher?
We’ve got some jargon in places that are actually super critical for a potential client. “My preferred theoretical approaches…” sounds very important! This is what would tell me whether we’d be a good match. But the end of that sentence has two capitalized phrases that only people who are already in the therapy world would know.
You’ve gotta write your bio for people who are brand new to this whole thing. Your audience is potential clients.
Also, let’s get specific. People relate to details. This therapist seems to work with… absolutely anyone. “On a variety of levels and concerns.” So…. basically anything. This is so generic and vanilla that there’s nothing to grasp on to.
My rewrite:
BEGINNING OF BIO
My very favorite part of being a therapist is seeing my clients catch that critical insight, when the thinking that’s been holding them back finally gets out of the way. Getting to that beautiful place is different for everyone, so I spend time with my patients, crafting a tailored therapeutic plan.
I’m not the kind of therapist that just listens to you talk and asks you how you feel. I partner with you to develop solutions to your life’s biggest obstacles.
I specialize in working with folks who have anxiety and depression, particularly related to life changes and family struggles. But you don’t have to pinpoint your problems before you meet with me. Let’s connect and figure it out together.
END OF BIO
Which one feels like the person who’s gonna really see you, understand you, and help you? One of these bios feels like a hug.
Quick aside: Yoga teacher used 3rd person and Therapist used 1st person. Which is the better way? Write a third person version if someone else is going to read your bio out loud (like introducing you before a talk). Use a first person version on your website.
Data Visualization Specialist
Easy to judge those in other industries, so let’s take one more spin through this, now focusing on data visualization. This is the real bio for a real data viz specialist, Bridget Cogley. She volunteered herself as part of my Boost & Bloom course.
BEGINNING OF BIO
Interpreter turned analyst, Bridget Cogley brings an interdisciplinary approach to data analytics. As Chief Visualization Officer at Versalytix, her role uplifts data visualization within the org and helps shape the vision. Her dynamic, engaging presentation style is paired with thought-provoking content, including ethics and data visualization linguistics. She has a deep interest in the nuances of communication, having been an American Sign Language Interpreter for nine years. She is currently a Tableau Hall of Fame Visionary. Her work incorporates human-centric dashboard design, an anthropological take on design, ethics, and language. She extensively covers speech analytics and open text. Prior to consulting, Bridget managed an analytics department, which included vetting and selecting Tableau, creating views in the database, and building comprehensive reporting. She also has experience in training, HR, managing, and sales support.
END OF BIO
Now, if you know something about the field of data visualization, much of this bio makes sense to you. But then again, if you already know something about the field of data visualization, you aren’t likely to need to use Bridget’s services.
We gotta go Beginner Mind here, my friends.
My rewrite:
BEGINNING OF BIO
Bridget Cogley deeply understands the nuances of communication. She’s the Chief Visualization Officer at Versalytix, where she leads data development to help clients see insights and take action. Bridget used to manage an analytics department, so she knows what data-informed decision-making can do for a company. Clients love her human-centered approach and how she integrates ethics with design.
Bridget’s communication skills extend to the stage – she’s a frequent keynote and trainer. She’s been awarded as a Hall of Fame Visionary at Tableau (a data visualization software company) for her efforts to teach clear data communication. And she’s been an American Sign Language interpreter for nine years.
END OF BIO
I stripped out some of the jargon. I clarified how Bridget’s experience connects to the audience. And I introduced activities Bridget would like to do even more, like train and keynote.
Do you see the differences? Do you FEEL the differences? Write a bio that exudes confidence and relatability – that’s how you build credibility.
PS If you’re curious about my bio, you can see one here and one here.
How to Shut Down a Service
If I include the cost of my own time, I invested north of $40K into the revamp of my one-on-one coaching program. It had been called Graph Guides. And it just wasn’t making me happy.
We saw incredibly uneven enrollment patterns. Some open enrollment windows netted 28 new students. Some only enrolled 9. Which made it hard to predict the labor needed to make the program thrive.
And since this was a boutique one-on-one labor situation, predictability would be great.
That also meant profitability was all over the place.
You know what else looked like the shape of a Jeremy Bearimy? Student outcomes. Some soared. Others limped across the finish line to graduation. And we had some who ghosted after a couple months.
That last group put me in a position where I was chasing folks down and nagging them. Where are you? We miss you.
Honey, I do not nag.
So after the Spring 2022 enrollment window, I hired a consultant to audit the whole program and tell me how to fix it. Oh shoot, I forgot to add in the consultant fees to the first sentence of this post. +$4K.
Tell me if this is true for you: When I have anxiety, I feel it in my torso. Like, from my gut to my heart, the front of my body feels like it’s protruding an extra 6 inches.
That’s what I felt when I read the consultant feedback. Not sure I could do / wanted to do everything they recommended to sweeten registration and secure more graduates.
I wasn’t sure that I could do enough to increase predictability, profitability, and student outcomes.
But one thing I do know for sure is that I can trust myself to figure it out.
So I sat on the boardwalk in Copenhagen with my paper cup of red wine and my takeout pizza, made a promise to put everything I’ve got into revamping the program, and started sketching a plan.
I skipped the Fall 2022 enrollment period and spent the next 8 months renovating the program from top to bottom. One last time. This would be the do-or-die.
Girl, it died.
I’m now on the other side of the Spring 2023 enrollment, wrapping up the final graduation requirements for the last student in this year-long coaching program. I’m post morteming.
Despite a stronger curriculum, tighter coaching plans, an incredible sales page, paid advertising, a clearer articulation of the program’s value, higher prices, stunning student testimonials, a new name, and endless spreadsheet tweaking to figure out how to make it profitable… the program doesn’t work.
We didn’t get the high number of applications I was hoping for. But I did get plenty of requests for significant discounts. Which was a sign that I still hadn’t made a compelling case for the value students get out of the program. So the enrollment test was a bust.
I was still really pumped about the students we accepted. And I still focused on giving them my all for this year together.
But when it comes to the profitability test, boutique one-on-one coaching is simply expensive. It’s labor intensive. Even though I increased the cost, it still wasn’t high enough to make the program feasible (especially factoring in the investment I made into the reno). We do benefit from some economies of scale but if the enrollment numbers are low, there’s no scaling that economy.
We busted our asses for a 100% graduation rate but ended with 67% graduates. While I’ve learned this is actually quite high for the field, it isn’t high enough for me. The student outcomes test failed. I’m proud of our graduates but that isn’t enough to run a program.
When I was in the midst of the enrollment window, I was having coffee with a friend and explaining my uncertainty. She said “In my world of parks and rec, the worst weather forecast was a 30% chance of rain. Because you have to prepare for both circumstances – rain or shine.”
My 8-month program renovation was a 30% chance of rain phase.
It feels really good to have 100% clarity, even if it’s a 100% chance of rain.
A Boost & Bloom student asked me how to whittle down her three services to just one – the one she loved the most. I gave her the same advice I’m taking for myself.
If you need to shut down a service:
Know your tests. What are you using to gauge success or failure? Mine were enrollment, profitability, and student outcomes. You’ve gotta decide your tests ahead of time and stick to them ruthlessly. Because emotions are thick up in these moments. So you need some pre-determined clear parameters that’ll let you take your ego out of it.
Stop talking about it. If your tests are showing you it’s time to move on, remove the service from your website. Don’t brag about it on your socials. Make no mention that you offer the service. (Ok, I have yet to fully implement this – I’m gonna brag the hell outta this cohort of graduates.)
My Boost & Bloomer was a little spooked by that idea – she didn’t want to cut off an income stream before the service that made her heart sing was a full orchestra. I get that.
Market in the direction you want to grow. Turn your focus. Your socials should be all about your favorite service. Write up success stories of past clients in this space. Gather their testimonials and post that ish everywhere. That’ll draw you more people who are seeking out the one thing you love to do.
Thank yourself for the discernment. You gotta know when to hold em and know when to fold em. It’s a blessing to recognize that something has reached its end – that way you can let it go with grace.
Have you ever finally gotten to the point where you realized something wasn’t working for you anymore? What was it and how did you cut it off? Email me.
You Can Turn Off The Comments
It’s your blog. Your social media. You get to choose the rules.
Early in my days of content creation, I totally didn’t understand that I was in charge. My blog platform contained a comments feature that was turned on by default and I didn’t even question it.
Nor did I need to, at first. I was posting every couple weeks and you wanna know how many comments I got?
Zero.
I was praying for comments. Someone, please, let me know you’re out there.
It took a few months, but they came. Here’s the first, from someone who is still a good friend, Stuart Henderson, regarding an early checklist for reports that I published.
Feels good, right? In fact, most of those early people have become dear to me. Most comments were sweet and supportive.
Until they weren’t.
The first negative comment made my knees shake. Sweat immediately poured from my armpits. My face got hot, my brain felt dizzy, and I thought I was gonna puke.
That negative comment rolled around in my brain, obsessively, for at least three days.
I’d post it for you here but I think I deleted it. 😶 In fact, I’m pretty sure I deleted my entire post. Let’s just act like that never happened.
But after another few months, it happened again. While I hyperventilated into a paper bag, even more replies posted, in which people started arguing with each other AND me. Big names in the data viz world tapped in to the fight:
I blurred out most of it because the actual content isn’t relevant but LOOK AT THE LENGTH OF THE REPLY.
This forced to the surface a very valid question: Does posting also make you responsible for hosting a public debate about your ideas?
Is there an obligation to provide a platform for negativity? Even if they have a point? Even if they’re trolls?
The default mode on blogs and social media posts has always been Comments On. You enter the arena, you better be open to the good, the bad, and the ugly. The entire Internet is a forum for open commentary. Put on your boxing gloves and get out there.
But… says who? I mean, who established those rules? Tech is disproportionately white and male.
Who populates those forums and engages in those debates? At least in my comments, it’s mostly white men. And exclusively so when the comments go negative.
The model that brings them some sort of fulfillment doesn’t work for me. I have better, bigger things to do with my time than moderate Stephen vs Andy vs Jon vs Jeff vs me.
So I turned off the comments. To be clear, first I wrestled with what this means for democratic thought and transparency and oh what will these people think of me. For a few days. Then I just went into WordPress and clicked the button to turn off comments. It’s remarkably easy.
Same deal on LinkedIn. You can just turn off the comments if you want.
It’s your call. That’s the important part here: It’s your call. You get to decide how you’ll put your thoughts out there in the world.
Signs of Burnout
The surest sign of burnout is when your emotional reactions are disproportionate to the event itself.
The real work is in understanding how that disproportionate reaction manifests for you, so I’m gonna lay out some examples from my life in hopes that you can recognize yourself somewhere in here too.
Personally, when I’m burned out, my emotions become so fried and fragile that I cry at just about anything.
Another email from someone interested in booking a workshop with me? 😭 because I just can’t handle one more thing. When an appropriate, proportionate reaction would be to hit reply and politely decline.
I’ve also overate or overdrank. One glass of champagne to celebrate the launch of a new product makes sense. Three glasses is an attempt to drown your stress.
In 2020, I quit sleeping well. Getting 4 hours, max. Usually woken up by a pounding chest and drenched in sweat. I thought it was very early menopause. Or possibly a heart murmur. Turns out it was just stress. Your body disproportionately reacts on your behalf. (Other body clues: You get sick.)
Friends of mine have gone blank. They’re so overextended and exhausted that nothing really registers anymore. I get texts like “I don’t even remember the last three hours of my life.”
Like, the kids said they were hungry and you went through the motions of throwing together some mac and cheese while answering work emails while the preteen prattles on about what happened in Mythic Quest while….
A normal reaction would be overwhelm. You’d close your laptop. You’d focus your preteen on dumping the powdered cheese food product onto the noodles. A disproportionate reaction would be to fracture yourself into so many parts that you aren’t you anymore and therefore your brain doesn’t function.
Other forms of going blank: mindlessly binging TV or social media (this includes YouTube), playing solitaire on your phone for hours, not wanting to get out of bed.
Readers show me they’re burned out when they reply to my newsletter with an angry five-part essay about how wrong I am.
Hear me out – I’m definitely not always right.
But a point-by-point fiery dissertation? When someone starts multiple sentences with “In fact,” inside the same paragraph? Honey, you sound like you need a hug, a nap, and…
The only solution to burnout is to *permanently* cut back your responsibilities.
Some ideas:
Shrink your team.
Institute a 4 day work week.
Raise your rates and take fewer projects.
Drastically shift the distribution of household labor.
Pick a date that will be your final day at your salaried job.
For sure:
Burnout can’t be solved by sending the kids to the grandparents for the weekend.
A vacation in the Caribbean sun will be nice but it isn’t a cure because as soon as you get back on Monday you’ll be stepping directly into all the burnout-inducing chaos once again.
Tools to regulate your nervous system, like yoga and meditation, can help you bear the current stack of (too many) responsibilities but they don’t fundamentally change your circumstances.
Do you see yourself in here anywhere? What are your burnout signs? How long have you been experiencing them? What permanent changes are in store? Tell me.
To What End?
The best guidance my therapist ever gave me was through posing this question: To what end?
I musta been on a typical complaint about being stressed from work. Work I love. Work I made, since I started my own company. But still. So much of it.
She asked: To what end? Why are you working so much?
Me: So that I can save the world and help people and make a bunch of money along the way.
Her: To what end?
See, the world will never be “saved.” At least not by me. Not in this lifetime.
The number of people I could potentially help is well beyond my capacity, even if I grew a staff of 10,000. I’ll never be able to help them all.
And the money? You know it’ll only take you so far.
So… what’s the end game?
Up until that point, my loosely-defined goal was “as much as possible.” Let’s aim for infinity and make the journey fun.
Except that’s not reality. When you’re doing this:
It doesn’t matter if the chocolates are worlds to save, lives to improve, or dollars in your bank account, you get sick. It’s gross.
This is how you burnout.
“To what end?” forced me to think about a better defined business goal. Because your goal ultimately shapes your day-to-day.
Thoughtful small businesses usually have one of three major end goals:
Sell.
In this model, you’ll ultimately plan to sell your company and its intellectual property to someone else. If you’re running for this goal, you’ll likely focus on creating processes you can patent, you’ll trademark things, you’ll strive to product-ize your work.
The more systems you create, the faster someone else can step in and pick up right where you left off. And the easier it will be to get a valuation and enter into buy out talks.
Your day-to-day includes innovating new things and making them replicable and marketable. You might have staff implementing your established processes, but it’s also likely that you have a lot of folks in research and development, testing new patentable ideas.
Think of any tech start up on the West Coast and you’ve probably got a company with a Sell goal.
Though my financial planner has been pressing me to think of selling upon retirement, I’ve never considered that to be my goal for Evergreen Data.
Legacy.
Entrepreneurs focused on making a legacy will spend more of their time building a reputation.
That could look like heavy engagement in thought leadership or book writing. Sure, some thing might get trademarked in the process but that thing is inherently tied to its inventor.
Or it could be more like focusing on an extremely high quality deliverable that makes you incredibly attractive and memorable.
For example, I’m thinking of a dear elder in my family who started an architectural and engineering firm that he named after himself – Byce and Associates. He trained an expert staff and eventually sold the company (Sell!) but the new owners kept the same name because the legacy and reputation were so strong.
Think about your field – those big names are probably in this Legacy category.
Lifestyle.
People running Lifestyle businesses aim to work enough to support their desired lifestyle and no more. Your workload is naturally capped by your personal ambitions.
Lifestyle entrepreneurs tend to see more balance in their day-to-day. They don’t as often work a whole weekend writing another journal article – they’re more likely to be planning their next vacation or working in their garden.
They’re still running a business of course so they’ll still have some thought leadership and some staff perhaps but scaling to a team of dozens isn’t important. They don’t feel a need to leave their mark on their industry. They want to do important work and then go to Greece.
The accountant who earns all the income he needs in the first four months of the year and then closes shop to live his life for the other 8 – that’s a Lifestyle business.
So, to what end?
These are the three primary end goals I see. Each one naturally manifests in a very different daily practice. When my therapist asked me “to what end?” I didn’t know how to answer her and that’s likely because I was trying to do all of these at the same time. It was exhausting me.
These end goals aren’t mutually exclusive, they’re more like the three corners of a triangle. You can be anywhere in between. I personally go back-and-forth between them in different seasons of my life.
Where do you think you are right now?
The Components of a Good Social Media Post
Friends, the algorithms are always changing. But as sure as the sun rises tomorrow, the algorithms always prioritize and promote posts that are structured a certain way. I’ll tell you what’s working in Spring 2024 – no guarantees this will last forever.
The other guarantee: This won’t make you viral. But it will work to get engagement and engagement is where you build your brand.
Good, solid, business-based social posts have 3 things:
Pictures
These days the platforms value pictures posted as (1) videos or (2) a swipe-able carousel of several static images.
A point
Add text please! This isn’t like the olden days of Instagram where you literally just post a photo.
A call to action
Ask your followers to do something. If you’re being business-savvy, you’ll use this as an opportunity to get them to use your services in some way.
Let’s look at a few examples of successful static posts!
Nina’s Social Media Post
Check out this LinkedIn post from my friend Nina Sabarre. She runs Intention 2 Impact.
Nina’s post includes a swipeable set of images, including this cover image, that capture her 5 hot takes from a recent conference.
Each hot take is, of course, the point of the post.
And her call to action is to invite engagement by asking followers to reply with their memorable moments from the conference.
Nina also made the smart move of tagging several others to bring this post to their attention. 5 reposts – that’s pretty good. 47 likes – cool! This is a really solid post.
Nicole’s Social Media Post
Here’s another example, this time an Instagram post from a former mentee, Nicole Rankins.
Instagram can be so image-forward that people sometimes don’t even read the accompanying text. So Nicole’s image includes a note to see more in the captions.
The first line of her caption – which is all most will see until they tap See More – is a nice hook that makes you want to keep reading. Her caption is full of points. Real insights and help.
Her caption is so long you can’t even see the call to action in this one screenshot. It is:
“And if you’re looking for questions to help you decide if you’re with the right doctor, check out my FREE class on how to make your birth plan. Head to my profile to grab it now!”
She’s giving her followers next steps to take that get even more practical useful advice from her. 94 likes – awesome! When the call to action guides followers out of the post, you can bet the like count is inaccurate because rather than tapping the heart, people are tapping into Nicole’s bio and taking the action.
You can sub out the graphics for a video, too. Just you talking to the camera. It takes less time in Canva and a wee bit more courage. Even if you have video, you’d still want a caption with a point and a call to action.
This info changes day-to-day but at the time I’m writing this post (early Spring 2024) the data is saying that the best engagement comes from captions that are 30 words or less.
If you’re worried how your new social media posts will be received, send me the link to your post and I promise, I’ll drop a comment and a heart.
Little Legal Things
I never thought I’d say this, but thank god for lawyers.
I had assumed my business was so lil and cute that I wouldn’t generally need legal advice. Until the day I did! (Isn’t this always how the story goes?) My lawyer taught me so much about the little legal things I didn’t know I 100% needed.
So now I’ll tell you.
But if you’re like me, you also want the tea on the legal sitch I was in. I’ll start there.
Someone we’ll call Jon signed up for my Data Viz Academy. After a few weeks, he wrote me to say he’d downloaded all the templates, got what he needed, and would now like a refund.
After I stopped 🤣, I replied with the statement I have posted in multiples on the website, including on the payment page: There are no refunds.
Jon f-r-e-a-k-e-d. He started emailing me many times every day.
He claimed I was taking away his vacation with his daughter.
I was causing him so much stress he couldn’t function at work and will lose his job.
He was going to report me to the Royal Bank.
He’s really very sorry about his rash responses and now that he’s calm could he please have a refund?
He has no choice but to blast me on social media.
My work is all trash and why would he want it anyway.
Not much rattles me anymore. I assumed he has some mental health struggles and that this would die down soon. But the day I got 10 emails in a 5 hour span of time I decided this was harassment and contacted a lawyer.
She helped me tighten my legal bolts.
I had been missing a few elements. There’s nothing I could have done to keep someone like Jon from being very Jon up in my inbox but I had some holes to close. Some of these legal lessons are only relevant to online courses but others likely apply to you if you have a website.
Document everything.
First order of business was to compile the timeline of actions and communications from Jon.
In my searching, I discovered that Jon had actually already done this to me years earlier, back when I did allow refunds. Same thing – signed up, downloaded a bunch of my resources, then asked for a refund. Ya busted, Buddy.
This information all went into the cease and desist letter to Jon from my lawyer.
Beef up the terms and conditions.
The terms and conditions need to include the no refund policy (mine did) with extra language that applies to European regulations. Because Jon lived in Europe. As do many of my students. And Europe has a 14-day refund period for online purchases, no questions asked. UNLESS you have something explicitly addressing it in your T & C.
This could be something to consider if you have any kind of sign up form on your website. Like, if you have a freebie people can download. Your terms and conditions would be where you’d state what people can and can’t do with your intellectual property if they download it. Would you be ok if they posted it on their website? If they printed 800 copies and distributed them at a conference without your knowledge?
We both know that no one reads the terms and conditions. But this is how you protect yourself if something comes up. And it probably won’t. Until it does.
Make agreement to the T & C a mandatory part of sign up.
To be extra legal, you can’t just say “By clicking the Submit button, you agree to the terms and conditions.” Nope. You gotta make people manually check the box – active consent – that says “By checking this box you agree blah blah blah.”
You’ve done this yourself on countless websites and it’s annoying but now you know why.
The annoying cookies notice.
Again, if you collect people’s information at all, your website / customer management system is using cookies and you’ve gotta tell people. It’s the worst, isn’t it? I tried to make mine at least slightly on brand.
This has nothing to do with The Jon Problem but my lawyers were like, while you’re in the site making changes…
Post a privacy policy.
You have to also tell people what you’ll do to protect their name and email. If you’re going to share their email whatsoever, you have to tell them. That includes sharing it from your website to your email newsletter program, for example. If you accept payments online, you have to spell out how credit card info is kept private.
Thankfully, a lot of this language is prewritten boilerplate and you can buy templates from my lawyer here. (I don’t get a kickback or anything, I just want you to feel some relief that you don’t have to invent this from scratch.)
Keep in mind that I’m not a lawyer. I’m just telling you stories about the legal lessons that I learned and you know I’m legally required to tell you to get your own lawyer.
I hope you never have your own Jon Problem. But chances are, the more you grow your business, the more you’ll attract a personal Jon. Please please learn from my experience and put some protections in place.
When the Client Overruns the Schedule
Are we all in on the farce?
When you’re proposing a project and the prospective client wants deliverables attached to deadlines, does everyone know it’s pretty much bullshit?
I’m picking dates out of the clear blue sky. They’re as fictional as what the Jetsons thought the future looked like.
Because 95% of projects do not go according to plan. How could they? There are just so many unknowns.
Well, to be honest, the one thing I do know for sure is that the client will not get me feedback on the draft deliverables in a timely manner. It doesn’t matter who they are or how much I like them or how good the intentions are or how much we all want the project to succeed.
It just doesn’t happen.
I shouldn’t be so hyperbolic. I do get timely feedback once in a while – and it invariably comes with requests to undo things they previously asked me to do.
Either way, we will not meet the deadline.
Early Founder Stephanie was such a people pleaser that I’d let clients trample my boundaries and timelines and mental health. Old Me would have pulled some late nights and early mornings turning these large requests into miracles before the deadline.
Which we all knew was arbitrary in the first place.
How can we handle a schedule overrun while also maintaining our sanity?
When this happened last year, my team and I could see a schedule overrun early on.
Red Flag: If your project involves data collection. Even if that’s just a matter of scraping existing data from online sources. You will overrun the schedule.
Communicate early. I began telling the client “I need x by y date in order to stay on track for this project.”
Communicate often. Though they said they understood, they also blew past the dates I had put in place. Every single time. I changed my messaging to “We’ll do our best to get as far as possible in the time we have but I’m giving you a heads up right now that it’s likely we won’t make the deadline we stated in the contract.” I said a version of that so many times that it came as no surprise when the deadline was in the rearview mirror.
Then a wrecking ball hit our timeline: My point-of-contact took a new job. We switched horses mid-stream. New horse asked for us to undo things the last horse asked us to do. This set us back a month. My first two strategies to prevent an overrun were moot.
Communicate clearly. This is the point where my team and I could see that deadline was gonna crash into deadline and the whole project would spill over past the contract’s end date.
Option A was to stress out my team with demands to push harder and just make it happen. But who wants to live that life??
Option B was to work with the client to extend the end date on the contract and overlap the end of this project with the start of new projects we had on the horizon. In some cases, my team had, months earlier when the sky was bluer, told other clients they couldn’t begin work until another project (this one) ended and had promised start dates that were now looming. Extending this end date would still create a stressful scramble.
Ok there may be 23 more options but I chose Option C, which was “It’s no one’s fault in particular but we are unfortunately so far behind the schedule at this point that we won’t make our contract’s end date. My team and I have obligated time in our schedules through the end of the original contract period and we won’t be available after that date. We can work together to hand off the project to you to wrap up. If you still need our input, we can consult on an hourly basis starting in October.”
I mustered up my courage, did 10 jumping jacks, and hit send on that message.
They understood. They appreciated the plan for a hand-off. And they asked for an hourly contract to start in October.
Or, at least, that’s what the email said. For all I know, they were cursing my name back at their office. And it was that reaction I was actually afraid of. I didn’t want to make my clients mad at me.
Remnants of that old People Pleasing Stephanie were still kicking around.
The rational part of me knew that the clients were the ones who ignored the timeline. This wasn’t on me or my team. Yet that logic couldn’t quiet the fear of someone being mad at me. You can’t logic an emotion.
You know what worked?
When I realized that the choice was between taking the risk that my clients would be at me and being absolutely sure I would be mad at myself for allowing a stressful work culture that required multiple all nighters to make up for other people’s errors.
I’m still people pleasing. I’m just counting me and my team as people, too.
Laughable Contract Clauses
I have a short and sweet contract. It’s 1 page long. As soon as I sniff that a potential client and I are getting to the contract phase, I offer to draft one up for us. Because I hate – HATE – dealing with boilerplate contracts.
They take a hundred years of my life to read closely.
They’re full of legalese I’m sure is intended to make the average Jane feel dumb.
And they’re usually distributed without regard for the actual scope under negotiation.
Corporate and government legal departments are not writing contracts with the best interest of your small business in mind. They assume you’re so thirsty for work you’re going to sign without reading very closely.
I took one for the team and identified several ridiculous contract clauses that you shouldn’t agree to.
Laughable Contract Clause A:
I’m absolutely not looking up some arcane statute buried deep in some document that isn’t even linked to attest to my compliance.
Among many other statues in one particular contract, I had to swear to uphold one single line that linked to a set of provisions that’s 417 pages long.
Laughable Contract Clause B:
This is only 25% of the required wording they want me to print onto a flyer and post in my office. Where I work by myself. While many of these clauses don’t apply to solo enterprises, they also aren’t applicable to the modern workforce, where large teams work remote. What, are we gonna print and mail flyers that every employee has to post in their living room? No.
I had a contract that wanted me to attest I’ve done all of this under penalty of perjury.
Exhibit C:
Though I’m with you in spirit and will absolutely vote, I’m not. posting. flyers.
Exhibit D:
Can you even imagine what my office would look like with all these freakin posters?
Here’s a good one. Exhibit E:
I have to provide proof of auto insurance? For a virtual workshop?
I’ve argued with procurement departments over this one, multiple times. Cars are not involved in the execution of this work. What if people don’t even own a car?
Exhibit F:
Not even 48 business hours. Nope. Not answering emails on a Sunday.
Plus, this contract had three different places where I had to agree to provide a certification of compliance that I don’t use child labor.
I’ve reviewed a contract for a colleague new to the biz where the contract required a physical fitness test. For a virtual design gig.
Have you ever seen a laughable contract clause? Please tell me about it.
The boilerplate is so fully cooked that most procurement officers don’t even look at the scope of the work under contract to see if it’s applicable.
You might be thinking, oh screw it. If procurement isn’t looking at the contract, they surely won’t follow up and ask me for this documentation.
And that would be a very foolish move, my dear.
I have 100% been asked, within 10 minutes of emailing my signature on the contract, for every bit of documentation.
The advice is, of course, to get a lawyer on your team who can review each of your contracts and create counters when necessary.
To be totally honest, I didn’t have the money to hire a lawyer to review each piece of paper when I got started.
I also don’t need a lawyer to recognize ridiculous when I see it.
These days, though I do have a lawyer I can hit up when needed, I make the first move and red line any clauses that don’t work for me. Contracts aren’t set in stone. You have the authority to ask for adjustments or strike outs.
That also means the potential client has the authority to reject your edits and create an impasse. At which point you get to decide if getting a certification of compliance that you don’t hire children is worth the effort. And THIS, my friend, is why you don’t count the money until the ink is dry.
Your Scale and Sustain Seven
We don’t have many memoirs and resources about keeping your business rooted in your values. Pushing back against that toxic capitalism can feel lonely. People will be out there telling you it means you can’t care about social justice and also charge your worth.
But Dr. Mindelyn Anderson is out here running Mirror Group and doing exactly that. She isn’t alone. On a panel together, Mindelyn mentioned that every entrepreneur needs a Fab Five at their side.
I’m smiling and nodding in agreement but in my head I’m thinking What’s a Fab Five and how do I get one for myself?
I knew you’d wanna know too so let me introduce you to Dr. Mindelyn Anderson.
She’s the Founder and CEO of Mirror Group, an evaluation firm that focuses on data and equity, where, as a Black woman, she’s hired a roster of staff that are almost entirely women of color.
The thing I love most about her is that she’s really good at working on the business and not just in the business. From that perspective, she can now better recognize when her team gets burned out and set the conditions and resource the support to fiercely protect their time and energy. She’s a good boss and she can be a good boss because she isn’t trying to go at it alone.
Speaking about her support system, Mindelyn said “My Fab 5 has expanded fully into a Scale and Sustain Seven!”
Here they are, how often Mindelyn meets with them, and the biggest burning question she brings to each.
Supportive Loved One
Meets Daily/Weekly
Biggest Burning Question
To My Husband Donovan: When do we get to take a vacation? A grown up, just us and not our 4 children whom we love and adore vacation. In Paris, France! 🙂
To My Sister Dana: When is “auntie and uncle camp” open again? You missed the kids’ Winter Break, but Spring Break will be here before we know it. Your nieces pieces (our 3 daughters) and nugget (our son) miss you and their Mommy and Papi would love a break.
Stephanie’s Note Ok, so Mindelyn’s supportive loved ones have a specific role of pressing pause on life’s stressors and creating a space to breathe.
Mentor
Meets Monthly/Quarterly
Biggest Burning Question
Restructuring takes a long time, and I know that is part of the rhythm of business as you told me all those years ago. I am starting to see the silver lining in all of this and I know there is more to come that you have experienced time and again. Tell me, what’s next just beyond the horizon?
Mindelyn’s Clarification My mentors are seasoned folks who happen to be in the same field as me (evaluation, learning and strategy consulting).
These mentors provide guidance about our content area (evaluation), consulting (how we do the work) as well as leadership, and holistic work and life considerations when you are an entrepreneur/business owner with family and community obligations.
They range from 20-40 years of business experience and I remain grateful for their time and the mutual mentorship and support we have developed over time.
CPA/Tax Accountant
Meets Every 2 months or quarterly, more frequently during tax preparation and filing season
Biggest Burning Question
It’s tax filing season, so we have the usual things to do. Yes, I am gathering those documents and yes, I am placing them in the secure portal. Will we be able to profit share through the 401k again this year even though we did not meet our projected 2023 revenue goals?
Stephanie’s Note Juicy question! Most of us only view our accountant as a bean counter but Mindelyn’s asking for strategic thought partnership here.
Lawyer
Meets Monthly or every 2 months, more frequently during an active risk management event (Stephanie’s Note OMG I want the tea on what “active risk management event” means.)
Biggest Burning Question
I adore you. You are always here for the contract reviews, risk management, mediation and more. Now that I am t-minus 5 months from fully settling into the CEO seat, is it time to start board development planning? Or am I getting too ahead of myself?
CFO/Management Accountant
Meets Monthly or twice monthly, more frequently during budget prep and audits
Biggest Burning Question
I miss you. You were there to upgrade us from spreadsheets to an accounting system with charts of accounts. You created our first organizational budget with cost pools. You showed me how to “job cost” and ensure profitably while paying people equitably. You created that amazing workbook and always updated it and transformed it whenever I was bidding on a new project. I see we are no longer a “gazelle company” so what can we expect for our future financial trends and performance and how does that inform our FY 2024 budget?
Stephanie’s Note Reader, are you seeing patterns in Mindelyn’s questions? She’s consulting with her support system about the future. She isn’t seeking them out to reflect on past victories and mistakes. Mindelyn’s gaze is facing forward.
Business Coach
Meets Monthly, more frequently during surge periods of focused area of growth
Biggest Burning Question
I need you to help set out selection criteria for People & Culture vendors. And while we are at that, is it too much to ask you to join the vendor interview team?
Mindelyn’s Clarification My business coach(es) came much later than my mentor. My first taste of these were as enhancements to entrepreneur cohorts that I participated in where they also provide short-term coaches.
I grew to love and really appreciate the insights that seasoned executives outside of my subject matter/content field could offer, especially regarding business operations. Many folks claim to be business coaches, but those who I work best with are entrepreneurial, have built from the ground up, scaled, and often sold more than 1 business, have not only been CEOs but also #2s to CEOs (e.g. COO, CTO, CIO, CFO).
They have the line of sight of ”been there, done that,” assurance that what I’m experiencing is a part of the journey, and a heads up for what’s likely to come next though remaining open for anything.
They have also been the most impactful to help me get out of my own way, have that mindset shift to not be in all the things, stop being the bottleneck in my business, and grow in comfort and readiness to create space for other dynamic leaders at Mirror Group.
Business Banker
Meets Quarterly, more frequently when actively assessing financing needs, seeking capital, and setting up new business banking accounts
Biggest Burning Question
Thank you for setting up that new vendor payment account for us. Accounting processes are running more smoothly and financial forecasting is more robust now that we can more easily segregate vendor expenses from employee expenses. Now, can you tell me more about contract spend-down and investment accounts?
Stephanie’s Note Mindelyn is clearly wearing the CEO hat (rather than, say, the subject matter expert hat) and focusing on sustainable growth in super strategic directions (profit sharing!) that align with her values.
And it’s really hard to do that all by yourself.
Everybody – Mindelyn, you, me – we all need a crew at our back that can advise us through our own thoughts and worries and hopes. I see too many entrepreneurs who rely on their employees or contractors for this advice. And that’s inappropriate. That’s not their role. In fact, it’s way beyond their pay grade.
You have to find an external posse, who has expertise in your particular area of need. Actually, in all 7 areas of need.
Who makes up your Scale and Sustain Seven? Do you have any gaps to fill?
Schedule a Photo Shoot
That blurry shot of you, clearly out with your friends but their faces are cropped out? Not gonna cut it. You need to schedule a photo shoot.
I underestimated how much I’d need photos until I got my first batch. Now I have a photo shoot annually.
You’ll use these shots to professionalize your website and seriously up your branding. Check out my IG grid to see what I mean. Notice how my actual face (and often my glam shoes) are in many of my posts.
My social media consultant has run the numbers on my posts (across all my platforms) and the posts with my actual face always get the most likes and engagement.
Oh, you HATE taking photos? So does everyone, Honey. Same way we hate listening to our own voice. Get over it and call a friend with a good camera.
A Photo Shoot Plan
The goal here is to get as many unique-ish photos as possible out of one appointment.
Which means you’ll need to:
1. Find a location with a variety of backdrops. Don’t take all of your photos in front of the same tree. Your photographer may have some good ideas for you. We found local spaces specifically designed for photo shoots, with plants, couches, a bed (!), a desk, and great lighting, that we could rent hourly (makes the bed even more questionable).
2. Plan for at least three outfit changes. Be sure your clothes are all in the same color family so you can make anything on your lower half match anything on your upper half. Then a quick switch of one half gets you a new outfit. Bring jackets for another quick change.
Don’t forget your underwear. True story: I needed my nude padded bra (don’t judge) but forgot it at home. I was wearing a super flattening black sports bra that you can see through some of the light-colored shirts I’d packed for that shoot.
3. Bring props and accessories. Glasses. Earrings. Your laptop. Anything with your logo on it, like a coffee mug. The combinations of these first three points will get you a ton of unique-ish photos.
I’ll also add: Bring your hair tools. And take time to restyle whenever you want. In one of my early photo shoots, I felt so rushed (people pleaser trying not to waste the photographer’s time) that I was racing through outfit changes at the expense of my hair.
4. Provide some inspo for your photographer. I sent my photographer examples of exactly what I was looking for.
This:
Became this:
This:
Inspired this:
Just search on some of your favorite people (famous, semi-famous, whatever) and paste ideas into Pinterest or even a Google Doc.
5. Ask for portrait and landscape. Landscape works great on your website but portrait is usually better for social media.
6. Get your head in the right space. I wouldn’t have believed how much mindset could make a difference until I saw it in myself, in two photo shoots just a few months apart.
At the photo shoot below, I was relaxed. We had good tunes blasting. There was a cat running around. More broadly, work was good, my family life was happy. It shows:
At the photo shoot below, I was incredibly rushed. I had just arrived at the location after a 4-hour stressful drive, which included a fight with my partner. I only had 20 minutes to network and take photos before heading to my next event. I was tense. Broadly speaking, it was just a few weeks before my divorce.
I was in a totally different headspace and it shows. (Though my jacket is still effin amazing.)
You can’t control all the variables in your life but you can prepare as much as possible to be in a good headspace leading up to your photo shoot. Make a playlist. Bring a buddy. Put joy in your heart.
Do you have a favorite headshot? I’d love to see it!
Shoulders back,
Stephanie
Quality Control
Have you ever used Frontline? It’s that flea and tick medication you put on Crackers or Captain.
Did you know that the US Food and Drug Administration can show up to the Frontline factory at any time, completely unannounced, for a surprise inspection?
Thank goodness, right? I want that level of quality control over something that impacts the health of my pets.
Quality control means there’s an internal set of standards plus an expectation that the standards are consistently met.
Do you have an internal set of standards for your work?
You might think your natural perfectionistic tendencies will ensure that your work is high quality. I promise, they will not save you here. You can’t just rely on some gut instinct about what good looks like.
Because as much as you might have perfection, you also have whims. Wild hairs.
And a fallible memory.
Plus, being a perfectionist sucks.
And don’t forget what happens when you start to hire some subcontractors.
Document what a minimum standard of care would look like. You can leave room for whims or deviations to cater to the client, if you want.
What elements are required such that you’d still be proud to put your name on it? Write that down.
Do you have a way to check that your standards are consistently met?
It isn’t enough to have thought through your standards and communicated them. That’s like writing down the driving laws and giving them to a 16 year old with the keys to a car. No, you’ve gotta teach and train and check in.
This might mean you have a subcontractor shadow you for a while until they’re independent. And then you check their work. You pop in on a workshop or rerun some of their stats or drop a paragraph into a plagiarism checker.
You don’t have to jump out of the bushes like the FDA. You should tell your team how you’ll monitor quality.
But quality control has to occur even if you don’t have subcontractors or employees.
This could look like having an editor read through your blog posts (I don’t have this, as you can probably tell ha!)
Quality control could be having an agreement with a trusted colleague to be the second set of eyes for each other’s reports.
Feedback surveys will never be a sufficient quality control measure. While they’re valuable, your clients don’t know what your internal standards look like. Feedback surveys can only tell you how it was, not how it was compared to what you planned for it to be.
Consistent high-quality work is a result of quality control measures. What do yours look like? Tell me.
👯♀️ Calendar + To Do List 👯♀️
This is simple math but incredibly hard to pull off: your calendar and your to do list have to equal each other. They have to walk in the same step. Be a symbiotic pair.
If your to do list for Wednesday looks like this:
Write a blog post
Develop proposal for ERC
Prep the workshop for VGB
Develop draft #1 of GF dashboard
Send 2 month check in email to LP
Plan next week’s social media posts
Revise the visuals for NYS workshop
Follow up with JB about potential gig
Meet with developers to review decision tree
But your Wednesday calendar looks like this:
That math ain’t mathin. More than half the to do list doesn’t have a space in the calendar where it’ll actually get done. The calendar, likewise, has no breathing room for handling the miscellanea of running a business.
So, what happens?
People cut the yoga and meditation time.
Skip the gym.
Forego the family time.
Sit back down at the computer after 8:30pm and knock out a few more hours.
Scrimp sleep and all the things that keep your mental health in check.
You can only do that for so long before you burn out.
You’ll know it’s getting bad when you get that dread in your stomach pit about a half hour after you wake up.
Or when you wake up at 3am thinking about all the things you have to do.
You work weekends (or, since you can work whenever you want, you’re working when you don’t actually want to be).
You get mad at the project manager for doing her job because she’s assigning you tasks in Asana.
The little dictator on your shoulder is both pressuring you and panicking at the same time.
At least, this is how I know burnout is at my doorstep. What are your signs? Email me.
If you’re having any of these experiences, it’s a warning light from Burnout Beacon. And the first place to look for the fix is the matchup between your calendar and your to do list.
My burnout prevention routine: On a Friday, open the calendar and to do list.
Look at the to do list and rearrange or regroup similar tasks. Like, if I need to follow up with potential clients and check in with past clients and send warm up emails for upcoming workshop participants, those are all inbox activities. So I group them together into the same day with my to do list.
I’m batching the to do list.
Then I look ahead at the coming week and put blocks in the calendar (even as small as 15 minutes, so long as that’s realistic) for everything on my to do list, starting with the most urgent activities.
Whatever remains on the to do list gets rescheduled to the following week.
In theory, this means I don’t ever get that crushing panic because I know there’s time allotted for me to deal with everything I need to do. It may still feel like a lot, but I know I have the space to handle it all.
If, after a few weeks, I notice that I’m rescheduling the same activities again and again, that’s my sign that I simply don’t have the time to do everything I’d like to do right now. I’ve probably taken on more than five projects.
I move those perpetually rescheduled activities off my to do list (seeing them turn red invites guilt) and onto a post it note titled with a future month. I can do it. Later.
If I were really good at time management, I wouldn’t be waiting until Friday to look at next week’s schedule. At that point, it’s almost too late, you know? Sometimes I’ve just overcommitted myself.
Proper time management would probably plan a quarter in advance. (Is this what Lean Six Sigmas do? I’ve never really known.)
But the reality is you can’t schedule that far ahead, even if you have current projects that will run that time. Clients are late. You need a sick day. Life happens.
So it isn’t helpful or wise to pop “plan next week’s social media posts” into a 3pm on a Thursday three months from now. Having to move it, because life came up, will be annoying.
There’s a sweet spot between overplanning and acting like your to do list and your calendar have never met.
Get them better acquainted and let me know how it goes.
My Office Set Up
While money can’t buy happiness, it does help. For example, my new office desk and chair are making me actually want to spend time at work.
I was due for a change. My old office chair was a thrift store find my cats had turned into a scratching post. And I was using two separate desks. One stand-up setup that my ex-husband constructed. Loved it, but it barely fit all the equipment I needed for an online workshop these days. And the other desk was a sit-down in the classically old wood style that had a dozen drawers and weighed 200 pounds.
This is my new desk:
It replaces both of my old desks because it’s motorized and raises and lowers itself. In fact, I can preset 3 different heights for when I want to sit, stand, or use a stool.
This variety keeps me from getting bored. Or sore.
Also, see the undershelf lighting? It comes in a bunch of different colors! Need a perk up? Switch it to yellow.
I also ditched the cat bed for an armless chair with a wide seat:
This design means I can sit with one leg tucked up under me or even fully criss-cross applesauce or a dozen other configurations that keep me actually at my desk working.
Between the desk heights, light colors, and sitting options, the combinations my physical body in better shape and make it so every hour of my work day feels fresh – and fresh keeps me inspired.
Together these may look bland but drop them onto my lime green shag rug, set against my bright yellow walls and honestly being in my office makes me so happy.
Want to take a look around?
This is the view from my fresh chair – which now sits, with the desk, in the middle of the room.
You’ll notice:
☀️ Natural light
🪴 Plants
💻 Space for all the online workshop tech
🟨 Those yellow walls
🎨 The back half is my art studio
Huberman Lab has an entire episode dedicated to the research behind optimal office setups for focus and health. Art studios aren’t in their recommended list. Plants are. Listen here.
What you can’t fully see in this video:
The stairway leading up to my office is plastered with thank you notes, postcards, and memorabilia from my work travels.
Coming or going, I’m reminded of all the amazing places and kind hearts I’ve worked with over the years and I feel profoundly grateful for my global community and that all gets me through the smaller, much more tedious moments of being an entrepreneur.
So, I spent several hundred dollars this year on new office furniture (during Prime Days on Amazon so I spent less but still, it’s Amazon, I know, don’t judge me). It drastically changed the vibe in my office, like opening the windows to let in fresh Spring air.
Even if your budget can’t manage that much, what small thing could you add that would make your heart smile? A candle? A photo?
I would love to see your favorite thing about your office. Send me a pic.