Hey there, CEOs, Rachel Cook here, founder of The CEO Collective and host of the Promote Yourself to CEO Podcast, and we are on to the second installment of the series all about a life-first approach to building and growing your business. Now, if you heard the very first episode in the series then you know a lot more about me, a lot more about my why and my personal journey in building this business, why I have been so intentional about building a business that allows me to live my definition of success: allows me to be the best mom I can be, be a present wife, be a daughter who can support and help out her parents who are now needing additional help - I'm definitely in that sandwich generation. And I have no regrets.

I've had to make trade offs. But I've always been able to prioritize the things that matter most to me and the people who matter most to me. And I know from experience working with thousands of women entrepreneurs that the biggest reasons women start businesses is because they want that flexibility and freedom to take care of their families, to take care of their parents, to take care of their children, to live an actual life. That is so crucially important.

And it's really one of the driving reasons why so many women are leaving the traditional corporate world, the traditional path that requires us to work like we don't have kids, but then parent like we don't have a job. It's just impossible. Instead, create a whole new way of showing up, a whole new way of running our businesses, a whole new way of being in this world.

So that first episode was a big one for me. It was very from the heart. Um, tried not to cry, did a little bit. But I hope you enjoyed that. And if anything, you know a lot more about me and where I stand in my values. So if you want to know even more, if you're excited about this series, keep on listening because in this episode, I want to dive into the 10 myths that are so easy to believe, but they truly hold you back. They will hold you back from having both success at home and success in the business. 

And if you fall into the trap of believing these myths, then you will always find yourself burning the candle at both ends. And that's not what we want. We want businesses where we can do meaningful work and live a meaningful life and take care of the people who matter to us and take care of ourselves. We want it all right, but that means we have to be willing to let go of some of the BS. It is just holding us back from getting where we truly want to go. So let's get into it. 

Myth #1: I have to do everything myself for it to be done right.

The first myth that is holding women entrepreneurs back is: I have to do everything myself for it to be done right. Who's felt that way?

I know I have. I know I have. This is such an easy trap to fall into. We believe that no one else can do the job as good as we can. And because we believe this, we have a hard time asking for support, we have a hard time accepting support, and when that support doesn't do it exactly the way that we want, we get upset and we just decide it's easier if I just do it myself.

I have fallen into this trap so many times in the past, but the reality is this is going to limit your growth and lead to burnout. It is keeping you stuck in the weeds. It is keeping you stuck in the minutia of your business and ultimately will keep you from being able to grow your business.

There is a point where you simply cannot do everything yourself and you have to learn how to not only ask for support, but receive that support. For us as entrepreneurs, that's learning how to delegate and learning how to lead. These are skills that are incredibly important if you want to grow a business beyond being a one woman show. And I'm not saying being a one woman show is an issue. If you want to have a solo business, just you in your business, that's totally fine. Do you! 

But I'm here to tell you, if you want a life-first business, it's so much easier when you have other people supporting you. When you need to take time off from your business, you have a team who can keep things running and keep the revenue coming in, keep your clients happy.

But that means you've got to be willing to ask for and accept support. You've got to be able to learn how to delegate and how to work with a team. This is the only way you will get out of the day to day of your business and be able to stay focused on that higher level strategy and stay focused on your personal priorities.

If you're trying to do everything yourself, you're going to burn out. So let's start asking for help and let's start accepting that support. Even if they don't do it exactly the same way you would. If you're really intentional and clear as you grow your business and you take the time to hire the right people, those people should be able to, one, be trained in the role you're hiring them for, but two, you should be hiring and looking for people who are extremely talented and skilled in the area that they need to be in.

That's the most beautiful part about my business is that my team is so talented. I know I can just say, "Hey, this thing needs to get done." I don't even care how it gets done at this point. I just want it done. And it makes it so much easier because I'm not micromanaging the minutia. It means I am now freed up as the CEO to focus on the big picture.

Myth #2: More hours equals more success.

Second big myth holding women entrepreneurs back is that more hours equals more success. This is such a dangerous myth. This is such a dangerous myth because if you fall into the trap of thinking, if you just work harder then success will come, then you are likely spending a lot of time focused on the volume of work, how many hours you're working versus the quality of that work and the focus of that work.

Time management isn't just about trying to do all the things. Being productive isn't just about trying to do all the things. It's about doing the right thing. If you've ever heard me talk about the difference between $10 an hour activities, $100 an hour activities, $1, 000 an hour activities and $10, 000 an hour activities - we've talked a lot on this podcast, and in my business The CEO Collective we work with a lot of our clients on getting them out of the weeds of the $10 and $100 an hour activities, because those are usually the administrative activities, the day to day operations activities, and they aren't growth oriented. 

Those are maintenance mode activities. Those are things that are going to keep your business where it is right now, but they're not growing your visibility. They're not getting more sales. They're not bringing more clients in. They're not creating new opportunities for your business. And as the CEO of your business, you need to be focused on that level work. 

And when you shift to focusing on the CEO level work, instead of basically acting as the assistant to your own business, you will find that you will be able to move further faster without working more hours. More hours does not equal more success. Most likely it's going to equal a lot more burnout.

Myth #3: Hustle culture is the only path to growth.

The third myth here: hustle culture is the only path to growth. I am so frustrated with hustle culture these days because that has been the beating drum for entrepreneurs for decades. It's all about hustle. It's all about grind. It's all about, you have to sacrifice 10 years of your life, 20 years of your life, do the things that no one else will do right now so that you can live the life no one else can have down the road.

As you heard me talk about in the very first installment of this series, nothing is guaranteed. Nothing's guaranteed. You might not be here in 10 years down the road. You might have a crisis that requires all of your attention, putting off your life, putting off your health, putting off your family and your friends and other things that actually matter.

They won't be there 10 years down the road if you sacrifice everything for money and for financial success. That can come, but it shouldn't come at the expense, at the sacrifice of the things that truly matter most. What will get you where you want to go, and will still give you that financial success, is honestly focusing more on strategic, sustainable growth.

We don't need to think like we have to go a hundred X all the time. That is not sustainable. It's just not sustainable. And even all the conversation out there about 10-Xing growth in a year for a lot of people that is not sustainable. We have to be realistic about what a realistic pace of growth is.

And for most businesses, if you're growing 10%, 20% a year, that is a really solid, steady growth rate. That's solid. That's beating inflation by a lot. If you're growing 25 to 50% a year, that's incredible! That's considered hyper growth for many industries. So I like to be more realistic about what's going to happen here for small business owners.

This is why I really love the book Double Double by Cameron Herold. He talks about how to double your business over three years. And I feel like that is such a sustainable mindset there, because we're not trying to do it all overnight. We're not trying to kill ourselves to achieve some arbitrary goal, but instead we are sustainably, slowly, steadily focusing on the things that matter.

And the things that are going to get you there are honestly going to be having a strategic plan, going to be effective systems. It's going to be taking care of yourself because entrepreneurship is a marathon. It is not a sprint. I've been in business for myself for 15 years, and I've done that as someone with multiple chronic health challenges, as someone with three kids, and as someone who's taking care of aging parents.

The only way I could do those things and have this lifestyle that I have is having a clear strategic plan, having effective systems, and having the ability to take care of myself; doing it in a way that allows me the time that I need to put myself in that picture too, so that I can actually be a priority too.

That's why we built the whole 90-Day CEO Operating System, so that you can create the plan with your vision and your 90 day plan, so that you create your Client Growth Engine and your Team Growth Engine, and you're in the middle of that as the CEO. Because CEO leadership starts with self leadership, and self leadership starts with putting boundaries in place and prioritizing yourself.

Myth #4: I can’t afford to take time off.

Number four myth holding women entrepreneurs back and entrepreneurs in general: I can't afford to take time off. If I take time off, I won't get paid. I can't take time away from my business because if I'm not working, there's no money coming in. I can't take time off from my business because if I'm not doing it, no one else can take care of my clients.

This is only going to set you up for exhaustion and burnout. It is so imperative that you build a business that allows you to take time off. Like I said, this is a marathon. This is not a sprint. And if you are working 24/7, you're going to burn out. But even then I talked to so many people who just don't have any boundaries between their business and their life, and they're working all the time.

Even if they're not thinking they're on the clock, they're literally checking their phone, they're checking their inbox, they're responding to things in the middle of the night on the weekends. And that's not healthy for any of us. We have to take time off. You need rest. You deserve rest. You don't have to earn it. Okay, you deserve it. As a human, you need rest. 

And in fact, as your business grows, your demands as a CEO are going to get bigger and bigger, which means you're going to need to continue to expand your own capacity to handle all of the things that are coming your way. As your business grows, you're not only dealing with more clients, you're also dealing with a team. You're also dealing with a lot of people coming to you all the time, looking for answers, looking for leadership, looking for direction. 

And in order to have the capacity to face all of that in a calm, clear, focused way, you need to prioritize your own wellbeing. And so that means that you need to build into your plan, taking time off.

This is why all the time in The CEO Retreat, we get to a section where we're talking about, I call it 30-60-90, where we've taken our 90 day goals, we've started thinking about what we want to accomplish in the next quarter. And then we go break it down month by month, the first 30 days, then 60 days in, then 90 days in.

And the first question I ask is, "what time off do you need?" And every single person in that room, if they don't tell me they've taken at least a day or two off, you better believe I'm saying, "okay, l et's get that in the calendar." And I'm not just talking weekends. I'm saying you need a long weekend.

You need to recharge here. I would never take a job where I didn't have some paid vacation time where I could unplug, right? Why would I let my business make me work that hard? I wouldn't. Be a better boss to yourself. Give yourself paid vacation. And it starts with prioritizing that and putting it in the calendar and taking that time off and building the infrastructure, the plan, the strategy, the systems, and getting the support team in place that can allow you to take a week off, two weeks off, a month off over the course of a year.

I, on average, take about 8 to 10 weeks off. Not all at a time, that would be amazing, wouldn't it? Be like having a whole quarter off. But, I usually take 2 weeks off in the winter, around the holidays. I take 2 weeks off in the summer, so we can have a summer break. And then I plug in a lot of 4 and 5 day weekends.

I plug in a lot of long weekends because I know that it is so crucially important for my ability to show up and lead this business. And it's important for me to also rest and recharge so that I can do things with my family and take care of myself. It's so important. It's so important. 

Myth #5: Success requires sacrifice.

Fifth big myth: success requires sacrifice. Requires sacrificing your life, requires sacrificing family time, requires sacrificing your hobbies, requires sacrificing your friends, requires sacrificing everything that matters to you. No, I don't buy it. I don't believe it for a second. And if you heard the first episode in this series, you know why. My mom was 31 when she almost lost her life, when she lost her business, and spent two years recovering from an accident that left her with a traumatic brain injury.

And I have known my entire life that it could all be gone in a second. Nothing is promised. Nothing is promised. And I actually believe now that I am in my forties and my kids are in high school, middle school... I'm so grateful that I didn't believe this; I didn't buy into this myth and I've been prioritizing my life with my family.

I'm so glad as someone with chronic health issues that I've prioritized my own health care, including advocating for myself. With anybody who's gone through chronic health challenges and you're trying to get a diagnosis so that you can get more support, you know that it is exhausting going to doctor after doctor and specialist after specialist and paying thousands and thousands of dollars for testing.

But if I'm not able to put that oxygen mask on myself and take care of myself, I can't be there for my family. I can't be there for my kids or my parents. I can't be there for my clients, right? So you have to put that oxygen mask on yourself. 

And I think too, you know, one of the things I did sacrifice for a while, and I think about this a lot more now, the pandemic really brought this to the forefront, I've always been an introvert. I've always had a really close circle of people around me, but in the last few years I've really prioritized female friendships. I've really prioritized finding people who I can laugh with, and who I can have fun with, and who we stay up late into the night talking. And those friendships have filled my cup so, so much.

They've been so crucially important. I have to say, I think this is the one thing that I really learned from my grandmother. She's in her 90s now, she's 95, and she always had incredible friends around her. She always had best friends, in fact my sister's named after her best friend. And those women supported each other through raising kids, through the ups and downs of life. Those women were her rock. Those women helped her when my mom got hurt, and my grandmother literally ended up with three little kids back in her house. And I think so much about all of these things, like you can tell in this series, you're going to hear a lot about the thoughts that I've been having as I'm in my 40s and in this stage, this is so important.

This is so important. It doesn't matter if you have a million friends on social media, a million followers on social media, if you don't have anybody who can come feed your cat while you go out of town for a few days. It doesn't matter if you have a million email subscribers, but you don't have somebody who you can call and say, Oh" my gosh, this happened. Can you come support me? Can you be with me?" That is so crucially important. 

We need that. We're humans. We are community driven human beings who need that. So please don't buy into that myth that you have to sacrifice everything to grow your business. I call BS on all of that. 

Are there trade offs? Sure. There's trade offs. There's going to be times where you have to make a trade off. There's going to be times when I look at my calendar and I'm like, I'm stretched too thin. I can't say yes to this thing. But if it's truly important to you, you need to prioritize your family, and your friends, and taking care of yourself. It needs to become a non negotiable as you build your life-first business. 

Myth #6: Growth requires constant expansion.

The sixth myth for women entrepreneurs is that growth requires constant expansion. I think a lot of small business owners believe that growth is like very linear. If you were to chart it out on a map, it's like, it goes straight up.

And that's not sustainable for a lot of people. And here's the biggest reason why. Sustainable growth means there are going to be times where you're growing, where you grow a lot, and then you need to stabilize because you're going to outgrow your current container for your business. 

Your infrastructure needs to be updated. Your team needs to grow. The systems need to be improved. Maybe the technology needs to be improved. Maybe the way you deliver your products, programs, and services need to change. Growth can't just be thinking about it being linear and then you're burning everyone out on the team as well. Growth needs to be like: grow a little, stabilize a little, grow a little bit, stabilize a little bit.

You have to build in those times where you can reset for the next stage of your business. For me, it's usually been around every three or four years where like we've grown a bit and now I'm like, "okay, what needs to change in order to set us up for the next stage?"

And this allows everybody to get really clear, really intentional. It allows us to say no to the things that aren't working. We now have given ourselves permission to hit the reset button on it. And it means that instead of just getting bigger for the sake of getting bigger, we can instead also look at what other metrics of growth matter to us, 'cause revenue is not the only other metric of growth. 

We could also be looking at how can we grow our client satisfaction and our client results? How can we grow our profitability even if we keep the revenue the same? How can we develop the people on our team? How can we improve our experience? Those are all parts of growth that I think get overshadowed so often by this desire for constant revenue growth.

Don't just think revenue is the only benchmark of success. It really isn't. And often if we're chasing revenue at the expense of everything else, we are setting ourselves up for a lot of frustration because we're outgrowing all the systems. We're outgrowing all the teams, right? How things show up in one area is how they show up in another area.

My kids are starting high school. Literally I have spent the last few months buying all new shoes, buying all new clothes, setting them up, getting the computers they need and the software they need for their programs. They're going into a new stage of their life, starting high school. And so we need to hit the reset. We need to stabilize again. We need to set them up for success and that's going to happen in your business too. So think about that. 

Think about, you know, it's not constant growth. Sometimes you need to hit the reset button. Sometimes you need to stabilize. Sometimes you need to upgrade internal infrastructure so that it can be sustainable as you continue, so that you're not just growing and breaking things. Instead, you're growing and you have the capacity to do it because you've taken the time to get clear and get intentional. 

Myth #7: I need to be available 24/7.

The seventh big myth holding women entrepreneurs back from having a life-first business is: I need to be available 24/7.

If people are paying me, I need to be available. I need to be on call to my clients, to my team, to my business. I need to be always plugged in. If there is one way that will keep your anxiety ratcheted up to an 11 all the time, it's being plugged in all the time. You need time away from your business. And this is where boundaries are so crucially important.

With all the technology we have, thinking about like your phone and the fact that people can technically get hold of you at any time. Do they really need to get hold of you anytime? I don't think so. I think there are very few instances where people need to be on call for their business.

And I used to joke about this all the time until I actually had a client who this was her career. I used to say unless you're catching babies and you're on call for a birth, you don't need to be available 24/7. And then I had a client, Dr. Nicole Rankins, who is incredible. She's an OB who is a specialty, hospital OB.

All she does is 24 hour shifts at the hospital where she delivers babies. And then she has this incredible business all about birth and pregnancy is her podcast. Go check it out. And you know what? She is not on call all the time. She has scheduled times. Where she is showing up to work in the hospital and she's delivering babies.

So the rest of us can take a chill pill here. There is no true emergency in the majority of our businesses that requires us to be on call. So I highly encourage you to put some more boundaries in place. My clients know that I only work generally Monday through Thursday. They know I take most of my Fridays off. So they don't expect for me to respond during those days. 

My team knows that I'm usually around, available via Slack, between like 10 and two or three on the days that I'm working. But evenings? Weekends? Nope, you're not going to get to me. And even, in my life and my family, I leave my phone on do not disturb, or I have special mode set where only certain people can get hold of me because I don't need to be on call to everybody.

That's just not essential. It's not required. The idea that you need to respond to people instantly is just so ridiculous to me. And I think a lot of people are exhausted with that. So start putting some boundaries in place. It is okay. I promise you, it will all be okay. There are very few true emergencies in your business that require you to be there.

Myth #8: I can’t trust anyone else with my business.

The eighth myth holding women entrepreneurs back from having that life-first business is: I can't trust anyone else with my business. This is kind of the whole "my business is my baby" mindset. And I have to say, once you've had actual babies you realize it's not that serious, right? There are very few things that even my team could do that would be such a mistake that it would like everything would melt down and disappear.

The fear that no one is going to do it the way that you can do it or that no one will care about our manager business as well as you will. There's some validity to that. To be honest, no one's going to care as much about your business as you do, but that doesn't mean they don't care, right?

Trusting and empowering a team, getting people on your team who believe in what you're doing, who are excited about what you're doing, who are thrilled to be a part of this, who believe in this work, that is so crucially important. But if you can't let go of that, like death grip of control, then you're going to be constantly putting it all back on your plate.

You have to trust your team. You have to trust that you're finding the right people, that you're building a great team. They're going to make mistakes because they're human. They're going to mess it up, but that's okay. There's literally so few mistakes that you can't come back from. 

There's going to be blips. There's going to be mistakes. There's going to be challenges. But when you really trust your team, when you can hand things off and know it's gonna happen and not keep looking over their shoulder like a little helicopter CEO who wants to know every single thing and micromanage every single thing, I can promise you it's gonna be so much easier.

One, your team's gonna like it a lot more because they're gonna not feel like you're constantly micromanaging them. But two, when you relax and let go, you're going to be able to do the work that you're here to do, which is not micromanaging people. It's making an impact, and impact making is messy and imperfect, but it doesn't mean it doesn't make a difference.

Myth #9: If I’m not working, I’m not making money.

The ninth myth: if I'm not working, I'm not making money. Now we talked about this a little bit earlier, the whole, "I can't take time off," but when you believe and you've set your business up in a way where your income is directly tied to the hours you work, then yeah, you're not going to make an income.

And this is one of the biggest reasons why, when I work with entrepreneurs and look at their business strategy - especially if they're telling me I want a life-first business: I want a business where I can take time off and revenue is still coming in. I want a business I can potentially sell one day - well, that's not going to happen if you have to be the person to do every single thing, if you actually have to do the work in order for the revenue to come in. 

You have to think about how are we structuring this business? How is this business set up? And that means building some systems. That means looking at offers that don't require you to be the only person to deliver them or create them. That means you need to be able to have the technology and the automation to make more things happen without you manually doing everything or even your team manually doing everything. You need things to sell that don't require you to be the person to sell it. And this is a shift for a lot of people, especially if you've been earlier on in your business.

I see this a lot with my clients who are more on the service provider side. But there's so many ways that you can decouple yourself from that time-to-money thinking. And it starts with really evaluating your business model and evaluating your offers. And making sure that you have that diversity of income streams within your business.

So even if you do have to back off for a little bit, even if you do have to stop working for a while, there's still things happening that's bringing revenue into the business.

Myth #10: Success comes at the cost of something else.

The final myth, and again, this overlaps a little bit, but biggest myth: success comes at the cost of something else. 

A lot of people really believe that success as an entrepreneur requires you to sacrifice your life, requires you to sacrifice your health, requires you to sacrifice your relationships, requires you to sacrifice your happiness, requires you to sacrifice having fun, requires you to sacrifice vacation, requires you to sacrifice everything.

I've talked to so many people who really believe this: so I just have to sacrifice something in order to be a successful business owner. Success isn't zero sum. It's not all or nothing. It's not. There will be trade offs and this is where we always have to think like context, nuance, discernment.

There's always going to be trade offs. There's always going to be trade offs. And one day you might have to say, you know what, today I have to turn down going out to dinner with my friends because there is an urgent priority on my plate. 

But you can also build in boundaries and build in systems and strategy and support that allow you to prioritize your date night every week, that allow you to prioritize spending time with your kids on the weekend, that allow you to prioritize going to that Pilates class you love. 

It's all about making intentional decisions and intentionally designing and creating the life and the business that you want.

There might be trade offs. There might be times where you do have to sacrifice a little bit, but if it's over long periods of time and you are expected to just live this really like "work is all that matters" life, you need to think about are your friends and family going to be there five or ten years down the road if you've ignored them and not taking care of them and not invested in those relationships?

Is your health going to be there five or ten years down the road if you haven't taken care of it? I can tell you I've got a lot of friends right now who are bumping up against some scary health stuff. I've got a lot of friends right now who are bumping up against relationship challenges. I've got a lot of friends right now who are losing people in their life.

And they're not saying to themselves in this moment, I wish I would have worked even more. They're saying, Oh my gosh, I wish I would have spent more time with this person. Oh my gosh, I wish I would have taken better care of myself. So we need to get rid of all of this all-or-nothing thinking.

It is a lot of thinking that, if it's an ideal world, you can do all these things. It's not an ideal world. It's a messy, imperfect world. And all we can do is be intentional about what we're doing. But when we press pause and we get clear about what our definition of success is, we get clear about the business strategy and the business model and the systems that are going to help support that definition of success, it becomes so much easier. 

So I want to know from you, which of these myths are a challenge for you? Which one do you need help with? Let me know. Come connect with me. I'm on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok everywhere. Let me know your thoughts and your insights. I cannot wait to hear from you. And I can't wait till the next episode because again, we are going through even more about building a life-first business and the shifts and the thought processes that need to change, that we need to detach ourselves from, in order to create the real, lasting, sustainable success we're looking for both at life and at business.