Raw_The Biggest Mistakes Holding You Back From a Life-First Business

Hey there CEOs, Rachel Cook here, founder of The CEO Collective and host of the Promote Yourself to CEO podcast. I hope you have been enjoying the series all about a life-first approach to designing, building, and growing your business. It's such an important topic to me. And this summer, as I was looking ahead towards all of the content I wanted to create this fall and the things I wanted to share with you, I went through all of our intake forms for The CEO Collective.

And, actually what I did was I downloaded all of the intake forms out of type form and uploaded them into chat GPT, and I asked it to analyze the responses and tell me: what were the top 10 reasons why entrepreneurs were joining The CEO Collective? And it was so insightful for me because out of those top 10 reasons, why people were joining me, and it came down to they wanted more balance.

They wanted more work life balance. They needed to understand how to manage their time effectively. They knew they needed the systems and the strategy and the support in order to get out of the weeds and reclaim their time, reclaim their life. And it really made me think, you know, I haven't talked about this as much as I feel like I should.

I've done a lot of deep dives into marketing and into sales and into client experience. We've talked a lot on this podcast about so many of the core elements that go into building a sustainable business, but I haven't really zoomed out and talked about the life-first approach, so that you would all understand and get a glimpse into my thought process, into my values and the lens that I have when I'm helping women design their businesses.

So today I wanted to continue the conversation and I want to talk about some of the biggest mistakes that are keeping you trapped, that are keeping you stuck, that are keeping you overworked and underpaid, that have you burning the candle at both ends, and that have you sacrificing your life and your health and your family and your relationships and all the things that really matter to you while you're trying to build this business. Because there's a better way.

There's a better way to have both the business that you want and the life that you love. So we need to take a look at some of the biggest mistakes. And in this episode, I want to talk about how you can course correct here with these mistakes. These are common.

When I look at businesses, the first thing I do when our new client joins us inside of The CEO Collective is I get to know everything I can about their business.

I read through their intake forms. I, look at their websites. I have calls with every single new client to do a strategy review and look at what are the things that we can do quickly and easily to start changing and shifting their business to be more sustainable. And these things come up again and again.

And they're just so common. And I want you to know that; I want you to know you're not alone in this. These things happen really quickly and easily for a lot of people to fall into these traps. But we can course correct together. So let's get into it.

The first big mistake that is keeping you from a life-first business is Not having a clear vision or a clear plan.

A lot of small business owners, we start our business and we have a vision. We have a plan and it's usually replace my former income, whether it's a corporate job, a salary, what have you. A lot of us are like our first goal, our first vision is just make a paycheck for ourselves. But what often happens is once we get trapped into that minutia of the day to day and we don't press pause and take the time to zoom out and realign with what's next.

And as a result, when we're focused on, just the day to day, we end up getting pulled into just thinking about the short term wins. Thinking about the problems that we're having today or the revenue we need to bring in this week or this month and thinking further out. Isn't even on our radar, right?

We're not thinking further ahead as far as what we want to accomplish within a year or what we want to accomplish within three years or five years, we lose sight of that vision. And even more, I often am working with women entrepreneurs who have already cleared their first six figures, they already have been in business for a while.

And they just haven't sat down to, one: what have you achieved? Like, recognizing what you have accomplished. And that in itself is a huge exercise: sit down and acknowledge what you have done. Acknowledge the success you've had. Acknowledge the milestones you've crossed. But then think a little further ahead.

What is this next stage of your business going to look like? What is the next stage of your life going to look like? And I think this lack of vision is what keeps a lot of people stuck in businesses that just aren't working for them anymore. So in my case, I shared in the very first episode of this series, I've had this business for 15 years.

I've also been raising a family over the past 15 years and I've been helping my parents over the last really five years now. And that means there have been stages of my life that have directly impacted the stages of my business, my life and my business are very much like on these two paths together.

And each time I'm in a different stage in my life, if I'm not adjusting my business alongside of it, if I'm not asking myself: is this business still supporting me in this stage of life? Then it's so easy to get caught up just in the short term things instead of: Oh, this is actually, I need to move in a different direction. I need to course correct here. I need to shift. I need to adjust. I need to adapt.

So one thing I really encourage everyone to do is press pause for a minute and think about, starting with your life, start with your life: what stage of life are you in right now?

So I shared in some of these episodes, my twins just started high school this year. They're both freshmen. They're going to two different high schools, two different programs. My youngest is starting middle school this year. It's the first year I will have no kids in elementary school. It feels like a big shift in my family. And, now that we're here, I also am very aware, not just because of my relationship with my kids, but talking with friends who are a little further along than me, talking with friends who have great relationships with their kids. -

- This is something I've learned: pay attention to the people who are a little ahead of you, at a different stage than you, and what can you learn from them. -

- And I've learned from my friends whose kids are in college, or whose kids are in their early 20s, and those kids are having great relationships with their parents. They're calling their mom, they're confiding in her, they're opening dialogue regularly, they have these great relationships. They want to spend time together, they want to do things together. They're very close. That's what I want with my kids. So what does that mean for me? It means in my vision right now, when I'm talking to those parents, they're telling me things like: Hey, yeah, your kids are getting more independent right now, but they still need you.

They're going to come to you, not right after school and tell you everything that happened, but they're going to show up at 10 o'clock at night wanting to talk about their day. And you need to be ready for that. They're going to come with these different challenges and you need to know how you want to handle those.

So for me, this stage of my life right now, yes, my kids are more independent. Yes, they're at school most of the day and their needs are different from me and I want to be available for that. I want to set myself up over these next four years and really next eight years, I want to set myself up to be that parent. That they come to when they need support, when they need encouragement, when they need affection, when they need anything, right? And I have to plant those seeds today. I also know that this stage is gonna prep me for what it'll be like to be an empty nester. And I can't believe that I am closer to being an empty nester than I was to having babies.

That is where I am in this journey right now, this stage of my life. So I want to be setting myself up for that. How does that impact my business? How does that personal definition of success, raising teenagers, setting myself up for the empty nest phase, knowing that as I get into that empty nest phase, it's so important for me to have my own interests and hobbies, and being taken care of my own health and wellbeing, investing in my relationship with my husband, having friendships that mean the world to me... All of that impacts how I'm showing up in my business and what I want my business to look like and how I'm going to run my business.

So when we talk about vision and planning inside of The CEO Collective, we always start with the personal vision, and we're looking three to five years out. Cause usually that's about, the stage of life for a lot of us, especially if you have kids, you know, the first three to five years are babies, toddlers, preschoolers, then you have the next three to five years, which is like elementary school. Then you have middle school, then you have teenagers.

And that kind of is how it flows with a lot of my clients. That's how it's worked for me is every three to five years, we enter a new stage. Everybody's needs are a little bit different.

So we start with your personal definition of success. We start with your personal vision for the next three to five years. And then we ask, what's your owner's intent? What do you need out of this business? What do you need financially? So what do you need to pay yourself in order to take care of these teenagers, in order to help your parents, in order to take great care of yourself, in order to go on weekend retreats with your girlfriends?

What is it that you personally need this business to do for you and your family? What are your non negotiables? What are the things that I'm setting my business up for? So, what I personally get out of it as the CEO, as the owner. And then I need to look at the business vision.

So over that same period of time, Where are we headed? What are we trying to do? What is our focus? Who are we trying to help? How many people are we trying to help? What's our revenue goals? What are the offers that are going to get us to those revenue goals? What is the strategy that's going to get us there?

All of that big picture, when you start thinking long term, when you start looking at a three to five year window, then it really makes it a lot easier to make decisions because it now becomes a criteria for decision making. And I think this is why a lot of people get stuck in these, focusing on short term wins, focusing on the next week or month, or maybe even couple of months, but not really seeing much further than that, is because they don't have something to make decisions against.

And that's why having that clear vision, having your clear values is so important. That's a three to five years vision and values. It's part of our 90 day CEO operating system. And then having a plan to break that vision down into actionable, check off a bowl, doable steps, right? And that's what our 90 day CEO planning process is.

So you need both of those pieces. You need to know where you're headed and then you need to be able to chip away at it, right? 90 days at a time, you're getting closer. The next 90 days, you're getting closer. 90 days is a perfect amount of time because It's just long enough to stay focused and to track and to see, how effective things are.

But it's not so long that you can't course correct or change your mind or make, adjustments as you need. So you need. You need those things to work together. You can't just stay focused on short term. You have to have that long term focus that allows you to have that steady, sustainable growth that allows you to do some growth and then some stabilizing, some growth, and then stabilizing that allows you to have periods of the year where you are resetting, where you are upgrading your systems, where you are making sure that the business has realistic goals that you can work towards every quarter.

And they're not. going like a million miles an hour every quarter. This is probably one of the biggest things that my clients learn when they're at the CEO retreat. Cause it's so easy. A lot of us are ambitious. We have big dreams and big goals about what we want to accomplish over the length of our entire career.

But really, If you're thinking about setting goals that are checkoffable, that are doable, if you want momentum, it's about the things that you're doing consistently. It's not about like how hard you're going for them. It's more about how consistently you're able to show up and do the thing. So to give another example of this, it's kind of like, if you want to invest in your health, If all you do is go once a week to the gym and do a three hour workout where you're just killing yourself at the gym, that is actually not as helpful for you longterm in your health as instead getting up and doing like a 30 minute workout every single day that is manageable for you over time, you'll build endurance from that 30 minute workout every day.

But if you're trying to cram it all in, In a short timeframe, then you're going to hurt yourself. You're going to be so sore tomorrow. You need help getting off the toilet. You need to be able to stay focused on the long term success, the long term results, gaining momentum, start to those little things you do consistently over time and not get so focused on the short term that you lose sight of where you're headed.

I think that's a really big one. And that's one reason it's such a huge part of our 90 day CEO operating system, because we know that you're going to go through these shifts. You're going to go through these time periods where your stage of life is shifting, where your priorities in your life are shifting, your needs are shifting, the people who depend on you, their needs are shifting, and you want to make sure your business can support that instead of you having to sacrifice those things because your business.

Needs you more like my business should never need me more than my kids do, to be honest. And if that's how you're feeling right now, like your business needs you more than your kids do. I'm like really? I don't think so. I think we need to adjust some things there. Okay. The next big mistake that comes up is a lack of systems and processes.

This is one of the biggest things that holds people back from a sustainable business. This is one of the biggest things that keeps people overworking all the time. And I get it, like systems seem really boring. A lot of people are just resistant to the idea of putting systems in place, putting processes in place.

And I have to say, if you are reinventing the wheel all the time, it's going to cause so many problems for you in your business long term. One, it means you're overworking to get to the same result, right? We believe in, and I say this all the time inside of The CEO Collective, do the hard work once, build the asset first, right?

Build the asset first. That's where you're doing 80 percent of the hard work and building the asset. The asset being something that can continue to be used, right? It's going to continue to provide value to you and your business. The asset is the system. The asset is the strategy. So if you're doing the hard work once putting that in place once, then other people can run that system for you.

Your team can run that system for you. You can start to pull yourself out of the doing of those specific systems and. When you do have to run it again, sure, there's going to be systems that need updates. There's going to be things that need to adapt and adjust because business is always changing.

Marketing is always changing. Sales is always changing. You're doing the hard work once doesn't mean that it's going to be done and then you set it and forget it. I think that is another huge Mistake that a lot of people have where I just set it and forget it, never do anything again. That doesn't work.

Even the most passive businesses still require maintenance, still require things to happen in order to continue running at that same level. Otherwise, if you set it and forget it, the performance might be okay for a while, but it will decline over time. Really you want to do the hard work upfront, 80 percent upfront, and then 20 percent as you're running systems again.

So what does that look like in our business? We have broken this down into a couple of core things. And I think if you learned about our 90 day CEO operating system, this will start to click for you. The first is our client growth engine. Our client growth engine is the three core systems that bring revenue into your business.

So the three core systems are your marketing system, your sales system, and your delivery system, marketing, sales, and delivery. That is attract, engage, nurture. Is your marketing system invite, inviting your clients to work with you. That is sales and delight is the delivery of your products, programs, and services.

As you grow your business, those systems should be dialed in. They should be dialed in so that you can start to pass parts of them off. You might not even be able to pass all of them off, but you can pass a good chunk of those things off to your team to support you with. So for example, in my business, One of our biggest attract systems is me going out and doing podcast interviews.

But if you think about all of the steps that go into that process of doing the research, which podcasts do I want to do on putting together the pitch, pitching them, following up, finally booking it, making sure that the interview gets recorded and that I'm prepped for that recording that I feel solid about it, making sure to follow up and say thank you, it goes live, promoting it, that's a lot of work to do podcast interviews and I probably do 50 a year.

So if I had to do that whole system by myself, I would not be able to do it at the level that I do it. I need support. So I have someone on my team who does everything that I can't do. And really the only thing that I'm required for to do podcast interviews is to show up and have the conversation, right?

That's the only thing I really need to do. Someone else can do everything else. Someone else can do the research and the pitching. I can, let them know if they're on the right track or not, but I don't need to be actively engaged in every part of that process. I just need to show up and have the conversation.

So that instantly means the system is built. 80 percent of it is built, right? It takes 20 percent of the team's effort to run it. And it takes very little of my time to run it. To show up and do the interview. And you can do this with all the parts of your client growth engine. Same thing with like my podcast right now, I'm recording the podcast right now.

Hi, this is the only part that I am a hundred percent responsible for, right? Me sitting down in this chair with this microphone. And having this conversation with you, no one else on my team can do this right now. Now I could hire someone else to come in and do the podcast. Like I could have my coaches come in and do the podcast or something like that.

But for the business I want, this is my biggest way to connect with. Every single listener, right? So this is the part I do, but my team helps me with the planning. My team helps me with all of the production. They're going to do all of the show notes and transcripts and editing and publishing and scheduling all of that jazz.

So our system, the process is built out. It's 80 percent done. Then it takes us as a team, 20 percent to run it. And for me, that's probably, maybe I'll say I'll take 5 percent of it. Cause it does take time to sit down and record this. I decided I was going to add video to it. So it's a little bit more than it used to be, but it's really.

Very low effort for me at this point because we did the hard things first. We built the system first. Same thing happens with, invite doing our sales processes. We did the heavy lift first, creating the offers, writing the sales pages, putting together our whole sales plan. All of that hard work has been done once and we just run it again and again.

Each time I go to open The CEO Collective, which are opening soon again, I might change it up a tiny bit, but the vast majority of that sales process is already done. The process is laid out and we rinse and repeat it and we rinse and repeat it. At this point, we get to focus more on optimizing it than starting from scratch, right?

So I might make a couple of tweaks to the sales page. I might rewrite a couple emails, but it's never going to be start from scratch for an offer I've had for four and a half years. It's already built. We did the hard thing once and now we are rinsing and repeating. And that system is what allows us business to run without me having to be hands on in every single part of it.

Same thing with delivery, the delight section. We have a process from onboarding to running The CEO Collective to offboarding people with every single offer. We have those things dialed in and I show up and do the part that was promised that I would do. I still create a lot of the content for me and my business.

One of my biggest roles is in the content creation, both for marketing and for clients. So both free and paid content, but when the systems are built, it streamlines your operations. When your operations are streamlined, your team can run them really easily. And when things are running smoothly without you having to be the person to do every single part, Your business gets easier.

You work less, you have more bandwidth to think bigger. You have more bandwidth to come up with new ideas. You actually get your life. It's an amazing thing. So that's one huge system. And this is why it's part of the 90 day CEO operating system is that client growth engine. You're marketing your sales, your delivery now on the second.

System framework that we have as a team growth engine, because at some point, and I see this happen a lot with my clients, usually when they cross that 250 to 300, 000 threshold, and they're starting to want to hit half a million and more. And they're like, okay, I really need to start being serious about putting a team in place.

Not just a, someone who I'm. Delegating a couple little tasks to but like an actual team who's actively engaged in the day to day who's actively engaged in running your business. We need a team growth engine. And that means just there's a client growth engine, which is marketing, sales and delivery.

You need a team growth engine, which is recruiting. Getting in front of the right people who would be a great fit for your team, who are a culture fit, a values fit, talent fit, right? Recruiting, getting in front of those people. It's basically marketing for hiring the actual sales process. Hey, you want to come work for us?

It's the same thing. Like these systems run in parallel to each other. And then management, how do you run the team or have a team that runs itself? So once you have those systems in place, You've done a huge amount of the heavy lifting up front. And then instead of starting from scratch, each time you get to rinse and repeat.

And as you rinse and repeat, you get to optimize and your team has clarity on what they're responsible for. They're clear on what the results need to be. And then because they're clear and they're able to take more ownership over that, they can make it do an even better job for you. And you CEO, developing your team and a leading.

So that's huge. Clear systems are essential. I know they are not sexy, but when they're in place, they take such a, a huge burden off of you and off of your team. It keeps you from overworking. It helps make sure that everyone is on the same page. I think that's just so crucially important. And that leads us to the next mistake, which is just having a lack of support.

And there's a couple of levels of lack of support here that I want to talk about, because I did just talk about the team growth engine and that is a system, but it's also the people supporting you internally in your business. And that's huge. Like having a team in your business is where. Other people who are there are helping you run the day to day of your business.

They're helping you to grow your business where you're able to now step out of that day to day and be focused on the vision, be focused on where you're headed, be focused on getting, your message out there, be focused on visibility and growth. Instead of All of the day to day operations. So your internal team is super, super important.

And that requires you to, like I've shared in a previous episode to ask for and receive support. To ask for and receive support. And I think that's so crucially important as a CEO to learn how to do with your team, but your team and your business, isn't the only place you need to ask for and receive support as you grow your business, you are going to have so many more demands.

On you just as a human being. And this is why so many people say that they don't want to grow a team because it can be stressful when you know that other people's livelihood depends on you and your business success. That can be really stressful. That can put a lot of pressure on someone, but you do need to be able to manage that stress.

If your goal is a business, that's not just you. You have to be able to get the support you as the leader, you as a human being need to show up and do the work you need to do. So when we're talking about this, the 90 day CEO operating system, It has vision and values. The first mistake we talked about short term thinking versus long term thinking.

It talks about systems and processes. So client growth engine, team growth engine, the other mistake we just talked about, but we also talk about CEO leadership and CEO leadership is really important to me because I think this is one of the things that makes or breaks a lot of small businesses. It's your ability to lean into your growth edge, which is.

The uncomfortable place where a lot of us really don't like being. And usually when we're leaning into that growth edge, we're leaning into, things we haven't experienced before. We're doing something new. We're coming up against new challenges and it brings up a lot of fear. As we get out of our comfort zone and we're going into this new uncharted territory for ourselves.

And that requires support that requires layers of support. So think about if you look at other big leaders and executives in any, it doesn't matter if it's government, nonprofit, big business, think about it. CEOs running a huge business. They probably have a board of directors or advisors. People that they are going to that are helping them with strategy, helping them with big picture that are holding them accountable.

They probably also have an entire leadership team who's helping them, implement the day to day. And then it requires a lot of support behind the scenes that you might not see that we don't see. And I think about this a lot, especially because as women entrepreneurs, The traditional world of work is very clearly dominated by men.

There's very few women CEOs out there. Now that number has increased, but at one point there were more CEOs named John than women CEOs total in the fortune 500. So most of those high level of roles were meant for men. Who had a full time stay at home spouse who was taking care of their life, who was taking care of their kids, who was their, running everything else behind the scenes.

But for women, when we get higher up in that level, for some reason, we think we shouldn't ask for support. That we should be able to perform at this high level and also be doing the laundry and doing everything ourselves. So this is where you really need to ask about what is your personal support system need to look like.

For me, there's a couple layers of this, right? One is I need support at home. I need support at home. My husband is home. We both work in the business, but there are things that honestly, I don't want to do. And I'm a thousand percent honest about it. And there's things he doesn't want to do either. This is why we have somebody who comes and cuts the grass.

Cause why would we give up a couple hours of our day for something we can pay 50 to get done a week. And then it frees up that time for us to spend time as a family or for him to go have a guy's night or something like that. Why would I spend time worried about things that are relatively easy to outsource or to hire someone to come in?

And also the people that we're hiring, that's their business. They want to help us. They literally want to cut the grass. They literally want to clean the house. They literally want to come do the laundry because that is what they do. That is their business. That's how they make their living. So it's mutually beneficial for us to get that support.

And we're buying back our time. So that we can be present for our kids so that we can have that quality time together so that we can go on date night, et cetera, et cetera. So one thing I always am looking at is how do I need to ask for support? In fact, this is in our CEO date checklist. If you've ever gotten our planner, it's a question in our checklist.

It says, where do you need support? And often I'll say, meals this week. I need to order meal prep this week. And so I have somebody I'll call them. Hey, I need lunches for every day this week. If I'm in a launch mode and I have a lot more going on than normal, I need that help. Okay. So I ask for support. I identify where I need support, where I'm going to drop the ball on something where we might need a little bit of extra help.

And I just ask for it and receive it. That also is emotional support. And I think this is really important too, because again, our nervous systems are not designed to have this much input and to take care of this many people. So if you have hundreds or thousands of clients, and then you have a team, it doesn't matter if it's two people or 20 people, that is a lot of input.

That is a lot coming at you. It's a lot of other people's problems that hit your plate. So you need your own emotional support. What does that need to look like? For me, this looks like having a therapist, having a coach, having colleagues and peers that I can call and, talk with them about what's going on.

I can get their thoughts and insights and feedback. It's being in the room with people who are also going through similar things, knowing that I'm not alone. So that level of support is crucial. And then there's also, just having friends. And most of my friends are also entrepreneurs, but that's because they also get what I'm trying to do.

Up to in my life, right? We tend to connect because we are on the similar path together. So you can't do it all yourself. You can't do it all yourself in your business. You can't do it all yourself in your life. It is okay to ask for support. You don't get a badge of honor because you spent all day Saturday doing laundry.

None of us do right. You don't get a badge of honor because you do everything in your business yourself and you're working 90 hours a week at the end of the day, at least in my opinion, as you know, by now, you want to ask for help, surround yourself with people you trust, get the support you need so that you can show up and be the best version of yourself in your business, for your team, for your clients, for your family.

For yourself, and it doesn't happen when we're trying to do it all. Okay, the next couple of mistakes here are kind of together and they go along the lines of something else we've talked about in a previous episode. But, I mentioned in our 90 day CEO operating system framework, the first mistake we talked about short term versus long term thinking.

It's definitely having that vision and long term view of where you're headed, at least for this stage of life and business. We talked about having the systems. And being able to rinse and repeat those systems with your client growth engine, your team growth engine. We talked about asking for support and surrounding yourself with people who can help you.

So you don't have to do everything yourself, but the core of the 90 day CEO operating system is CEO leadership. And. A lot of people don't think of themselves as a leader. This kind of surprised me because I think I've always just thought of myself as a leader. Also, I'm the oldest daughter of an oldest daughter of an oldest daughter.

And if you know an oldest daughter or you are an oldest daughter, you've been the leader since you were a child. Let's be honest. Like you've been the boss, you've been in charge, you've been helping everybody, right? So it comes very naturally to me to think of myself this way as a leader, as the person in charge.

You know, it's kind of an ingrained in my personality, but CEO leadership starts with self leadership. You can't effectively lead other people if you can't lead yourself. So CEO leadership starts with self leadership. And there's two big issues that I run into again and again with my clients, two big mistakes that they fall into these traps.

The first issue with their own self leadership is that again, they come into, I've got to. Work hard all the time. I've got to work harder, got to hustle more, got to grind it out. Success requires sacrifice. And that mindset. means that they're constantly like nose to the grindstone, constantly interrupted by dings on their phone, attached at the hip to their laptop.

They feel like they can't walk away from their business at all. And it's this belief that hard work is what's going to get them to where they want to go. And I think that is such a trap that, I mean, let's be honest, since the industrial revolution, the whole reason that the industrial revolution took off was, Hey, you can work hard and.

Make an income and take care of your family. But the hardest working person out there is not the most successful person out there. It's the person who works smarter who focuses on the highest value activities they can do versus doing everything. And this is that whole, work smarter, not harder.

A lot of people have a really hard time embracing this. They think they understand what that means, but then that's like that Puritan work ethic just keeps telling them you're not working hard enough. And how I see this show up a lot is when I talk to women who truly feel like they don't deserve to take a break, they don't deserve rest.

They don't deserve. Self care. And that is heartbreaking to me because those are things that you inherently deserve as a human being, right? We are human beings. We're not human doings. We're not supposed to work non stop, 24 7. But there is such a shift that needs to happen if you We're raised this way, or, conditioned this way in our society.

And this one took a lot for me to deprogram. This has taken decades of therapy and of coaching and of deep inner work to allow myself to feel safe to rest. If you were somebody who was around a lot of really hardworking people growing up, like I was, I remember if I was at home as a kid, like in high school or something, watching TV after school, the minute I could hear my parents walk through the door, I jumped up, TV went off and I made myself look busy because resting was looked down on.

If you're just resting, you could be doing something productive. And it's that belief that productivity is about being busy, not about. What you're doing, but about how much you're doing quantity over quality. So yeah, this one is a big one for us. You deserve rest. The quality of your work is important. And if the quality of your work is important, then you have to take care of yourself in order to show up and perform at that level.

This is such a big differentiator between high achievers and high performers. A lot of high achievers conflate productivity with being busy and doing as much as you can, but they're treating every task on their list as if it's equally weighted. High performers know that there are only a critical few tasks that are absolutely essential to getting the job done and to doing it well and to performing at the highest level.

but you do hit a threshold where It no longer matters. The amount of effort has diminishing returns. It no longer has the results that you're looking for. So they understand how to prioritize rest and recovery. They understand that is just as important as the performance. So I think that's a really big one.

And that starts with your own CEO leadership. The final thing I'll say about this one is. As leaders in our teams, I've heard about this a lot. I hear a lot from people who have worked behind the scenes and other small businesses. Again, a lot of my clients are service providers. So they've worked with other people as a contractor, sometimes as a part time employee, but they'll talk about how on the front of this person's business, they talk a big talk about freedom and flexibility and work from wherever, but internally.

Their team is exhausted. Their team is exhausted because they're overworking their team and they're putting demands that are unreasonable on their team. They're saying publicly how important it is to, be able to relax and be able to go on vacation. But internally their team can't even ask for vacation.

They're literally being told, no, I need you that week. Or, that, It's looked down on if they take time off, it's looked down on if they take a break, it's looked down on if they say, Hey, I need to go on vacation or whatever. They're expected to work nonstop. Meanwhile, that particular entrepreneur is talking about how they live this very like flexible lifestyle.

There's a lot of people who are like that out there. And honestly, if you want a team that truly supports you and stays with you longterm, this has got to apply to them too. They need to also believe that we're here to do the best that we can do. We're here to be high performers. We're here to get the job done and to do a good job, but We're not here to burn the candle at both ends.

And we're not going to say one thing publicly. But then behind the scenes, we're treating our team completely different. I think there's just so much hypocrisy in the world of entrepreneurship and small business. And it does make me crazy a lot when I hear about it. And when I hear the stories of people who literally are like getting ready to deliver their own baby and their boss is saying that they can't, put down their phone, they need to be available for something like this.

Some people are just absolutely ridiculous and don't realize what hypocrites they are. But if you want to lead a team and a culture that believes in working smarter, not harder. This has got to apply across the board and the way you lead yourself needs to be congruent with how you want to lead your team and vice versa.

Okay. The next and final big mistake I'm going to talk about in this episode is again, it's a CEO leadership thing, and it comes in right off of what we just talked about. It is not having boundaries between your personal life and your life. Now I'm here to say, I think the idea of work life balance.

They got a little wrong, right? I think work life balance, a lot of people, the way that they think about this, or they visualize this as if have a little scale and you have this amount on this little scale for work and you have this amount on this little scale for life. And it evens out all the time and you figure out this magical system and peasy lemon squeezy.

That is not how it works. Balance is hard. Stand on one foot and see how long you can stand on one foot. Balance requires a lot of work. Balance requires a lot of intention. Balance requires you to be really present and focused. Literally, stand on one foot and see how long you can stand on one foot without falling over or having to put the other foot down.

It takes practice. That's why I really like the idea of work life harmony. Where you're every day, every week, every month, being very intentional and setting yourself up for success, putting boundaries in place between your life and your work and making sure that, yeah, maybe there's going to be a week or two where you're traveling for work or sometimes where you're a little busier because you're deep in creating a new offer or you're running an intensive, there's going to be times where you lean a little bit more.

Towards your business, but you just want to make sure you're balancing that with leaning into your life. A little bit after that boundaries are so crucially important. They're so crucially important. And I think this is one reason why if you've ever worked with me in any shape or form, that I am such a stickler for my calendar.

I have a whole calendar SOP and I'm reviewing it. Every month I review my calendar SOP and I'm asking myself, what do I need this month? What's on deck for life? What's on deck for business? And if there's busy seasons, I'm going to adjust. There are going to be some times where I need to lean a little heavier into my life.

And there are also going to be times where I lean a little bit heavier into my business, but over the scope of, A week or a month or a quarter, it all equals itself out. And the reason I'm able to do that is because I'm so clear about my boundaries. I'm so clear about how I run my calendar. And when I am having to invest more into my business, for example, I like to give concrete examples here, so you can really understand what I'm saying.

When I have the CEO retreat, every quarter we host the CEO retreat. We host one that's in person here in Richmond, Virginia, my hometown. And we also host one virtually. So usually it's on one Friday followed by another Friday. Now, what you might not know if you've not attended the retreat is the day before the retreat, I also host a mastermind day, and these are exclusively for clients, they.

pay an additional fee if they are not in the collective. If their level in the collective is a VIP level, they get access to this mastermind day as part of their program, but it's a smaller group, five to six people. So that's now Thursdays and Fridays that I'm on, that I'm a hundred percent on with My clients two days back to back, which is a lot for me.

It takes a tremendous amount of energy and attention. And it's honestly more than I work the other, 10 weeks of that quarter. That's more focused client. Facing time that I work the rest of the quarter, but the week before I make sure I have scheduled the weekend before some rest and relaxation time.

I literally have it in my calendar. I literally have in my calendar, take care of yourself before the CEO retreat. And I write little notes in my calendar for myself. I remind myself to go get a massage or to go see a friend or to do anything I need to get ready. And be emotionally, energetically ready to host clients for that event.

Long of a stretch. And then in between those two retreats, I also make sure that I'm doing all the things I need to do to rest and to recover. I'm making sure my family has the support they need while I'm gone for those days. Cause I really am gone. I'm like focused on my clients. And then the week after is a no call week, meaning I don't do any client facing appointments.

I don't do any interviews. I have that week as like a recovery week. And having these types of boundaries, having this clarity around how I run my calendar, and knowing that it's not about work life balance being perfect in any one day or even any one week. It's just about how it all works out over the course of, a month or a quarter or a year.

It has helped me find the harmony that I'm looking for. It has helped me find that there are going to be times where I'm leaning more into family. Kids starting school the first, the week before school. And the first week of school is always a little hectic, always a little crazy. And I know that, and I allow for that.

And I don't beat myself up if that is a lot and I don't get everything done in my work. It's okay. It's not the end of the world. I already planned for that and accommodated for that. And then the flip side, work heavy times, like when I'm running a CEO retreat, I've already planned for that. I've already accommodated for that.

I know I'm going to lean back in. And so it's that harmony. It's knowing it's not perfect, but it does take a level of intention. It takes setting boundaries around your time and being very clear with people when this time is off limits. When you need recovery time, let your team know, let your clients know, make sure everyone knows, make sure you're fully allowing yourself to rest because it is just crucially important.

So these mistakes. And challenges that come up so frequently are why we have designed this 90 day CEO operating system the way that we did, because I know that if I can help you get clear about your vision and values, if I can help you turn that vision and values into 90 day plans that allow you to build that momentum by taking the right actions.

Week after week, month after month, quarter after quarter, building momentum over the course of a year, building up that client growth engine, and then the team growth engine. So those systems are running very smoothly, allowing everybody to be more efficient in your business and your business to become more predictable and more profitable.

And then leveling up your leadership as you are leaning into those growth edges, as you're stepping out of your comfort zone, trusting your team, stepping out of your comfort zone. Putting boundaries in place, stepping out of your comfort zone, allowing yourself to be supported. It sounds so silly that would make people uncomfortable, but it does so much.

It makes us uncomfortable because we have all of this mixed messaging surrounding us all of the time. So if you enjoyed this episode, I want you to go over to the website. There's a link in the show notes, go to The CEO Collective. com slash. Masterclass. I am hosting a brand new masterclass coming up in the coming days to share with you a deeper dive into how you can implement these solutions into your business, how you can set yourself up for more sustainable success without sacrificing your life, your family, your health, and the things that truly matter most to you.

I cannot wait to see you there.