Why You Need to Build Your Village (and Stop Trying to Be Superwoman)

Hey there, CEOs, Rachel Cook here, founder of the CEO Collective and host of the Promote Yourself to CEO podcast, and I am recording this episode immediately after recording last week's episode. It's messy in the middle, and I wanted to follow up that very vulnerable, honest, raw look. Into my life, not with crying, even though I have a bit of a vulnerability hangover.
But I wanted to follow it up with some practical insight because life is gonna life. Sometimes life is hard. Sometimes we get thrown challenges that we don't expect. And we have to navigate through it. And I find that for a lot of women entrepreneurs, we tend to put on that superwoman cape. And just keep pushing and pushing and pushing through, making ourselves a martyr instead of asking for help instead of accepting support.
And this is one of the most important lessons I have learned in my entire life. I feel like I couldn't have gotten through the last four or five years of my life as hard as it's been with the pandemic. And homeschooling kids, and then kids going back to school. Stepping in to take care of my mom's nursing care and my parents' finances and selling parts of a business and moving my dad into rehab and then navigating his relapse and back into rehab and all of this stuff.
I mean, it's been kind of insane, but there's no way I could have done all of that if I didn't really. Have the ability to resource myself, and I wanted to talk about that today because that didn't happen by accident. I really think the last five years I've been able to resource myself and get the support I need because the previous 10 years I learned how to resource myself.
I learned how to ask for help. I learned how to receive help. It took a long time for me to be okay with that. And I think this is one of the most common challenges I see for women entrepreneurs is we are so used to being superwoman. We are so used to being the person who holds up the sky in our life and our business.
And as I talk to my clients, I just see over and over again that they truly feel like they have to do it alone. That. They can't ask for help or that they ask for help, and it's not the help they need, you know, they can't accept the help. It is such a learning curve, and this is one of the biggest things you can learn in life as a business owner, is how to resource yourself.
So let's talk about it. Let's dive into it. I wanna talk about how to identify when you need support, different types of support, how to ask for it, how to receive it. Because if you wait until the crisis happens, if you don't have a support system and something bad happens, something crazy happens in your life, things will fall apart very quickly.
Things will just completely fall apart. I have seen people. Lose their businesses because they had zero support system when life got hard, harder than they could manage on their own. And keep in mind, we're not meant to manage life on our own. We just aren't. We're a community-based species. We're supposed to have a village, but in the last, I don't know, a hundred years, we've just told women that we're supposed to be doing it all right?
We're supposed to do it all. We're supposed to have it all. And. Let's be honest, women are the invisible backbone of this country, of this economy. Women are the invisible labor at home that keep our families running. We're the invisible labor in our communities that keep communities connected, that keep organizations together, that keep schools running like women are The invisible.
Thread behind all of this, but so many of us feel alone, and so many of us feel like we have to just keep white knuckling our way through hard times. And I don't want that for you because it sucks and it's impossible. And you deserve better. I deserve better. We deserve to be fully supported. So recognizing when you need support starts with knowing that you need and deserve support right now.
You deserve to have a support system right now. You don't have to wait until you're in crisis mode to get a support system. So think about that one for a minute, because often I will talk to women entrepreneurs who get to the point where they're in crisis. And they realize they don't have anyone to talk to.
They don't have anyone to be our sounding board. They don't have anyone to help them process what's going on, and that is when it becomes even harder. So you deserve support right now. You deserve emotional support. You deserve to have friends in your corner. You deserve to have peers and colleagues you can turn to.
You deserve to have professional support. You deserve to have all the layers of support that I'm gonna talk about today. Please don't wait until you're in a crisis mode because honestly, most of the time we don't see the crisis coming.
We are in it. We are trying to survive it. But one thing I will say is a lot of women struggle with burnout. A lot of women entrepreneurs, especially because we have this superwoman syndrome where we feel like we have to do it all ourselves. We tend to struggle with burnout a lot as entrepreneurs and small business owners.
And so that's probably the easiest place to start with recognizing when you need support, because this is a conversation I have with a lot of my clients is they're so used to being the solo entrepreneur, or they're so used to being the one that does everything that they know. They're headed towards burnout.
They're telling me they feel exhausted. They're telling me they feel overwhelmed. They're telling me they feel like they don't have any more energy. But they don't change what they're doing. So if you're headed towards burnout, there's a couple of red flags I want you to think about. What are your burnout red flags?
And if you're not sure, this might be a great journaling exercise for you. So I know I'm headed towards burnout when emotionally, I am very reactive when I no longer have patience. For myself when I no longer have patience for my kids, my family, when I get more reactive. And honestly, it sucks so much that the people who we love the most and who are the closest to us are probably the ones we're gonna be the most reactive with because somehow we will hold it together.
Yeah, while we're dealing with that difficult client or while we're navigating a tough email or while we're, you know, handling whatever situation that's coming up, we'll keep it together. And then as soon as that moment is done, the call is over. You're off the zoom, then suddenly it's like. We're no longer holding it together, and we are just so close to losing it on someone else.
And so that's where I notice a lot my emotional red flags is when I don't have any patience. When I'm highly reactive, when I'm highly anxious and I can feel. The anxiety, I can feel that I'm getting snippy. I can feel that I'm getting irritated. So what are your emotional red flags? For me, that's what it looks like.
I get snippy, I get irritated. I am not a fun person to live with. Okay. What are your physical red flags when you are headed towards burnout or overwhelm? For me, my physical red flags are I am, I have chronic pain and fatigue issues, we will get to the point where I've overdone it. I will have to literally take a weekend where all I do is rot in bed.
I will not have any more bandwidth. And again, it's kind of like I'm able to hold it together and power through. In the public sphere, I can hold it together and show up for the networking event. I can hold it together and show up for the client call. But as soon as that's done, I'm crashing out.
I'm ready to go lay down. I want a heating pad, I want a gummy, and I want to just kind of numb. And that to me is a big sign that I'm burning out is that my energy drops my physical body. Hurts, and it's usually because I've just been, you know, clenched trying to hold it together and logistical red flags.
What are the logistical red flags that you are on the track to burn out? For me, it's usually when my calendar is way too full. I've been saying yes to too many things. I don't know what it is about us that we say yes to, things being very optimistic that we're gonna have the capacity for it, the mental, emotional capacity to handle those things.
But when we are in burnout and we're feeling depleted, we have nothing left to give. We still keep saying yes to those things. So that's something that comes up for me is like I've overcommitted my calendar, I've overcommitted to things, that I've said I was gonna do. I tend to find that is one of the biggest logistical red flags for me is I've put too much on my myself, within the capacity I have.
And I will say this year. Even before you know everything, with my dad's relapse, I was feeling like with all that's happening in the country with all the fascist government takeover and everything, it was, it was very much draining. You know, it drains a lot of energy out of you, and I realized that it was taking me longer to process things.
It was taking me longer to get things done. Usually if I'm feeling well, if I'm feeling resourced, I can get so much done so quickly. I can work very fast. I can think quickly on my feet, but. I know I'm headed towards burnout, or I know something is really impacting my capacity.
When I start having more fuzzy thinking, when I am having a hard time staying focused. When I have that brain fog, when it takes me longer to do things that usually I can get done pretty quickly or easily. So what are those emotional, physical, and logistical red flags for you? It's really important to know these, and I think it's important to actually write these down.
Like what are your red flags that show that you are white knuckling it? You are trying to push through, but on the other side of that, you're kind of collapsing on the other side of that you're not getting things done as efficiently, or it's taking you a lot longer.
These are signs that we need to press pause and we need to reset. Okay. And this is one thing I've been talking with a lot of my clients about, because when we find ourselves in these situations, it's so easy to just get that tunnel vision where you get locked into thinking, I've just gotta get through this.
I've just gotta get through this. It starts being like that meme where it's like, I guess adulthood is saying, I guess when things calm down a bit, I'll get to that. Things are never gonna calm down. You have to press the pause button and you have to reset and resource yourself.
We tend to wait too long to ask for help because we have gotten stuck in this cycle of over-functioning. We've gotten stuck in this cycle of feeling like we do not matter as much as everything else. That we are responsible for matters. And a really easy exercise for this is if you were to make yourself a list of like, what are the top five things that matter most to you right now in your life or in your business?
The top five things you're responsible for, the top five things that impact your life and business. Almost no one writes down themselves. Almost no one. We put everything else on that list, right? So we never put ourselves as a priority. And then when we've completely depleted ourselves, we've exhausted ourselves.
We're still pushing through. We're still not on the list. This is your wake up call. This is your reset. We need to hit the reset button, press pause, clear your calendar, push back the deadlines so someone might get upset. I find the vast majority of the time, if you decide to give yourself a reset, and I've had many clients over the last few months, I've had to encourage them to do this.
Press pause, clear your calendar for the next two weeks, push back the deadline. It doesn't matter what you tell them. You don't ever have to disclose like why you need to push a deadline back a week or two, or why you need to move things on your calendar. It could be as simple as, Hey, something has happened that I urgently need to take care of.
I'm going to move these deadlines back. Thank you for your patience and understanding. You don't have to overexplain. That's another thing women tend to do is overexplain, and then it almost becomes like we're waiting for someone else to give us permission to take care of ourselves and prioritize yourself.
Don't do that. Hit the reset button. Give yourself a week. Give yourself two weeks. Push the deadlines back, push the meetings back. It will all be okay. I'm willing to disappoint a couple other people as long as I'm not disappointing myself. Right. That is the thing I've had to learn That has been really hard.
I have to stop disappointing myself and not prioritizing myself and not taking care of myself because I'm afraid of disappointing somebody, somebody else. 'cause at the end of the day, we're all gonna disappoint people. It's just a fact of life. But I have to prioritize me because. There's so many people that depend on me, just like there's so many people that depend on you, and guess what?
They can't depend on you if you are absolutely depleted and burned out and exhausted. So once you've hit the reset button and you've cleared a week or two weeks for you to regroup and get things organized and get things figured out, here's some things I want you to think about, about how to resource yourself.
Here's where I think about resourcing myself. First is personal support. You know, in the business space we talk a lot about getting professional support. We talk a lot about hiring coaches and mentors and getting team members so that you can outsource things or you can delegate things. That is.
The easiest level of support for a lot of small business owners to start to say yes to. In all, all honesty, that's the easiest one. I'll get an assistant, right? I'll get an assistant, I'll hire somebody, or I'll outsource this piece to somebody. That is actually the easiest level of support to resource yourself with.
The hardest level of support is on the personal front. It's on the personal front. It is having family and friends and people. Who are not in a transactional relationship with you, who deeply care about you as a person. And this is something that I feel like so many entrepreneurial women lack because we get so focused on our business, we get so focused on growing our business that the only support we have is people we're paying or people who have some sort of transactional relationship with us, and we forget to build.
Real life relationships. This is one of the biggest things I've learned over the years, is how important real life relationships are. And for me, that starts with my family. So my husband I've shared before, he is my emotional support husband. And we have had to work a lot on how we can emotionally support each other.
'cause we're very, very different in how we need emotional support. There's family. Your partner, if you have a partner, making sure they're actually emotionally able to support you and hold space for you when you're going through hard times and not trying to fix things. They're just there to be emotional support.
That is a huge difference. And I would also say friends are another piece of that puzzle. I realized during the pandemic that I really didn't have many friends, like I had business friends, business besties, biz BFFs, people who I had met through the entrepreneurial journey who I'd been in masterminds with, or I'd been in programs with, or I was in networking events with, or went to conferences with.
But you know, what I realized was that the minute that container was over, very few of us kept in touch. Very few of us continued real relationships outside of a paid transactional container, and I realized I needed to invest in female friendships. I needed emotional support, and so I started proactively cultivating friendships
honestly, it was kind of like dating. It was kind of like dating. I found my best friends because I dated them because I was going to events and attending things locally. I realized I needed to get way more involved in my local community. And when I found someone who I was just like, this is a kindred spirit.
They're both growth oriented, they're ambitious, but also really value having like a beautifully full life, very values aligned. For me, I was just like, Hey, I wanna spend time together. I wanna be friends. And we prioritize that. And that meant prioritizing going out to dinner or meeting up for lunch, or coworking together, or going away for the weekend together, or attending retreats together, doing life together.
And that is huge. That is the biggest thing to me. Personal support. These are the people who do life with you. If you were to call them and say, Hey, can we go run some errands? They would be just as happy to run errands with you as to have a really nice girl's night out. These are the people who do life with you.
These are the people who, when you just had a really, really hard time or got really terrible news, they're coming over to support you, and talk with you.
Those are the people that you need in your personal support system. People you do life with. These aren't transactional relationships. These are deep emotional relationships, and it takes time. You're not gonna find these in a crisis, by the way. You're gonna have to cultivate these. You're gonna have to cultivate these by prioritizing making time for them, by showing up for them, by proactively connecting and communicating with them.
And it does take effort, and at first it might feel weird or awkward, but I can promise you having people that you can reach out to and they are there for you. It's a level of, honestly, it's a level of love that I don't feel like I've ever really had in my life as an adult. Knowing that it's not just my husband who loves me, but these deep friendships people who are in my corner, and if anything ever happened, I know they got my back and vice versa.
Then there's practical and logical support. Um, I wanna talk about this too because this is another area where women struggle so much and it comes down to our conditioning. It comes down to the invisible labor that we provide in our lives. So often, and one of the reasons I feel like so many women get.
Overwhelmed and burned out is because we go after growth in our businesses. We go after putting in place systems and strategy and making sure it's as streamlined as possible, as efficient as possible. We will hire an assistant, we'll hire somebody to manage our social media. We'll hire people to do things for us in our business.
But somehow we won't hire people to do things for us in our life. And this is another big lesson I had to learn. The hard way is as your business grows and you have more demands on you. You actually need to increase your at home, your practical personal systems as well. And this could mean you need help with childcare.
This could mean you need help with housekeeping. This could mean you need your groceries delivered or you need a meal delivery service. I actually just had a client I talked to, I wanna say last couple weeks, who was just feeling so overwhelmed with life that. I went through and I said, where can we take the pressure off?
Like what is actually stressing you out right now? Because I know, I knew she had a running to-do list in her head of all the stuff that was, she was falling behind on this and this and that, and it was like, my laundry is overwhelming. My dishes are overflowing outta the sink. My house is a mess and it is so stressful.
I'm so distracted. I feel like I can't get any work done. 'cause all I can think about is the fact that the dishes are all over the place and the laundry is loads and loads that haven't been washed or folded. And I said, why don't you hire somebody to come over and wash your dishes and do your laundry?
And I'm here to tell you guys, there are people out there who will happily do that. There are laundry services. Where you can literally put all your laundry out on your porch, they will pick it up and it will show up the next day. Clean and folded. Game changer.
There are so many things you can do in your life that will make it easier for you. And again, we tend to have this feeling of. I have to do things a certain way or I can't waste money on that. I'm telling you, if you are headed towards burnout, the greatest gift you can give yourself is spending a couple hundred dollars to have someone else clean your house, to have someone else do your laundry, to pick up meals from a meal delivery service or DoorDash or whatever.
I'll also say if you're in a season of. Limited capacity. If you're headed towards burnout, you're going through a tough time. Some of my favorite things to do, I literally look for where can I simplify stuff in my life as much as possible. And I will go to what is the simplest, easiest meal plans we can have?
What are the easiest meals for us to make? I have an easy button here. That I can draw from when things get behind in life. 'cause they will 'cause it always will. Who do I call for this? Who do I call for this? Who does the lawn? Who does the gardening? Who can come pick up the cars and make sure they're maintained?
I keep a running list of all of that so that when I need the sort, the support, I have it and I'm not scrambling trying to figure out, well, what do I do? So give yourself permission to just hire some things out. It's okay to hire some things out.
On the childcare front though, when my kids were really little, this was one of the biggest things I needed help with because I had twins, so I was automatically outnumbered. And one of the ways I got childcare support was I got real creative. I did a nanny share. I had a nanny half the time at my house, half the time at my friend's house, and we shared a nanny for years.
I put the kids into preschool as soon as they were old enough to go into it. And I remember even earlier on before they were old enough for preschool, my gym used to have like two hours of free childcare, and so I would go put their little booties in the free gym childcare, I would do a half hour quick workout, and then I'd spend the rest of the time getting caught up on what I needed to catch up on.
So look for ways. To resource yourself if you need some help. I know not everybody can afford full-time childcare. I know the cost of childcare is just insane right now, but ask, see how you can get creative. See if there's another parent you can do a childcare swap with. See if there's someone in your life who would happily.
Come give you some support. I've been going over and babysitting for my sister who has littles, my niece and nephew. The older niece, she's fine by herself. She's in middle school now, but the younger two are little. They're still in preschool. And so my sister's been calling me, Hey, will you come hang out with them for a couple hours?
Of course I'll come hang out with my niece and nephew and play with them for a couple hours. That sounds like so much fun. But she has to ask, right? Like, I didn't know she needed extra support until she said, Hey, I have this thing I, need to go to for work. Can you help me? Yes, I can. So think about that.
Where's some practical support? Whether whatever's stressing you out around the house, ask for help around children. Ask for help around meal delivery. Ask for help. The other thing I will definitely encourage everyone is to learn how to get emotional support. This is ongoing work, right? Like there is no easy button for this.
This is the deep work that is gonna take the rest of your life. It is, it's just gonna take a long time and you're gonna invest time and energy and money into. Your emotional support. 'cause some of it can come from friends and family, but some of it is your own internal work, your own internal mindset work, your own learning how to care for yourself.
I have found that the last. I really, I feel like my entire adult life, I've had to re-parent myself and re mother myself and learn that I am worth taking care of and actually practice taking care of myself. I have had to learn these red flags I just talked about. The things that I know are like, these are indicators.
You're going down a bad path here. You gotta course correct, need a reset. I've had to learn about nervous system regulation, and I've had to learn new coping skills. I've had to learn that if I'm really upset 'cause I just got off call with one of my parents and it's very triggering to me that instead of pouring myself a glass of wine, I need to look at my husband and say, Hey, can we go on a walk around the neighborhood?
I've had to learn how to have healthier coping skills. I've had to learn skills every day that help me manage my nervous system. I've had to learn that setting boundaries isn't always as easy as we want to think it is. Because if we'd had people who were violating boundaries, right, they were pushing too hard, and then we put a boundary in place, they often push back against it.
'cause now you're redefining what that relationship looks like. So it's really challenging. So for me, that has meant, I've always had a coach. I've always had actually a couple different coaches. I have. Coaches that I, I turn to for different work. Um, I have therapists who I've worked with and always have access to.
I have different practices that are so incredibly important for keeping me grounded, my yoga practice, my meditation practice, my journaling practices, even my morning routine in the morning, I basically get up, sit in a chair by myself while all the kids are still asleep, my husband's still asleep.
Everything's quiet. I drink my coffee. I pull a tarot card. I do my journaling. I read, but those little things help me manage my nervous system, and so there are new habits I had to learn to incorporate. Learning to embrace a slow. Lifestyle and a slow approach to business as opposed to hustle. Hustle.
Everything's urgent. Everything's panic was a huge shift for me because I was raised in an environment where everything was an emergency all the time. And it's really challenging for me when I have to go back into that environment, especially around my parents, because for them. Yeah, every little thing is an emergency.
Every little thing is urgent, and it's very stressful to be around. So I've had to literally deprogram myself and reprogram myself to enjoy a slower pace of life, to not be mad at myself, that I'm taking longer to do things, to enjoy quiet space, to do nothing and not feel bad about resting. If you feel bad about resting, if you feel guilty about resting, then this is work you need to do because it means your nervous system is so used to everything being panic mode, everything being urgent, everything being, you know, on fire all the time, that rest does not feel safe in your body.
And if rest doesn't feel safe in your body, you are going to be facing and fighting burnout for a very long time. You have to learn how to actually. Rest and how to receive that support. So let's talk about asking and receiving support, because again, I think this is something women really, really struggle with.
That Superwoman syndrome is so strong, we feel like we should be able to handle it. We feel like we should be able to keep pushing. We just a little bit more. I can handle it for another week, another month, another year, until you can't. Until you can't. And what happens is we push past our available capacity.
We push past the energy, we push past the time, we actually reasonably have available. We don't protect ourselves, and we stop pouring back into ourselves. And when we're constantly doing that, when we're not refueling, we're going. To crash and burn, right? So the I should be able to handle this mindset is devastating long term.
I'll also say the other part of this mindset, I think is when we feel like, well, not everything's fine right now. I don't need support right now, and so we don't. Deepen our relationships with our friends, or we don't work with a therapist or we don't work with a coach. We don't do the practices that help us stay grounded and that really refill our cup.
Right? We stop doing those things 'cause we're like, everything's fine right now. It's okay. It's okay if I don't, I don't do this. It's okay if I don't have a coach right now. It's okay if I don't have a friend I can call and go to lunch, but. Then something happens and you're isolated, right? So this whole, I can handle it myself.
Mindset is literally setting us up to fail. It's setting us up to fail. So how can we, one, ask for support if you feel like you are on this path and you know you are headed towards burnout, or you're just feeling like. I, I need a reset here. I encourage you first to do a reset block, a week off, two weeks off, move the deadlines, move the calls on your calendar, send a quick email.
Use chat GPT to write the email. I don't care. Hey, something urgent came up. I have to handle it immediately. I need to move this deadline. I need to move this meeting. Thank you for your patience. I will be returning to the office at this date, okay? If anybody gets upset. That's on them. Most people are reasonable.
I find most people are incredibly reasonable, and if you email them and say, I have something come up that I have to address immediately, I'm going to have to step out of the office for a week or 2 90, 99 times out of a hundred. I get responses like, I hope everything's okay. Please let me know how I can help you.
Maybe once in a while there'll be somebody who gets upset about that. And you know what? That is not the type of person that I wanna work with because it shows that they have no humanity. They don't care that you're a real human who has real needs. Okay? And I'll also say you do not have to overexplain yourself.
You do not have to get into a bunch of reasons why. Whatever, it doesn't matter. I need to take some time away for the next week and handle something urgent. I will return, okay? Unless you're flaking on people all the time, I really feel like most people are gonna be understanding. So once you've cleared your calendar for a little bit, once you've given yourself some space, then I want you to go through and think about, okay, what type of support do I need right now?
Okay. Is there that practical, logistical support that I need right now? Do I need someone to help out with childcare? Do I need help with my home? Do I need help with housekeeping? Do I need help with laundry? Do I need a meal delivery service? What are the simple, easy things that will get me some time and energy back right now?
Okay. Resource yourself that way. 'cause that's a really easy, low hanging fruit way to do that. The next thing is, what personal support do I need? When was the last time you had quality time with your partner? When was the last time you went out with friends? When was the last time you said, Hey, I'm going through something I need, I just need someone who can talk with me.
Reach out to those people. Hey. I'm going through a tough time right now and I could really use a walk and talk. That's one of my favorites personally, is if something's going on in my life and I just need to like process it out loud, I will go on a walk and talk. I message my friends, you know, my husband knows this a lot.
That is one of my favorite ways to process things and sometimes if it's really stressful, I'll reach out to my therapist, Hey, this, I need to talk with you. I need. To get on your calendar this week, and if you don't have a therapist already that you're working with, find one, ask for recommendations.
Find somebody who can be there to help you process those things. And I'll also say, make sure that you're adding yourself onto your calendar. So I'm saying take things off your calendar for a week that are related to everybody else's needs, and you're gonna put on your calendar what you need. So even right now as I'm recording this episode, and I just shared with you in the last one how tough this season has been, I have been adding myself to the calendar a lot.
Okay. I just went on Sunday to a puppy yoga class. It was the best 75 minutes. That I have had in such a long time, and I needed that right? I needed something that was just purely fun. I needed that oxytocin, those little cute, squishy puppies. And today I have a therapy appointment, and tomorrow I have a haircut.
And yesterday I did a full at home. Facial and took a nice bath. I'm putting myself on the calendar because I know I'm in a time where I'm pretty stressed and I need to be taking care of myself even more. When I'm really stressed, when things are really hard, I need to put myself on the calendar more than anything else.
I also want you to think about who else can help you. And this is one thing that can also be really challenging, right? So as I've been going through all this stuff with my parents, I was sitting here going, what else am I not thinking of? And when you're in a crisis mode, like I kind of have been with dealing with my parents stuff the last six weeks I needed to process and I didn't know what I needed quite yet.
So I used chat, GPT. I literally was like, here's everything that's going on right now. Here's all the information. Can you help me figure out how I'm gonna tackle this, how I'm gonna tackle all these things? And it ended up telling me about a care manager that could help me find senior living for my mom.
There's so many things we can do to resource ourselves, and that's one of 'em is have another place, another sounding board that can help you prioritize things so you're not just trying to figure it out yourself. That's the biggest thing is stop trying to figure it all out yourself. Stop trying to figure it all out yourself.
That is how we end up isolated and how we end up burned out because instead of co-regulating with other people, instead of putting ourselves on the calendar, we isolate and we take ourselves off the calendar. We basically make ourselves nowhere on the priority list. Okay. I will also say when you're asking for and receiving support, it might not be perfect, right?
It might not be perfect. Over the last six weeks, this has definitely not been perfect. I've been asking for support, and you know what? Some of it's been a little bumpy. I've had to ask for stuff from people who haven't gotten me the information I needed when I needed it. Related to my parents' situations, I've been frustrated with that.
I've had to ask my kids for a little more help, and they're old enough, they can do some things around the house, but they're teenagers. They're not happy that I'm saying, Hey, today's Monday time to clean the bathrooms. It's not perfect. They're still complaining about it, but you know what? I'm receiving the help however it comes.
Even if the bathroom isn't cleaned the way I would do it or the way the housekeeper would do it, it's clean enough, you know? The laundry might not be folded the way I would fold it, but it's clean and it's in the drawer, or at least in a basket in their bedroom. And think about how you need to set up recurring systems of support before anything bad happens.
This is probably the biggest thing I find that. When we're in a crisis, the reason it got there, and the reason we're having such a hard time navigating it is because we have neglected ourselves so much. We've neglected ourselves so much that that crisis came and we're already depleted. So every month I have a monthly reset checklist.
Every month I know what self-care appointments I need on my calendar, right? And so I schedule them in advance. I schedule my chiropractic, my acupuncture, a schedule floats. I make sure I am going on my walk and talks with my husband multiple times a week. If I'm looking at my calendar and I know ahead of time that I'm gonna have a really busy season, so.
The next two weeks I'm hosting CEO retreats. I already told my husband, Hey, I've already ordered meal delivery. We're making it simple right now 'cause there's a lot going on and I need his help with that, with the retreats. Resource yourself and start building out, like I literally have little mini SOPs for what to do during different seasons of my business or seasons of my life.
I have my monthly reset checklist where it's like, here's the things I need on my calendar Every week I literally will check in and say, do I have at least one date night this month on my calendar? Do I have at least one girl's night or time with my girlfriends this month? And I will make sure I have those things in place.
It's not sexy. I know to schedule this, but it helps maintain that baseline of being supported and it makes sure that I'm not depleting myself before I get to some sort of crisis. What happens when you're well resourced, when one is you are able to handle things better? When you are more well resourced, when you have personal support, when you have emotional support, when you have that logistical life support and you have business support, having business support meant I could step away from my business and do the absolute bare minimum for months while taking care of my parents, and that's a blessing.
It doesn't mean I'll just be able to step out forever, but it meant for a solid six months. The first time I had to step in, the business was fine. It was running, it was cruising right along. I could do the bare minimum and I could focus on what was in front of me, which was taking care of mom right now.
Because my business support is there. I've been able to pull back. So yeah, I haven't recorded fresh episodes in over a month. I'm not doing a video episode right now because it's easier just to record audio for me at this particular moment. But it means I've been able to keep my business going.
I've been able to stay grounded. I've been able to show up for my clients. I've been able to have one-on-ones with my clients and not feel depleted from that because I have that business support, because I have the personal support going through a hard season. I haven't had to do it alone. I've been able to process how I'm feeling by going on my walk and talks with my husband.
I've been able to spend time with friends and they've been able to hold, space for me, which has been so incredible and because I have those places to receive that support, I feel like it's helped me to be very present with my kids and not. Burden them with what I'm going through 'cause it's a lot.
And also make sure I am not snippy or short or impatient with them because I know I'm depleted when I'm short and impatient and you know, kind of bitchy with my kids. I don't wanna be that mom. I wanna be the mom they wanna spend time with. And because I've been able to take care of myself. We've been able to stay connected and have a great relationship and be on the same page together.
So resourcing yourself is a strength. Resourcing yourself is required if you're gonna step into leadership in any way. Right? And that's just the reality of it. It's something we're not talking about enough.
Build your team so you can scale your business. Yes, that's one part of it, but I'm talking about resourcing yourself with emotional support, resourcing yourself by asking for help with things that other people can do for you. Whether it's asking your family to pick up the slack somewhere or outsourcing it, hiring somebody to come clean your house or mow your lawn or whatever.
And it's also resourcing yourself by putting yourself on your to-do list, by putting yourself on the calendar, by prioritizing the things that fill your cup and help you to not get to the point where you're depleted. Just like you know, we look at the fuel gauge in our car. I hate seeing that fuel gauge go below 50%.
My worst nightmare. Because I've experienced it is running out of fuel on the side of the highway, and it scared me so bad and I was so freaked out by it when that happened. It has never happened again. And that is such a great metaphor for life, right? Because we will literally let that fuel gauge get all the way to empty, and instead of saying, oh, I better go refuel.
I better make sure I'm sleeping okay and talk to my therapist and have a night with my friends, and all the things that help us resource ourselves. Instead, we're like, oh, you know, it's, it's telling me the little light's flashing. I'm gonna run outta gas soon, but I can keep going right until you can't.
And that's what we don't want to happen. As your business grows, as you have more people, depending on you, you can't afford to crash and burn. I can't afford to crash and burn. I'm the sole breadwinner for my family. My husband works in the business, but he is primarily the stay at home parent. And I'm also navigating caring for my own parents.
Like there are too many lives depending on me, to be able to keep it together and stay focused and stay grounded and show up and give what I've got to give to them. But I've got to have something to give and you do too. So I hope this was helpful for you. I hope this was helpful for you. I don't want any single person feeling like they've gotta go through things alone.
They've gotta just put on that superwoman cape and keep going, even though the empty light is on. You shouldn't. That is not sustainable. That's not smart. You deserve to treat yourself better than that. I encourage you to do one thing this week to better resource yourself.
What will help you reclaim your time, your energy, your attention? What will help you get grounded? What will help you fill up that fuel tank again, even just a little bit? This is something I'm constantly reminding my clients. It is okay if you need to hit the reset button and block a week off your calendar so that you can reset if you've been going through a lot like I have.
Take a little bit of time for yourself. People are reasonable and they want to know that you're taking care of yourself. If there's any insights or ahas you wanna share with me, head over to Instagram at Rachel Cook. I would love to hear from you. And of course, if you know that part of resourcing yourself and saying yes to being fully supported.
Is to get in a room with other women entrepreneurs and a team of mentors who are here for you. Come check out what we're doing at the CEO Collective. We would absolutely love to help you start shifting into being a fully supported ceo. You can get all the details@theceocollective.com slash join. I'll talk to you in the next episode.