Slowpreneur: Business Without the Busy

As a solo business owner, it can be really tough to set boundaries with clients. We need to have policies that protect us, but speaking those out loud and enforcing them with others can feel super scary, if not next to impossible. 🙈

It's also pretty hard to figure out when to be disciplined with your boundary-setting, and when to be more flexible. When we should give people the benefit of the doubt, and when we should hold firm. This is why gentle boundary-setting is an art, not a science. 

In today's episode, I'm sharing two recent stories that illustrated for me some of the principles and values that I believe in when it comes to gentler, more human boundary-setting. Remember: there are no "right answers", there are only answers that feel right to you. ❤️

When the world is scary, it is easy to get sucked into the bad habit of doomscrolling: compulsively checking our various feeds for bad news and updates. This impulse makes sense! We want to be informed, and it's difficult to switch off when things are stressful. 🙃

And yet staying in this cycle of doom is not helping us or anyone else. It's throwing off our nervous systems and making us less effective in our work and our activism. So in today's episode, I'm sharing some of my best strategies and tips for reducing your doomscrolling, plus some crowdsourced suggestions from all of you! 📱

Hopefully there will be something in here that is supportive in reducing the harm of these habits so we can all feel healthier and happier. ❤️

On today's episode, I'm interviewing Joy Asibey-Gabriel, personal stylist and feminine adornment coach, about the power of living & working pleasure-first.

This was such a rich conversation! We explored why it can be so hard for us to prioritize pleasure, why pleasure is so important, how Joy brings pleasure into her life and business, and how we can start to access it in small ways every day.

Joy is such an inspiring human, who is always dancing, laughing, and dressed to the nines. I love watching how she shows up in the world, and I really loved learning from her throughout this conversation. 😍

Confession: I'm a business coach that kind of hates the business coaching industry. I have opinions about some of the shenanigans that go on when it comes to marketing, sales and business models, and I want to talk about! Not just to protect you from scammy, slimey tactics, but also to strongly discourage you from replicating any of them inadvertently. 🙅🏻‍♀️

In this episode I'm sharing my seven hottest takes on the world of online business: everything from passive income to MLMs to "investing in yourself". We're going there! Wanna join us? 🌶

As always, would love to hear your thoughts and any hot takes of your own! Drop them in the comments below or over on Instagram. 

Y'all, we have a lot to do which means we have a lot to NOT do. On today's episode, I'm talking about entering my anti-decanting era, plus what my shampoo bottle epiphany taught me about figuring what else I'm not doing anymore in life and business. This is a terrifically freeing thought experiment that I highly encourage you to take on in your own life! 💡

Tune in for lots of examples of the power of personal policies, how we apply this practice *weekly* in The Profoundery, and other ideas for things you may want to discontinue for yourself. Honestly? Not doing things is super fun. 🙅🏻‍♀️

On today's episode, I'm convincing you to take a vacation from your business. A real one! Not a staycation, not a working trip, not a digital nomad experience on the beach in Thailand. A real vacation where you unplug from your daily tasks, give yourself a chance to breathe, and learn to be a human again. 😍

I'm going to share two key mindset shifts that you'll need to take on board before you feel like vacationing is possible, and then I'll talk through six tips to make your vacation more fun & relaxing for you. Ready to vacay?! 🏖

On this episode, I'm sharing my seven favourite books for slowpreneurs! 📚 Unfortunately there is no book specifically about slowpreneurship (yet! I hope to write one soon!) but these seven taken together are a good primer to help you build more slow values into your own business.

I'll be walking you through all of these books one by one and sharing why it has stuck with me over the years. We're covering a whole range of topics, from setting up standard operation procedures to dealing with stress to time management, and I hope you pick up some of these books to support you in your own small business. 📖

On this episode, I'm talking about why rest is so important for us entrepreneurs. It's not just a "nice to have" thing that can be sacrificed on the altar of productivity! Rest is one of the most important factors when it comes to our productivity & creativity, and should be prioritized.

I'm also sharing five different kinds of rest to hopefully spark some new ways of thinking about rest and encourage you to fold even more of it into the everyday life of running your own business.

Hello and welcome back to Season Two of Slowpreneur! 🐌 Thank you for coming back for another round of thoughtful conversations about what it means to build a sustainable & intentional business. 🥰

On today's episode, I thought it was about time that I tell you about my philosophy on slowpreneurship! I'm sharing my personal definition of what it means to be a slowpreneur, as well as definitions that have come before me. And I'm also explaining my framework for slowpreneurship, which prioritizes three key factors: strategy, systems, and self-care. I'll give you examples of each so that you can start making your business feel more intentional. Let's dive in! 🎉

And just like that, it's the end of Season One of Slowpreneur! I'm taking an intentional pause between seasons, but not before I share the slow business lessons that I've learned from creating this podcast that I think are widely applicable no matter what kind of business you run. 👀

In this episode you'll hear my thoughts on the importance of showing up, how vulnerability creates connection (and my two most important rules for being vulnerable with your audience), and ways you can motivate yourself to keep going when things are hard. These are universal lessons that I constantly need to be reminded of, and I hope that they bring you some encouragement too. 🎉

And as I end this season, I just need to say a huge THANK YOU for listening. I am so grateful to have this space to share my ideas & connect with all of you. See you next year! ❤️

Over the past few years, more folks than ever are working & running businesses from home, myself included! It's harder than ever to set up clear boundaries around our time & work hours. If we're not careful, the lines between personal & professional life can get really blurry. Over time, this lack of down time can lead to us to feeling a huge lack of wellness & restfulness in our everyday lives. 🙃

On today's episode, I'm sharing five ideas for "commutes" you can try even if you work from home. These are simple, free things that you can do to create more of a divide between work time and home time starting today. Practicing a work-from-home "commute" creates a gentle distinction between work and rest that can be so supportive to us having a sustainable business. 🙏🏼

It's not easy to build a business, and it's even harder to build a business that feels calm & peaceful to spend time working in. I've learned a few strategies over the years about what helps me to feel more relaxed when managing my business, and on today's episode I'm sharing those ideas with you! ✨

If you struggle with setting boundaries, managing client communications, keeping track of what you have to do or find yourself constantly fielding questions, this episode will give you some ideas & inspiration to set things up in a more sustainable way. 🙏🏼

Everyone talks about how it's so important to work ON your business instead of only IN your business, but what does that actually mean? One key aspect is taking time to reflect on your experiences and make sense of all the data you're collecting as a business owner.

In today's episode, I'm sharing my five favourite tools for reflecting on your business. All of these tools are inexpensive or free, but could pay huge dividends in the value you gain from making space to reflect.

And don't miss our Reflect & Reset Session 🗓, happening on Wednesday, October 26th from 5-6 PM EST! Grab your $15 ticket here: https://bit.ly/reflectoctober

We've all experienced stressful seasons in our lives & businesses, and managing them can be really challenging. When everything feels important but time is limited, how do you make progress towards your goals or even just stay afloat? ⛵️ Life lately has been a little bit chaotic, but I'm making it through thanks to some helpful reframes and strategies. 

In this episode, I'm sharing the metaphor that helps me navigate hectic seasons and juggle all of my priorities effectively. Hint: I intentionally drop some balls on purpose! If you're dealing with a stressful season, I hope the ideas in this episode can be supportive to you, too. 🙏🏼 

Sometimes you lose the love for your business. You hit a wall (financial, emotional, or otherwise) and feel like you can't go on anymore. You fantasize about getting a part-time job at Indigo (just me?!) and wonder if you're even cut out for this whole entrepreneurship thing after all. I've been there! I'm actually there right now! 

In this episode, I'm sharing the story of my own slump, which I am only now *slowly* starting to emerge from. It's been a hard few years, and that's taken a toll on all of us humans running businesses, myself included. I'm also giving you some ideas for what you can do if you cannot summon the energy to "dream big!" in your business right now. It's okay. I believe it will pass. Here's how I've been supporting myself until I can fully come out on the other side. 

Today on the show, it's Bruno's first birthday! To celebrate, I'm sharing all the life & business lessons that I've learned from the experience of raising this puppy over the past year. 

While a dog might be an unexpected source of business wisdom, I hope you can find some inspiration in this episode to apply to your own life and business. It's surprising just how much this little puppy has to teach me about what it means to live a good life, how to honour my capacity, and how to reinforce my boundaries with others. 

PS. This is also the last episode before the show goes on a mini summer sabbatical! I'll be back in your feed very soon, but until then I hope you have a wonderful summer 🥰🙏🏼

Today on the show I'm talking to Rachel Kelly of Make Lemonade about her journey over the past year: closing her physical coworking space, navigating her "fruitcake phase", and then deciding to become a florist! 🌼 We discuss how important it is build a life outside of your business, to let yourself dream bigger, and to follow your curiosities wherever they might lead, even if they don't "make sense" at first.

Rachel is such an inspiring person with such a zest for life, and it was really great to learn from her journey and see the new avenues opening up for her as she pursues her floral dreams. Most of all, I loved the reminder that nothing is ever wasted: the confidence and skills we learn in one area of our lives are transferrable when we move in new directions. I hope you love this conversation as much as I did. 

As you're probably well aware, we're living in an incredibly challenging time in history. For most of us, life is pretty hard right now! And yet, as you'll hear on this episode, I recently decided to make things even harder on myself by starting a new challenge called (I can't make this up) 75 Hard. It didn't last, but along the way I learned some important lessons about the ways that we often inadvertently choose to make our lives harder than they need to be because of outdated scripts & ideas about how we "should" be living or doing business. 

In this episode, I share my new motto – 75 Easy! – and how it has been inspiring me to make better decisions for myself. I also discuss how we desperately need to break up with the idea that harder things are always more worthwhile, and give you a few questions to ask yourself if you're coming up against a hard problem or phase of life. 

If you have a love/hate relationship with social media, you're not alone. Over the past few years, I've been finding myself less interested and more overwhelmed by apps like Instagram and TikTok, and feeling a pull towards slower platforms, like podcasting, blogging, and YouTube. 

In this episode, I'm talking about some things to consider when it comes to where you're putting your marketing energy, offering you reassurance that you don't have to take part in any platform (or feature!) that you don't want to, and giving you some of my top tips if you want to build a business outside of the world of social media. I'm figuring this out right alongside you, but I hope that some of these ideas can support you in making a more empowered decision about where to spend your time. 

Welcome to Slowpreneur, my new podcast about slow & steady entrepreneurship for thoughtful, values-based business owners. On this first episode of the show, I'm explaining why I'm starting a new podcast now, and letting you know what you can expect from future episodes of the show. Tune in to hear my real thoughts on the business coaching industry, why slowness is an antidote to so much of the toxicity in our culture, and what I actually mean when I say "slow". 

I hope that this podcast feels like a soft place to land for you as an entrepreneur, and helps you feel less alone as you build a business according to your values.