Ep 181 Book Series: Review of She Builds by Jadah Sellner
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Sara Mayer: [00:00:00] Welcome to the bold goal crusher podcast for anyone looking to stop letting life get in the way and start crushing bold goals. I'm your host, Sara Mayer, and I'm thrilled to navigate this journey with you because it's time to start boldly achieving without working double time. So let's dive in.
Sara Mayer: Hello, bold gold crushers today. It's one of my favorite episodes because we are talking about a book, the book she builds by Jada Selner. If you haven't read it, don't worry because we are going to talk about it. And I hope you do join us on our monthly live zoom book call. Calls love to have you. If you haven't joined the book club yet, you can feel free to join at saramayer.com/joinbookclub. And once you join, it'll take you to the [00:01:00] website where you can sign up for the live discussions. Every month I do give away a free book. Make sure you join. Can't wait to see you there. This book is the Anti Hustle Guide to Growing Your Business and to Nourish Your Life. And for those of you who don't know, I am anti hustle culture.
Sara Mayer: We love to crush our goals and everything that gets in the way. Because it's truly about living life and not checking email and your to do list. This could not be a more perfect book for this season, especially as we get into the hustle and bustle of the holiday season and then the beginning of the year, which is a natural line in the sand where people start to really focus on their goals and build up the momentum for the year.
Sara Mayer: So this is a great book to read at this time. So let's talk first about the hustle culture. What is it? Are you contributing to it? And how does this [00:02:00] book help you combat that? And I think that many times the word hustle gets a bad rap, but hustle culture really is a common workplace and personal environment that emphasizes hard working and long hours as being the key to success.
Sara Mayer: And it became recently popular to talk about with many companies, encouraging employees to put in extra effort and work more hours for better results post COVID to really get back to what they feel was happening before COVID. I love that in this book, she talks about how the idea of the hustle culture sometimes is.
Sara Mayer: Really promoted by men they'll, she talks about how Mark Cuban talks about how he hasn't, it didn't take vacation for so many years and how [00:03:00] Elon Musk believes that you should work more and more every day and how that doesn't really. Work for women. And I would actually argue it doesn't really work for men either.
Sara Mayer: There are seasons and things that you can go through and you can have the ability to architect your own life. So one of the things that. She talks about in this book is really simplifying your life and architecting your future, because if you don't, the likelihood that you will burn out, you cannot hustle all the time and the likelihood that you will burn out is high.
Sara Mayer: So she talks about this from the perspective of a business owner or an entrepreneur, but there are many parallels to the working person who's working for a corporation or even someone who's staying at home with their children. [00:04:00] So one of the first things she talks about is that Anything that compromises your health and your relationships simply is not sustainable.
Sara Mayer: You won't be able to sustain that over time and she has this idea of the integrated life and the integrated life is A life about creating harmony among your health, wealth and relationships and bringing your whole self each part, no matter how much of attention it's getting together. And I love this idea of an integrated life because it means that you can shift it up.
Sara Mayer: So she, she says that you can upshift and downshift according to your priorities in every get any given moment. And. When she looks at the integrated life, it's health, wealth, and connection in a little Venn diagram there, and
Sara Mayer: [00:05:00] she talks about seasons. And I love the idea of seasons because she asks, what season are you in? Are you in a season of trade offs? Are you in a season of building? Are you in a season of healing? What are your seasons? And then you can create. What she calls an enough number. So that is the enough number is what you need to make in order to have enough, because many times we're trading our time and our passions for money.
Sara Mayer: So the enough number is the fixed personal expenses. Plus the variable personal expenses, plus investments, plus taxes. So as you navigate different seasons of life, you may have different enough numbers for your personal and business goals. So she realized that her enough number was, or Michelle is the example in here.
Sara Mayer: [00:06:00] Her enough number was 150, 000. And basically when she mapped that out, she was able to create a revenue map to that. And what she realized was that she didn't need to keep hustling because she was able to achieve her enough number when it was broken down. She also talks about the different ways that you can evaluate whether you are creating your future vision.
Sara Mayer: And the first one is emotional. How do you want to feel physical? What do you, what experiences do you enjoy? intellectual, what do you want to learn? And spiritual, how do you want to serve? And that's how you can imagine and create your next level vision. So you jot down your responses to those questions and your next level vision can be charted out in a little graph, with an [00:07:00] X.
Sara Mayer: So you put feel at the top, enjoy to the right, learn at the bottom, serve to the bottom draw a little. Two lines across there and outline how you want to feel. And when you're architecting your future vision, a great question to ask that Tony Robbins asks is if you can have anything in the world, what would it be?
Sara Mayer: If you could have anything in the world, what would it be?
Sara Mayer: And when you write that down, you can write your future vision in a format. She suggests this format, your home life, your wellness, your relationships, your company or work and your contribution. So what are you contributing to society? So the first step in really building your life is to create your future vision.
Sara Mayer: And to then [00:08:00] gather your support squad. So maybe it's peers, colleagues, mentors, friends, coaches, whoever, who will cheer you on and help you through this process of building your ideal life. Now, once you do take the process, do the process of architecting your vision, it's time to optimize. That's really leading, creating your vision, getting your squad, but optimization comes next.
Sara Mayer: And so that's about thinking about how to reclaim your time and energy. How to build your dream team and how to streamline your business. So she goes through several tips and one of the things always comes down to workflow and how you're working. So the first step in reclaiming your time and energy is to do a weekly timelog to really figure out where you're spending your time and [00:09:00] energy and where that is going.
Sara Mayer: And then where do you want to be spending your time and energy? She also suggests an energy audit. So coming up with the activities, like maybe it's morning ritual, cooking, co work with a friend and what energizing What that's bringing to the table. Is it energizing, draining, or neutral? And then maybe putting some notes there.
Sara Mayer: Like checking email, maybe draining. And really thinking about your energy audit. Now, we all have stuff that we have to do that we don't like. Like email, maybe one of them. But if we know that's draining, bookmarking that with something that's energizing or limiting the amount of time we do that is an effective way to really design your life.
Sara Mayer: One of the other things is clarifying our capacity. Our capacity is the time we truly have [00:10:00] to work with and maintaining that will help us avoid burnout. She puts together a really cool idea of designing your weekly workflow and. She has a plan for each of the days, themes and activities based on those days.
Sara Mayer: So I love her themes. If you haven't checked out her themes, it's on page 113. One is momentum and money Mondays. So she kickstarts the week with a team meeting on Monday. She identifies priorities and then she works on projects that bring in money for the business. Love that. Talkie Tuesdays is the next one.
Sara Mayer: So this is when she batches all her calls on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And if they're scheduling a call, they need to schedule it on Tuesday or Thursday and she even has times 10 and one. This includes coaching calls, podcast interviews. [00:11:00] Anything that has to do with talking happens on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Sara Mayer: Wednesday. I love this. This is about the nice thing. She says about batching. Her calls is that leaves Wednesday's open for what she calls deep work. And I think that's really cool because so many times we talk about things and we have ideas, but we don't block off the time to actually work on them.
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Sara Mayer: Win Wednesdays is, wins Wednesdays is how she ends up moving the needle in her business. Then she has talkie Thursdays, cause only meetings on Tuesday, Thursday. And then she has fleet, free flow Fridays. I think it's so important when we talk about habits and being consistent. A lot of people are very creative and have to tap on their creative energies and juices, and they're scared to structure their schedule because they're afraid that they will lose that creativity.
Sara Mayer: So I love free flow Fridays. You can even put that into your calendar dealers choice. Fridays are open for flexibility and fun and sometimes focus. She wraps up projects on that day. She maybe have a date night. She may watch a movie, those type of things. And then she says Saturdays and Sundays are less structured and that allows her to stay [00:13:00] on track.
Sara Mayer: And you can change this workflow. So it doesn't have to be like that all the time. I know when I worked in a corporate environment, I tried really hard Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, to get all of my action items done. So Thursday I can make all those connections and Friday I can wrap things up. So it's up to you to create what that looks like.
Sara Mayer: And I also love her idea of setting up bodyguard emails that bodyguards your calendar. And we often write the same emails over and over, but setting up these emails of how you're going to respond to someone who's asking you to do something that you can't do, which, my suggestion is always, do you know who would be great at that?
Sara Mayer: Let me connect you. It's a great way to give an opportunity to someone else and help someone out. She suggests an out of office reply on a regular basis, [00:14:00] creating a now page on your website. And I love this idea. This is a section of your website that you update regularly, maybe like a blog in that format.
Sara Mayer: About what the priorities are right now, what you're working on connection, mentorship, creating events, traveling podcasts. And you can put that in your out of office reply. You can put that in the bottom of your signature. So people know what you're working on and maybe they're just curious. She also talks about designing your dream team, which I won't go into a lot of depth because some of you are just starting out.
Sara Mayer: You work by yourself. But one of the things that happens is that There are these five S's of sustainable growth. So share, sell, serve, systemize, and sustain. And you really need to think about who you're bringing on your team and what they bring to the table. Are they sharing? Are [00:15:00] they selling? Are they serving?
Sara Mayer: Are they helping you do that? And job descriptions, as important. So she does talk about Mapping out customer journeys, if you do have your own business. And I think it's so important to think about what your customer journey is and how you're going about it. So the core customer journey is, what is the customer?
Sara Mayer: How are you attracting them and how are you moving forward? She suggests a couple of things about FAQ documents. I have a lot of notes on this one, but one of the things right. Right now is to determine the five S's and that's really what needs priority now. So if you're in share mode, you need to strengthen business development opportunities.
Sara Mayer: You need to create new content and establish presence on your platform. If you're in sell mode, you need to [00:16:00] generate more revenue, build out promotional materials, or create a new offer. You are in serve mode. If you need to create a better customer experience and improve the product fulfillment process, and you are in systemize mode.
Sara Mayer: If you need to focus your team operations and process behind the scenes, and you are in sustained mode because sustainability is at the heart of building with love. So you are always in that mode. So that's the foundation of streamlining your business. As you build a business that does not require you to hustle all the time.
Sara Mayer: So we talked about leading, this is architecture, architecting your future vision, and we talked about optimizing, reclaiming time and energy, building your dream team and streamlining your business or work. Now let's talk about visualization. Visualize she builds with focus, she says, and I love [00:17:00] that without leaps of imagination or dreaming.
Sara Mayer: We lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming after all is a form of planning. Gloria Steinman. Love that quote. So let's talk about how do you plan quarterly? And you can do this in your business, in your personal life, in your work life. The first one is setting your intention. So review your big picture vision, connect to your why and define your desired outcome for the quarter.
Sara Mayer: Celebrate your wins, take a step back and acknowledge your progress. Fill your dream bank, unleash the ideas swirling around in your head and give them a home to paper, to free up mental space or put them on your Asana board. If you love to track electronically, determine your capacity, identify how much time, energy and resources you have to work on growing your business [00:18:00] over time and choose your VIPs.
Sara Mayer: Your very important projects prioritize, which of your dream bank ideas, you will turn into VIPs that you will pursue over the next three months. So this is about creating a three month sprint. If you haven't read the book, 12 week year, this is a great time to think about that. But when you think about a quarterly plan, she uses a circle as you can see here.
Sara Mayer: Kind of there you go. She uses a circle January through March, April through June, July through September. We're coming up on the end of a quarter and October through December and really deciding what are those three things, those very important projects in each of those quarters that you are going to work on.
Sara Mayer: You don't need to do this for the whole year. You can start off in January. You can start off in. September, whatever, but it's about really outlining those. Those priorities. [00:19:00] And then once you have set that plan, it's about renew, reviewing, reflecting, and realigning. So many times this. Plan is going to change and things are going to change as you work over time, but the quarterly plan allows you to truly craft your future vision.
Sara Mayer: So next let's talk about expanding and you may be thinking, Whoa, wait, we're expanding. We're talking about cutting back and not being on the hustle culture, but We do need to expand and that's really how you lead, optimize and visualize your solid foundation and build on it. So even though you've learned the skill of running on empty, now's the time to learn the art of breathing deep all over again.
Sara Mayer: That's a quote from Morgan Harper Nichols.
Sara Mayer: First, let's rethink when we're talking about [00:20:00] expanding, this is allowing ourselves to truly celebrate ourselves, listening to our bodies, and then creating the opportunity for us to be able to. Replicate or move into the next quarter. So the first concept is really embracing your pace. So you will be lost and unlost over and over again, relax, love.
Sara Mayer: You were meant to be this glorious epic story. Naira Wehid said that quote. So there are three decisions that you can make at any time to run your business. You can either pause, push, or pivot. Also works in your home life and also works in your pause. When something unexpected in life comes up, you must slow down or halt your business while something important takes center stage and that's okay.
Sara Mayer: Push when a project or [00:21:00] initiative in your business needs an extra level of effort, focus and energy to get to the finish line. Or pivot when you need to find the courage to change directions because you recognize that a shift is necessary or when you realize something is no longer working. And this is how we expand.
Sara Mayer: It's okay to pause. It's okay to push and it's okay to pivot. But when you do that purposefully and intentionally, then you are able to deepen your roots. And truly build your future vision, the life you were meant to dream be in without. Being in the hustle culture. This book has some great tactics, worksheets, different things that you can use to design your life.
Sara Mayer: And she leaves us with a short poem, which I will read for the builders. This is for the [00:22:00] builders. The bold ones who speak their dreams out loud and continue to face failure. This is for the difference makers and the imperfect action takers. This is for the visionary rule breakers, the wild ones who dream a better world and believe in something greater.
Sara Mayer: This is for the movement starters and the trailblazers. This is for the daring creators, the resilient ones who paved their own path and life's. and trust life's flow. This is for the answer seekers and truth seekers. This is for the courageous leaders, the brave ones who won't give up and surrender when it's time to let go.
Sara Mayer: This is for the movers and the shakers. This is for the freedom chasers, the unapologetic ones who are unshakable and have nothing to prove because they are enough. This is for the builders who win with love. Great book. It's time to build the life business career. And family that [00:23:00] you have dreamed of. So let's get to it.
Sara Mayer: Bold goal crushers. Don't hesitate because you can trust crush your goals and everything that gets in the way. So let's get to it.
Thank you for tuning into the bold goal crusher podcast where we crush goals and everything that gets in the way. I always love to support my community.
I look forward to seeing you crush your goals this year.
