The Female Fusion Podcast!

Show transcription

[INTRO] Hi there. I'm Jen Blandos, the founder of Female Fusion Network. I've been an entrepreneur for over 20 years with experience in building seven figure businesses and working around the world. Originally, I'm from Canada, but I've been living in Dubai for the past 14 years. I've created this podcast to share my insights and expertise as a global entrepreneur and help other women start, build, grow, and scale their businesses. You'll also hear from some of the world's top experts and female entrepreneurs who will inspire and motivate you to achieve your business goals. So join me as we explore all that the world has to offer and build the business of your dreams. Let's get started. 

MAIN EPISODE

Today we are going to talk about a topic that so many entrepreneurs struggle with and I know I did for a number of years, and that is boundaries. And how is it that when you have your own business, how do you set yourself boundaries so you're going to be able to run a business and have a bit of a life. And I know it can be really hard, especially when you're first starting out, but even if you've had a business for a while that there's just so much to do. And you know, of course, naturally when we have our business the first couple of years, everything is being thrown at it. And it is very typical that you are going to be working more than 40 hours in a week, sometimes 50, 60, 70, 80 hours, but that is what it takes in the beginning to set up a business.

But as your business starts to grow, or even after you've been in your business for a while, it's really important that we work on establishing boundaries. And I'm going to hold my hand up and say I haven't always been perfect at this. And this has been something that I struggled with for a number of years because like a lot of women, I'm a people pleaser. I like to make people happy. I want people to love my business, to love the service that I provide.

And because of that I am always giving 110% over delivering, making sure that people are happy. But that can be problematic because it can also eat into your energy and make it really difficult for you to run your business and have a bit of a life. And last year I set myself a goal within my business, within female fusion, that I was really going to work on boundaries. Because in female fusion we are a community of now close to 1000 female entrepreneurs and I absolutely love every single member. And I wake up in the morning and think oh my goodness, what can I do to make things better for my members?

And because of that I care so much and sometimes I find it difficult to put up those boundaries because I want to be that person that helps. But last year I set myself a goal and I had given myself a word. And every year at the beginning of the year I give myself a word. And last year my word was boundaries. And instead of having a New Year's resolution, it was very much of I need to work on boundaries and everything that I do around my business and also personal life as well, I need to have better boundaries.

So that was my big thing that I worked on last year, my word for this year, for 2023 is growth. So growth both for me with my business with female fusion and my professional growth, but also the growth of my members. And then also the other thing is fun because I worked a lot last year, even though I got very good at boundaries, I still worked a lot and I didn't have as much fun as maybe I would have liked to and maybe I had had in previous years when I owned another business. So I'm going to work a bit more on having a bit more fun, throwing more travel into the mix, doing more sport and adventure and kind of getting back to the way that I was maybe pre pandemic. And I'm sure a lot of you feel that as well, that I find that life changed for me in the Pandemic and I ended up retreating a lot into work and I had this fear for a while as well about, oh my goodness, what's going to happen?

I need to work harder to make sure that I have this business and everything goes really well. And I did that right. And the Pandemic has been quite a few years now. We're three years on from the Pandemic. Life is pretty much back to normal, so that really isn't an issue anymore.

And I realized that I got myself into some bad habits. And so I am back on focusing on having a lot more fun. And I've even set up Fun Club for me and a few of my entrepreneurial friends who have been similar that they haven't been having as much fun as maybe they did previously. So one of the things that we're doing in Fun Club is every month we're going to do something fun. Maybe it's just having a lunch and having those connections with other business owners, or maybe it's a night or a weekend away or going out for dinner, going to a spa or going scuba diving.

We've got a big list of things we can do, but that is going to be my focus is having fun. But I wanted to go back and talk about boundaries because I learned a lot about myself and a lot about boundaries over the past year and previously, not only with female fusion, but also with the other businesses that I've owned, is that I found it really difficult to say no. And I don't know if this sounds familiar to you, but I would find myself saying yes to opportunities and to work that I didn't necessarily want to do because I would look at it and go, oh, but, you know, they're paying me and it's good to have the revenue coming into my business. So I'm going to say yes. So, for example, when I had my training company, I would get asked a lot by clients and they would say to me, oh, we loved your media training, we loved your communications or PR training.

Can you do customer service training or can you do business writing training? And I found that I said yes a lot of times because I wanted the work and because I thought that it would be good for the business. But upon looking at it afterwards, as I realized, it just caused so much stress and worry because it wasn't my zone of genius and it meant that a lot more of my energy was being spent servicing work. That wasn't my zone of genius. And so one of the things that I've started doing is saying no to a lot more things.

And that goes back to first of all as well, is that I have really decided for myself about what my priorities are and what I want to focus on. So even over the past couple of years I have another business as well. I have a business that does media training and public speaking training, but I've made the decision that I can't do that and I can't do female fusion. And I did try for a lot of times and I found that I just wasn't enjoying it and I used to love it, but so much of my focus is on female fusion now that I don't have the mental space to go and do that. So one of the first things that I worked on in the past year is looking at my priorities both as a business and also personally as well.

So my big priority was I have to focus on one business, not on two. So I have to focus on female fusion and taking that as big and as far as I can go. Now I am a girl who thinks big and I've always got big ideas and that's another thing as well, that sometimes the big ideas take longer than what I think that they might. But I really doubled down and said, you know what, my priority is female fusion and building and growing that business not only in the UAE but globally. So I did a lot of work on that and that was my priority.

So what I started doing is I started saying no to other things that weren't linked to female fusion. So I was getting phone calls, for example, to do media training or public speaking coaching or even coaching for other organizations and I was like I don't want to do it anymore. And I even tried. So last year I was approached and asked if I would deliver a workshop over it was over two days and it was around entrepreneurship. But you know, the thing is, is the people who were attending the workshop were not my ideal pain customer.

So I could do a two day workshop on entrepreneurship but none of those people who did the workshop would ever be part of female fusion. They weren't my ideal paying customer and probably Jen, a couple of years ago, if asked to do that, it would have been like, yeah, okay, sure, I'll do that. But I was like, no, it doesn't feel right. So I said no. And they came back to me and they said, well, we would really like to have you do it, so please, could you reconsider?

And I thought, okay, if they pay me a lot of money, then maybe I'll do it. And sometimes, as well, in entrepreneurship, we have something called well, what I call anyways, I call it the F off price, which means that you price it so high because you really don't want to do the work. But if they're willing to pay that amount of money, you'll be like, okay, the money is good enough. I'll go and do it. So I priced it super high, super high, very high.

And I thought for sure they're going to come back to me and they're going to say, thanks very much, but no. And that was also a good way for me to get out of it. And then they came back to me and they said, okay, yeah, that price sounds fine, that's good, could you send us the contract? And my heart sunk into my stomach because I was like, you know what, even at that F off price, I still don't want to do it, I'm not feeling it. So I felt like a bit of an idiot, I guess.

And I went back to them and I said, thank you very much for the opportunity. But on further reflection, I just don't have the time to deliver this for you right now because it is going to take me about five days of time to prepare and deliver this. And it's just not time that I'm able to release from female fusion right now. And so I managed to get out of it, but I really realized, well done, Jen, for setting her priorities and realizing that the focus needed to be on female fusion and reaching those goals for female fusion as well. But I didn't just have business priorities, I also had personal priorities as well.

And it's something like I'm not perfect on this and it's really hard when you own your own business. And I think I need to do a whole episode just on this about talking about having a family and running a business. It's not easy, right? And as long as I've been an entrepreneur, I've had kids. And my kids now are 19, my son Matt is 19 and my daughter Eva is 13, almost 14.

And I have not always been the ideal mum. I missed some of the lookbook days at school. I wasn't the parent who came on the school trips because I was working, because I always had my business to run, but I had been able to make up for it in other times. But I have made a priority to spend more time with my kids and it's hard because I do try to pack in a lot in my day, but what I do is I set myself a bit of a system and I've made it really clear as well to my kids. So one of the things that I've started doing my son is in university now, so he's a bit different and he's a bit older and the time that I spend with him is different.

But for example, with my daughter, even though she could ride her bike to school because the school is quite close to our house, that I actually make a point of driving her to school in the morning because we have really nice conversations. And I don't know if you have kids, but especially at home when they get a little bit older, especially when they're teenagers and they come home and they'll be like, nothing happened, don't want to talk to you, don't want to hang out with you. But for some reason there's something happens that when you sit in a car, they go from grunting at you to actually telling you how their day went. So I've gotten myself into a really nice routine with Eva where we just hang out in the car for 1015 minutes in the morning and she tells me about what's going on in her life and what's happening at school and her goals, what she wants to do in life. And I feel really privileged to have that time with her.

And so I have carved out that time to do that. And then the other thing as well that I've made a priority is that every Friday I take her, pick her up from school and I take her down to the sailing club on a Friday because she's quite an active sailor and she starts her sailing early. And so we have a chit chat when we go down to the sailing club and have those conversations again. And it's it's kind of that nice time that I get to spend with her. So my goals are very much female fusion and that I need to focus on building that business, but then also as well, that I need to make my kids and also my husband a priority as well.

And it's carving out that time. So how do I do that? I do that by giving myself a system. So I will look at how I set my boundaries by being very, very clear about the days that I come to things, the days that I come to events and the days that I'm not available. So, for example, I block out all of my Monday and my Monday is a creative day.

Now I go live online in our community and I talk to my members and I really like being able to start the week off with my members and just have a bit of a catch up going live, which I love. I love to go live, but then the rest of the day is set aside for creative time. So it would be maybe I record podcasts on that day. It could also be as well that I would use that time to write blog posts, I would be thinking about new activities or initiatives that we would be doing. But I always set aside my Mondays for creativity time.

And I find that, gosh, it helps so much. I never used to do this, and if you aren't in the habit of doing this, even though it feels like you're so busy and I used to do this as well. And I hear from other entrepreneurs, I talk to them and they say, oh, I just don't have time for this, I don't have time for creative days, I don't have time for networking, I don't have time for this. All I'm doing is working. All I'm doing is servicing my clients or my customers or doing whatever it is in the business.

But then the problem is I feel that if you're so busy doing that, that you don't have the time to think about where you're going to take your business, how you're going to reach your goals. So I have become really good at blocking up my calendar and also as well making sure that I stick to that sometimes as well. It might just be like I do work a lot still. So even though I block out my Mondays and my Fridays, my Tuesdays to Thursdays are full on sometimes. And sometimes it might be waking up early in the morning.

And I am an early riser, I get up at 506:00 every morning, but it could be going until later in the evening. But I do try to fit in most of what I can on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursdays, because I need to have that white space to be able to come up with the creative ideas. And it's really amazing how much more you can do and how much more you can come up with if you give yourself that time to be creative, to not do meetings, to not have the other stuff going on in your business, that it allows you to be more creative. So I give myself a system around that. And then the other thing as well that I've started doing and I used to be so bad at this especially in my other business as well, that I would basically be available twenty four seven and it would mean that I would get WhatsApp messages at 11:00 at night or emails late into the evening and then asking that I would respond to something or come and deliver a presentation the next day.

And I would do that. And the amount of stress and anxiety and I don't know if you feel this or that you do this, that there is the feeling sometimes that especially when you're a small business, that people think that you should be available all the time. And this is where being organized and having better boundaries helps so much around this. So for example, unless it's an emergency, I don't respond to messages after about 630 or seven in the evening. I do to my friends and my friends, WhatsApp me or send me a DM.

That's different. But in general, I have stopped replying to phone calls, to emails, to WhatsApp messages? And even if I do respond to an email, like, let's say I decide to have a catch up night, because I do sometimes work later into the evening if the kids are not around or my husband's out for the evening, rather than sitting in front of Netflix, and I still do this. I'll be like, do I watch Netflix or do I clear my inbox? Well, inbox wins out a lot of times because then that gives me the space in my head to not worry about that the next day or later in the week.

So I will do that. But what I do is I set all of my replies to land at 08:00 in the next morning. And there's a couple of reasons for that. One is boundaries. I don't want people to think that I will be available at 10:00 at night to do something.

But then the other thing as well is also professionalism, that I feel like it looks much more professional as a business owner to show that I'm responding to things at eight or 09:00 in the morning rather than 11:00 at night or 01:00 in the morning. And it just I feel like if I was sending email messages out at 01:00 in the morning, even if I was working at 01:00 in the morning, I don't want people to know that because it lets them think that I can be contacted at any time. And I do feel as well that maybe it makes me look a little bit unprofessional because I'm working so late now, they don't know all the things that I have going on. But people do have these unconscious biases, so I try not to give them the reason to do that. Now, the biggest thing where I really struggled with was saying no and saying no to customers, clients, members, and doing it graciously and with kindness.

And the first couple of times it's really hard, right? Especially if you're a people pleaser and if you want to help and support people. And I wish that I had all the time in the day to be able to do that, but I can't. So with a membership of like a thousand businesses, if I sat down and met all of our members for coffee, I wouldn't get anything done in the month. And then my members would be complaining, saying, you're not providing us what we wanted to have delivered from you.

So I find it hard because I have business owners message me and say, oh my gosh, I have this problem in my business. Can I call you? I need help with my business or can I come to the office? I'm really struggling with this problem. Could you share your insight?

Can I pick your brain for an hour? And in the beginning I used to do that when I was building female fusion and I think as well in the beginning it's really good to try and connect and be as close as possible to your customers or your clients or your community like we have in female fusion. But as your business grows it that becomes very overwhelming and it's not feasible to go and do. And so what I did is I looked at the business and I looked at female fusion about how I could organize that. So I was still able to support people but I wasn't the go to person so I wasn't getting the messages.

24/7 can I meet for coffee? Can I pick your brains? Because it can't be done. And the first few times I said no, I felt really bad about it. Now is quite easy and the reason is that I have set up my work and the way that we do things.

So there's other ways that you have access to me, so I might say no, but then there's other ways that you can have access to me. So for example, if you are stuck in your business and you want some help with your business strategy, well, I do 2 hours every month for our entire community on business strategy and we do a little bit where we talk about different areas of business strategy and what you can work on. But then we also open up the floor, we do it online over zoom, but I open it up so anybody can ask anything about their business and I'm there to support them. And then the other thing is as well is that we have an online community that you can go and ask any question. And it's not only Jen that has the answer to things and that's why I built female Fusion as well is knowing that the power of community and the collective wisdom of the group is so much stronger for people to share their experiences.

And chances are that you ask a question and you're going to have ten people who will know the answer to that. Especially when you see in our paid membership group that you don't have people who are trying to sell to you, you have people who are sharing their experience and talking about what worked for them and what didn't so oftentimes that that is very powerful in itself. And then also as well just having access to me at events either online or face to face. And I try to be at at least four in person events a month, which is quite a lot because I'm also speaking at those, hosting those, but I want to meet our members and I want to be of service and I want to be able to hear about how things are going. I can't give a 1 hour business coaching session and I'm not a business coach.

I don't want to do business coaching. And that's one of the things that I was very passionate about with female fusion, is I wanted to make sure that we were building a community, and it wasn't something where I was setting myself up to be a business coach and you could pay for an hour of coaching or buy a coaching package, because that's not what I want to do. So there are so many people who are amazing coaches depending upon what you're looking for. So I love to serve by being able to share my knowledge. And then we'll put on things like challenges or group workshops or master classes and I try to deliver at least one master class a month and then sometimes we'll put on a few extra things as well.

So, for example, I did a lot of work with our members on planning and how to plan for the coming year. And I actually did three live sessions, which was a lot of work. They were full days and really worked with members individually on their businesses. So those are all of sort of the ways that I restructured things to make sure that I was saying no. But I was still being available.

And I found that for boundaries that that was really key for me, unlocking that kind of peace of mind, of being able to set the boundaries, to be able to set the boundaries with kindness and compassion, but still also being available. But what I do see, and I think that we've all been there as well, is that entrepreneurs, especially in the beginning, but even if they've had their businesses for a while, can sometimes struggle with taking on too much. And this is where we need to be really conscious of that and conscious that we can take on too much and come up with a way on how we're going to set our boundaries and how we're going to plan our workload. So it enables us to balance our time properly and to be able to run our businesses and to be able to build a profitable business, but to also practice self care still, because we need to sleep, we need to exercise, we need to eat well, we need to have personal time. We can't just be work, work, work all the time.

And getting into the habit of doing that makes it so much easier to run your business. So if you're one of those people who is so busy and you're like, I'm just too busy. I can't do this. I can't make time to eat properly, to sleep, to see my friends. I'm just so busy running the business that sometimes if we're able to slow down, it enables us to speed up, to say no to the things that aren't serving us, that aren't benefiting us in our business or also our personal life.

Because what I have found is every single time I've said no to something, it's opened up another possibility. And it's interesting. I got a message the other day from someone who had been a client of mine for years in my previous business. And then he followed me over to my other business that I had set up, and he messaged me and he said, we contacted you for this massive project, and you didn't bid for it. And we're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars that they asked my other company to bid for.

And he said to me, I'm so surprised. Why didn't you bid for it? He's like, Definitely you would have won that project. You were so experienced in that. And I said to him, I'm just not there anymore.

It's not what I'm doing. I'm focused on female entrepreneurship and really helping to move the needle for female business owners. And this is not the project for me anymore. And I know that you won't have me 100% on this project. Probably wouldn't even have me 10%.

And it also gave me, like, this pit in my stomach. And I don't know if you feel that. And I'm finding that as I grow more and more as being an entrepreneur and I'm talking I'm 20 years in now that I'm really learning to trust my intuition. Because if I look back at every situation that I've had in business that hasn't worked out or has created a problem, every single time, my intuition was telling me not to do it. But then my head stepped in and said, are you crazy?

Why are you not doing this? Make great money from this. It'll be a great opportunity. Every single time, my intuition was right. So in my old age, I'll be hitting 50 in 2024.

I can't believe that I'm almost 50 years old. But I've started to realize that my intuition is right, and I need to lean into that and trust my gut. And I wish that I had done that more because it would have saved me a lot of grief within business. So how do you say no without coming across looking like a jerk? And this is hard, right?

This takes a bit of time for us to be able to get comfortable saying no. And it depends upon who your client or customer is. And also as well too, if you want to be able to work with them in the future, maybe the opportunity that's presented to you isn't in your zone of genius. So as I was saying to you that I was being asked to do business writing workshops and customer service workshops when I owned a communications focused training company, it wasn't really my zone of genius, but I said yes. And I pulled together the courses, and the clients were very happy.

But I didn't love it. It didn't feel like the right. Fit. So I've started to become really good at just saying no and being okay with that, knowing that in the future it's going to open it up for better things. So what are some things that you can say no with?

And this is I always say you always want to, you always want to keep the door open, right? You always want to have a good relationship with everyone no matter what. So even if it's not your zone of genius or you don't want to do it, do make sure that you respond and you still cultivate that relationship. So it could be as simple as things like, oh, thanks for the opportunity, but it's not something that we can commit to right now, or we're currently at capacity. But do you know what?

Why don't I refer you to a couple of other businesses or give you names of businesses who could help you, or if you do really want to do it, but you just have so much work that you know that you're just going to burn out if you take on that project. You could say something like, I know this is really important right now, but we are completely booked out for the next month or the next two months. Would it be possible to schedule it for a later date? And sometimes the customer, the client might wait, other times they might not. One that I've used sometimes as well is just said, do you know, it's not really the best fit for us.

It's not really the zone of genius for us. And I want you to have somebody who is going to be amazing and this is going to be their zone of genius. So not right for us. But I'd be happy to find out or help you find someone who would be the right fit. There's all sorts of things it's whatever feels right in your language, but get comfortable with saying no and get comfortable with also saying no internally.

So I had a conversation with the team about this last year as well, because I found although I was getting very good at working on my boundaries with people from my other business and also with female fusion, sometimes I would look at my diary and my team would have put three events in a day for me to be speaking at. Now this was particularly busy, especially around times like Expo when we had Expo in Dubai, we were doing a lot over at Expo and sometimes I was speaking at a few different pavilions around Expo, which was amazing and oh my gosh, I'm so grateful for that opportunity. It was such a beautiful experience. But I did find that I would have a breakfast and then I would have a lunch and then I would have an afternoon meeting with, let's say, one of our partners and then I would have an evening reception that maybe I was either hosting or I had to speak at or even just attend. And it would get to the point where it would be 10:00 in the evening or 11:00 and I could no longer speak.

And anybody who knows me knows that I love to talk. I am extroverted. I love people, I love being around people, I love hearing about people's stories. But there comes a time where it's just so much that it gets overwhelming and it's not that you don't care. And I had a few times that this happened last year that it got to the point that I had so much packed in my day or packed in my week that just my energy was completely knocked.

I found myself when the first time it happened, just feeling like I was a bad person and why don't you want to talk to people anymore? And then after a few days I really reflected on it and realized it has nothing to do with that or you wanting to serve people. But there comes a point when you've talked to over 100 people in a day. And really because I want to know everything about people's businesses, I try to remember people's names, I try to remember as much about their business because I genuinely care. It just got to be a bit too much.

And so I realized from boundaries also as well, talking to the team, saying meetings only on these days, events only on these days, no multiple events on the same day because it's too much. No online master classes and then events, we need to kind of space it out because I need to have that headspace and I need to have that time to think. And I'm finding that having that time to think gives me so much more clarity. So going back to that, start to get really comfortable with saying no and know that you are not a bad person. It's okay to say no.

It's okay for us to have healthy boundaries. So when you look at this and when you work on setting your own boundaries, be really clear on what your priorities are for your business. So priorities for your business and also personally as well, because that's going to help you set your boundaries. And then be thinking about what your goals are for your business as well and what your goals are personally and make sure that your boundaries are really aligning with that and then be super good at sticking to it. So develop yourself a system.

So Monday, Friday for me, I still work eventually. It would be great. I know some entrepreneurs who I'm friends with don't even work on Mondays and Fridays and only work three days a week. But for me that's not possible, especially as we're going global at the moment. But what I do try to do is the Mondays and the Fridays are my creative days, the days that I can really use that to reflect back in myself.

And sometimes if I'm feeling super tired or it's been too much, sometimes I might only work for a few hours and then go for a walk or go to the gym or do something which is going to help me get that creative space back again. And it's not that I'm being lazy or I'm slacking off of work because I work a lot and I pack a lot in within a day, but it's not right for me. So be really kind to yourself and give yourself that space to be able to create within your business and then manage expectations and have boundaries around that. So if you don't want people contacting you after six or 07:00 in the evening, unless it's an emergency, of course if you have a big event the next day or something like that, of course you know, there's always exceptions to that. But you should never be responsible for people being badly organized and this happens a lot that a lot of last minute things or late at night requests come because other people haven't been organized with their work and also unless it's urgent, don't reply.

Don't reply or set up your email. Schedule it so it happens in the morning. So it's very clear people don't need to know if you're working or not. But make it very clear that, you know, I'm in the office from eight till six, you know, you can contact me eight till six if it's a super emergency outside of that. But if not, don't worry, it will be picked up in the morning and I'll work on that.

And then just be careful as well about not taking on so many things that you're going to get so overwhelmed and you're not going to do anything. And it's really essential that we don't spread ourselves too thin and that comes down to boundaries as well. If we say yes to everything, we are going to be spread so thin that it's not going to make us available to do the work that we really want to be able to do. So don't be afraid to say no. Find those phrases that work for you to say no.

If you feel really uncomfortable with saying no, find phrases that work for you and practice those. In the first couple of times it's going to feel a bit uncomfortable, but then you will find that every time you do it, it gets easier and easier. It's kind of like a muscle that you're going to the gym. The first few times you go to the gym it feels terrible and you feel like what am I doing here? Why am I in the gym?

But then every day it gets to be a little bit easier and it's like that with when we are setting our boundaries as well. So try not to spread yourself too thin and make yourself open to other opportunities. So you say no to those things that you don't really like I don't know what it is. And I'm telling you from 20 years of experience of having done this, every time I have said no or every time even that I've lost a contract or a project, that it has opened things up to something better. And that is really where the magic happens.

So get good at setting your boundaries and sit back and look and you will see that this is where the magic happens. You get good on your boundaries. It opens you up to amazing possibilities in your business.