If you have a legacy-making project calling you, and your calendar keeps pretending not to hear, this episode is for you. Visionary work does not get protected by accident. It gets protected by design.
In Episode 357, Erin shares what is really going on when you "just cannot find the time" for the book, the program, the creative project, or the big pivot. Then she walks you through the practices that make visionary progress possible inside a full life.
This episode will help you stop treating your visionary work like an optional hobby, and start treating it like a Lantern that deserves space, boundaries, and devotion.
Return on Joy (weekly newsletter)
Superabound supports visionary entrepreneurs and founders who refuse to sacrifice their lives to build their business, blending grounded strategy with unconventional tools that help you think clearly and decide well.
Schedule a 90-minute Superabound Start Session here to see what coaching with us will unlock for your business and life.
Full transcript:
Welcome to the Superabound podcast where vision-led entrepreneurs learn to build a generous business without sacrificing what matters most. You are listening to episode 357, protecting your visionary projects. Hello and welcome. Okay, today I want to talk about something that comes up all the time with my clients. It is probably the number one reason that folks work with me as their coach. Um and that is that leaders, entrepreneurs, busy people in the world always have visionary projects that it's really hard to find the time to take forward. Because when you are a business owner, there are of course things you want to accomplish, things you want to put into the world. legacy level types of products, information, classes, books. Um there are just things that we kind of crave doing as um creative people. But when you're also running a business, it is so hard to carve out the time for those things. Similarly, you know, I work with a lot of physicians and researchers who have multiple projects on the go and then very full clinical schedules. Uh leaders who have things they want to shift in their business, big pivots they want to experiment with, but the dayto-day can just feel so overwhelming that there just never seems to be time for those visionary projects. So if you are someone who has had some project on the go or dreams of doing something at a higher level, something that will be like a book or a long-term project that will kind of stand on its own, but you're having trouble finding the time to do that. This episode is for you. As you most of you know if you've been listening to this podcast for any amount of time, I am the author of several books. I am currently working on my next book. There are some little books that are kind of coming out of this bigger project as well as I am doing an oracle deck which is similar to like a tarot cards but it is not following the classical tarot system. It is following um some of my own tools, concepts, methodologies, and I am not just writing that book that goes along with it. I'm also creating all of the artwork, not being a trained artist. So, it's very fun. It feels like a big stretch. It's a whole mindset um learning and expansion for me personally, but these are the types of visionary projects that I hope will help people for decades to come. And at the very same time, I'm a business owner. I have clients that I see every week. I have marketing to do, sales to do, um admin to do, the general upkeep of my business and I work with a very small team. I have some contract people. I have an employee. Um it's not a lot of people. So, I am doing a lot of the work, doing a big chunk of the work. It's not just uh you know me putting out something and calling it a day. The big piece of protecting visionary level projects is f doing the dance, finding the the harmony between what has to happen in the day-to-day to keep things moving in your business or you know with your team uh if you're a leader if you have a you know a nineto-ive job. keeping those things rolling while at the same time protecting your visionary project. So, I'm going to give you four things that I do think are very essential. These are the things that have allowed me to publish books in the past while keeping my business running um without getting burnt out. And you know, one of my claims to fame among my own clients, another reason people tend to work with me is because I do these types of bigger projects within a 4day work week. Generally I am a big believer in the idea of holistic or whole life success where we are not valuing revenue and business success over personal fulfillment. A lot of business coaches and a lot of business people tend to think success is only about how much money you're making. And it doesn't really matter what the quality of your life is if you're super rich or if your business is doing well. Doesn't really matter if your personal relationships are a mess um or if you don't really love spending time with yourself. I do not believe that at all. I think that the only success that matters is success that weaves between your business and your personal life. I just think yes, of course, in order to have a beautiful lifestyle, we live in a culture where you need money. That is true. Um, but for so long, and I think we see it in a lot of places in the world, there's an immense value that is put on financial success more so than personal fulfillment. And yes, one can inform the other. I do believe that. But what we're trying to do is help you create the visionary projects that hopefully will not only be very fulfilling for you but help you and your business grow sustainably. Um, in the coaching industry for instance, I have watched brilliant business owners and amazing coaches close their doors in the last few years. And I think that that is in large part, you know, it's burnout. It's, you know, if you're if you're the sole entrepreneur or you have a small team and you end up taking on too much and you're working seven days a week, there's only so much that your accomplishments can really fuel you before you burn out. So, we don't want to do that. But at the same time, I think a lot of people have had trouble maintaining lasting success in a sustainable way because they had one play. They had one pathway to that success and they were not innovating and thinking about what they and their business needed to do in order to evolve, to grow, to stand out. You know, if you only have one modality as a coach or you only have one very narrow niche or lane that you can support someone with, your customers aren't going to probably want to utilize that same tool over and over and over again. They might grow out of the need in one department. So if you are not expanding yourself, learning more, developing your skills, trying different approaches and becoming someone who can support them more holistically, that is a very hard business to be in. So that's something that I'm always trying to do. I'm always trying to expand my coaching skills, um, be a better thinking partner, evolve personally, and a big part of that has been writing books, producing this podcast. You know, this is episode 357, and there's been a bunch of bonus episodes, so I'm sure we have even more than that on our platform, but you'll see over time the podcast evolved. It changed, I changed. um a lot of things have shifted and I do believe that that is a product of having visionary projects protecting the time it takes to create those things having a book that can sit on someone's shelf for the next 70 years that means something that's a way of differentiating yourself a lot of people these days I think are like kind of poo poo long form content Um, you know, I'm not a big fan of listening to a three-hour podcast personally, but if I have a book, if I have a course that really supports me, if I have something I can revisit and it does and it ages well, you know, it it supports me as I grow, that is something I want to have. And that is what I'm talking about when I say a visionary project is something that is at a legacy level. So when you are no longer here, someone can still get helped by you and your work in the world. Something that has impact. So for me that is books. That's bookw writing. And for you it might be something else. But let's get into how to actually protect that in the context of I know you're busy. I know you have fires to put out. I know you have a lot going on in your world. The very first thing and possibly the most important thing to protect your visionary projects is the concept that some of you will know very well of self-investment. Now, talking about self-care is very trendy, but actually practicing true, authentic, nourishing self-care is something I watch even the world's smartest people struggle with. I like the idea of self-investment over self-care because what that indicates is that it's not just a oneanddone type of thing. for someone to see the benefit of investing, they have to do it consistently over a period of time. And so self-investment is doing all of the things we know we should be doing. Um, but actually making space in your life for those things, especially if you're busy, especially if you're doing high impact work. um figuring out how to get enough sleep. That's an act of self-investment. Uh doing something every day for yourself, physically, for your mental and spiritual health, for your emotional health. Doing something that makes your sense of connection to others and to yourself, your relationships better. This is a type of self-investment that I think because we know we should do it sometimes we mistake that knowing for doing and I am someone I've shared this before um who had a lot of knowledge about what I should be doing and burnt out anyway because I was not doing the things that would have actually supported my system. So self-investing I think is the most important thing if you take nothing else away from this today it is to really develop your own personal tending triad. So sustaining rituals um personal filter which we're going to talk about in a minute and your visionary practice which is actually you know the topic of this whole thing is if you are not taking time to commune with your future self if you are not putting in some effort even if it's you know 15 minutes a day to write your book if you're not doing that for them then it's going to be really hard for that visionary project to come to life. So that self-investment is making the time making the space in order to do that. And I share this with highly busy very important people my VIPs a lot. The number one argument, which I totally understand, is that, okay, but I can't make a 25-hour day. My time is spoken for. My schedule is packed. I don't even have enough time between meetings or between commitments to like have lunch most days. And I understand that. Um, but here's the important thing. The next ingredient that will help you protect your visionary projects is learning the art of the empowered no. Because at the end of the day, everything that is on your calendar got there because you said yes. Even if you have an assistant who schedules all the things for you, you trained that person. You told them what you would say yes to and they put it on your calendar for you.
There's a lot of arguments I know you might be having with me in your car or as you walk with this podcast, but I'm trying to empower you by telling you that some of these things actually were meant to be a no. Some of the things on your calendar right now don't really deserve to be there. And I and we're not being mean about it. It's not to say that the project might not be worthy or the meeting might not be with someone who's a very wonderful person, but if you are serious about protecting your visionary projects and you look at your calendar and you don't have a minute of your time on there, you need to learn the art of the empowered. know this is something I wrote about originally in my very first book which was for yoga teachers and it was like a success guide for yoga teachers because yoga teachers especially you know you think oh they're so lovely and nice and they say yes and like you don't want to miss out on an opportunity if you're trying to build a yoga business you just want to say yes to everyone you want to teach them yoga it's so great I burnt out doing that So, um, being nice is not the same as being kind. And sometimes you have to be willing to possibly disappoint someone. Maybe refer them somewhere else, delegate something that isn't really within your um, wheelhouse of like, you're not the person in the business that really needs to do this. This is just something that you know how to do. You're okay at it. Um, learning the art of the empowered no doesn't mean you just go start saying no to everyone. It means that you start to get in the habit of giving yourself a buffer between when a request comes in for your time, your energy, or some resource that you have. You actually give yourself the space to not have a knee-jerk reaction of saying yes. And a really simple way to start to do this is when for the next day, you could play with this. I think we've we've talked about this previously on the podcast, but it's good to do every so often, commit this week to not saying yes to anything anyone asks you for 24 hours. Now, that doesn't mean if your kids say, "Hey, can can we have dinner soon?" You say, "I'll get back to you in 24 hours." I'm not don't don't take it to that extreme, obviously. But when it's something that will have to go on your calendar and it's about to take up space, I want you to really think, is this an hour I am willing to spend away from my visionary project. Give yourself a little bit of time to really think that through. If it is aligned with your vision, if it is aligned with your values, if it's something that is important to moving the needle in the direction you want to go in ultimately with your business and your life and you want to do it, then it's probably a yes. But if it's something that you know you typically say yes to and then you dread it, it's something that really someone else should look after. It's something you don't even think is necessary and you don't want to do it and it's not really going to have a negative impact other than maybe disappointing someone. Can you say no as some mental gymnastics? This is very helpful and I hope you will try it. And I alluded to the next one within this but really looking at your calendar and making sure that your visionary project has time and space on your calendar. Now I have clients right now who are writing books and some of them are doing that in 15 minute a day blocks of time. You know they just don't have the bandwidth right now to spend eight hours writing a book because they run a business. They have kids. They are busy people. Some of them run several businesses. Um but they want to finish their book. So that sacred time is smaller than maybe they would like it to be. But they protect that time with everything they've got. They treat it like the most important meeting with the most exclusive person. And really, it is it is your meeting with your future self. It is an act of self-investment. And it requires sometimes an empowered no to something that maybe isn't as important and meaningful to you. And it isn't going to contribute to that project getting done. Now, on the flip side, the other thing you want to make sure you're calendaring is time for doing the things that actually move the needle in your business. So, when I'm writing a book, it would be really easy for me to actually let my writing time get a little bloated, kind of get in the mood. I'm doing some art over here. I'm making oracle cards and then I'm writing the description and then another idea pops up. I really at this point could sit down and write or create for many hours. That's a fear I think a lot of people have. It's really beautiful when that flow kind of happens. But I also know that my visionary project could then expand into that time because it kind of feels good. I could very easily start to let things slip. I mean, I don't think I could. I'm I'm doing this for drama, but I don't think I would let things slip in my business. You know, client care is very important. But I mean, I could skip marketing for a couple days. No big deal. What I do instead is I always have time on the business for the BIS or time on the calendar for the business. So, I have about an hour a day that I call CEO lantern time. And in that batch of time, I kind of move through a few different categories. So, some days it's marketing, some days it's sales, some days it's outreach, education. Um, I move through these categories and I make sure to kind of do a deep focus or systems, processes. I'll do that deep focus for an hour where I am doing the things that hopefully will prevent fires from happening in my business later. You know, it's a kind of a protection of my business. It's cleaning up systems. It's planning for launches. I do the business of the day-to-day stuff within that hour so that when I sit down to write, I'm not saying, "Oh no, I forgot to email back that client. Let me let me leave my visionary practice time to come back into the business and get things going." And oh no, another email came in and oh, someone responded, I have to DM them back. And it's it's just so easy to kind of let the the boundaries blur. And so one of the acts of self-investment is I take time for my business, for the loose ends, for the systems, for the cleanup. It's not the sexy part of protecting your visionary project. It's not the fun part of getting to do the oracle card art or write the descriptions. It's the work. But if I do that work in a proactive manner, it actually frees up my energy, my time, makes it cleaner. So that when I sit down to do that visionary project, I am not cluttered, worried, distracted by the day-to-day in the business, which I think is a big trap that many people fall into. you know, turn off my email, mute my phone. I go really deep with what I'm working on. And I even do that with clients. We have a co-writing, co-working sessions. It's a really beautiful thing. So, I hope that this has helped you kind of think of some ideas to help you protect those visionary projects because I do think that they matter. I think they matter not only for the long-term success and whole life success of your business, but we all want to walk out of this world knowing that we left something behind that will continue to have ripple results. At least I do. And so, if you can protect your visionary projects, you will be one step closer to doing that. So, I hope that that's helped. And I also want to invite you to my brand new weekly newsletter called Return on Joy. Every Thursday I am sending out a short note to my email list called Superabound Collective with something that I really love. Could be a tool, could be a product, could be, you know, something that's making my life happier, something that's making me healthier, something I'm doing for self-investment, something designed to help you really feel whole life success, help you get closer to that. So, it's not just all business books and productivity hacks. it is how do you actually enjoy this wild ride of entrepreneurship, of leadership, of creativity. So, I hope you will join me there. And to sign up for that free newsletter, you can head over to bsupbound.com/collective.
And I'll see you on Thursday. Take care.