Ep. 175: BREATHING ROOM, BOUNDARIES & ASKING FOR HELP IN YOUR BEAUTY BUSINESS, WITH MICROBLADER AND PMU ARTIST/MARKETER SHEILA BELLA
No matter how hard you try - you can't pour from an empty cup.
That's something that I say a lot. I tell it to my students, I tell it to my team, and it's something that I have to remind myself of too!
No matter how hard any of us try or no matter how much we wish we were, we're not never-ending sources of energy. We can't be everything for everyone all the time nor can we do everything for everyone all the time! That's something that I think is a big issue for a lot of entrepreneurs but especially for female entrepreneurs. Because we put so much pressure on ourselves to be Wonder Woman.
But here's the thing - Wonder Woman isn't real. We are! And the reality is that in order to achieve all of the incredible things that we want to achieve - we have to take care of ourselves first!
I know that this can be a hard lesson to learn, but it's probably one of the most important things you'll learn as an entrepreneur. Not even as an entrepreneur - but as people!
We all need to allow ourselves a little breathing room. That's what allows us to be our best selves.
Here are the episode highlights:
‣‣ [03:28] First, I want to talk about a time very recently when I was just too overwhelmed to even enjoy a nice moment with my family.
‣‣ [06:43] If you're feeling overwhelmed by all of your work, life, and family responsibilities: this is my message to you.
‣‣ [07:44] What is entrepreneurship really about?
‣‣ [08:41] I encourage you to take a moment and ask yourself these questions: are you satisfied with how things are going in your business? If you continue on the path you're on, are you going to be satisfied with your business, your relationships, your bank account?
‣‣ [10:05] A good exercise to shift your balance is to rethink the way you look at what's truly important.
‣‣ [16:53] In order to be a successful (happy and healthy) entrepreneur then you need to learn how to set healthy boundaries!
‣‣ [19:38] Let's talk about the importance of giving yourself some breathing room.
‣‣ [22:07] What's the ultimate form of self-care as an entrepreneur? Asking for help.
LET'S CREATE SOME BOUNDARIES! (Listen Here)
You can follow me, Sheila Bella, on Instagram @realsheilabella!
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You can enjoy a transcript of the podcast here.
Sheila Bella:
Attention overworked, overwhelmed, burnt out, crying in the shower, drinking cold coffee, snapping at her kids, skipping lunch, stretched too thin, harsh to hubby, maxed-out mogul mom. If you are responding to DMs at 11:00 at night beside your fast asleep husband, I am talking to you. If you're ignoring your kids, leaving them to their own literal devices, YouTube, iPad, the university of screens, so that you can create content for Instagram, I'm also talking to you. If you've ordered takeout for the third time this week because you are too drained to prepare a hot meal and you just want it done, it's expensive, but you just need it done, I'm talking to you.
If you feel like you work eight days a week, 36 hours a day, 366 days per year and still not getting the results that you want, I am talking to you. This episode is for you. The painful truth is that you will not get the results you want with the sacrificial lamb strategy. Did you know that?
By the end of this episode, you are going to feel so much more empowered and ready to rock. You're going to stop being the slave girl to your business and you're going to get a grip. Let's figure this out together right here on Pretty Rich Podcast.
Welcome to Pretty Rich Podcast, where you're totally the heroine of your own story. I'm your host, Sheila Bella, and I've built a seven-figure PMU beauty biz and a seven-figure online biz without a degree, without a fancy website or a sugar daddy, and if you and I hang out on here long enough, you're going to start to believe that you can do it too. How about that for a side effect of listening to this podcast?
Because you really can. I know you think I don't know you, I've no idea who you are, but I do. I really, really do because I am you, I was you, and I believe we are all on the same journey together. My perfect job didn't exist, so I created it. The job I wanted wasn't hiring me, wanted nothing to do with me, so I skipped the line and hired myself as CEO, just like you can.
So consider me your secret beauty biz BFF in case you need to be reminded on a weekly basis that power is never just handed to you, you have to take it. Are you ready, beauty boss? Let's jump in.
Hey, everyone. What's up? Welcome to Pretty Rich Podcast. Ooh, what a week it's been. It's been a week. Has it been a week? It's been a week for me, but it's been all good actually. I'm feeling very blessed, very, very blessed and I hope that you guys feel the same way.
Okay, so as well as things are going, right, we're all feeling very blessed, yes, and things are also, at the same time, imperfect. They just are. It's never going to be super perfect, you know what I mean?
Last night I was a stress ball. And it wasn't about anything in particular, I think I was just overwhelmed from the day. I ended the day yesterday and I went to In-N-Out with the kids, we just did drive-through. And I went there with my husband and the kids and we were all in my car, and I just felt so irritable. Will was talking about his day, I was asking him about his day, he was talking about his challenges. And the kids weren't even necessarily fighting, they were laughing, having a great time. It was super cute, but I was so irritable.
It was one of those moments where I didn't tell them I was feeling irritated. I was just, yes, I was just trying to look at the bright side of things and just kind of swallowing all of that. Do you guys ever feel that way? And I think what it was is I just needed some space and silence and I wasn't getting that. I hadn't had it all day.
My mom was texting me about taxes and my team was texting me about several different issues, and my friends were also texting me about what's going on in their lives. So the work addict in me likes to get things done, so I wanted to get back to people as soon as possible, because if I don't get back to them right now, I will forget. I will forget. And the nurturer in me wants to pacify right then and there.
All of a sudden, I felt like a rookie again. Because I have a team, I have a team of about 25 to 30 people where I could delegate things to, but these were all things I couldn't really delegate, like my relationships, my kids, or not at that time rather, and my decision-making. I needed to make decisions about important things like our finances or the business. And I know everybody has their own level of overwhelm and I guess I had just maxed out.
So, at night, I put on a very familiar movie that always calms me down. I put on 20 minutes of Mean Girls. There was no suspense, right, and I just kind of got lost in it. There's no suspense because I already know what's going to happen, just kind of got lost in it and I erased my brain. It was like meditation. And I felt better.
So, today, if any of that is relatable, anything I said is relatable, we are all at different places in our journeys and know that even at this level with a large team and this amount of responsibility, that still comes up. But before, maybe it was not being able to pay for my apartment or being stretched thin because I didn't have anyone to delegate emails to, right?
So I'm talking to you, woman who's trying to do it all. The painful truth is you're not going to get the results that you want with this sacrificial lamb strategy, right, that we women are so programmed to do. You know this one, it's the one where the exhausted entrepreneur offers herself to the gods of Fortune 500, that her sacrifice of self, health, blood, sweat, sleep, marriage, tears, and kids, all with the prayer of success to one day find her and take mercy on her poor soul. Let's stop believing this distorted view of what entrepreneurship is and let's adopt a few new things, a new view, okay? A healthier, more highly effective view.
Entrepreneurship is not working 18 hour days, seven days a week, and are those 18 hour days miserable hours, neglecting your other responsibilities to yourself, your loved ones and what really matters to you? So entrepreneurship is a mindset of creativity and production for profit. When you're stressed, you suffocate creativity and you sabotage productivity. Let me say that again. When you're stressed, you suffocate creativity and sabotage productivity.
So today, we're going to talk about creating balance and satisfaction in your daily life, and I'm going to give you some tools. So if no one has asked you the question, okay, let me be the first, are you satisfied with how things are going in your business? Is how you spend your days creating more or less satisfaction? If you were to continue on this path, what would your life look like in five years? What would your marriage look like? What would your relationship with your kids look like? Your business, your bank account, what would it all look like?
You can pause this unless you already know, unless you just saw those answers just flash before your eyes. So ask yourself this, is my workload zapping my energy or is it energizing me? Is my work life making me miserable or is it inspiring me? If the answer is zapped and miserable, something needs to change.
So here are some mindset shifts that will help you bring about balance, boundaries and breathing room. Uh, you just want to breathe, right? Breathing room into your daily life.
The first shift to bring balance is to rethink the way that we look at what's important. How many times have you said, "I just have too many balls in the air," right? I've said that. And when we say this, what we really mean is that we're juggling too many tasks at once and it's only a matter of time before we, quote, drop the ball. It's only a matter of time. What does drop the ball mean? We lose a client, our project misses a deadline. We skip out on date night. We're late picking the kids up. We forget to call our parents. We bail on plans with friends. When we're juggling too much, we make mistakes.
So to be more effective, we need to decide, yeah, what's okay to drop. That's a concept. Decide what's okay to drop and drop it. Really, drop it.
So let me introduce you to glass balls versus rubber balls. Glass balls are fragile and need to be treated with care. We want to avoid dropping these balls. Here's some examples of glass balls, okay? And everyone's glass balls and rubber balls are different. Yourself, your health, your wellbeing, that's the glass ball. Your relationships, relationships with your significant other, your partner, your husband, your boyfriend, your kids, your parents, your best friend since middle school, that's a glass ball. Your spiritual connection, your wellbeing, that's a glass ball. Mental health, glass ball, right?
And this isn't a popular idea, but one of my glass balls is my business. That's one of my glass balls. I can't handle all the glass balls in my business, but there is a specific area of my business that no one else can do, and that is the decision-making, right? The reason why my business is a glass ball is because my business allows me to care for myself, to have the time to spend with my husband stress-free.
I spend a lot of money too on wellbeing and weird health stuff. I think our vitamins cost like, oh, this is embarrassing, like $400 a month or something crazy like that. We order from a website called Thorne, which is the best, thorne.com. And that's really important to me because longevity is important to me, right?
So that is on my list of glass balls. You can't pour from an empty cup. So I do prioritize my self-care because my self care allows me to pour into my business and into my family. And the reason why I need to pour into my business is because my business pours into the needs of my family.
Are you thinking about creating an online beauty course, but don't know where to start? I created this free starter kit that's going to guide and help you get clarity on the first things you need to do to start your beauty online course journey.
It's time to start thinking about creating passive income from home, and a lot of beauty entrepreneurs have already started transferring their in-person trainings to online ones. And if you know that this next step for you is kind of scary, but it's a must, having an online course is a true dream and it brings immense possibilities and freedom to your life, your business, working from home. I've done it myself and I've coached several other beauty entrepreneurs to do the same thing.
So if you want access to this free online course starter kit, all you need to do is text the word STARTERKIT to 310-388-4588. That's 310-388-4588, and I'll text you the link.
Now let's talk about rubber balls, okay? So rubber balls bounce back. It's okay for us to drop them and pick them up later. So my examples of rubber balls are cleanliness, for example, clutter, sometimes social media, certain messages that aren't urgent on Instagram, that don't require my immediate attention, certain opportunities that aren't necessarily calling to me, that don't require me to make a decision about it right now.
Even in my business, I have some rubber balls. For example, a landing page that one of my team members created is just okay. It's just okay. I'm going to let it go because it's fine. It's a rubber ball. It's not urgent. Maybe I'm not super on top of my posting schedule. I'm like 80% there. It's fine. That's a rubber ball. It'll bounce back. Right now, I'm sitting in a room, and if I'm being honest, this room could be a lot tidier, for sure, but it's a rubber ball. It's okay.
So I pick and choose, because remember, every time you say yes to something, you're saying no to something else. So schedule your time according to taking care of yourself first. Take care of your loved ones also, and take care of your business. And in your business, learn to work smarter. Also know what are the priorities that are profit generating. What are the profit generating things on your to-do list? Everything else is a rubber ball. Got it?
A lot of successful entrepreneurs know how to say no. Here's a way to know whether or not you lack healthy boundaries. If you have trouble saying no to people, if you're frequently drained, if you feel constantly exhausted and fatigued, if you, all the time, not once in a while, but if you all the time feel overwhelmed and anxious, and a big one that I can totally relate to too because this used to be me is if you wake up dreading your day. You guys feel that way? You wake up and you dread your day and you have a hard time getting out of bed.
Last night, I told you I felt irritable or edgy. I knew I was at my limit. And one that's really hard to come back from, once you start having feelings of resentment, that's hard to come back from. So if you're feeling things like resentment, guilt, shame, not doing enough, feeling just kind of passive about things, those are red flags for not setting enough healthy boundaries.
Another big one is having a hard time making decisions. It probably means that you can't hear yourself think because you haven't taken the time to be silent and you haven't been able to hear yourself think. When you lack boundaries, when your lines aren't clear, it's draining. It zaps your energy. When you learn how to set boundaries, learn how to pick and choose glass balls versus rubber balls, you feel energized and it boosts your mood, and a boosted mood, an energized boss, that is the boss of a profitable business.
So you've got to learn to set boundaries. You've got to learn to say no, say things like, "Thank you for asking, but I have prior commitments that day." You don't have to give a reason, but if you must, you know, our husbands are great excuses. You can say, "I told my partner that I would not be taking on more at this time, I'm working to create more balance in my life," and that should be reason enough. You can say that you're unavailable until a certain date, until a certain month. Thank them for the opportunity. You can say, "Yeah, I would like to, but I'm actually unavailable until August, until September. Could you please ask me again closer to that time?"
Something I say a lot is, because I mean it, "Thank you, but I don't have the bandwidth to take this on right now." And I'm being honest, and usually that's enough. So give yourself some breathing room by creating margins, drawing lines.
All right, do this exercise with me. For this exercise, I want you to grab any sheet of paper, any sheet of paper, something to write with. Now, I want you to draw a large square and then draw a smaller square inside the large square. The smaller square represents your responsibilities and commitments. Now the larger square represents your bandwidth or your energy or your mental ability to deal with your responsibilities and commitments.
Now, when these squares are the same size, this means we are maxed out. What you want is you want to have a margin between the big square and the small square. You want your bandwidth to be greater than your commitments.
So we call this margin by many names, such as breathing room, free time, rest, downtime, me time. Your new mantra is my free time is not my availability. Ooh, that was hard to say. That was so hard to say. Can you say it with me again? My free time is not my availability. We need to stop confusing our free time with our availability and other's free time with their availability. Wow, that's respect right there. That's self-respect and respect for others.
It's normal to feel guilty about this, especially if this is a big change for you and you haven't looked at it this way yet, but as you practice creating margins and allowing yourself to have uncommitted time, this will get easier. Remind yourself that your free time is productive. It recharges your creativity and it restores your energy levels, which is important.
Now, aside from saying no, another thing that all successful entrepreneurs do well that's highly overlooked is this, they ask for help. To me, one of the most fantastic forms of philanthropy is providing someone with a job. A job is an opportunity. And I think for many people who grow up believing that paying someone to clean your house, mow your lawn, wash your car, answer your emails is lazy, yeah, and almost categorized as elitist because you're forcing people below you socioeconomically, to do things that you don't want to do.
But as a business owner, an employer, and a Filipino, okay, I'll get to that later, I see the other side. My family, I grew up watching my parents delegate a lot of things. It's very common in my homeland. Providing someone with an opportunity to earn their living is a beautiful thing.
Think about it this way, okay? You have labored to make your money, or your family did, and now you're giving that to another for their labor. This is how individuals rise, through that, provide for themselves and their loved ones and have a sense of worth. And also, I'd like to add that it isn't easy to take on employees. It's a responsibility, not just a luxury. It's more of a responsibility, especially when their monetary needs solely depend on your ability to provide.
But I have to say the ripple effects of giving opportunities of employment, right, they're unlike any other good I've ever seen or experienced, and that's why I also urge and encourage my clients of Pretty Rich Bosses to hire as soon as possible because it's a win-win. It's a win for the person with the opportunity, as well as the company. You cannot scale without a team. You can't rise up without opportunities.
And it gets really meta, because through making successful business women inside Pretty Rich Bosses, I believe that our mentorship program is impacting the world beyond what we can see. We're creating businesses that create opportunities.
I really hope that this podcast episode has helped you identify and understand why you're feeling maxed out and learn to create more balance, boundaries, breathing room, and gives you permission to ask for help. Know that you can have it all, just not at the same time, unless you learn how to delegate. Until next time, friends.
Hey, thanks so much for listening to today's episode of Pretty Rich Podcast. If you want to continue the conversation longer, check me out on Instagram. It's my favorite place to connect with you guys, @realsheilabella. I'm happy to answer any of your questions or simply to chat and get to know you better. And if you end up doing something super awesome like screenshotting this episode and reposting it on your stories, that would put the biggest smile on my face. Don't forget to tag me. I appreciate every share and love feedback from my listeners.
Also, do you have my number? Do you have my number? Because if we're going to keep hanging out, you should probably have my number. So you can actually text me. That's right, you can text me at 310-388-4588.
And if you're sick and tired of doing business alone and you're interested in accelerating your success by hiring a business coach or joining our mentorship program called Pretty Rich Bosses, go ahead and just apply. Why not? Check it out. Go to sheilabella.com/apply and we'll schedule a free strategy session with either myself or one of my advisors.
And of course I got to include my kids. So here to send us off are Beau and Grey.
Grey:
Hello.
Sheila Bella:
Grey, say, "Share with your friends."
Grey:
Share with friends.
Sheila Bella:
"Please review my mommy on iTunes."
Grey:
[inaudible 00:27:13] mama iTunes.
Sheila Bella:
"Thanks for listening."
Grey:
Thanks for listening.
Sheila Bella:
Hey Beau, can you tell everybody what our family motto is?
Beau:
Yeah. I can do hard things.
Sheila Bella:
I can do hard things. Good job, buddy.
