Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign.
[00:00:07] Welcome back to Confessions in the Home Office. My name is Wendy Hill, and each week I bring a new episode to you about working from home or interviewing other business owners or telling crazy stories about trying to juggle running a business while working out of my house.
[00:00:25] As you can tell if you've listened to the podcast before, my voice is shot. And I'm sorry I almost didn't record this week, but I'll explain in the episode what's going on.
[00:00:35] So last week I was recording an episode with my friend Deb Sofield, and I was like, my throat's killing me, and it's been hurting for a few days. I've been coughing a little bit. And that was over Labor Day weekend.
[00:00:46] And after I finished recording with Deb, we took off and went to the farm my husband and I did, to check on things and look around. And I was feeling really badly by the time we.
[00:00:58] We finished with that and we were on the way back, and then it was Labor Day, and I was out on Labor Day. I was just. I couldn't function. So I made an appointment to go to the same day clinic at the big medical practice where I go on Tuesday. And I thought, I'll see a nurse practitioner or see another doctor, find out what's going on. And by the time I got in there, they were like, you have bronchitis, you have a sinus infection, and you don't have to get tested. But we're pretty sure you have Covid, too, because your heart rate and just how you look and you sound. And I was like, you know what?
[00:01:32] I know it was probably crazy to say this. I didn't get the COVID test because they said it wasn't going to change the treatment. They're not really prescribing the antivirals anymore because they're making people feel bad.
[00:01:43] And I kind of didn't want to know because I already felt so rough that I was afraid if I heard the word, you have Covid, I would probably just go home and get in the bed and that would be the end of it. So at the end of the appointment, the doctor that I saw, which was not my usual doctor, she looks at me and she goes, do you need a note for work? And I had this split second of confusion, like, who am I going to give that to? Am I going to tape that on the refrigerator or on the mirror? And I just looked at her and I said, my boss is really tough, but she'll understand, and just left it at that. And because when you run Your own business. There is no hr, there's no sick leave, no safety net. It's just you, your clients, and whatever life decides to hand you that week. So life handed me a lot last week, and so there were other things that went on as well, too. So.
[00:02:34] And if you've. If you've listened since the beginning, you've heard me talk a little bit about Lola, my golden retriever.
[00:02:40] So I have. I. Excuse me, I have her and her litter mate, Cash.
[00:02:44] Cash is very needy, very whiny. It's very emotional. He talks to me all the time. It's like having a husky.
[00:02:51] But Lola is steady and Lola eats everything. But Lola is very loyal, and she expects me to come in the office in the morning, and she usually has a piece of paper in her mouth like she's going to work, and I just love her for it. And she's. She's misbehaved some here and there, but. But she and I are pretty tight, and she's under my feet all the time when I'm at my desk.
[00:03:15] Well, a few weeks ago, my husband and I took the kids shopping up at the. The Charlotte outlets so they could get sho.
[00:03:23] My son needed, like, nice shoes if he was going to interview and, you know, all that type of stuff. We spent the day at the outlets and spent way too much money. And we came home and we let Lola and Cash outside to go run in the yard. And a few minutes later, Lola comes limping back to the door. I'm like, oh, gosh, what does she get into? Did she step in a hole? Did she trip over a root? You just never know.
[00:03:46] So the limping got worse. Then she's holding up her leg, and I got a little nervous because I've had several other golden or golden mixes that I've rescued when they were older, and they all end up with a tumor or bone cancer or something. And I'm like, she's not even six yet. This can't be it. So I waited a day or two, took her to the vet, and they're like, we think she's torn her ccl, but let's give her a couple of weeks with some pain meds and some rest and see.
[00:04:14] So this past week while I was sick was the same week that she was scheduled to go in to get sedated and have X rays.
[00:04:20] And just because she's a few pounds overweight, because she lives in this house, they were going to X ray both sides because they felt like both knees were a little weak.
[00:04:29] And so all this is going on. So I'm dragging, I'm getting, pushing through, getting rid of a fever.
[00:04:36] And we're taking Lola to the vet and my husband took her. But I went, when we went to go pick her up, thinking that we would talk to Dr. Oz, the vet.
[00:04:46] Well, they said, Dr. Oz will call you later. The vet tech's probably 21 years old. And she goes, yeah, I'm sorry, that, that she's going to have to have both knees redone. And I thought I was going to pass out in the, in the waiting room of the vet's office because if you know anything about a canine tplo surgery, one is horrendous cost wise. I was thinking too, have to get a job, I have to put her in photo shoots. She's going to have to set up an Instagram account.
[00:05:15] I don't know what we're going to do. We're going to get brand endorsements. Something's going on because I'm about to flip out. I'm still sick, I'm still out of my head, I'm on steroids, and my dog has two bad knees. What am I going to do? So, thankfully, a few hours later, the vet called and said, it's just the right knee, the left one's a little inflamed, but we're fine.
[00:05:33] I really thought I aged 10 days, 10 years in that day.
[00:05:38] And so while this is going on, still have work, still have meetings, still have some calls, still have deadlines and projects and, you know, the real world, things happen all the time and things keep going. If you run your business, it's not just your business. You've got everything else going on too.
[00:05:54] And then there was something else that, that came in on top of it that I wouldn't say is humorous, but it was something very unexpected.
[00:06:02] I have a cousin and that situation is complicated. And they are incarcerated in another state. Have been for a little while. I found out recently and have talked to some people online that know her, trying to find out if she's okay, what's going on. I mean, genuinely concerned, even though we haven't been in touch that much.
[00:06:21] And so I'm working through everything and I get a Facebook message from someone that she knows saying that she's been moved to another facility. And I'm thinking, how do you know moved? How do you know this? Like, I know there's a state database for things like that. You can look up people's charges and whatever, but never really had to get that involved with it. And so I said, well, how do you know that she's moved? And they're like, oh, you just need to download the app.
[00:06:45] And I was thinking, a people tracker app. Oh my gosh. So I looked it up and I can have it notify me when she moves from place to place.
[00:06:54] Not really details with what's going on, but I thought, you know, with everything that's going on this week, and then I finally heard, oh, you just need to download the app to track where she is. I thought, you know, Wendy, you. There's just some things you haven't been exposed to, and you just never know what you're going to learn when you talk to people. So I didn't know whether to laugh or cry or to add that task to my Trello board of like, download the app so you can track your cousin.
[00:07:19] But I thought, okay, so now I've got content calendars, podcast setups, client projects, and now a prison tracking app on my phone.
[00:07:28] So that was not on my to do list for last week.
[00:07:32] So I do want to talk about how I kept everything moving. So I don't know if anybody else feels this way, but I feel like I made it through pretty well.
[00:07:40] Between losing my voice, feeling terrible, Lola's knees, and finding out that I can track my cousin on my phone, I think some people would probably just say, forget it. But I decided that I was going to get everything done. And here's how I did it.
[00:07:56] I delegated. I delegate a lot of work to a couple people that work with me on a regular basis.
[00:08:02] And I was supposed to go to a client's office, I think Tuesday or Wednesday.
[00:08:06] I help them with podcast production once a month, and I usually go in and make sure everything's set up in the studio. They're busy. They're not all, you know, super tech savvy. So I decided when I found out kind of what was going on with me, I found somebody at the client's office and talked through things with him.
[00:08:24] And then the day of, went through everything on FaceTime with him. Even though I looked when he saw me, he's like, I'm glad you didn't come in.
[00:08:31] But I realized then, and I've always worked on having a. Processes, processes for every, for every, all the things.
[00:08:41] But you really need to figure out who your go to person is even on the client side for things. If something goes down, you really can't wait till you're sick to figure out who those people are. Luckily, I had a couple of days to get it figured out.
[00:08:54] But you need to go ahead and say, we've got a way to do this if. If I can't be here and go ahead and get them up to speed on that, and then I'm going to talk about this again. I talk about this almost every episode about Trello. Trello saved my life last week.
[00:09:10] It's not fancy, but every project, every deadline, every checklist is in there.
[00:09:16] So when I get off a call with a client, whether there's been like a AI meeting recorder, or I'm just taking notes, because I still love to take notes because I love paper and pen, I put everything in Trello, Whether it gets delegated to somebody else or it's something for down the road or something that needs to be done that day.
[00:09:33] So while I was sick and sitting in the recliner with my laptop last week, projects didn't live in my head and just float away because I was out of it. Stuff got done and I kept getting updates. This is getting done. This is getting done. I have a question on this.
[00:09:49] And we all saw what needed to happen and everything kept moving.
[00:09:52] I even put stuff in there. Send client update.
[00:09:55] Because when you're out of it and you're on all that medication, you need to remember you still need to send them an update on something.
[00:10:02] And then the other thing was just trying to really, I don't know, capture my energy kind of in little segments. I was on steroids, so a couple of my friends were messaging me every day asking how I was doing. And I'm like, I'm going to crash when this is over because I am working like a mad woman, as bad as I feel. But it was really just saying, hey, I feel good right now. I'm going to try to get a couple things knocked out or I'm really tired right now.
[00:10:31] I'm going to sleep for an hour or two and then keep going. And I know a lot of people say, I'm just shutting down. I'm going to bed for a few days. And if you can do that with your business, I think it's fantastic. You are light years ahead of me. Just the type of work that I do, there's always something to do. There's something to do seven days a week.
[00:10:51] So anyway, it was more of, hey, I can talk for a few, and I do need to call this person back. So I'm going to talk to them or my voice is shot.
[00:10:59] I can work on a couple of things here and then I'm putting it up for the day.
[00:11:03] And really it was Just, I would say, kind of coming to terms with, like, having the mindset of.
[00:11:10] Gave myself permission to slow down because I knew I had everything in place. I had other people to help me. I had everything captured in our project management system. We're not failing. Maybe we're not operating at over a hundred percent, but having the systems and the people and working on processes really kept me from getting stressed out and kept me from getting behind. I felt like maybe I was a half a day behind at most, and I got caught up.
[00:11:38] So. And this is where some of you probably say I'm crazy. While I did have some time last week because, you know, with steroids you don't really sleep. So I was dozing last week.
[00:11:49] I kept working on this membership project that I've been working on. A couple years ago, I had a course where you could learn how to be a marketing virtual assistant. I had some students.
[00:12:01] It went well, and then it kind of just. It kind of fizzled out. And it was both sides. It was me just not feeling like we need to keep going with things. And then the students that were in it kind of wrapped up with what they had.
[00:12:15] But I feel like there's a lot of skills out there that people need to know that are more like marketing tech skills.
[00:12:23] I sit in meetings or I'm on calls every week where clients will say, well, Wendy, can you do xyz?
[00:12:29] And it's because their staff doesn't know how to do it. It's not just because it's a marketing task. It might be something as simple as how to create a QR code or how to set up a campaign in a fundraising software or something along those lines.
[00:12:43] And so I've been recording well, first brainstormed all kinds of scripts and topics, and I've started recording. I couldn't do much because of my voice.
[00:12:55] All kinds of videos, kind of how to videos for this.
[00:12:58] So it'll be kind of like a marketing tech skills, you know, to pay the bills type of thing. Learn. Learn these skills. You can do more with your job. You learn these skills, maybe you can freelance. Learn these skills. Maybe you can just pick up a couple of projects here and there to help supplement your income. So I know there's a lot of people in my stage of life where their kids have gone off to school and they're trying to figure out, do I go back to work? I've been home, I've only worked part time, do I go full time? I don't know if I want to do that. I'VE got parents to take care of or I want to do stuff with my spouse.
[00:13:33] Learning these kind of skills can be really helpful because there's. AI has taken over so many things, but AI is not taking over people that can just stop and get things done for people and be super dependable. And I think that's really important. So there will be more coming about that. I'm going to put some links in the show notes about that.
[00:13:55] Um, because I think there's. It. It'll be an annual membership. It's not high cost. There'll be new things that'll be added all year long and you can renew each year or not. So, anyway, so as you can tell, I'm wrapping up my week of steroids because I've been rambling now for a while.
[00:14:12] But here's kind of the big takeaways. You're going to get sick.
[00:14:16] I usually get sick about every year, 18 months, and it's a doozy when it happens.
[00:14:23] And I get mad because I take all those vitamins and do all that stuff. And it still happens, but life happens. Your dog's gonna blow out a knee or something else.
[00:14:32] Cousins will move from prison facility to prison facility. You'll lose your voice and your doctor will ask if you need a note for your boss. And you'll think, I am the boss.
[00:14:42] But maybe I do need that note just to remember, to remind myself it's okay to rest.
[00:14:49] So I would say keep documenting your processes.
[00:14:54] Know who your backup people are for every client, for every type of project.
[00:14:59] Use tools that other people can access.
[00:15:02] Give yourself some breathing room on your calendar. This is one thing I didn't talk about. Putting in some buffers in between meetings just so you're not running hard all day. And most of all, just give yourself some grace, because being human is part of the business plan.
[00:15:17] So thanks for joining me on this episode of Confessions in the Home Office. I mean, usually a little more scripted, usually have a little more of a tight outline. And this day was just. This episode was just a complete freestyle. So let me know what you think and keep working smart, keep planning ahead, and watch those dog's knees when they're outside running in the yard. All right, I'll see you next week.
