230: Is Your Work Stealing Your Joy?

Hustle, grind, repeat… society has been telling us that for far too long, it is a dated obsolete model that desperately needs evolving. Let’s do business differently because you can, you didn’t start your business to work 60 plus hours a week. You’re a business owner because you want freedom, time, freedom, financial freedom, lifestyle, freedom. I’m on a mission to give you that I guide impact driven women,

just like you to simplify scale and strategize. So you can take action double down on your business and yourself without doubling your workload. I shave off time while helping put money in your pockets. I know because I’ve done it myself. Growing a seven figure business while growing a family, it can be done. You can be the visionary, the leader of a team,

the successful woman you were designed to be. It is time to stop operating at ordinary levels and choose to be extraordinary. I’m Tonya Dalton. And this is the intentional advantage. Hello? Hello, and welcome to episode 230. I want to talk about something that you probably haven’t heard discussed on a lot of shows about business and that topic is joy, happiness,

fulfillment, satisfaction, excitement for what it is you do. I think we spend 99% of our time when we’re talking about business, talking about what’s your ROI, what’s your P and L saying, what numbers are you getting in your bank account? How much profit are you making? How many customers are you marketing to? What’s your lead gen strategy? What kind of funnel do you have?

And we don’t spend any time talking about joy, happiness, satisfaction, excitement, those topics seem to be taboo. And the truth of the matter is, is for a lot of people, their businesses are stealing their joy. They’re not feeling that fire in their belly about what they’re offering or what they’re selling. They’re feeling like they’re slogging through their days.

And I want to address that because here’s the truth of the matter I like many of you I’m guessing have had those times in your business career where you thought, I’m not sure what I’m doing here. I’m not sure I’m really happy with this is this really what I want to do. And then you got to go back and you got to really dive back into who you are,

what you want, how you want to define success, to really find that fire again and light it up, pour some gasoline on it. And the truth of the matter is is you can do that. We can reignite that passion. We can read night that joy. I know I’ve had to do it for myself a time or two. So that’s what I want to talk about on today’s show.

Let’s talk about joy. Are you truly fulfilled by what you are doing? And that really boils down to three big questions. I want you to think about, and we’re going to be discussing these throughout the show. Question one, are you celebrating your successes or are you so busy chasing success? You forget to celebrate it. Question number two. Are you doing business on your own terms or are you doing on somebody else’s terms?

And then the third question we’re going to be tackling today is are you embracing freedom? Are you really embracing the freedom? Which is for many of us, why we started our businesses, time, freedom, lifestyle, freedom, financial freedom. Are you taking advantage of those freedoms or are they just consistently out of your grip? Because you can’t quite get there.

You can’t loosen up the reigns. You can unplug from your business. You can’t take time off to enjoy the freedom, which is why you started the business in the first place. That’s what I want to dive into today. I want your business to stop stealing your joy. I want your business to be at the heart of what brings you happiness at the heart of what brings you joy,

what brings you satisfaction? So let’s talk about that. All right, let’s start with that first question. Are you celebrating success? Because here’s the thing that I have learned from my own experience in building a business. Sometimes you got to see how far you’ve come to really understand how far it is. You can go. You know, so often we’re caught up in the doing,

trying to achieve the next goal on our list or trying to get to that next level of business, trying to push the funnels so that we get more leads in trying to convert more customers that we’re so focused in on the sales strategy, that we’re not taking time to step back, to really align and think about how we want our business to be run and doing in your business is great.

We have to do things in our business. That’s for sure. But when you’re constantly on this never ending cycle of doing, doing, doing stuck in this cycle, you’re never treating the small wins and successes as wins along the way we think, oh, I’ll celebrate when I achieve this giant accomplishment or I’ll I’ll celebrate. When I get to that level in business.

This is part of that someday syndrome that you’ve heard us talk about here on the show before, where it’s like, I’ll spend more time with my family. When I land this account, I will, I will take my, I will allow myself to go on vacation. When I get to this level of income, I’ll do this later and later, it seems to be this finish line.

We never reach because we’re not stopping to celebrate our successes. And the truth of the matter is we need to be celebrating, not just the giant successes, but the medium-sized successes, the small successes. There’s a lot of success that happens in our daily lives as business owners, but we get so caught up in the hustle and the grind that we become miserable.

And we think we, I can’t celebrate that. That’s too small, but when take the time to celebrate that we’ve made progress that we’ve made movement towards our goals. It really does cultivate that motivation that we need to keep moving forward. These little celebrations don’t have to be giant. It can just be a pat on the back for yourself. When is the last time you said job well done.

Look at you. You’re amazing. What great work you did today? What was the last time you actually said that to yourself? I mean that right there is just a small momentary, you know, glimpse at what celebration can look like, just kind words to yourself, but we get so caught up in this doing. And that’s what I see a lot of right now is too many people getting caught up in how much,

how many getting caught up in the metrics of the business. You know, recently, not that recently, a while back I was in this mastermind and it was filled with some names that you definitely know that you would recognize. And I was really excited about being a part of this group. And I thought this is going to be incredible because we’re going to be talking about what’s going on behind the scenes with our businesses.

We’re going to help each other grow our businesses. And here’s what I found. All they did was talk about the metrics. And I, I swear to you, these people were not happy with their businesses. They were so caught up in what was the bottom line of their business? What was the ROI for this? And they were tracking their, they were tracking their team’s time to the minute to make sure they were squeezing the very last drop of energy out of every single team member.

They were so caught up in the numbers. I don’t even think that they were stepping back to look at what they had created with everybody else in the outside world sees as successful. They were so busy chasing those metrics that they were burning themselves out, wearing themselves. They were worrying themselves to death. Some of these people were running million dollar launches and they were disappointed,

upset, frustrated, because the metrics didn’t work out the way that they wanted it to. We have to let go of the numbers. Happiness is not found in your bank account. It is not found in the bottom line. It is not found in your P and L statement. Yes, those things are incredibly important. And I think that’s a show that we need to have at some point is a show talking about what metrics are important,

but here’s the thing. If you’re chasing down just a bunch of numbers, you’re wearing yourself out, you’re exhausting yourself out because happiness is not found in your bank account. It’s found everywhere else. Yes. Your bank account allows you to do the things you want to do, but if you’re just continually chasing a number, looking for that number in your bank account to get bigger and bigger and bigger,

and you’re not ever spending that going on vacations with your family, experiencing life as a whole, you want to make more money, make more money, make more money. You’re not satisfied. And that’s what I saw with these other business owners that I guarantee you think of as being successful, who are miserable, who are unhappy because they were so busy chasing the metrics.

We lose our way. When we get caught up in the metrics, we lose our why, why is it I do what I do. Why is it? I work with the clients I work with, why is it I want to get out of bed and do this work? And again, yes, we want to know the metrics. Metrics are important.

I’m a really big advocate for knowing your numbers, but not knowing all the numbers. God knows. There’s a ton of metrics we can be chasing down in our businesses. Understanding what are the key metrics that help define success for you, understanding the metrics that are really driving your business. Let’s stop losing our way. And instead use the metrics as a way of checking in to make sure that we are on the right path.

Because if you’re so busy chasing the metrics, you’re never going to unplug from your business. And this is when we start to have that overwhelm, that burnout and just the downright frustration that comes. So let me say this again. We need to make sure that we’re celebrating the great, wonderful things we are experiencing along the way, not just when we reach this finish line,

but when we are doing amazing work on a regular daily basis, we need to give ourselves time to step away because so that we can catch our breath and we can see how far we’ve come. You know, there was a time where you wished your business was doing what you’re doing now, or you wished that you were even in business at all, because you are doing a corporate job or something else that you were unhappy with and you thought,

I just want to start a business and it will be amazing. And here you are now, have you found the happiness you were looking for? So here’s what I want you to do. I want you to consider today’s episode as a permission slip, step back, take a good look around, give yourself space to bask in the glory of your business,

and to really recognize yourself for the powerful, amazing business woman, entrepreneur that you are, because I can guarantee you it’s been far too long since you’ve given yourself that celebration. Okay. I want you to think about that. How am I celebrating on a regular basis? Am I regularly checking in with my business outside of the metrics and just assessing, how do I feel?

How are things going overall? How does business look and take some time just to take that in? Okay. That’s the first question I really want you to think on the second question is, are you doing business on your terms? Are you really running your business the way that you want to run it? Or are you running your business on someone else’s terms?

We get caught up and we’ve talked about this on several episodes. This season, we get caught up in selling to everybody, everyone who comes our way as a customer, we want to make sure that they’re satisfied and they’re purchasing and they’re converting. We’re getting caught up in those metrics of how many people convert. What’s that percentage look like. And we don’t stop to ask ourselves,

is this even my client at all? Is this the clients that I want to work with here we are. Once again, creating caught up in the metrics. How many people am I getting in the door? What’s my lead gen look like? And we get caught up in those numbers again with what’s my conversion rate. What is that looking like? We don’t stop to ask ourselves,

are these the right customers for me, for what I want for what I want to offer. And because we’re confused, we offer up anything and everything, even things that don’t align with what brings us joy with what brings us happiness as the business owner, the products and the offerings and the services that we really want to be giving to our customers and clients.

And this is when we start chasing our tails, having way too many skews or way too many offerings in our services menu, or being everything to everyone. I want you to step back and look at how many offerings you have. Is it the right number for you, or are you spreading yourself so thin? Because you’re trying to be everything to everyone.

Take a step back and take a look because there have been times in my own life where I have done everything that I thought was quote unquote, right? Because this is what people wanted from me. You know, a long time ago, way back in the day I started as a blogger and I started my blog with my two kids playing at my feet.

This is before I even started my very first business. This is like 2007. I think some in summer, 2006, 2007, somewhere around there. And I had a blog where I talked about things I was really passionate about. I did a lot of DIY projects. I did a lot of food blogging, and I thought this is going to be amazing because these are things that I love.

I love food. I love building things. I love fashion. And it was miserable. It was absolutely miserable. And I found that when I was doing this big blogging and I was sharing these recipes and I was sharing the step-by-step instructions and I was stopped, I would, you know, make, I’d get out the ingredients. I would stop. I would take a picture.

Then I would put the ingredients in a bowl. I would stop. I would take a picture. And then I would do the first step and I would get things ready and I would stop. And I would take a picture and I was taking all these pictures. I was stopping myself from truly enjoying the process. And the worst part was I would get this beautiful meal together and it would be already on the plate and I would stop.

And I’d say kids, honey, John, we wait, got to take a picture. Let’s take it outside. Let’s let’s position. Okay. We got to take a couple of extra pictures and buy a couple. I mean like 50, right? Let’s try this angle. Let’s try that angle. Then by the time the food got on the table,

he was cold. It was cold and it wasn’t good anymore. Even though I’d spent basically five times the amount of time, it normally would have taken me to put this meal on the table because I was stopping and taking pictures from multiple angles. And I thought, why the hell am I doing this? Why am I doing this? People loved my recipes.

People loved how I ran the blog. I hated it. I absolutely hated it. It’s still all the joy. And quite frankly, it’s still all the joy from my family as well, because they didn’t even get to enjoy the food. And the same thing happened with my DIY projects, where I found it. What I love about doing DIY projects is just the not thinking,

just getting in and going and focusing on the plans and the building and doing those things and the having to step back and taking pictures and making sure there were pictures of all the different stages. It exhausted me and it wore me out. And I got to where I hated that blog. And I eventually let it go, which was a good thing, because then it took me a while to really reignite my passion for food.

Again. I mean, I’ve always, I’ve, I will never stop loving eating food, but that passion I have for creating and making food, I had to actually go back and actively find it again for myself because it killed all of that joy because I was creating something for everybody else. It wasn’t making me happy, but it made all of my readers happy.

They were incredibly happy with those recipes. They loved all the step-by-step pictures, but it was wearing me out. And that’s what I want you to think about are the things that you’re doing really bringing you joy, or are you running your business for somebody else? Because quite frankly, it is not selfish to run a business on your own terms. We want to run a business on our own terms because that’s how we ignite our own passion.

That is how we get fired up for the work we do, which makes our work better. We’re better able to serve others when we serve ourself. First, you’ve heard me say this before, but we cannot shine our light on others if our battery needs recharging. And that is true in our personal life, that is true in our business. We have to make sure that our business is serving our needs and what we want and what ignites passionate us so that we can go forth into the world and ignite other people to be passionate about it as well.

It’s exhausting to not be passionate about what you’re creating. This is what I talk about. When I talk to people about, you know, when I write a book, I have to love it. I have to absolutely love it. I love a child because I’m going to talk about it nonstop for months and months and months. I can’t imagine writing a book that you don’t believe in that you don’t love.

And that’s the thing with your business. You got to believe in it. You have to love it too, so that others will believe in it so that others will love it as well. So I want to encourage you to step back and ask yourself, are you doing the things that are making you happy? Are the offerings you’re creating really aligned with?

What brings you joy? Or are you offering them? Because you think this is what everybody else wants for me. So this is what I have to offer. If you say to yourself, I should be doing this, or I have to do that. Those are not things that are bringing you, joy. The things that bring you joy are the things that you say,

hell yes, I get to do this. I love doing these things. I want you to look right now at your menu of offerings, whether it’s products or whether it’s services. And I want you to go through with a real discerning eye and ask yourself, does this bring me joy? And if it doesn’t bring you joy, stop offering it because I can promise you right now,

you probably have way too many offerings. You have way too many things that you’re offering to everybody else. So take the things off the table that you don’t even enjoy doing. So that’s something that you can do for yourself. Okay? That’s our second question. Are you designing a business on your own terms or is it on everybody? Else’s and then the third question I want you to ask yourself is are you embracing freedom,

time, freedom, lifestyle, freedom, financial freedom, location, freedom, whatever freedom it is that you’re after. Are you truly embracing them? Because the truth of the matter is way too many people have their heads down and they’re so busy running their businesses. You’re not looking up to see that you have the opportunity to unplug. You have the opportunity to step away from your business from time to time and enjoy those freedoms.

I think it’s incredibly important. This is part of what I love teaching women in my fast track to freedom formula. And what I teach in my intentional CEO mentorship is let’s find those freedoms. Let’s let’s, let’s go back and look at our business so that we can have more of that freedom in our lives, because the truth is it is not sustainable to be constantly running a marathon.

And that’s how so many women are running their businesses. If you want your business to be sustainable, you have to make it sustainable. This is not one of those things. Again like that someday syndrome where it’s like, someday my business will be sustainable. It’s like, no, no, no, no, no, no. If you want your business to be sustainable,

own it, own that sustainability. Choose how you’re going to unplug from time to time, choose how you’re going to run that business so that you actually can embrace those freedoms, put things in place so that you can step away and have that time freedom or that lifestyle. Freedom move to where you want to move. I did that. I ran my first business out of Dallas,

Texas, and I loved living in Dallas, but it was, I like to tell people too many people, too much concrete, too much, too much, too much. I wanted to move to a smaller town in the mountains. And so I gave myself the grace to have location freedom. I run my own business. My husband works for me.

We can do this anywhere. We want to, why not live? Where we want to live? Why not choose to do that now, instead of waiting until that someday when we retire, which is what so many other people do you want to be somewhere else, make that happen. You want to create time for yourself, make it happen. And I know that there’s a possibility that right now you’re sitting there shaking your head saying,

oh, there is no way I could possibly do that. I can’t move where I want to move, or I can’t run my business the way I want to run it. I can’t, I can’t unplug from my business. I can’t recharge. But the truth of the matter is you can, you have to choose to see that you have that ability.

I mean, one of the reasons that entrepreneurship happens for so many of us is we are drawn to those freedoms. We look at these people running businesses and we say, gosh, they don’t have to, they don’t take orders from anyone. They don’t want to listen to anyone. They run their business on their own own terms. That’s who you are.

Now, if you are running a business, you can do that. We have to stop treating our businesses as if, if we step away or we change the way we’re doing things, they’re not going to thrive or they’re not going to grow. We have to stop playing into the status quo because right now the status quo tells us hustle, hustle, hustle,

go, go, go. If you’re not growing, you’re dying. I don’t want that. And I can promise you if you are listening to this podcast, you’re listening to it because you don’t want it either. You know, when we follow this, these misguided ideas and we allow ourselves to play by these rules, we lose sight of those freedoms.

We lose sight of that joy that we could have in our business. We lose sight of running a business on our own terms. And that’s when we find ourselves feeling like we’re under water. Like we’re exhausted. Like we’re burned out because we’re not allowing ourselves to really embrace that freedom. And that’s what I want for you. I want you to really start by looking at how you can schedule some breaks in your days.

How can you take a half Friday off? How can you take it? And I mean off, I mean unplugged, I mean, no phone. I mean, no email. Check-in I mean, no pings from your team. I mean, no slack back on plugs. This is one of them things we do. And our fast track to freedom formula is we start with taking off,

you know, little bit of Friday. And the goal is that we get, so Friday’s off. We get to choose how we run our business. And this is the thing is we can do this. It’s absolutely possible. We just have to design the business. So it works for us instead of us feeling like we’re constantly working for the business, preparing your team and your business.

So you can go on vacation and not just go on vacation, but actually enjoy your vacation too. You know, I recently wrote an article for entrepreneur talking about the importance of play. That if you want to grow your business, you need to play more. God. We’re so serious about our businesses. Aren’t we? And we’re so serious about them that we feel like we can’t let go of them.

We can’t, we can’t turn them over to our team. We have to micromanage our team. We have to make sure that we’re our hands are in it constantly. Which means when we go on vacation, it’s not really vacation. Cause we’re still checking in a couple of times a day, or we’re still peeking at our email when we’re on a boat with our kids or we’re at the beach.

And we’re like, oh gosh, I’m worried about this project. Are people getting the work done? Let me just peek in at my slack channel. I want you to start designing your business so that you can allow yourself to go on vacation so you can enjoy that time for yourself and quite frankly, for your family. I think it’s really important. So I want you to look at your schedule and I want you to think about what are some things I can start delegating?

What are some things that I can outsource so that I could step away? So I can unplug from my business because I know this might seem scary. Trust me, I get it. I’ve been there. Anyone who’s delegated to anyone else has been there as well. It’s not easy to hand over the reins, especially if you feel like your hands have to be in everything.

I want you to remind yourself why you started this business. Did you start your business? So you could run your business 60 to 80 hours a week, so you could wear yourself out. So you could feel like you didn’t have time to really be present with your family. Or did you start this business because you wanted to have a lifestyle on your own terms.

So let’s find a way to make that happen. And that happens by you making a choice by you choosing to find that time, to delegate, to hand things over, to let it go, which means quite frankly, letting go of some of that perfection that you’re feeling, that things have to be perfect. That if you’re not doing things for the clients or the customers,

no one else is going to be able to do it as well as you all right. I want you to practice doing away with that. And let me tell you how I’m this for myself, because just like you, my business is, it’s something that’s constantly moving. We’re constantly getting orders. Then there’s constantly things to be done. Lots of projects,

lots of big events coming up, but here’s what I’m going to do. Just to show you that I put my money where my mouth is. I like to say I eat what I cook. I don’t just talk about these strategies. I don’t just talk about, you can have these things. I actually run my business on these terms. So what I am doing and I have committed to doing is I am taking a break.

I am stepping away from the podcast starting next week. There’ll be no a new episode. And the whole month of July, no new episodes coming out. This is the first time I’m doing this. We’re an episode what? 230. So 230 weeks I have consistently put out a new episode and I’m choosing to take a break. I’m choosing to step back and taking a little hiatus.

I’m coming back in August. Don’t you worry? I actually have an amazing August plan. And we’ll talk about that in just a minute. But here’s the thing is this July is for me, I’m going to recharge. I’m going to soak in some time for me and my family. And you know what, honestly, I’m allowing my team to recharge because my team does a lot of work behind the scenes.

Yes, you see, hear me on the podcast, but there’s a lot of moving parts that happen with, you know, emails going out and making sure that podcast episodes are, are produced and edited and everything is scheduled. And there’s things on the show notes and all those moving parts. It takes a lot of work. So this is a little break,

not just for me, but for my team as well. Well, and for my family who are going to enjoy me fully a hundred percent, because when I come back in August, the truth is we’re going to be in book launch mode. My book comes out October 12th and I don’t think I’ve said the name of the book on the podcast yet. So let me just go ahead and tell you the name of the book is on purpose.

The busy woman’s guide to an extraordinary life of meaning and success. Oh, I am so on fire for this message. And I cannot wait to get this book into the hands of as many women as possible, but I know that if I keep going this summer at the same speed and the same mode, I’ve always been going at, I’m going to wear my stuff out.

So I’m taking a breather. I’m taking no moment to step back to recharge myself because when we come back in August, it is all hands on deck. We’re going to go in full force. We have a really exciting event. I have planned for August. We’ve got pre-order bonuses. I’ll be talking about, we’ve got all kinds of things that are going to be happening.

Lots and lots of podcasts, interviews. So many things. So I know this is going to be a huge marathon at full sprint mode when the book comes out. So I need to give myself time to really prepare for that. And here’s the truth too. Quite frankly, we’re 230 episodes into this, into this, the show. And it’s time to shake things up a little bit.

I want to step back and I want to give myself some time just to, just to dream and think about what could the show look like? How could we reformat a few things? How can we redefine not just the podcast, but other parts of my business as well. How can we make some shifts that I know I want to make that are going to excite me and really like that fire in my belly.

I need to take a step back and do that. And I already have some really great ideas about the podcast of how we’re going to do things. I already have amazing guests lined up and I have a season topic that is ready for us, that when we hit August, we’re going to be, we’re going to be going full force because I’ll go ahead and tell you what our theme is for.

When I come back, the theme for the podcast is going to be designing a business on your terms. So we’re going to be diving deeper into a lot of what we covered here on the show. This whole idea of choosing how we live making choices. And we’re going to be interviewing some incredible people who have made those choices who have made interesting unconventional,

exciting choices in how they want to run their lives and how they want to run their businesses. So that’s what we’re going to be covering. Once we come back from this hiatus and you can already tell, I’m excited about this, this idea of stepping back and breathing for a time or two, taking some beats just for me and my family and my team.

That’s going to allow me to come back. Re-energized re excited, just re everything. Let’s be honest, just, just so ready because this fall has so much in store for us. The book is just the start. It really is. But the book is it’s really exciting. It’s exciting things. And so I want you guys to be a part of that,

and I want you to feel that same excitement coming from me. But if I keep going and I keep doing this over and over and over again, I don’t take time to give myself a break. You’re I would, I would be exhausted. I’d be worn out. I’d be burned out. So starting next week, no new episodes for the next couple of weeks through July,

but I’ll be back in August. And I hope you’ll be back here with me. In the meantime, we’ll still be running the show behind the scenes. Lots of things, lots of big dreams are going to be coming to fruition. Lots of big ideas. We’re going to be implementing and creating. Like I said, we have an incredible event I’m putting on in August and I’m going to want you guys to be a part of this because I’m gathering together some of the most powerful,

amazing women that I know to do this event with me. All right. Okay. So here’s to you reigniting the joy here’s to you running a business. So you feel on fire for it. That is ultimately what I want you to be thinking about while we’re on break. Because when we come back, we’re going to be talking about designing a business on your terms.

We’re going to be talking about how you can choose how you want to live, how you can choose the way that your life runs, and that includes your business because when you choose joy in your business, that’s when you know you’ve got the intentional advantage. Thanks so much for joining me today. Quick question though, before you go, do you like prizes?

When you leave a rating and review of the intentional advantage podcast, you’ll be entered to win my life changing course, multiplying your time. Simply leave the review and then send me an email@helloattonyadalton.com with a screenshot. I choose one winner at the end of every month. So go ahead. Do it right now. Just a quick comment with what you loved about this episode or the show in general and a rating and send it our way.

Not going to lie by stars is my favorite, but I’d love to hear what you think of the show. And if that’s not enough of an incentive for you to win the multiplying your time course, I have to tell you the reviews are the number one thing that supports this podcast. And me, it’s the best way to spread the word and get business tips and strategies to all those other women out there who need it.

So there you go. Two great reasons for you to go and leave a review right now. So go ahead and do it, send that screenshot my way, because I want to give you a free course. And thanks again for listening today. I’ll be back next Tuesday and I’ll plan to see you then.

 

 

**The Intentional Advantage podcast is a top productivity podcast for women. This transcript was made using AI.

Tanya Dalton is a top 10 best female keynote speaker, productivity expert and best-selling author.