The Power of Pause

Speaker 1: [Music] career Compass has been such a meaningful project because the strategy behind writing it was how can I help people through their own journey of burnout to also understanding if they wanted to take some sort of break whether they wanted to take an extended amount of time away from work how could they do that in a way that did not hurt their career and their career trajectory but also allowed them to still refuel themsel be able to be passionate about their life and their work again and really get aligned with what their core values are I'm Melanie bar welcome back to the shilp podcast your go-to place to empower you to live the life and business that you crave I'm here to talk about everything from Having the courage to make life and career leaps to the details of how to lead effectively create successful teams Implement strategies for growth and Infuse Tech Innovation I'm here to celebrate your wins and navigate through your challenges I live in the city now but I grew up in a town of a thousand people I've navigated major life leaps a senior level corporate career worked in professional sports and now as a successful entrepreneur who loves business technology family and making meaningful connections with you and the Sheil it Community I also love a good workout and dose of self-care magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy so turn up the audio open your favorite Notes app grab your favorite drink and here we go welcome back to the Shel to podcast thank you for joining us Laura what inspired you to transition from leading marketing initiatives at Fortune 500 companies to founding Soul Solutions the biggest thing that was a shift for me was I experienced extreme burnout and I had been working in Corporate America for the last 20 years and I knew there was something else something deeper within me that wanted to do work that would be impactful not that the work I had done on the corporate side wasn't impactful but something that more closely aligned to my values and so initially when I started Soul Solutions the thought process was how can I be a Powerhouse within an organization to be able to shift their marketing initiatives but what it really came down to what I quickly Learned was that the work that I was meant to do was being able to help leaders lead organizations in a way that was creating more sustainable success so that they weren't creating burnout on their teams and that really became the Catalyst for soul and it's so true because sometimes I've seen leaders where they put more and more on their team members instead of making sure the operations are functioning in the right way or the communication is streamlined so I see how people can get burned out in those situations yeah for sure within an organization there's so many people that you are appeasing right especially for middle management you've got your team that report to you that you're trying to essentially Shield you have your upper level leader who you're reporting to that may have specific needs and what's the department goals then there's the SE Suite of what they need and typically there's either investors if you're PE owned or there's the board even if you're private you have people who are funding these organizations that have very deliberate goals and so as a middle manager you're being pulled in so many directions and ultimately most of these managers have not received the training to be able to be effective leaders alone be able to take care of themselves or their teams in this new paradigm that we're working in that requires leaders to not just deliver results but create culture that's so true and a lot of times they have work in addition to responding to all the levels there's also the work in addition to all of the responding and managing and leading oh 100% the number of times where I was like oh it's 7:00 and now I can actually get my work done my story is not unique there's so many of us out there who are actually starting their true workday around 700 p.m. after they've had dinner they do it after their kids are being put to bed and then they're doing the Deep work but at that point you're mentally exhausted and so your ability to give your full effort impacts your own ability for productivity and Effectiveness which then starts to create the spiral of is the work I'm doing meaningful work is this actually having the impact that I want it to have and then you start to question whether or not there's a values alignment which is the first step to actually experiencing burnout how does your background in datadriven and digital marketing inform your approach to helping businesses grow through consultancy yeah my business two core areas that we're talking about so the first is around the data analytics side of it and the second is around more of the qualitative pieces so the quantitative pieces as we think about organizations it comes down to understanding how do we know who we're marketing to what levers can you pull based on the data that you have and so when we think about those areas what we have to understand is you've got tons of data that's offline data typically sitting in some sort of database somewhere or maybe in some organization's printed pieces how do we turn that into digitized formats you've got a ton of Digital Data meaning you've got your G4 your Google analytics data you've got your advertising data how does that all come together to have you really understand who is your end consumer and how can you make sure that your targeting them in the right way with messaging and content that is Meaningful to them that's actually going to convert you recently released a new book career break Compass tell us about your strategy behind writing it yeah career break Compass has been such a meaningful project because the strategy behind writing it was how can I help people through their own journey of burnout to also understanding if they wanted to take some sort of break whether they wanted to take an extended amount of time away from work how could they do that in a way that did not hurt their career and their career trajectory but also allowed them to still refuel themsel be able to be passionate about their life and their work again and really get aligned with what their core values are so the whole plan around career break Compass was all about how do we create intentional plans for an intentional pause and so many people I talk to especially when I was planning my own break didn't plan out how they were going to spend the time and what I wanted to make sure that I did for my own personal break was Max maximize the impact I was having within the break be able to get my mojo back and get clear in terms of what I want to do and then also the next piece was get clarity on how do I want to re-enter work in a way that would be impactful and be able to deliver results but also still make me feel good about being able to spend time with my family and enjoying doing the things that I love to do that's so smart and I love that Focus because mostly with people that have kids we take a step back I'm a twin Mom I had two at once I thought I'm not probably going to have this opportunity again to be in the baby stage and be with them during these moments but I remember sitting in the nursery thinking if I don't have an intellectual conversation I might lose my mind I loved being with them but they didn't talk back to me and I had two at once but you're right because I was on a nonprofit board and I was lucky enough to listen to a lot of stories of women who either were regretting not taking the time to be at home with their kids or regretting like you mentioned not planning out that time so that they could then reenter the workforce so what you're focusing on is such a needed Focus because you're right we don't always plan that out in thinking of the next phase when we're done with the break yeah 100% I think that's the key is I interviewed about 170 people as a part of this journey for the book specifically and they are seite Executives all the way down to managers and you think about it even as Gap years for college students which I never took a gap year I actually never took a gap anything up until this point and I think the key learning that I had was in each of those interviews the core areas that came up was being thoughtful about how to spend the time but also being thoughtful about what they want to do after their break to your point and so for some people they took a pivot which means that they did something totally different than what their last years of experience had been for others it went back into a similar role and allow them to be elevated in a different way so I think the CEO of task rabbit talks specifically about her break her year break that she took before she took her CEO role at task rabbit and she talks about how they had planned out their ability to travel abroad live abroad for a year put their kids into school have their kids learn a different language and really be thoughtful about that time it's really impactful for us no matter where we are in a corporate ladder or in an entrepreneurship journey of being thoughtful about how do we want to spend the time that we have in in a way that makes us feel whole not just from a work perspective but from a holistic life perspective that's so interesting and I love what they did too because when we travel we see that the world is bigger than ourselves yes I love that we can get so caught up in our day-to-day and like you said with the burnout that we don't realize that the world is so much bigger than what we're experiencing yes one of the key things that we have to think through is the world is so much bigger and there's so much for us to experience there's all the science around neur plasticity right of being able to make sure that we're continuing to learn as adults there's adult development that is happening that sometimes we forget about and a part of that is understanding how can you put yourself into new environments so that you're learning different things how can you test and be curious being able to make sure that you're taking action on them and then also how are you taking care of yourself and so in the book I talk about four Ps which is play pause plan and pursue and the whole thought process around that is a science-backed approach to elevating our joy making sure that we can be mindful and settling our nervous system being thoughtful about how do we plan activities and plan setting goals for ourselves in our lives which typically High Achievers have no problem with and then the pursuit piece is really key because now that you have all of these areas that you know you want to focus on now you've got to go try it on now you've got to go test into it and see how does it feel and is this exciting or is there an area that you need to Pivot I love that you put play first 100% yes that was very intentional so I don't know about you but especially as a parent and especially as a woman in the corporate world for so long play felt frivolous to me that's something the kids do when I would see people get engaged in different activities or go on vacations there was almost a resentment in me Melanie like almost a piece of wow good for you that you got to do that but what I learned about resentment is it's actually an internal desire of what we wish we could do if only we gave oursel the permission to do it and so play was really critical in being first for me because what I've recognized is that as adults we put play on the back burner but play is actually if you think about the science of play it actually helps us collaborate better it helps us innovate better it helps us be able to come up with new ideas and ultimately play allows us to be in flow which we honestly think of as more pause but play is what actually allows us to be in flow it's the absence of time that we start to lose track of and that's the beauty of play yeah and it's interesting cuz we're so busy with tech and it's so easy to be distracted and it seems like when we play we figure out and take the time to think about what we really want instead of just putting oursel in front of whatever distractions in front of us because it's easy to become distracted yes and that's with our devices it's so easy for us just Doom scroll and play as thoughtful it's intentional it's about I'm going to sit down and I'm going to do this thing I'm going to dedicate time to do this thing that is going to elevate me it's going to bring joy within me that I haven't felt and when you have that moment there's almost that dopamine that you get differently it's like the real dopamine not the technology dopamine and you want that more and some of that might just be doing a puzzle with your kids it doesn't have to be super complicated it doesn't have to require you to go travel the world it can be small moments that you can find joy in what do you hope your readers will experience after reading your book my biggest hope is that it gives them permission to take care of themselves and I think so often we talk about self-care as like these bubble bads or maybe massages that we take or whatever it might be but I think self-care comes down to so much more than that it's about giving yourself permission to be where you are but enjoy where you are and I think that's the difference and I have to ask this did you enjoy the writing process and do you have any advice for future authors out there yes so the writing process for me they call the crappy first draft I'll censor that but that was actually the most cathartic experience so the book actually came about because it was I had been journaling throughout my planning process and during my break and as I was talking to more and more people I thought to myself maybe this framework could be helpful to other people and so the first cut was very cathartic like it takes a long time and you do numerous Cuts after that and I think the key is allow yourself the space to continue to come up with different ideas to be able to make modifications where you need but also be done that was one thing that my editor was really great at Amy was wonderful about that piece she was like Laura we're GNA be done and you're going to want to keep editing and that's okay but you're going to have to move on and allow yourself the space to say this is it for now and there can be another version so I come from the world of digital marketing where like I can go in and make a change on a website right now if I didn't like what it looked like that's not the same as in print and so it once it's out and for me the learning curve has been being okay with what is there that it serves the goal and the intention and there's always something you can do better that's great advice cuz perfect is the enemy of the good like if we keep trying to make it our own version of perfect we'll never put it out there 100% exactly magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy we've talked a lot about business and our work life today what is one thing that you do to make sure that you find and live your joy yes so I put play paus and plan into my week so I'm always thoughtful about if I feel like my play tank my joy tank is low what am I going to do during the weekend to treat my weekend like a vacation so that's really important for me there's a researcher actually at UCLA her name is Cassie Holmes and she studies time poverty and one of the things that she talks about specifically is discretionary time correlated with happiness and what she found was is that people who had excess amount of time and then also very little time had the lowest amount of happiness and so the key is how do you find that sweet spot of being able to use your discretionary time which is around 2 to 5 hours a day and so if you think about that for me I time block everything and make sure that I'm including play as a part of my day and a part of my week and if for some reason I start to lose sight of that I make sure that Saturday or Sunday are my weekend vacation days where I can treat the weekend like a vacation I love how intentional you are and I'm a big fan of time blocking it's someone that is juggling a lot with technology and the speed of everything we do have to plan in those moments and if we do we can be intentional about them we don't have to be doing them but have our mind somewhere else yes and I think that was the key I had felt before that I lost autonomy over my schedule when I was getting double booked and just the anxiety would override me when you're super busy and you have a lot to do you have multiple teams that are reporting to you you start to lose the autonomy that you have over your own life and that's being reflected in your Outlook calendar and so allowing yourself to time block gives you that autonomy back thank you so much for joining us today please please share with us how and where we can find you and your new book thank you yes you can find me at lauren. I'm on LinkedIn and on Instagram and you can buy career break Compass anywhere books are sold thank you for joining us today I'd love to hear from you reach out to me at hello Sheil it.com on our Sheil it website or at Sheil it on social thank you to my editor richino who always makes us sound good until next time let nothing stop you from experiencing the life and business that you crave