Welcome to the unfolding journey of my life's interaction with the philosophy I call 'Life, then Business.' What started as an attractive idea has become a way of life... but it didn't come easily. As a business owner, I got stuck in the very trap I diligently tried to avoid until the COVID pandemic served as a wake-up call. This episode is a bit of my story and what 'Life, then Business' means to me.
Too many business owners are owned by their business, organize their lives around their business, and are sacrificing too much life for business. Do you remember the 1990's phenomenon that was Susan Powter, "Stop the Insanity!" That's how I feel about business owners letting their businesses define and run their lives. It's time to change course and build a business that serves your life. Join me in embracing a fuller, more intentional existence where we move beyond lip service or striving, and dive deep into truly living Life, then Business.
Welcome to the unfolding journey of my life's interaction with the philosophy I call 'Life, then Business.' What started as an attractive idea has become a way of life... but it didn't come easily. As a business owner, I got stuck in the very trap I diligently tried to avoid until the COVID pandemic served as a wake-up call. This episode is a bit of my story and what 'Life, then Business' means to me.
Too many business owners are owned by their business, organize their lives around their business, and are sacrificing too much life for business. Do you remember the 1990's phenomenon that was Susan Powter, "Stop the Insanity!" That's how I feel about business owners letting their businesses define and run their lives. It's time to change course and build a business that serves your life. Join me in embracing a fuller, more intentional existence where we move beyond lip service or striving, and dive deep into truly living Life, then Business.
Brianna Siobhan:
Hi, it's Brianna Siobhan here here with the Life Then Business podcast. This is my first full episode and I thought what better way to start than to answer the question what does life then business mean? Or at least what does it mean to me. So I'm going to share with you a little bit of my history with this concept of life then business. So this idea for me came from seeing small business owners. I was raised by entrepreneurs and I had a lot of exposure to other small business owners, both before and after starting my own businesses, and what I saw was I saw so many business owners where their business owned them instead of the other way around. Their lives were organized around their business instead of the other way around.
Brianna Siobhan:
I believe your business should be supporting your life, not your life supporting your business, and it's such a common trap that small business owners get caught in of their life supporting their business and their business owning them. So I held this belief for many, many years. It's been over 20 years that I've been in business myself as a business owner, and even before that, but I've held this belief that a business owner should have a business that supports their life. But if you looked at my business until just a couple of years ago, or I should say any of the businesses I owned up until a couple of years ago, you would have seen that my results, my life and my business did not line up with this concept and that although I had the idea and the belief in the concept that my business should be supporting my life and I should be owning my business, I wasn't living it. And there's two reasons why. One is I had this conscious thought and belief that it should be life and then business, in that order. But subconsciously I had a million reasons why it wasn't possible for me, or it wasn't possible for this business, or it wasn't possible yet I needed to get to XYZ stage of business before I could live that way. So I had all of these reasons and excuses that we're not particularly conscious. They were more subconscious and they got in the way. When it comes to your subconscious beliefs and thoughts, they are always going to be more powerful than what's in your conscious mind. So unless we kind of get an eye on what's going on subconsciously and make sure we're wiring our subconscious brain to be in alignment with our conscious thoughts and desires and goals is never going to happen, so that very much was going on for me. The other reason is I didn't have the skill set there is a skill set to how to build a business to support your life of how to organize your life so that it comes first and your business gets organized around your life. There's a whole skill set to how to do that and I didn't have that skill set. I didn't even realize it was a skill set I needed to develop. I just believed in this idea, this theory, and then I couldn't figure out why I wasn't living it.
Brianna Siobhan:
So for many, many, many, many years, too many couple decades, I put my business first. It was my first priority, day in and day out, late at night on weekends. I think back and I think, oh my gosh, my poor husband never saw me. I was working all the time. I had big goals, I had big ambition and I believed if I worked long enough and hard enough, I could get there and then I'd be able to live my life.
Brianna Siobhan:
But then I had a kid, and you know what Time doesn't stop. Kids grow up and they grow up fast, funnily enough. I remember when I was a little kid and adults around me going oh my gosh, you grow up so fast. And I was like, are you kidding me? Is taking me forever to grow up? But the reality is, as an adult, with the perspective I have as an adult, it took forever to grow up as a little kid, but as an adult it goes by so fast. So I had a kid. He started growing up and I realized that I had one chance to put him first, and so I did. I learned how to put him first.
Brianna Siobhan:
The only problem is I didn't continue building the skill set from there, so I put my kid first, but then my business came next and my business pretty much took everything else that I had. There was pretty much nothing left over for my spouse, my family, my other family, my extended family, my friends, and certainly not time for me. It really wasn't much of a life. There was a lot that was fulfilling in being a mom, there was a lot that was fulfilling in my business, but ultimately there was so much missing from my life. So I lived that way for a long time in multiple businesses.
Brianna Siobhan:
And then something happened. We had a pandemic, the COVID pandemic hit, and at that time by that time I was running a CPA firm and tax season was always tax season. It took over my life and we were in our second COVID tax season in 2021. And I got COVID. And I got COVID at the very end of January. Now, most of you are probably not CPAs and you don't really know the flow of tax season, so let me tell you people think it's all about April because April 15th is the filing deadline, but really January is our warm-up, and then February, march and the first half of April were slammed. So it is 10 weeks of intense work and most large CPA firms have mandatory overtime for every single employee and folks work 80 hours a week for 10 weeks straight.
Brianna Siobhan:
So that's when I got sick, was right there at the end of January, at the beginning of those busiest 10 weeks, and not only did I get COVID, but it took me two months to recover and be able to actually go back to work full time. So eight out of those 10 weeks I was out of commission. I owned my own business. I was the only one who knew how to do some of the returns that we prepared. I reviewed every single return that came through my office because I did not yet have senior enough staff to do reviews, and so it was brutal, to say the least. It was a very, very hard season. I never want to do that again, but I learned something really important and I'm actually really, really grateful for that experience.
Brianna Siobhan:
I learned two things. One is I learned what my team could do without me, and it was a lot more than I realized, and so there were a lot of things that I was spending time doing that I didn't need to. That was contributing to my overwork, my overworking and underliving, and so seeing that was the first step to starting to develop more of the skills of how to change that. The other thing that I really understood and I really got from that experience was how spending the prior decade not taking care of myself contributed to me being ill for two months straight. If I had spent the prior decade prioritizing my health and my well-being and my wellness I have a hunch I wouldn't have been sick for so long. Now there's no way for me to know that for sure, but I have a pretty strong hunch. So I got it. I understood the impact of how I was living and how I was running my business, and so I started to make changes, and over the last couple of years. It's been three years now. I have made massive, massive changes in my business and in how I run my life.
Brianna Siobhan:
So before this watershed moment of getting COVID and being ill for so long, I was working 60 plus hours a week, year round, not just tax season, year round. I took one to two weeks off a year for vacation. I worked holidays. I got sick frequently and when I got sick, I got sick Like a cold would knock me out for a week and then I worked like crazy to catch up. I actually wasn't earning enough. I was barely paying the bills. I didn't have much time for much of anything else. I didn't have time or energy for much of anything else. At best I had a date night with my spouse on a monthly basis, but even when we did go out, I was usually too tired to enjoy it. I rarely spent time with friends. I stopped playing music, one of my biggest passions. I rarely went hiking my mountains and the other biggest passion I have. I think I didn't travel beyond just the few states around me, and those were trips with my son A very little bit of time that I did spend with him one-on-one on vacations, and ultimately I was tired and I was stuck and I was broke. In other words, nothing was working about any of it. Now, three years later, I look back on the last year. I averaged about 40 to 45 hours a week working. I still want to bring that down. I want to be less than full-time, but that is a big improvement over the 60-plus hours per week I was doing before. Last year I took three months off. I also took holidays off.
Brianna Siobhan:
I got to have three international trips wonderful adventures. I spent six weeks in Europe, I spent two weeks in Ecuador and I went back to Europe. I had actually quite a fun trip. I spent a few days in California, a week in New York and then a couple of weeks in Spain. On these trips I spent time with my mom, who is 78. Really important to me to spend time with her while I still can. I spent several weeks with my son traveling and adventuring. My son is nearly 17. Again, really important to me to spend time with him before he's off and launched and having his adventures without his mom. I got to spend a couple of weeks with my spouse vacationing and adventuring in New York and in Spain. They were really wonderful trips. It was fantastic.
Brianna Siobhan:
I earned more last year than I ever have before, so I've actually not just paying the bills, but I'm able to save and invest. So working less, taking more time off, earning more and in my business I do so much more of what I love and a whole lot less of the stuff I don't love. The bulk of my time is on things that I love and I'm really good at, and very little of my time is on the other stuff. So I get regular dates with my spouse. I get regular time with my son. I was available to support my mom when she went through a medical issue. I get to spend time connecting with my friends on a weekly basis. I'm mastermind with a group of women. We have weekly calls and in contact with each other daily. I started writing a book in this last year. I taught some classes, ran some workshops and I'm starting a podcast. So there's a whole lot of life going on for me now that wasn't before and under. All of this is an undercurrent of my taking care of myself.
Brianna Siobhan:
I made a decision when that COVID experience happened. I made a decision that I was no longer going to sacrifice my health, my well-being and my life to my business and I started to put my well-being first. So life, then business, means to me getting to build the business that I want, putting my self-care, my well-being, my wellness first. What that means is sometimes I go to work late because I need that time to get my walk-in. It means that I leave on time even if I have to-dos that are going to flow over to tomorrow or next week. If I am taking time out for a medical appointment or a massage or an appointment with my child, I don't make up those hours by working extra. When I need rest, I rest. These are some of the pieces of putting my life first. I make a point of dating my spouse, visiting my mom, spending time with my son, connecting with my friends, connecting with my extended family. I used to only see my extended family when they happened to come to town. Now I actually take some time off and go see them. I'm pursuing passion projects like writing my first book and creating this podcast.
Brianna Siobhan:
Life and business means to me scheduling my vacations and my trips and my adventures first and then scheduling my business flow around that. It means being available to seize the moment when I see those moments come up, to connect with the people around me, particularly my teenager. Life then business means to me that I'm going for what I really want, not going for what I should be going for. I'm not setting realistic or reasonable goals. I'm going for what I really want for myself and for my life.
Brianna Siobhan:
Life, then business means to me seeking pleasure, the more the better. Sometimes pleasure are little moments. It's really indulging in the physical sensation of how smooth my facial cleanser feels on my face when I'm washing my face in the morning. It's taking a moment to pull over when I catch an incredible view of the mountains. I may be driving around town doing errands and I see it's clear and I can see the mountains and I pull over and just drink them in. So much pleasure in that moment. It means singing really loud in my car sometimes, or dancing around the kitchen when I'm preparing meals. Sometimes it's taking time out to completely immerse in pleasure, going to the spa and relaxing in the steam room and having an incredible massage. But it doesn't have to mean massages and pedicures all day and every week. It can be in so many moments every day and in fact pleasure can be infused in almost any moment and every moment throughout the day. So life, then business, means to me seeking and creating pleasure in my life. Relationships are more important to me than my business. My wellness, my well-being, my health is more important to me than my business. My bucket list is more important to me than my business. Living what is truly important to me, with intentionality, to have a full and rich and fulfilling and satisfying life that's what life, then, business, means to me.
Brianna Siobhan:
The other day was International Women's Day. I have a friend and mentor who lives in Sweden. She told me that the economic and business media there in Sweden said there was literally nothing to report or celebrate for International Women's Day, because women have been stepping down from positions of power and more men have been taking their seats at the table. This really hit me. I thought why is this? Why? Well, I think overall society, we've gotten better at getting women to the table and into the positions of power, but as a society we haven't figured out how to keep women there. Now there's still work to be done to get more women at the table. I'm not saying we're done there, but we've gotten better at it, but we're not keeping them there, and it's because of this concept, it's because our society is telling them business comes first and society is requiring that they sacrifice too much to keep that seat at the table, to stay in those seats of power.
Brianna Siobhan:
Life, then business means not sacrificing ourself or life for business, and so what we need to do in addition, to continue bringing more and more women into positions of power, but also learn and teach ourselves how to be sustainable in that, how to stop sacrificing too much life for that seat at the table. Burnout is real, folks. That's why burnout is real, and when we put life before business, we can turn that around. So life then business means to me not sacrificing myself or my life for my business. It means taking those seats and stepping into positions of power and embracing life, all that we want to experience in our lives. Not settling, sacrificing, compromising, living it all. I didn't say having it all. It's not about having, it's about living, living it all sustainably and with intentionality. This is what I want for me, this is what I want for you, this is what I want for everyone, this is what I want to be supporting my clients in living. So if you want this too, life then business, then join me on this journey. That's what this podcast is all about, and it's why I've got every topic under the sun that I cover, because it's all part of life.
Brianna Siobhan:
I'm going to talk about business a lot. I'm quite passionate about business. I have a lot of thoughts about business. I am so delighted with how successful my business is, particularly in the last couple years, in the time that I have reorganized it, so it's supporting my life instead of the other way around. I have lots of thoughts and skills and tools to share with you around that. But it's not just that, because it's life, then business, so I have tons to share with you around all of the other areas of life as well Marriage and parenting, and manifestation and pleasure, and on and on and on. So we're going to do it together. I hope you'll join me on this journey and if this is interesting to you and you are interested in having more life in your life and living a life of life, then business, in that order. Then join me, subscribe to this podcast and stay in the conversation with me.