Denise Duffield...:            Hey gorgeous, before we get started on today's episode, I have a huge favor to ask you. Over the next couple of months, I'll be launching some new business trainings completely focused on helping you to grow your business. It's a really special opportunity to get some business training from me and my team to help you set up your business. Now, we are so close to wrapping up everything for the launch, but here's where you come in. Please take just a couple of minutes to answer this super short survey. There are only three questions you need to answer, but I want to make sure that I'm covering everything that you need to know and everything on your wishlist to learn from me about business. Just go to denisedt.com/survey. Thanks so much and here's today's episode.

Speaker 2:                           (Singing).

Denise Duffield...:            Hey there gorgeous, it's Denise and welcome to this week's episode of Chill and Prosper. Now, I am talking about something that really annoys me this week and this is the beauty of having your own podcast, right? Every time you see something that annoys you, you can just take a note for it and then that will inform what your podcast episode's going to be coming up. I actually didn't realize this annoyed me for such a long time, because I totally bought into it as well. And I am talking about this trend of asking people how many hours they work in their business. And I did totally buy into this a couple of years ago because it just felt like, "Wow, this is cool. You can hardly work and make heaps of money." And of course, the most famous example of this is The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss.

                                                I read this book when it first came out. God, I didn't even know how old I was, but probably I was mid-20s I'd say. And just this idea that you could work less and earn more totally blew my mind. It really did. And it was a game changer for me of just seeing the possibilities for business and creating passive income and marketing in a different way. And so even Tim Ferriss himself says, "Guys, it's not literally about working four hours a week necessarily. It's just about working on the things that are important to you and creating your business in a way that doesn't stress you out and that gives you energy for other staff." And I am a ruler archetype in the sacred money archetypes, and so I'm a workaholic sometimes and I can work and work and work. And so for me, that idea of making things simple and streamlined was really helpful.

                                                But then, I have seen it a lot the last couple of years where people share how many hours they work and I love this transparency. I love it so much. My friend Leonie Dawson talks about how she builds a multimillion dollar business on 10 hours a week. And I actually do believe Leonie because even though she has some of those creative workaholic tendencies like I do, she genuinely spends time in her garden and on her art and with her kids and things like that. So, I love the fact that she talks about that. Here is where the problem starts, okay? When people then compare themselves to others. So you might have seen Leonie's post, you might have seen things like 4-Hour Workweek and go, "How can I get that done and how can I work less?" And so, people ask me a lot and they say, "Well Denise, okay, you've got a multimillion dollar business. How much do you work?"

                                                It's such an irrelevant question, okay? And I'm not being mean. It is just such an irrelevant question and there are so many better questions to ask. The reason why it's irrelevant is that we all have completely different capacities for work. We have different procrastination. We have different goals. We do completely different businesses. Our output might be completely different and the quality of work that we do might be completely different as well. So, let me just explain for myself why I find that such a hard question to even answer because... So, I have a course called money bootcamp. It is an ongoing course where people are in a group, we have new people join all the time, and my role in that is to do the live calls and to answer questions in the group.

                                                Now, when I first started that, I was in the group seven days a week, all day long. That doesn't mean I was in there literally 18 hours a day. It just meant that I checked it first thing in the morning, I checked it during the day, and I checked it before I went to bed at night. And so, I wouldn't even be able to add up all of those things because it might have been logging in while I was sitting at the doctor's waiting room and answering a couple of questions. I don't know, it might have been in the car. So I actually do a lot of work in the car when Mark and I drive out to our farm, which is about 45 minutes. And I sit there and I do work on my phone. So, it's really hard to quantify this when we actually are living these lives where we can check in and out of work whenever we want to, right?

                                                And so, work can spread and infiltrate into our entire lives. For me, so much of my work is thinking of new ideas for marketing, thinking of new ideas for podcasts. Those ideas come to me when I'm on the massage table, when I am going for a swim or a walk, when I'm having a shower. So, do I add those up as work time? How would I even quantify that? The other thing where I'm not going to ever answer this is because I've got ADHD. So, I'm someone who procrastinates all week and then I might do 40 hours of work and manipulate time and space and do that in two hours and have this incredible download. And so, if you're comparing your workloads and your output to me, just know that I have ADHD and I procrastinate and I think about my business 24, 7. And you might not need to do that and you might not need to compare yourself to that.

                                                On the flip side, sometimes people who are asking, they're trying to get permission in some ways. So you might have thought that and gone, "I want permission to work less," or, "I want permission to do things in an easy way," or, "I need permission to grow a team and create some ease." So usually, it comes from a place of... It could be a place of pain that you're just going, "Oh man, I don't understand the secret that they all seem to know," or you are frustrated with yourself and you're frustrated with some aspects of how you do business. So I understand the curiosity that people have, but I just wanted to do this episode to kind of tell you that it is kind of irrelevant, unless you're exactly the same as those people. The better questions for you is to think about how much do I want to earn and what do I want to do for that money?

                                                Because when you start to realize that one, we all have different income goals, but also we all have different purchasing powers, right? Your dream home in your town might be a completely different price from someone else's dream home. So even comparing money goals isn't always the most useful thing either, right? We sometimes have different currencies, as I said, we live in different states or different towns that have different purchase power, and we all have different desires and goals for our life. So you have to do some work there and to ask yourself, "Well, how much do I want to earn?" Before you start to compare your workload and your work ethic or your output to someone else, because you might decide you are happy with a very simple business, a very simple business model. You might realize that you don't want to do what other people are doing, that you don't want that complication.

                                                There is someone that I've been curious about recently and she earns a ton of money. I'm talking $30 million or something crazy. But I look at the way that business is run and every part of me just goes, "Do not want to do that. I do not want to have multiple coaches working under me. I do not want to have multiple touch points for me to work with somebody. It's just not my cup of tea." And that's totally cool. It's so empowering to just know that about yourself, instead of feeling like a failure or feeling like you're not living up to your potential or other people's expectations of you. So, that's just a really key thing to ask yourself is how much do I want to make? And then, the next question then is a consequence of that, right?

                                                Because if you want to make a million dollars, you have to make a million dollars worth of value for people. And you can do that in so many ways. You can break it down and go, "How many $10 things would I need to sell? How many $100? How many $1000 things? How many 10,000?" And you can work out your own combination. But if you think to yourself, "Okay, a $100,000, a six figure income in my business would make me feel like such a success. It would feel so good," well then, you can make decisions based on how many hours you want to work, what kind of pricing would you want to set up for that. And then, it all kind of just tumbles into place rather than comparing yourself or setting this goal of, "I need to have a business like that person." It's totally irrelevant.

                                                Okay. So I'm going to take a really quick break, and then after the break, we're going to talk about how to set up your business to work for you and better questions to ask. But before you go, I have an upcoming training coming up in a couple of months around business and I would love your input on what you need to see in that course or what you would dream to see in that course. So if you go to denisedt.com/survey, you can just fill in... There's three questions, but it will really help me to know what business advice you would like from me, okay? It will only take you a couple minutes. Please go do that now and I will see you after the break.

Jo Ebisujima:                      Hi, I'm Jo Ebisujima. I'm a Brit living in the rice paddies in Japan and I run The Wonder Mom Success Club, helping moms to be more productive and build their business around their family. I've been a huge DT fan for years and one of my big aha moments was reading her first book when I realized I could use the same baby step approach to upgrades that I use with productivity. That is to say, I don't need to refit the entire kitchen, I can start with just buying a few nice plates, or I don't have to buy a whole wardrobe of clothes, I can replace the saggy, old, gray knickers. It's totally doable even if you're just starting out on your money journey. So, my family now call these mini upgrades and they are all on board and love it too.

Denise Duffield...:            Okay gorgeous, welcome back and thank you if you went and did that survey for me about the upcoming business training. Again, it's at denisedt.com/survey because I've got some cool stuff coming up.

                                                Now, we are talking about just this weird thing about asking people how many hours they work. And I love the transparency, I love when people share it. I just don't love when we compare ourselves or think we have to build a business like that. So, here are some better questions to ask yourself. We talked about how much do you want to earn and what do you want to do for it? But let's break that down even further, okay? Because you're allowed to build your business to work for you and your personality. If you don't, you run the risk of burning out, being resentful of your clients, and then just not even having a business to help people with. So we're doing this for longevity, we're doing this for the sustainability of your business. Not because you might think it's selfish or greedy or you've been told the customer is always right.

                                                Okay. So, how many hours do you want to work? That's the big question to ask yourself is if you see people and they seem to be living this chill life, what do you want for yourself around that? Do you want to not work on weekends anymore? Do you not want to work on Mondays or Fridays? You can absolutely choose. Now, when I started my business, I didn't think I could choose. It just didn't occur to me that I could choose, to be honest. And I started out as a coach and I had clients all around the world and so I wanted to be available to them. I wanted to be generous to them. So I thought, "Wow, I don't want to ask other people to work outside of working hours." So I will have my first clients at 4:30 in the morning, I will have my last clients at 9:00 PM at night because I wanted to work within different time zones. And I was so burnt out and this was pre-kid. So I was just like, "Just suck it up and do it." But it felt really horrible.

                                                So, the first upgrade I made was to only work 9:00 to 5:00. And then I was like, "Oh, I'm not going to do Saturdays anymore," because I felt like, "Saturdays in Australia are Fridays in America and the UK," and, "What if people want to have a session with me on Fridays? I have to be available!" So, even just taking those coaching hours down to a reasonable time for me was life changing. And so, you might just make a couple of little tweaks like that and it's totally okay to do it. And occasionally, someone would go, "Oh, it's like that's after hours for me," and I'd just say, "I'm really sorry. I live on the other side of the world. That's my availability." It is what it is. And I felt like a B-I-T-C-H, but I needed to put my own oxygen mask on first. Otherwise, I honestly would not have survived doing years and years of coaching like that.

                                                The other thing for you is that you might realize that you need spaciousness between clients. And so if you use an online system like Calendly, for example, it will automatically block time out because I used to have them back to back and I'd be like, "Oh my God, I've been holding in this pee for three hours. I need to quickly go and pee before my next client." And there was just no spaciousness there. So, that could be an amazing upgrade for you to feel more spacious. You might realize that you can only take on a certain amount of clients at a time just to have that spaciousness around thought and feeling and workload, right? And if you're someone who just bangs them all in and you regret it, then that can be an incredible upgrade where you say, "You know what? I'll only take on two website clients at a time. I'll only take on three coaching clients at a time. Otherwise, I will reach my limit."

                                                Now, I remember meeting someone in my first year of coaching and I had a real shame about the fact that I could only do about eight clients a week before I felt too stressed. And I was really just going, "Oh my God, I'm such a lightweight." But it was just too much to hold and too much space and I probably hadn't learnt enough boundaries and all that kind of stuff. So each of those clients, it wasn't just an hour. I was doing three hour sessions with them. But I still was like, "Oh, eight's my max," and when I got to 10, I was just like, "Oh man, this is such hard work." And I met this lady at a coaching seminar and I was asking the same thing. Instead of saying, "How many hours do you work?" I was asking everyone, "How many clients do you have a week?" Because I had this insecurity that I was being lazy and just not trying hard enough.

                                                And she said, "On average, about a hundred." A hundred clients a week for an hour each. She was literally doing face-to-face work with clients a hundred hours a week. She was not even joking. It just blew my mind. First of all, I felt like the biggest loser, but then I was like, "How does she do it?" But you know what? That might feel really easy for her. It would feel hard for me, but it would feel really easy for her. And so, you can't judge either way and also you can't judge yourself, okay? You can only just ask yourself that question, how many hours do I want to work? And then give yourself permission to reduce those hours, to create those spaciousness, to block out your calendar. One upgrade I made recently is during the week of the end of the month is when I have two money bootcamp calls. One on a Thursday night, one on a Friday morning. And for me, that was such an upgrade, because I used to do them every week for six week blocks and it was so exhausting. So, that was a big upgrade.

                                                And then, I realized that I was still over-delivering and making them 90 minutes. And so I recently just went, "No, 60 minutes is more than enough, okay?" So, I made that change. And then, I realized that Thursday night call from 8:00 PM till 9:00 PM was... I was starting to get resentful about it because it meant that I was really buzzing. I couldn't get to sleep. It made me really tired for the call the next morning. So then, I changed it to 7:00 PM, 7:00 to 8:00, and then I can go and watch an episode of Bridgerton or something afterwards. I just felt really good about that. So, you can make those little tweaks and changes. They don't have to be set in stone. You can renegotiate with your clients. You can change those things at any time.

                                                But I also just realized that, that week kind of knocks me out and I can't go into those calls exhausted from other commitments. So now, because I know when those calls are going to be, I literally go into my calendar and block it out for the whole year. And I put in call week, no calls. Nobody can book into my calendar. I need that week. And then, I go and get a massage either before or after. I go get an IV infusion. I just do things to fill my cup, so then I can show up and serve for those people in my money boot camp. That's why you're doing it. None of these reasons are selfish. It's about how can you thrive so then you can help more people? How can you thrive so you can make more money and change the world?

                                                How can you put your own oxygen mask on first, thrive, so you can show up and serve a long time in the future? So, you can make any of those tweaks that could be so simple for you right now. Yeah, and then think about that in different categories of your business. So I know that if I have one or two podcast interviews, I'm kind of wiped creatively for the rest of the day. And I used to just block in lots of them or I'd block stuff in and then have to do creative work like writing scripts or doing something like that. And now, I realize I can't. So you'll have capacity around your own time, you'll have capacity around different parts of your business, and it's totally okay for you to shift those things around.

                                                You might decide to look at your cycle around that. So my friend Stasha, who has something called the Period Coaching School, she talks about designing your business and your workflow to align with your cycle. Even if you no longer have a cycle or you don't have a cycle, you can still do that. You could align with the moon. You can align with parts of the month where you feel more in flow, or you might have other commitments. You might be a solo parent who has their kids week on, week off. So, you might design your business around that flow to make that feel really good. The other part of that is when you're designing for capacity around time and energy and clients or different parts of your business, it's also okay to design it around that timing thing, okay? So you might work really well at 4:00 AM because you either have stayed up all night, because you work best at night, or that 4:00 AM is because you like getting up early, okay?

                                                So, we've got to stop taking advice about five things that millionaires do. All millionaires get up at 5:00 AM. No, there are just no rules anymore about anything like that. And we've got to stop perpetuating it, we've got to stop telling ourselves that there is one way to do business, and we have to give ourselves permission to do things that feel good for us and help us thrive. Now, there's so many little avenues you can go around that. For example, you could look at batching things. Doing work like batching up all your podcast interviews or writing a month ahead of your newsletter. Now, I have a whole episode around this. It was one of the most commented on podcast episodes I've ever done. It's about batching. So you can find that, you can just search for that in your podcast thing. Go and look at that.

                                                But also, I've got some things coming up where we're talking about designing your business to be in alignment with your particular strengths and challenges. So if you love personality tests, if you love archetypes and things like that, you are absolutely going to love this upcoming training. I've been working on it for months now. It's been super fun. But if you want to find out all about that, first of all, go do the survey because then you'll be on my newsletter list and we can make sure that you are first to know. That is at denisedt.com/survey. We're still making those tweaks on that course. So if there's something that you really want to learn how to do in your business and you really want that permission to design it the way you want to design it, then make sure you go fill in that survey so I can make sure it's useful for you. Okay, so stop asking people how many hours they work. Stop caring about it all together. And I have one last final thought for you straight after this last break.

Natasha Bray:                    Hi, everyone. I'm Natasha Bray and I live in Wales in the UK. I'm a success mastery coach and healer for women who want to unlock the ultimate up-level. I joined money bootcamp in August 2017 when I was at a really low point in my life. I was stuck around 3K months in my business and I'd just become a single mom to a 10-month old baby. I'd followed Denise for a while and I was really attracted to her laid back energy. Since joining boot camp, my life is now unrecognizable. My biggest money block was not being able to have money and love, and now I have an overflow of both.

                                                The same month I joined money bootcamp, a new man was literally delivered to my doorstep. We're still together now and I've grown a seven figure business in that time too. What I most love is the community. Being surrounded by other women achieving big things with money is so inspiring and it shows you what is possible for you too. Over the next year, I'm excited to be moving into my million dollar home with my partner and to be able to impact millions whilst making millions. I'm forever grateful to Denise and the other lucky bees for the part that they've played in this journey.

Denise Duffield...:            Okay. So my final thought for today is around perfectionism because often, when we're trying to design our business, we're trying to look for answers. It really comes to this place of feeling like we have to be perfect. And we're never going to be. Perfection doesn't make you money. Perfection is not the goal at all. And so, I want to read a few quotes for you. So Amy Bloom says, "You are imperfect, permanently and inevitably flawed, and you are beautiful." And that's just such a wonderful reassurance I think to realize, "Hey, I'm never going to find this perfection. I'm never going to find the perfect way to do things. I am allowed to shift and change no matter what."

                                                And then, the last one I want to share is from Sharon Salzberg and she says, "You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection." And you are allowed to love yourself so much that you give yourself permission to be imperfect. And sorry, one other quote before we go because this is such a good one too. This is from Marilyn Monroe and it says, "Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are." Isn't that beautiful? "Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are." So you're whole, perfect, and complete, your desires are valid, everything you want to build in your business for yourself is totally valid and acceptable, and you are enough. All right gorgeous, I will see you on next week's episode of Chill and Prosper. Have a great week. Bye.