Letting Go of Hustle Culture with Jadah Sellner

[00:00:00] Emily Thompson: Welcome to Being Boss, a podcast for creatives, business owners and entrepreneurs who want to take control of their work and live life on their own terms. I'm your host, Emily Thompson, and in this episode I'm joined by Jadah Sellner, who first visited the Being Boss Podcast way back in episode number 203.

[00:00:19] Today she's here to chat about letting go of hustle culture to build your business with a more holistic and mindful approach. You can find all the tools, books, and links we reference on the show notes at www.beingboss.club. And if you like this episode, be sure to subscribe to this show and share us with a friend.

[00:00:39] Our audience survey results are in, and yet again, the biggest challenge facing business owners like you is marketing. So I have a podcast recommendation for you. It's time to check out Imperfect Action, hosted by Steph Taylor, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. The audio destination for business professionals.

[00:00:56] Imperfect Action is a bite size online marketing podcast for business owners. Join Steph as she answers all your business marketing questions and deep dives into the nitty gritty of online marketing, content marketing, social media marketing and marketing strategy for business owners. I recently had the pleasure of sitting in on a live recorded episode by Steph, where she broke down the marketing potential arising from the world of Web3 for small business like us.

[00:01:21] And y'all listening to her talk about Web3, finally, finally made it make sense in my head and her library of content is just waiting for you to tune in, listen to Imperfect Action wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:01:34] Jadah Sellner is a best selling author, business coach, international keynote speaker, TEDx presenter, poet and host of the Lead With Love podcast. She's the author of She Builds the Anti Hustle Guide to Grow Your Business and Nourish Your Life. She's also the co-author of the best selling book, Simple Green Smoothies, where over 1 million people have embraced this simple and healthy habit.

[00:02:01] As the founder of Jadah Sellner Media Inc and She Builds Collective Jadah, helps women build their businesses and their lives in a way that works for them with love. She has been featured in Forbes, O, the Oprah Magazine and the Wall Street Journal. Jadah, welcome back to Being Boss. I am so glad to see your face cuz I can see your face and otherwise have you back on the show.

[00:02:28] Jadah Sellner: I'm so happy to be here, Emily, and I know people can't see your face right now, but your haircut is amazing.

[00:02:36] Emily Thompson: Thank you. Thank you. You know, as I was getting ready for this, I was, I was at home showering and like doing my hair and all the things. And I was thinking about the last time you and I hung out together. It was in San Francisco. Was that 2018?

[00:02:51] Jadah Sellner: It was, it was. It's wild. And we had a really full day together too.

[00:02:56] Emily Thompson: Yeah. Yeah. A really full day. A really. Fun day. Like whenever I look back at, you know, all the amazing experiences that doing this podcast has, has presented me with all the, all the fun days or trips or whatever that one day that that showing up in San Francisco for the Hivery event.

[00:03:17] Um, and really going and hanging out and having dinner with you guys afterwards, I think goes down as like, top three, maybe. It was such a great day.

[00:03:28] Jadah Sellner: Well, we want you to come back and hug some redwoods the next time you're here.

[00:03:32] Emily Thompson: Oh, I know, I know. I want to very badly. And I also have to tell you, do you remember that cute little car that I was driving? The rental car?

[00:03:38] Jadah Sellner: Yes.

[00:03:39] Emily Thompson: Was a red bug convertible?

[00:03:41] Jadah Sellner: Yes.

[00:03:42] Emily Thompson: How about I bought one.

[00:03:43] Jadah Sellner: Oh, I love it. I love it. I love that so much because you were living your best life driving it.

[00:03:52] Emily Thompson: I really, really was so funny. Sidebar story. I show up in San Francisco, had rented just like, you know, a, a compact car. Um, I show up at the airport, like I've gotten my bag, I show up at, um, at the rental car place and I'm like, you know, here to get my car.

[00:04:09] And she's like, Is it just you? And I was like, Yes. She was like, Do you want that? And she points out a red convertible bug. And I was like, Absolutely. I do. Drove it around for the weekend, Loved it so much in 2021, um, I got, it's not red, but I did by myself. One, because it made such an impression. Again, such a great trip that I needed that in my life every day.

[00:04:33] Jadah Sellner: You're, you're, it's embodied living, right? Where it's taking a piece of something and allowing it to be a part of your day to day. So beautiful.

[00:04:41] Emily Thompson: Yes. Yes.

[00:04:42] Jadah Sellner: What, what color is it?

[00:04:43] Emily Thompson: It's gold.

[00:04:44] Jadah Sellner: Ooh, I love it even more. .

[00:04:46] Emily Thompson: She's real cute. She's real cute. Perfect. We're not here to talk about my car today, we're here to talk about you and what you've been up to. We were just sort of gasping at each other that it has been since 2018. Also, since you were on the Being Boss podcast. I cannot believe that it has been four years, which is totally insane. So if anyone isn't familiar with Jadah, um, you can go back and listen to her first episode here at Being Boss with us in episode number 203. We will have a link to that in the show notes for this episode. It came out in fall 2018. You're here back now and you've been up to a lot of things. So why don't you give us little catch up. What have you been up to since we last chatted here on the show?

[00:05:33] Jadah Sellner: Yeah. Well, we, we know, we, we said that there's a bit of, a bit of flushing years down the toilet with the collective pause, um, with the pandemic.

[00:05:45] But even before that, you know, I was in that identity crisis and transition, kind of moving out of Simple Green Smoothies and into my next body of work with coaching and mentoring and leading retreats. Um, and it was in 2019 was actually a really big year for my family and I, we had really, really big loss.

[00:06:05] So my father had passed away at the age of 59 years old. Um, a few months later we put our 13 year old rescue pup to sleep. You know, we'd had her since she was a puppy. Um, the only fur baby my daughter ever knew who, you know, our dog was a little bit older than her. Um, and then a few months after that putting, um, my, my brother who was 16 years old passed away in a car accident.

[00:06:29] So it was six months of intense grief. I had never lost anyone actually in my immediate family. Um, so that was very, very intense of having those losses and also having to reconfigure how I show up in my business, and something that I talk about is like, when do we need to push? When do we need to pivot and when do we need to pause?

[00:06:54] And so 2019 then add on 2020, 2021 was just a uh, a huge pause button on a lot of ways that I had been doing business, had been doing life, and really allowing myself to reset and to grieve, and also learning how to receive more love and support. I'm somebody because I'm a community builder, I'm very generous with my time.

[00:07:19] I love to give, I love to add value and in a season of grief, I had to learn how to receive all the love that I had given for so many years. And I think for a lot of people that we've all been on this healing journey, whatever that may look like. It's not necessarily always loss of, uh, a loved one, but could be loss of anything, a business, an identity, a relationship.

[00:07:45] And something that I came up with in that time is I'm not hiding. Because it felt like I had stepped away from the world, but I said, I'm not hiding. I'm healing. And so for me, since our last catch up has been really, really huge reclamation of redefining myself and what really matters to me, um, and being able to kind of rebuild from that place.

[00:08:09] And so I've been definitely writing a lot. I got a book deal during, during that season and had kind of created my creative cocoon, and now I'm in this next season of life, which is what I'm calling my emergent expression.

[00:08:25] Emily Thompson: I love that you have all these wonderful ways of framing this incredibly difficult time in your life to, to look at it in the light that allows you to really show up and heal from it and learn from it and, you know, continue to create, um, even after going through so much personal and collective grief.

[00:08:49] High five, but also my condolences on all of those. All of those things. But again, always so amazed at your ability to reframe and show up and, and, and do the work that you need to do. Even if you know, or especially since for the past season, the work has been for yourself, not for everyone around you.

[00:09:12] Jadah Sellner: Yeah.

[00:09:14] Emily Thompson: That's amazing. That is absolutely amazing. Well, I'm glad that you have put the work in that you were here to do for this book, because this book that you have created, um, is I think one of those books that's coming out at just the right time. You mentioned this, uh, this idea that you are healing instead of hiding, which as you were saying that I remember feeling a very similar thing, though I didn't put it in such great words.

[00:09:43] Um, whenever I was going through burnout myself, and I guess it was 2018, 2019, and really feeling the need to hide and. Mm. You know, it's funny as I'm even saying this, I'm thinking, you know, being presented with maybe contention from others for how much I was hiding, but I'm projecting that I don't think anyone, I don't think there was any contention from anyone. There was contingent from myself around hiding.

[00:10:09] Jadah Sellner: Yeah.

[00:10:10] Emily Thompson: Um, so I'd love to hear a little bit from you around maybe some of those mindsets for allowing. To hide and heel as needed, um, through such a trying time for yourself.

[00:10:25] Jadah Sellner: Yeah, so I think that we really have to redefine and rethink even self care so often, right?

[00:10:32] How our society is like bubble baths and massages. But I think a big piece is boundaries is an act of self care. And so, The reason why you, myself, and anyone else when life happens, that we might say we're hiding, like we're hiding from the world and our responsibilities. That is an external definition of, of actually being able to have boundaries.

[00:11:01] Of how much I can hold in any given season of my life of we don't acknowledge when shift and unexpected things happen, and we just expect ourselves to operate the way that we always have. So we're constantly pushing. We're pushing projects forward. We're like, Hey, I committed to this. I said I would do this, so I'm going to do it.

[00:11:21] And at that same time, we are harming ourselves in that process when we don't adjust and adapt ourselves to the change, to the unexpected and allow ourselves to be whole, human, messy and all of those pieces, because for me, I wanted to keep pushing because that's what society is expecting of me. That's kind of the, the what we get from being in, in a place of hustle culture of this constant like pushing, proving, performing, people pleasing, and then we are depleted at the end of all of that. And so I really like this reframe of, you know, like I call the cycle of fear. That we get caught in when we are forcing, and then that leads to exhaustion, which then leads to the avoidance where we're hiding.

[00:12:12] And then there's this rigidity, right? Where we get stuck. We're stuck in this pattern of doing the same thing over again. And so, what I like to is like flip that of how can we be more flexible? How can we adapt to what is in front of us and, and readjust based on what's happening in our lives? And I, I think we have to keep revisiting that on a constant basis.

[00:12:36] And that's the pausing, that's the taking a step back as like stepping back is not a failure to me. It is a strategy for us to be intentional with our lives and also be realistic and honest with ourselves about our capacity and our energy. Cuz I'm sure the season of burnout for you. When you take a step back, I mean, I'm curious, I mean I know you've talked about a lot about this on the podcast, but in that season of burnout, it's like there were more things on your plate that weren't there before and now they're here or something had shifted a dynamic, whatever that is, there's, so when something changes than we have to take a step back to change ourselves or change our commitments and so that piece of boundaries of, All right, actually I can't take on more, or I need to release and let go of something that isn't serving me in this season.

[00:13:30] Emily Thompson: Yeah, I mean, you made it to where I was wanting you to go, , which I love cuz I was gonna prompt this out of you. This idea of change, because I think that the hardest part for most people when navigating through any sort of hard time or where, you know, the workload you've been or the capacity that you've had is no longer what you have or something has, has shifted.

[00:13:53] It's the rigidity in yourself in changing, uh, the idea of what it is that you need. To be supported, and whether that's more or less or whatever, that I find is the hardest part for most people. Accepting the fact that what worked for me yesterday does not work for me today, and it probably won't work for me tomorrow either.

[00:14:13] And, and coming to terms with, um, changing what your boundaries are, given the season of life that you're in. So I'm glad that you made it there because that's something that. I remember having to come to terms without myself, but it's something that I watch bosses struggling with all the time. They're struggling with showing up now, playing by the same rules they've played by for six years, um, and not understanding that the boundaries, the. The self care, the, the, the steps that you are taking or the things that you need to help you heal along the way, change as you navigate through every different phase of your journey.

[00:14:54] Jadah Sellner: Yeah, it's, it's the analogy that's even coming up for me in this moment. I used to have a pair of honeymoon jeans and so I was always trying to get back into that.

[00:15:04] And when I was 22, when I got married, so I've been married for 17 years now and. That I made that a metric of success in my body, so I. And I've moved around to a lot of places from LA to Hawaii to Northern California all, and I would keep those, like these honeymoon genes just traveling around with me.

[00:15:23] So I'm measuring myself, comparing myself to this 22 year old within my body, right? That that is, that is the metric of success that I was creating for myself. No one else was telling me I needed to fit into my honeymoon jeans and I kept carrying them around with me. And so, and I remember I actually did get back into them and then I got right back out of 'em, you know, life and all the goodies and sweets and things.

[00:15:51] And I, I had this moment where I was like, I need to release and let go of these honeymoon jeans. This is not the standard. This is not, I need to accept and love myself in every season and stage of my body, I'm a curvy woman. I've got booty, I've got boobs, I've got all the things, and it's just like it wasn't serving me to try to fit into an old version of myself.

[00:16:16] And I think we do the same thing as bosses in our businesses. So often we think that the compare and despair is coming from outside and of course, social media, all of these things we're comparing ourselves or outside, you know, to whatever other people are doing. And, but one of the worst things that we do in competition is compete with our past selves trying to catch up.

[00:16:40] Like, I, I made this much money and I cannot make, you know, any less than that amount. We're constantly trying to catch up to this past version of ourselves because we think that is our potential. That is our greatest, you know, trying to get back to the good old days, or whatever that is. So, uh, I love that you, you bring that up because we are comparing ourselves.

[00:17:01] If we look at that past self, we had different responsibilities, we had different commitments, we had different priorities, and those shift and change as we age. We are people who are aging and what matters to us shifts and changes over time, too.

[00:17:18] Emily Thompson: Think of a time when you felt disconnected from work. Maybe an important email got sent to spam only for you to find it when it was way too late. Maybe a partner or a team member took an action based on old information when an update could have saved so much time and effort, or maybe you finally went on vacation and came back to customer complaints.

[00:17:37] Being disconnected has a steep cost. If your teams and systems aren't talking to each other, it's impossible to see the full picture, to take the right actions. And do you know who pays this steepest price? It's not you. It's your customer. With all of your teams on the same page and all of your data in one place, a HubSpot can transform your everyday conversations, strategic decision making sessions and everything in between, into moments customers feel good about. And with a lovingly crafted suite of tools, you can seamlessly connect your team so everyone has access to the same data, and you're able to focus on what really matters your customers.

[00:18:12] Learn how HubSpot can help your business grow better at hubspot.com.

[00:18:19] Oh, this is all so good. Okay. I wanna talk about She Builds though. I wanna talk about this book that you have written. Um, before I dive too much in the book though, I always like to hear a little bit about the book journey. Like what made you, what made you want to write this book, now?

[00:18:37] Jadah Sellner: Yeah, so it's interesting.

[00:18:40] I got the literary agent that I worked with, David Fugate. He saw me speak at World Domination Summit for Chris Guillebeau in 2014. He saw my keynote. He said, This is a book, and started introducing me to literary agent or to, um, at book editors in Portland. And I was getting so excited. My business partner at the time, Jen Hanser, to Simple Green Smoothies, was there.

[00:19:04] And then I just got to this place where I'm like, The Simple Green Smoothies book needs to be written first. Like we hadn't even had our book. And so this idea had been planted for many, many years, but it was not the time. It was not the season for me to write this book. So this book has been on my heart for many, many years.

[00:19:24] And it was in 2018 when we were, when we last connected, where I reached out to my literary agent. I was like, I have sold my half of Simple Green Smoothies. I am ready to write my next book. Um, he's like, Great, just send me a proposal. And I was like, All right. And just. Crickets, darkness, Nothing. I was just sitting on my hands like, What is it?

[00:19:48] What am I trying to write? And I, I didn't wanna write the book that I thought that I should write or that people were expecting me to write, so I really needed to connect to what do I actually want to say? And so that took. A lot longer than just, you know, write, write a book in 30 days, that type of thing.

[00:20:07] That process does not work for me. Um, so it wasn't until 2020, the pandemic was that season of pause that really allowed me to just connect with the book. I wrote 30 thou over 30,000 words in three days, um, and I needed, I did this like online writing retreat and I, but I needed to get like out of me, what was brewing inside me, what was alive.

[00:20:38] From there, then I could start to write the book proposal and get a sense of where I was going. So that, that was kind of the process of getting to the finish line, of getting the book deal. And then there was a whole other spiral of like, But what am I really, really trying to write and say? Um, so it definitely, I went all the different ways of trying to sit my butt in the chair every day at 6:00 AM and write, and I was doing that for several months and I wasn't getting any traction from that place. So I think it's also important for us as creatives to pay attention to what works for us versus what everyone says is like you are a writer. If you sit in your seat every day and just write no matter what.

[00:21:19] That wasn't working for me, and so I had to, I ended up renting or staying in hotels for a few nights a week. I'm an immersive creator, like lock me away. I don't have to make anything for my family. What do you need to eat? How are you feeling? All of that. Just roll outta my pajamas and start writing beautiful mind index cards, all the things.

[00:21:41] For me, I need to be immersed in my work without any distraction. So that was kind of my, my writing process in, in getting the book done was finding my way of how was I actually going to get it written? But I, I faced a lot of resistance and emotional blocks along the way, So I just wanna say that. It's not an easy journey writing a book and I know you know that too.

[00:22:04] And it's also a lot different writing a nonfiction business book that mixed in with like memoir type stories than green smoothie recipes. Like one tablespoon of chia seeds, a handful of spinach like it. This is was a very different writing process for me.

[00:22:21] Emily Thompson: Oh, thank you so much for that peak behind the scenes of that process.

[00:22:26] One of my favorite things about this is two things. Two things come to mind. It's like my favorite things about what you just said. One is that you really had to put things in order for this book to come out of you. So, right. It was Simple Green Smoothies first. You knew you had to do that thing, and then it wasn't just sit down and do the second book, whatever, you know, you thought that needed to be.

[00:22:53] It was around really waiting until that next book was ready to come out of you once it had like, you know, sprouted its little seed and formed into something that was recognizable enough for you to, to do the thing. I will say I love that. That's number one for me because I've been in that state since book number one of like, there's been many books that should be book number two and I just can't do it y'all, I know there's another one in there, but it hasn't, it doesn't have enough leaves yet.

[00:23:26] Jadah Sellner: Yeah.

[00:23:27] Emily Thompson: For me to recognize what it is just yet.

[00:23:30] Jadah Sellner: And I think often we are living our books before we write them. And in that season of, of grief for me in 2019, I had a lot of comparison. There were other people who were getting book deals, people who I, that are on my peanut butter and jelly list is what I like to call it.

[00:23:48] And, and I was just like, Oh, not fair. Why? Why can't, But I, I couldn't, We can't force ourselves into creativity, into our authentic expression. Sometimes we need to live the book a little bit longer, even though we have a seed, like there's a little seedling of an idea that's there, but it's not, it's not fully cooked yet.

[00:24:10] And so we do have to let things simmer and know that even though it doesn't look productive on the outside, like I'm physically writing my book and I have my fingertips to my keys and words are showing up on, on a document. The book is being written. You're just living it. I'm sure you probably have notes, several little notes that you're kind of scribbling down when, when little sparky ideas come.

[00:24:33] And then there will be a moment where it will be time and you will grab all of those notes, pull them all together, and then assess what's really there and, and creativity. It's a process and a lot of it is very, unknown, but as humans here in our world, it's like we want to know the answer. What is it?

[00:24:53] What? What's the TOC? And it, we have to be more patient with creative projects. We have to allow the unknown, the uncertainty. We've gotta get comfortable with sitting with that, because that's actually most of the work.

[00:25:06] Emily Thompson: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I feel like most creatives really struggle with that quiet sort of inner work with creativity, especially in this world of sharing everything on the internet, right?

[00:25:16] Jadah Sellner: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:17] Emily Thompson: Of like, I don't have anything to share because it's all happening very internally. I will say, I let go of my need to like care about that. A couple of years ago, I was like, Okay, look, I, I feel it forming. I'm not going to rush it. It is what it is. I will be here for it one day whenever it is ready to show itself.

[00:25:33] The second thing I really love about what you had said is what this creative process looked like for you. Because I agree, or I hear this often as well, where, you know, for you to be your writer, you have to be sitting down every day to write and like, yes, but like, I'm not going to, or I know my creativity doesn't work like that.

[00:25:53] And a couple of episodes ago in episode 322, if you wanna go back and listen to it, you can, we'll have a link to that in the show notes or wherever you're listening to this, you can just scroll back up a couple of episodes. Um, I talked to Tieghan of Half Begged Harvest, who talked about her unconventional process for creating as well. And one of the things that I noted there that I want to sort of bring into this episode as well is that you were like, Screw what I should be doing. Air quotes, like, I need to do this in the way that I most want to do this, and that looks like x, that looks like you being super immersive, sitting down to 30,000 in three days blows my mind blows my mind, but, But if you know how this works for yourself. Embrace that and do it, and don't change your process or, I love that you didn't change your process, um, to fit what people see as like the normal creative process. So yeah, five.

[00:26:54] Jadah Sellner: Thank you. And it's, it's one of those journeys where I know that every time you face a creative project, whether it's a book or a business, each time is gonna be different.

[00:27:07] If I have a book number three in me, which I know there's things swimming around that process, as much as I want to be able to rinse and repeat the one that I just did that worked, might not be the one that's gonna work the next time. And that's why we have to be so in tune and in relationship with the work as well as with ourselves.

[00:27:26] So catching ourselves, And it's the same thing even in our businesses, being able to tune in of like what is working right now? What's not working? What might I do differently the next time? That retrospective and constantly being able to reassess so that we can readjust and then be able to, okay, realign, this is okay.

[00:27:46] We reflect, we review, we realign. And so that process, that iterative process, I think is really important. And to catch yourself when you're stuck, whether it's burnout and I'm exhausted to not just keep powering through, but like, something's not working here. I need to reassess and take a step back. Not as as, as a failure, but as a strategy.

[00:28:08] Okay. Like what's not working? Why am I so exhausted? Why am I so tired? And being able to just take inventory of that, I think is a really important practice instead of constantly moving forward, we need to assess like, something's not working here. I'm stuck. And also, for us, not trying to figure it out all on our own.

[00:28:28] I, you know, I went through therapy to kind of release some of the, the emotional blocks, the childhood trauma. I also worked with a life, my life coach, Rebecca McLaughlin, to help me kind of get out of, of the weeds and, and prioritize because you know, with a book, there's so many moving pieces. The same thing with businesses.

[00:28:49] It's like, but what do I do next? And for me, I don't know if this is for you. When I have too many to-dos on my my plate, I get overwhelmed and my response is actually to freeze. So some people when their list is, yeah, but some people, when their list is long, they can't go to sleep, and so they will go at the list and just keep, you know, it's a bottomless mimosa to-do list or just, you know, just never ending power through. I just freeze and I'm like, All right, Bridgeton, let me watch you from 9:00 PM to 5:00 AM full day work shift. That's what I will do. So I will avoid, I, I will get, I will freeze and I just won't do anything on the list.

[00:29:31] So sometimes we need someone to help us of like, here's all the pieces, but here's just the right next step for right now. And that can make it feel less overwhelming and like I can do that one thing on the list.

[00:29:44] Emily Thompson: Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Mine's not mine's books, but I will just like, I just won't get outta bed that day and just lay in bed and I'll make some great movement on the novel that I'm reading.

[00:29:54] Jadah Sellner: Yes, Yes. I call this and the book, I call it Daytime Couch time. My friend Nikki Elledge Brown and I talk about this, it's like, Are you daytime couch time or daytime bedtime where it's like we're on the couch or on the bed. We think we should be like in a desk, sitting in a seat doing some work, but we're like, Nope, I am. I'm in parallel. I am on my bed.

[00:30:14] Emily Thompson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can't even hold my head up today. Y'all.

[00:30:21] Is anyone else eyeballs deep in the return of travel. Conferences, retreats, meetups, which means receipts. I'll be honest, I'd gotten used to not having my wallet overflowing with wads of flimsy paper that I just had to save. Luckily, that's not how we have to live anymore. Not me or you. Thanks to FreshBooks Cloud Accounting.

[00:30:41] In fact, organizing your expenses has never been easier. Take photos of receipts with your phone using the FreshBooks mobile app and then throw the receipt away. You can even do one better by applying receipts directly to clients or invoices when you need travel lighter and still do your job. What more can a boss ask for?

[00:30:59] Try Fresh books free for 30 days, no credit card required. Go to freshbooks.com/beingboss to get started today.

[00:31:09] Okay. Love it. Then let's, let's dive into what this book is about. If you wanna give us like a, maybe a, maybe like a bit of context why this book was the one that needed to come out in this moment and, and how it's going to help folks who read it.

[00:31:25] Jadah Sellner: Yeah, so it's interesting. The title of this book is She Builds and I was having lunch with a friend and trying to figure out what the name of my podcast would be.

[00:31:35] It's not, She Builds it's Lead with Love, but we had come up with, She Builds as just like this thing that was circulating. I bought the domain for $1,800. I had never paid,

[00:31:47] Emily Thompson: Oh my God.

[00:31:48] Jadah Sellner: For a domain ever, but it was just, synchronistic download that I just followed and I just let it rest and I didn't, I didn't know that this would be the book title.

[00:31:58] And um, so for me, the reason that I wrote this book is as an entrepreneur, I've been an entrepreneur for 14 years. Um, I'm a woman of color. I'm Black, Chinese and white. I've been married for 17 years. I have a 15 year old daughter. And when I was reading entrepreneurial books, they were written by all, ivy League College educated white men with no caregiving responsibilities.

[00:32:24] So I did not see myself in the books that I was reading, and I wanted a book for me. I don't have a college degree, so I'm very scrappy, innovative with my entrepreneurial, I'm. Like theater background, spoken word poetry. And so I wanted, like, as Toni Morrison talks about, is if you don't see the book that you want to read, then you must write it yourself.

[00:32:46] So that was really kind of the intention. The why, the mission for me in writing this book is I wanted a business book written by a woman of color. And to that there could be more books that are written by women who have caregiving responsibilities and also are building meaningful businesses and bodies of work in the world.

[00:33:07] And so this is really, if you're like, I'm done reading books written that are centering, you know, white male stories that are very. 40, 60, 80 hour work weeks are not working for us. Um, this, then this book would be for you. Like, I want a different way. I wanna be able to build differently and not build from that toxic productivity of constantly working until you have nothing left and have nothing left to give after you're done working for your loved ones and for yourself.

[00:33:37] So this is like a warm hug of a business book that is compassionate, but also super strategic. There's, I mean, every strategy that I use with my clients, whether they're just starting their businesses or running a 5 million dollar a year company, I've put every resource, tool, worksheet thing that I coach and mentor my clients on in this book.

[00:34:01] That it could be affordable and accessible, that someone could go to a library and be able to build a business in a way that works for them.

[00:34:10] Emily Thompson: Yeah. One of the things I love most about it is how sort of conversational it is. I know everyone who, or a lot of people who listen to this podcast often say one of the things they love about it is they feel like they're, you know, sitting down at a, at a coffee table or a coffee shop, drinking coffee.

[00:34:25] That makes it a coffee table though, not that kind of coffee table.

[00:34:27] Jadah Sellner: Yes. Yes. Totally.

[00:34:30] Emily Thompson: Um, just sort of like picking in on a conversation between, you know, two folks having a good chat about doing business and I feel like this book, this book also embodies that. Um, as I was reading through it, I felt like you were just catching me up on what you've been up to and like how you're doing business these days.

[00:34:46] And it felt, it felt super easy to digest, very easy to read, which is also not something that's very prevalent amongst the entrepreneur book crowd.

[00:34:55] Jadah Sellner: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:34:58] Emily Thompson: Ok. I wanna dive into something that you present very early on in your book. Um, I think this is going to be a really great sort of mindset shift for bosses listening to this, to this podcast.

[00:35:12] I wanna talk about you, you sort of position it as a transition from fear to love, and love in particular, having some importance here. Your podcast is called Lead With Love. Um, so what is, what is that? Help us understand what you mean when you say love in this context.

[00:35:31] Jadah Sellner: Yeah. So I created an acronym inside how the book is held.

[00:35:36] So it's divided in four parts. So Lead, Optimize, Visualize, and Expand and really as the foundation of us building sustainable businesses. So when I'm talking about leading, is being able to lead from the inside out so that we are not making decisions for our businesses and our lives from external, uh, things.

[00:36:01] Or the shoulds in the world, cultural expectations, uh, that we are making decisions from within and then we can support ourselves, our family, our team, our community, our customers, all of that. So we're kind of moving our way out. Um, so that's how I'm kind of structuring that, that piece and really inviting us to say burnout is not an option.

[00:36:24] So how do we create a vision for our lives and our businesses in a way that is sustainable and then optimize, You know, we're thinking about like systems, um, but doing it in a way where we're able to really honor our time and our energy and our capacity of, um, there's one exercise in there where I talk about doing an energy audit and being able, it's so simple.

[00:36:48] It just being able to assess the activities that we're doing in our lives and wait, what are the pieces that are energizing me? What are the pieces that are draining me? And also what are the things that are kind of just neutral, like, like, they could stay or they could go. Um, one example for me during the pandemic was I noticed, I was like hashtag zoom fatigue.

[00:37:08] And I just had too many Zoom calls and I was just like, even with my friends, I'm like, I love y'all, but this I cannot do anymore zoom calls. I can't do anymore dance classes on Zoom, just I'm so over it. Poetry classes, writing, I was just doing too much on Zoom and I had to slow it down. But I realized when I did the audit for myself of like, Okay, I need to stop signing up for classes and trying to get an MBA or like a Master's in everything.

[00:37:32] Um, and also be more intentional. So I redirect at that time to more writing and being able to focus on the book during that time. Um, and then visualize is really about being able to have a vision and turning that into reality and actually, I, and I know you do this as well, of like quarterly planning, being able to be intentional about setting an intention for what it is that we wanna do, creating meaningful projects to move our, our ideas forward in a way that is realistic for our lives and honoring our capacity and bandwidth. And then expand is really about deepening. So being able to deepen into what it is that we're creating, being able to expand our capacity to show up and serve in a way that works for us.

[00:38:22] Kind of my overall philosophy is about love over metrics, which is being able to put people first. That includes you above the metrics or creating meaning behind the numbers, adding more meaning and why? Like what is the meaning? Why do I wanna make this much? Why do I wanna serve this, this meaning, this many people.

[00:38:43] So just getting more clear and allowing love to be the ethos of how we make decisions in our businesses, not from the metrics of success that were defined by other people outside of ourselves.

[00:38:56] Emily Thompson: One of the things that I'm hearing in this that I feel like makes it so different from so many other business books that are out there is one of the things that really resonates with me and what we do here at Being Boss is this like intense level of self-awareness that you're bringing to all parts of this.

[00:39:14] Um, whether it's, you know, doing everything with intention or really getting in touch with, you know, what feels aligned for you and in every phase of what it is that you are doing in where you are in business. That self-awareness piece is one, incredibly important, but two very obvious in all the things that you're talking about.

[00:39:34] Jadah Sellner: Yeah. Yeah. And I, I think it's interesting because, Yes to self-awareness and also having a holistic viewpoint of your entire,

[00:39:44] Emily Thompson: Yeah.

[00:39:44] Jadah Sellner: Your entire business and your life and the people that are in it. So, uh, one example of an exercise that I have is like a rules and responsibilities review. Like it's not sexy, but it's very practical and it's actually a tool that my clients, if you have a team, or even if it's just you, How am I doing in this role?

[00:40:03] Are there anything that is basically exhausting my energy? It's a waste of time. Just being able to assess. I think that what you're saying that that self-awareness and also just a holistic awareness of how everything that you are spending your time and energy on. How is it all doing? Like where are we?

[00:40:21] And just being able to check the status quo and not just constantly being that stuck in the rigidity of like, Well, I said this is the plan, so I'm gonna stick to it, but if something's not working, it's not working, and we need to take that step back and really look at and reassess,

[00:40:37] Emily Thompson: Oh, I am enjoying this juxtaposition you're giving to self-awareness and assessing. Because I feel like sometimes the trouble with self-awareness is that it's almost a continuous state you should have, you know, or definitely like the assumption is there that you should be always self aware. Which, not really possible, especially in like modern society and with us doing all the things that we're doing.

[00:41:03] So I'm loving that you're pairing this with this idea of assessment of maybe you can't be self-aware all the time, but you can sit down sometimes and have some sort of assessment to see, to bring self-awareness into this moment.

[00:41:17] Jadah Sellner: Yeah.

[00:41:17] Emily Thompson: Around the things that you've been doing to see if they're aligned or not.

[00:41:21] Jadah Sellner: Yeah.

[00:41:23] Emily Thompson: I never really thought about that. That's a, That's a good one. I might have to take that one with me.

[00:41:28] Jadah Sellner: I love it.

[00:41:30] Emily Thompson: Might have to take it with me. Makes it feel much less intimidating to think of it as occasional assessments.

[00:41:37] Jadah Sellner: Yeah, and I think that we have, you know, Also, wherever you might, your energy or your focus or attention or your passion or your obsession is use that as a tool to get you to be more self-aware of like your highest value is in business building and creation.

[00:41:55] I feel for me that building a business is the greatest personal growth trim. For myself. I have made all of my best friends and deep relationships with women because I started a business. I had so much more struggles with it before that. And so for me, business is just a vehicle for my creative expression.

[00:42:18] It's also a beautiful tax writeable, , um, contribution for my friendships that I have. I have people in parallel playmates on this journey with me who are also business owners, who are also women, who are also moms. Like very similar things that we can talk about all the full life integration of what we have going on in our lives that I think for anyone who's listening is like, what do, what are the things that I care the most about right now, and how can I find other people who are on a similar journey as me and even my husband and I we're, He's like on a spiritual seeking, you know, kind of that midlife crisis season. Like he's just his interest, so he's looking for friends in parallel playmates that are into jujitsu and spiritual awakening and all the things, and I'm, I'm in a different place and season. So we have to pay attention to like, what is it that we're going through right now and how can we find people that could be on this journey with us so that we don't feel so alone? I don't think that we need to do life alone.

[00:43:26] I think it's so much for so much more richer, um, when we have deeper relationships with people that are in similar phases and seasons as us.

[00:43:36] Emily Thompson: I agree with that a million percent for sure. So I would love to hear from you, you know, going through, um, how you have laid out this framework for building the thing that you are here to build, to tackle entrepreneurship from this more holistic, um, self-aware space. Why should we?

[00:44:00] Jadah Sellner: Mm. Yeah.

[00:44:01] Emily Thompson: What's the point?

[00:44:02] Jadah Sellner: Yeah, I love that question. I, for me, I truly think that it's about building a compassionate relationship with ourselves and with our work. We spend most of our waking hours and, and whatever work it is, whether you're an intraepreneur inside someone else's company, and actually many of my clients' team members will use a lot of the exercises within the book because it is back to that just building a compassionate relationship with yourself, and if business is one of those main buckets in your life, this is a compassionate companion for you to build in a way where you're not harming yourself. I just think men or the mental health crisis is so intense trauma is being reactivated with our leadership, with just all of the things.

[00:44:53] And so for me, why it matters is because we cannot continue to keep harming ourselves while we build. We need to do it in a compassionate way that is not just loving to our customers and our clients and our community, but also to ourselves. Cuz ultimately for me, that is my highest value, is love. And so I will use business as a vehicle for that expression of that value.

[00:45:16] But to build in a more loving, compassionate way where you're not gonna burn out in the process. I don't want women or anyone who identifies as female or socialize as female at birth to, to feel like they can't build in a way. That works for them because people are tapping out, they're burning it all down.

[00:45:37] They're like, Not for me. And then we take away these amazing voices and ideas and I, I just think the diversity of bringing more feminine and feminine can be in any terminology, any gender spectrum. But we need more of that in the world to balance. Looks like the, she builds and he destroys. So we need to kind of like counterbalance some of that, that energy to really.

[00:46:02] We need both. You know, we need love and we need metrics. And so this is a combination of the two and doing it in a compassionate way, um, that's also super practical too.

[00:46:12] Emily Thompson: Mm-hmm. Yes. Okay. I wrote down on a post that I'm about to just rip off right the second and put on my computer screen. Your creations should not harm you.

[00:46:25] Just gonna put that right there for later. Right there. Then let's wrap this up then with a couple of like, a couple of hard hitters, actually. Just one hard hitter and then some fun ones afterwards. If there was one action or maybe thought that you would like for someone to explore, um, that you'd like every boss to either take or do or whatever, what would that be?

[00:46:48] Jadah Sellner: I, my invitation would be to define enough for you, define enough, define your enough number, what sustains you and your life and your livelihood, and let it be enough. So often we are just chasing more. We're moving the goal post further. And so if you can just sit with yourself, ask yourself what is enough for me in this moment, in this season of my life, it can change two weeks from now, two years from now, 20 years, but in this moment, what is enough?

[00:47:26] And when you know that enough number for yourself, then it's easier to say no to all the other things trying to get your attention. And you can just settle and, and allow your nervous system to soften into this is enough for me right now.

[00:47:44] Emily Thompson: I agree with that one too. Amens all over the place for you and all of this.

[00:47:49] Where can people find more about you and what you do, but also where can they get this book?

[00:47:55] Jadah Sellner: Yeah, so for me, jadahsellner.com. Um, and @jadahsellner, and I always say Jadah, like Prada, and for the book, head over to shebuilds.com. You know that $1,800 domain that I bought there,

[00:48:15] Emily Thompson: Go there everybody. Go there. Worth it.

[00:48:17] Jadah Sellner: And I definitely include free bonuses and resources for anyone who buys a book that can just help them. One thing that I share is a couple's retreat guide that my husband and I do, but you could do it with a bestie, a friend, whoever. Just, we always go away once a year and do a lot of the exercises in the book and just creating a, a schedule for you to kind of, kind of go away in a cabin or a staycation at home, whatever feels good to you.

[00:48:43] Emily Thompson: Love it. And my last question for you is, what's making you feel most boss.

[00:48:48] Jadah Sellner: Mm. For me it's all about embodiment practices, so any type of dancing, I'm, you know, I'm listening to all the Beyonce, all the Lizzo right now, but dance parties for me is just got me, like, I just staying in my body and not being in my head so much.

[00:49:08] That's my little body break, um, to really put my body first and allow all of the other things that need to get taken care of to flow from that place.

[00:49:18] Emily Thompson: Oh, that is such a great an, always with the great answers. Good. I agree with that. Be in your body's self-awareness practice and or occasional assessments.

[00:49:29] Um, but also know, Jadah, this has been a treat. I am so glad to have gotten the chance to catch up with you today.

[00:49:36] Jadah Sellner: It's been so fun and I'm looking forward to you coming back to California.

[00:49:40] Emily Thompson: Oh yeah, yes.

[00:49:46] All right, boss, because you're here, I know you want to be a better creative business owner, which means I've got something for you. Each week, the team at being boss is scouring the news, the best entrepreneurial publications and updates and releases of the apps and tools that run our businesses, and is curating it all into a weekly email that delivers the must know tips and tactics in the realms of mindset, money, and productivity.

[00:50:09] This email is called Brewed. We brew it up for you each week to give you the insight you need to make decisions and move forward in your creative. Check it out now and sign up for yourself at beingboss.club/brewed. That's beingboss.club/brewed. Now, until next time, do the work. Be boss.