Summer Vacation

Kathleen Shannon 0:00
Welcome to being boss episode number 28.

Get your business together, get yourself into what you do and see it through.

Emily Thompson 0:13
Being bosses hard. Lending work in life is messy. Making a dream job of your own isn't easy,

Kathleen Shannon 0:20
but getting paid for it, becoming known for it. And finding purpose in it is so doable

Emily Thompson 0:27
if you do the work.

Kathleen Shannon 0:29
being bossed is a podcast for creative entrepreneurs. Brought to you by Emily Thompson and Kathleen Shannon.

Emily Thompson 0:35
Hi, I'm Emily. And I own indie typography, where I help passionate entrepreneurs establish and grow their business online. By helping them build brands that attract and websites that sell. I help my clients launch their business so they can do more of what they love, and make money doing it.

Kathleen Shannon 0:54
And I'm Kathleen, I'm the CO owner of braid creative where I specialize in branding and business visioning for creative entrepreneurs who want to blend who they are with what they do narrow in on their core genius and shape their content so they can position themselves as experts to attract more dream clients.

Emily Thompson 1:12
And being boss is a podcast where we're talking shop, giving you a peek behind the scenes of what it takes to build a business, interviewing other working creatives and figuring it out as we go right there with you.

Kathleen Shannon 1:24
Check out our archives at loving boss calm. This episode is brought to you by fresh books, cloud accounting. Alright, you guys, today is just me and Emily, and we're going to be talking about what we've been up to this summer. We're going to give you a little peek behind the curtain on our vacations and how taking a vacation has affected our business, including some of the big picture thinking. We're gonna be talking a little bit about how we've kept our businesses running even while we're away. So yeah, here we go. Hi,

Emily Thompson 1:56
Kathleen.

Unknown Speaker 1:58
Emily.

Unknown Speaker 2:01
Long time no see.

Kathleen Shannon 2:04
Right. Okay, so right now, I've tell you all Emily is in my house. And we are in separate rooms recording over Skype because we got some fancy new microphones.

Emily Thompson 2:17
Yes, we did. They're very nice.

Kathleen Shannon 2:21
So it's just kind of funny being in the same house and other bedrooms but recording like we normally do. So the reason why Emily is here is because she's been on her 40 day road trip and came through Oklahoma City, which is where I live. Yeah. Emily, how's her vacation? Ben, tell us what you've been up to.

Emily Thompson 2:43
Oh, dude, I've been up to so many things. So I guess at this point, what is today today is today is actually the sixth of July that we're recording this. So we are 36 days into our 40 day adventure. We'll be home this weekend, which is kind of a crazy thing. We left on June 1. And we traveled north to Indiana to see my grandmother who lives in northern Indiana and then from there, we went west. And we did. We've done all kinds of things. We we camped in Minnesota for a couple of nights. We drove through South Dakota and had a really crazy night and like some national grasslands. And we saw Mount Rushmore and we did Yellowstone and we went up to the Pacific Northwest. We stayed a night at on Mount Rainier, which is probably one of my favorite campsites. We've done a lot of camping, which has been crazy. I have not camped in over seven years. And so we've done a whole lot of camping this trip and I have loved it so much. And then we traveled south on one on one and stayed with some friends around California, and spent a couple of days in Colorado. And we left Colorado yesterday and drove to see Kathleen in Oklahoma City.

Unknown Speaker 4:02
Yay. Yay.

Emily Thompson 4:03
It's it's been a really fun, fun crazy trip. I know we did a Minnesota a couple of couple of weeks ago. That was me talking about how stressed out I was. Do you remember that? That? minisode we did it was like three or four questions?

Kathleen Shannon 4:19
Oh, yeah. Because you thought that you were what you were you were like, are we crazy? Yeah. Because

Unknown Speaker 4:25
I felt Okay, here's

Kathleen Shannon 4:26
where we need to admit that we pre recorded all the episodes that you all have been listening to up until now. Even this one's kind of pre recorded, but soon we're going to catch back up. So that's kind of a interesting thing. Yeah, remember what we said?

Emily Thompson 4:42
Yeah, I can't remember what we said about a lot of them too. But But yeah, so we did we did a lot of pre recording. Before I left. Kathleen and I were seeing each other almost every day

Kathleen Shannon 4:54
to do is crazy. All like I feel like we almost burned ourselves out on this podcast.

Emily Thompson 4:59
Yeah. We were hitting it pretty hardcore and did a whole lot of pre recording so that I could take this trip but also so that we could just generally like, Are you kidding? Your trips? Yeah. And then just generally take a break from podcasting because we absolutely love it. But we do have lives and jobs separately from the podcast. So it was really good to be able to hustle out a whole lot of them and then really kind of take we've legitimately taken in a month off from the podcast from each other a little bit. I feel like I haven't seen you or talked to you and forever and and then we both hit the road. So we've both taken some some trips. What have you been up to Kathleen?

Unknown Speaker 5:40
Hmm. Well, um,

Kathleen Shannon 5:42
so I took a trip, probably. When was that? As like the beginning of June. And we went to seaside Florida, which is where the Truman Show that movie with Jim Carrey was filmed. Yeah. So it's a lot like that movie where everything is really perfect and manicured. And it's a vacation that my family takes every year and we rent a house. And it's fun because we know what to expect. And this year, we rented some paddleboards and did some paddleboarding on the ocean. And that was great. We saw a dolphin and started just kind of like chase a dolphin on the paddleboard. And then I went straight from Florida to the giant conference in Charleston, South Carolina. And so I was speaking, I was had a speaking gig there. And we had heard great things about Charleston. So I brought my husband and baby along on that trip. And my best friend Liz, who also works with me at braid creative. She drove down from Durham, North Carolina, her and her husband, and they hung out with us. They're in Charleston. And so yeah, we had a good couple of trips. I do have to mention that the shooting that happened in Charleston happened while we were there, and oh, yeah, yeah, it was really awful. And it was such a cool city. And that was a really tragic thing to happen. And I don't have really the words to talk about how awful that situation was. And I want the podcast to get too political. But that is straight up racist. And it was straight up terrorism. And I just have to you know, throw that out there because I was there but other than just being there at the same time. And anyway, Oh,

Emily Thompson 7:35
I'm so I'm so sad that you had to deal with that in Charleston. I've never been to Charleston, but I've heard such great things. And I've lived like I've lived in this house my entire life. And I'm sad that you had to experience like that side of the South. But that's it's what we deal with too. So I'm sorry, but I'm glad that you enjoy Charlestown.

Kathleen Shannon 7:56
Oh, well. And like, you don't have to apologize to me because it didn't at all really. You know, it just, it's just a shitty thing that happened. And not even saying that I feel like I'm brushing it off, which I'm not at all it was just okay. So here's what really happened. I sent out a newsletter talking about elevating the mundane and talking about finding inspiration in the everyday grind. And someone replied, because I was kind of mentioning my trips, and they were like, Oh, I can't believe you didn't mention the shooting in this letter. And that you were in Charleston. Like it just seems it seems awful that you didn't mention it. And so now I'm like taking that feedback. And I'm like, well, maybe I should mention it here. Because how can I talk about Charleston without talking about the shooting? That said, I replied to them, and I said, I think it would be more crass to talk about the Charleston shooting, which honestly, I'm in the green, it didn't affect my trip. It didn't affect like, it was just this awful thing that happened. Um, and and it's not cool. And obviously like my heart goes out, but I'm not going to sell and launch my e course in the same breath as talking about a shooting like that seemed more obscene to me. And so like, honestly, being boss, our podcast, it's not quite the place to talk about it. It's a thing that happened and it was awful. But it's not. It's not what we're focusing on. So I just wanted to say yes, I was there. I was there. Whenever it happened. It was awful. I don't have the right words to talk about it. There are a lot of people who are doing a great job of talking about it. But I'm not one of those. But obviously I think it was an awful thing. That's I guess what I'm trying to say and Emily and I were talking about doing even an episode on feedback, and we've been getting a lot of feedback. Some of it is nice. Some of it is not so nice. And how do you deal with that feedback? How do you keep it from keeping you from sharing and putting yourself out there? But that's not what we're talking about. Today we're talking about our summer vacation. And we really want to talk about being boss while you're on vacation and what you can learn along the way, what does it mean for your business? How can you keep a thriving business happening while also making your life happen and doing things like taking vacation? So Emily, what, like, I'm sure that being on the road so much, especially I find that I do a lot of deep thinking, I don't know if it's the vibrations of the car, or seeing things or being in the car gets me thinking. So I'm curious if you had any insights or revelations while you were on your road trip, particularly about your business or business model, or how you want to continue to grow in the shop, autography, or the podcast, or any of the things that you're doing, what did you learn along the way? Sure.

Emily Thompson 10:53
So I'm the same way I love I love riding in the car. Like even since I was a kid, I get carsick, which is, which is a little unfortunate. So whenever I am writing in the car, I can't do things like I'm either driving, or I'm looking because I can't read and I can't like mess with things in my hand. If I'm not looking up, I'm like throwing up. So I do I get a whole lot of time to just like really sit and think and look at things, which has been really nice. And we have, I think, by the end of this trip, we will have put over 8000 miles on our car like for this trip, which is which is pretty massive, actually, we may end up doing hitting about 9000 by the end of it. So I've had 9000 more, I will have had 9000 miles to think, which is a lot of thinking to do. And I've thought obviously a lot about my business. It's funny, I was talking to you earlier about how, you know, 40 days of this trip, I thought it was going to be like a working vacation, something where I was able to take a lot of time to really to really do some work.

Unknown Speaker 11:57
Oh, yeah, I remember for you left, you were like, I'm gonna write a book. Do you

Unknown Speaker 12:01
remember that?

Kathleen Shannon 12:04
You're like, I think a book.

Emily Thompson 12:08
I didn't write a book. No, just let that out. Now I did not write a book, I didn't do much writing other than emails. Which, which is where I get into, you know, this idea of being a traveling entrepreneur is so glamorous. But being a traveling entrepreneur, and working on the road is really hard. I mean, I take it for granted living in the south where they're you know, are there's a little town at least every I don't know a couple of miles. But you go out west and you go 30 miles without seeing another human being there that doesn't make for great Wi Fi connection, or for even great self self in service. So I've definitely found that, in traveling, the places that you think are going to have the best reception where you can get the best work done, are the places where you have no connectivity, and you can get no work done. And the places that you would anticipate to be the worst are the places where you tend to have the best. For example, we were in God any place we were in, you know, Southern California, we were in Colorado, we were in like, you know, some heavily populated areas and had no no connectivity like no, very little cell phone service. If you don't have LTE,

Kathleen Shannon 13:19
I had cirro Wi Fi in seaside. And even my cell phone was awful. My cell phone cannot Yeah,

Emily Thompson 13:26
it's horrible. So I was in New York. Before we took this trip and had almost no cell phone service. I was in Orlando before that and had almost no cell phones or it was like the places that heavy populated places need more cell phone towers.

Kathleen Shannon 13:41
People in New York and Florida get stuff done.

Emily Thompson 13:44
I know. I know. Right? So so that is one thing I found is like the idea of being a traveling entrepreneur, unless you're going to really plan it out and do it right. It's really hard. So the little bit of time that I did get to work, I spent like doing emails, so just generally managing my inbox or doing some client work. And in terms of my business that made me really realize that whenever I break down what I do, the things that have the highest impact, sadly, is emailing and it really made me think a lot about how how much time I spend emailing like if you if you were only allowed to work about 15 hours a week, which is about how much time I was able to a lot between literally full time driving, setting up tents, like making food and generally living. I was able to pull out about 15 hours of work a week and what what it came down to for the place that I'm in in my business was emailing so dealing with inquiries or really mostly direct client work and also managing my team. And some of the some of the small design stuff that I had coming in that I had to look at. We were launching a site so it was doing doing sort of final walkthroughs of websites and looking at code and testing all the links and those sorts of things. And then also finally doing, like coaching calls with my clients. So that those calls that were still scheduled out doing some of those. So about 15 hours a week, boiled down to one on one, client work, and emails. And my goal for this entire trip was to go and do lots of writing, like I had so many plans. And I've done plenty of writing, like pre writing, so like blog posts that I want to write or newsletters that I want to write, or, you know, hopefully launching a new resource model for my business in the future. And, you know, planning out what that looks like. But I still haven't gotten to a place in my business where I really can just do the things that I want to do. And that has made me rethink a lot of things. So being on the road has been hugely enlightening. And I definitely found that one of the things that I want to do is, I love this podcast, a ton, a ton of time, I've thought about this a whole lot. And I've also thought about the history and on the history, the future of India biography and what I want to do in the future. With that, so that I can travel more, and I can enjoy my family more and enjoy, like, you know, the benefits of working as hard as we do. For me that's traveling. And to do that, I think I'm going to have to stop doing so much one on one client work is the big revelation.

Kathleen Shannon 16:42
So do you think that you're going to start building more like product packages or digital products or ebooks ecourses

Emily Thompson 16:52
I do, I think is definitely going to be digital product. I have some plans for a really great, really great resource center for for entrepreneurs who want to, you know, launch a business online. And I've outlined tons of that which has been really great. You can outline things really well in a tent with a notebook when you have no connectivity. So I was able to do a lot of that planning, but it did make me think a whole lot about what it is that I do, what it is that I'm expected to do and what it is that I want to do, which is really huge. Whenever you have a laptop that's dead with no Wi Fi, you can really stop and think about what you want to do.

Kathleen Shannon 17:37
Okay, so I want to pause for a second and talk about our sponsor fresh books. Fresh books has been one of our exclusive sponsors since almost the beginning. And that's because we truly love them. And we think that you will to you guys, it is so important for freelancers and business owners. And even those of you who have a day job and are still side hustling to track your income and expenses. We were just chatting with freshbooks last week, and they told us that on average, customers double their revenue in the first 24 months after using freshbooks. What Sign me up freshbooks is the easy to use invoicing software designed exclusively for small business owners who bill for their time and expertise. Bill like a boss and try fresh books for free for 30 days. Just go to freshbooks comm slash being boss and enter being boss in the How did you hear about us section when you sign up? Alright, so let me ask you this, like, I want to dig back into the email because I want some more clarity around what you were saying there. If you only have 15 hours to work for me that can get sucked up real fast, just doing email. So like for me, even in my daily grind. I don't know if you found this on your trip at all. But if I want to get some writing done or if I want to do whatever it is that is creative, I need to do it first. Otherwise, I'll get bogged down into the admin.

Emily Thompson 19:08
Yeah, email, email is ridiculous guy like I'm, I want I want to start forming like a community of online entrepreneurs who manage email differently than is currently happening. And I don't know how to do that yet. I have some ideas and maybe we can just like I'll flesh this out one day, but I think that email is breaking the online entrepreneur.

Kathleen Shannon 19:33
Yeah, like I I'm really curious about email and I just don't I okay. I think the thing that I uncovered since the month that we've been gone is that there is no right or wrong way to do business or to do anything right. And I know that we I feel like our podcast is really us talking shop and figuring it out as we go and helping our listeners figure it out as they go but i i love the idea Yeah, of figuring out how other people do email. And again, it's been a big thing for me. But I have found that, um, and we have an entire episode on email somewhere. So check our archives for that. I'm not sure which episode it is, but we'll include it in our show notes. But an email, email is a big one. So I think for me, it's just doing the creative work first, doing the stuff that fuels me first, and then coming back later and doing the administrative stuff. But I've also stopped responding to things that don't need a response.

Emily Thompson 20:37
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Do There are tons of emails. And you know, if you're one of those people that just didn't get an email from me, it's because I didn't think it warranted a response.

Kathleen Shannon 20:48
Well, but you know, what, honestly, I was, I was one of those times, so I missed you big time. I was almost like, because it felt like you fell off the face of the earth a little bit. And, and just not. So we were seeing each other almost every day, leading up to this trip. And then it was almost like radio silence a little bit, but there's still stuff happening on our end, like promoting the podcast. Okay, so the week that I was on vacation, and I wasn't getting good reception, our I'd make episode images, that's one of my job duties, it just didn't happen. So there were some things that just didn't happen. And guess what, like, the world didn't end our podcast and like, everything still just kind of happened. So um, so I guess that was a big thing is that it doesn't have to be perfect. And it doesn't have to, you can skip the beach, and land right back where you left off. And so I kind of think that that's what we're doing here a little bit. And but yeah, going on vacation. So for me, I have a year and a half old baby. And vacation is not quite vacation. And I feel like this is very like oh boohoo you had a bad time at the beach. But like vacation, it I'm not used to like my baby goes to daycare. And I work really hard all day. And I love working. And so then shifting from that to going on vacation, which used to mean going on adventures. And kicking back sleeping in my vacation was one asleep regression, which kind of gave me like an episode of like post traumatic stress breakdown, because I was afraid that he was going to stop sleeping again. So my baby didn't sleep for a year, he only slept for 45 minutes at a time for a year, he finally started sleeping, we go on vacation, and he's up every like it started with him just waking up early like around 5am, which is totally manageable, I can do that. And then it's kept sliding back earlier and earlier. And then it was him being up every three hours. So it didn't feel much like a vacation. It felt a lot like becoming a stay at home mom just in a different place. So that was again, I need a new word for hard, because it's not hard. But it wasn't necessarily Alan fun. And at one point, and Jeremy and I were like working is more, you know, like working is easier in some ways, because at least I know how to work. Leon is like I sometimes don't really know how to be the best mom. But I can record a podcast, that's for sure. Anyway, but then as soon as we got to Charleston, it's kind of like we found our groove. And we found our rhythm with each other. And I think also just seeing a new place like I thrive on seeing and doing new things. That's what makes me feel most creative in my life. And so I've been to seaside for a few years, and I love it. It's beautiful. But I really like going on a new adventure. And so I really love seeing Charleston. I also think that speaking at this conference was kind of hanging over me. So I went on my vacation first and then I was speaking the next week at this conference. And I don't know how many of you bosses out there do much public speaking. But I get really nervous and almost moody and my brother who is a performance artists like he gets really moody before he goes on stage and performs. And so I kind of felt that way too. And I wonder how much of that was cleaned over my trip. So I learned never pair business travel with vacation travel unless you're doing the business part first getting it out of the way and then you can enjoy your vacation. So

Emily Thompson 24:47
yeah, so I feel the same way. So we launched a site for actually one of our braid in Detroit biography, indie boom combo clients. Her name is Brenda, Mangalore, she's super amazing and a fine artist and we've been working on finishing up her site. And I definitely found too that that as you know, the site, like little milestones were coming around like those things were hanging over hanging over my vacation. And it's even worse whenever there was one night, oh, man, we decided to camp it out at a cafe, which are like these, it's a, what is it like a brand of of campsites that you know, have great showers. So we would usually stop at those and like, get our shower in, and they all had Wi Fi. And so we decided one night to pull it over at a K away, we get everything set up because I have some some deadlines to meet. And I get my laptop open, and their Wi Fi is out. And so then and we were in wine country in California, and then I'm just stressed for the next like, two days until I know I'm gonna get like some good Wi Fi for me to, you know, meet my deadlines and send off my files and email a client. And I definitely found that, that having so little control over everything, when you're traveling like that really makes it hard to to be a super type A, like business owner who's trying to like meet deadlines and make people happy, and you know, know when you're gonna have good Wi Fi or not. So yeah, I have definitely found myself testing my boundaries of stress a lot more on this trip than I ever thought I would. And not just even even for work, doing our big road trip the way we have. I mean, there are lots of nights where we legit, we legitimately had to fear bears. So like, you know, setting up your tent and knowing that you cannot eat like in your tent, which we never did any way or you can't eat around your pantry, you have to put all the food in either a box or in your car, because bears are coming. It's kind of like a whole different way of living. Or there were lots of times when we didn't know where we were going to sleep until about 30 minutes outside of a campsite where we you know, just sort of made up our mind. Okay, this is where we're going.

Kathleen Shannon 27:11
Yeah, it kind of shifts your priorities right? Like it dies revival versus the fluff,

Emily Thompson 27:16
did it make your business feel like fluff it did, it really did, which is, which is really made me again, sort of think a lot about what it is that I do every day. And what part of what I do is super important because like I work 30 to 40 hours a week. And if I can work 15 hours a week, and basically get all the things done that I need to get done. What am I doing for those other 15 to, you know, 30 or 15 to 2025 hours a week.

Kathleen Shannon 27:44
But on the flip side, as your business partner, and as one of your clients, I felt that and your team is like your test. I love them. I love you, Chris, I love you, Cory, David too. And they're great, but they're also not you. And so it got me thinking about like, on a bigger scale way is the, I guess like what is what is our role as bosses and as business owners. And so one it is for us, for you. And I specifically and probably a lot of our listeners, building a team so that we can do things like take vacation is awesome. And I know that even before you went on vacation, you were like, I'm I made this happen, because I built up the team to do it. And it felt like a little bit of like, almost a little bit of proving it, you know, like you got no really I'm doing this because I built a team. It's almost like you're cheerleading yourself, like I can do it, I can do it, I have a team, I can do it. But then there is still like a little bit of that magic that comes from being the visionary of your business of being that type a creative that builds your business up from the ground up. And and for a while, it was just you, you know what I mean? And so, and I and I think that I don't have the answer to this. And that's part of the that's part of my like, big summer revelation is that I'm finding that I have a lot of questions and not a whole lot of answers. But I guess my question is, how much can we delegate out as business owners and bosses? And how much of it do we have to do? You know, there's that whole like, work harder. I mean, sorry, work smarter, not harder. But I still think that there's like a good amount of hard work on our part as bosses and that's what makes our businesses successful. And maybe that's the story I'm telling myself and maybe it's not true but for right now it feels a little bit true.

Emily Thompson 29:41
Yeah, well and I definitely think it is I especially think the way the way you and I and especially you and your work with braid is such huge advocates of the personal brand, and of an of building a brand around yourself. It does sort of position you to be the Mojo holder, like, you are the holder of all the Mojo. And if you are not there, you may be able to pass some of that Mojo off to to other people to your team. But it's still your mojo. Well,

Kathleen Shannon 30:13
yeah, see, I think that you can pass the tasks off to your team. I think that your team can reply to emails, you can set up systems and that stuff can happen. And you know, someone else can edit the podcasts, someone else can code, some websites. But I think there is like that, that Mojo factor, that is kind of irreplaceable. And so that's, maybe we'll even start to explore a little bit is like, what is the boss Mojo that makes a business successful? And how do you? How do you really embrace that boss Mojo without getting burnt out? Because I think that you and I were both starting to get a little burned out before we both left for our trips. Oh, definitely. I

Emily Thompson 30:57
mean, actually, with, with my business, five and a half years into it now. I mean, I'm definitely a little burned out. I mean, and not, not in a bad way, like not super burnt out. Like, I love what I do so much. I love building websites. And I love coaching my clients to help them build amazing businesses, but walking away from my business and seeing, seeing it almost from the outside. And living a life where I'm not connected to it every single day, like getting out of my bubble, has definitely made me rethink how it is that I want to help the people that I want to help do what they do. So how it is that I help other entrepreneurs launch a great business online, maybe it's not doing, you know, branding, and websites that require so much of my mojo so consistently to go into it. Maybe it is something that I can walk away from a little easier, and maybe not even walk away from the something that requires so or requires less of the personal touch, but still making the same impact. And that actually reminds me a lot of our episode with Elise and Scott. Yeah, is from Hey, Sweet Pea, and how, how, you know, they're on their big epic, like forever roadtrip, who knows when they're going to end. But you know, they they shut down a business similar to mine, for the exact same reasons. And I think, you know, in the moment, I thought, well, you know, you could just set up a team and have everyone do it for you. But then walking away from it, you know, and, and I have not walked away from anything, but like, leaving, leaving the confines of the studio, to to run my business elsewhere really made me realize how much I need to be in it, for it to be as great as it is. And I love the idea of, of not having to check in for a week. I would love to be

Kathleen Shannon 33:01
an amazing me think about the podcast. And what we're building here is that I think we have a lot of reach, and a lot of impact. And it's still really personal. But it's not. I mean, it takes a lot of time just to coordinate, write record and all of that, but probably not as much as doing like a one on one does. I think our thing is just figuring out how to monetize it. Like we figured out with our, with our businesses, because we're not quite there yet with the podcast, which brings us to you, I think that we've been doing a lot of thinking and planning for the podcast and where we want to take it. So yeah, including today. We got together and talked a lot about our new orleans trip. Yes, I can't

Emily Thompson 33:47
wait.

Kathleen Shannon 33:48
So that's going to be in. For those of you who are thinking about signing up, we only have a few spots left, like maybe 1010 or 15, maybe. And so we're capping out at 75 people, and we're going to be going to New Orleans in October. So it's from October 15 to the 18th or 19th. So it's for a few days from like Thursday to Sunday. And yeah, planning that has been a lot of fun. And so we've even started talking about expanding the being boss model. So stay tuned, because lots of stuff is coming up there. But we don't quite have it all figured out yet, but we're working on it. Alright, so a big thing. Speaking of being able to step away and digital products and building that thing up. One of the things that braid creative did is we launched our branding eCourse on June 1, so the day that you left was the day that it launched, which is really scary. I was like, Oh my god, I think he's told me that you'll have like Wi Fi on the

Emily Thompson 34:52
highway. It went off so well but

Kathleen Shannon 34:54
um, it ended up being a credibly successful launch. So Yep, in 30 days. Okay, I never really talked the specific numbers on here. But Emily encouraged me to be transparent because it's something that we do want to teach our bosses and our listeners how to do but in 30 days, we had a $20,000 launch.

Unknown Speaker 35:19
Yay.

Kathleen Shannon 35:22
And I have to say that that and about half of that were hard costs that we spent creating the ecourse. So money that we spent with Emily to actually get it up and running and launched money that we spent on a content coach and copy editor. So I mean, all of this, it helped pay for a lot of that. And that doesn't even include our time and we spent the last year putting it together. So there, that's a lot of time that we could have spent on one on one clients that we spent working on our own stuff, but now it's going to be recurring and passive income. So I think we did an episode on passive income. But we might be doing an episode in the future talking about launching and digital products and how to build passive income. And yeah, so that was a really exciting thing. And we're really excited about that. And it'll just be interesting to see if we can sustain that. Um, I mean, I definitely don't know, I don't want to like, put a limit on myself. But I don't know that we can reach that amount every month. If we did. I don't know I might, oh, Kathleen,

Emily Thompson 36:33
not with that added to

Kathleen Shannon 36:38
give me a pep talk in link, give me a confidence boost, hopefully. But this is where you know, we start, I mean, this goes into a whole new episode that we probably need to record. But passive income is anything but passive. You have to spend a lot of time promoting. And a lot of people feel really cheesy about promoting themselves where they feel icky. So promoting in a really meaningful way where you're giving your gift some knowledge away. And that's all stuff that we'll talk about in a future episode. But it was really exciting. And if you guys are interested in the branding ecourse you can find that at breed creative calm to sign up, throw that out there. And yeah, it's pretty exciting. And so thank you, Emily, for helping us with that. And this is three years in the making, from combining all of our other e courses into one. And so it was definitely not an overnight success. It was not something that we wrote in a week or a month is something that has taken us a good half a decade really of experience and expertise to create. Yeah, and then a lot of listening to Emily and getting her advice as far as the strategy goes for launching that and yeah, everything from pacing to the autoresponders to affiliate programs. There's just a lot that goes into it. So we'll have to do a separate episode on that. But that was an exciting thing. And I felt like a total boss. So it was definitely Yeah,

Emily Thompson 38:06
no, that was totally boss. I was so excited to get that thing launched to just because like I saw you guys working so hard on it for so I mean, we started talking about the the website side of it, like what do we need to do to combine and and relaunch? We started talking about that in December. Like if you'll remember I mean we have been we have been talking about even just that side of it for six months. So no, it was it was just as like gratifying for me to watch you guys like get that together and launch it as it was to have it go off as such such an easy launch for me i think it's it's pretty rare that that our product launch like that goes out you know it goes off without some sort of hiccup and it was stressing me out that I was leaving the day that you guys you know decided to launch today it was like am I being stupid like should I stay and make sure this goes off well, but we did all the footwork and I had Corey who was there you know ready in case anything happened and I had my iPad and all those things and and it went off really really well. So So no, it was it was a great launch on both of our sides. So high fives all around and I'm so excited that it was so like fruitful for you guys. That's exactly what we want. Hey bosses. I'm going to take a second to interrupt this episode to tell you that if you're liking being boss and you're ready to level up your game, we've got something just for you. Check out the being boss bundle it's Kathleen's DIY coaching for creatives and my Get your shit together series bundled together at one low price just for you bosses. You can find that at love being boss comm slash bundle. Okay, back to the episode.

Kathleen Shannon 39:53
Alright, so the big things that we're getting from vacation is big picture thinking really narrowing in on what are we best at? Yes. And yeah, yeah, like Where? Where can we best serve? Where What? What is the most important work that we can be doing? Yes. Ah, can we reach and more impact? Yep. But with meaning and still keeping it personal and not, I'm not getting burnt out?

Emily Thompson 40:22
Yeah, well, and I think that's so important for everyone, like, I feel so enlightened. Like Zen doubt at the moment in so many ways, in ways that I haven't felt in my business in a really, really long time. And I think that I like I kind of want to challenge everyone, like, if you can take two days, two days where you have no connectivity, and not like not not answer email, but one of those things where you can't even look at your phone, because I know, like how addicted we have all become to connectivity, I have a friend of mine, who will carry around an extra charge thing for his phone. Just so in an emergency, he still has a little bit of juice left for you know, General connectivity. It's a it's a thing, like David's mom gave us one of those like little backup batteries to before we left just in case, I think that there is something so humanizing almost to, to disconnect completely for two days, if you can do it, and really see what it is that you think about in terms of your business. Like, for me, I was thinking, I spent my time in the woods, thinking about thinking about my one on one clients, and not even so much my design development clients. But the coaching side of what I do with Indy boom, I wasn't thinking about how I can make people search engines more or search functions more functional. I was thinking about how I could help them build, you know, do better product launches? or, or, you know, how is it the or what is the best way of launching a product with a webinar? Or how is it that they can use content marketing to to, you know, market their services or whatever. So I definitely found that, that being alone, without like, all your Twitter, friends, and all of your Facebook, friends and all of your Instagram likes, I think that being alone, like that will really give you the freedom to think, but then pay attention to what it is that you think about are you thinking about, you know, systems? Or are you thinking about how you can make your client experience better. For me, it was thinking about how I can help more people build an online business that gives them the freedom that I have experienced in the past in the past four weeks, because I have experienced some pretty sincere freedom and choosing where I want to sleep at night. And and when I want to work on some scale, sometimes that was decided for me. So you know how it is that that I can help others find that freedom? It wasn't, it wasn't about websites, which is really funny to say it

Unknown Speaker 43:10
really becomes more about lifestyle, right? Yeah,

Emily Thompson 43:13
oh, tons tons and giving people the knowledge that they need to build a lifestyle where they can choose, whatever, whether it's where they live, or how they live, or who they live with, or whatever it's about, I don't know, finding what gives you the freedom to think about what you want to do, as well as do it.

Kathleen Shannon 43:34
So I had so I had another person who is on a big road trip, come in and visit me. So the cool thing about Oklahoma City being in the heartland is that it's in the middle of all these major highways, right? I get a lot of fantastic people driving through and visiting. So Sarah Vaughn bargain from yesterday, s.org came through town, and we've been internet buddies for a long time. And so it was cool that you were on a road trip. She was on a road trip, she came and stayed here for a night. And we were having dinner. And her whole thing is if you're not familiar with her website, is to say yes, like to say yes to adventure. And she's always going to like weird, quirky little museums, or challenging herself to try all these new things. And it's kind of reminding me of what you're saying, because I don't think it's just taking two days off to think but really removing yourself from what you usually do and giving yourself space. Anyway, one of the things that I loved about Sarah, and just observing her is that she was really getting stuff done and being an amazing, she's an amazing working creative. She doesn't necessarily want an empire. She doesn't want to be like walking through a door and people are just throwing money at her. She just wants to live comfortably and get stuff done. And make a good living just doing what she loves. But being able to take a six week road trip around the country. So that's what she was doing. And one of the things I loved about her that I really needed to see with my own eyeballs, and this reminds me of you to Emily is that she was able to get stuff done. Without getting in a total tizzy over it, I find that most creative entrepreneurs that I know myself included, get so like, impatient and worked up and just like, these, like kind of almost like crazy cycles of self doubt, and, but then like, kind of like a manic creating stuff, and then burning themselves out and like these just like really volatile cycles of working. And, um, she just seemed really even to me, and that's, you seem really even to me to Emily, a lot of times, like, I've seen you get a little worked up, but nothing. Nothing like, you know, not like total meltdowns. And maybe, maybe the meltdowns are not on the podcast. Like maybe it's whenever I don't see you.

Emily Thompson 46:03
Yeah, don't talk to David about that. No, no, I don't I don't get really worked up.

Kathleen Shannon 46:10
But uh, anyway, I just really liked how even she was. And so I think that's something that I'm really striving for, in my own business, and my own life is just kind of a little more evenness.

Emily Thompson 46:24
Yeah, no, I agree with that so much. And that actually, like brings some clarity. To me Even we were talking earlier about Brenda, like the new indie boom projects that that's going to launch soon. And she is like, she has been dream client for me, she is so wonderful. And she is one of the most even people that I know, like that I've ever talked to like she is just she's such a pleasure to talk to you. And also like another one of those would be Lindsay Kluge, who is also a braid in the indie boom condo, a condo combo. And she's not one of those people who's just so like, he doesn't get worked up about anything. She's just super even. And but she like they both run amazing businesses, they get their shit done. And like everyone just simply like, loves working with them. And I think that, I think that that's huge for for building something bigger than yourself, is you have to, like get out of yourself a little bit and you know, deal with your own problems like, away. But otherwise, like generally just get stuff done. I think that's a, that's such a huge lesson. But

Kathleen Shannon 47:38
like not even just dealing, dealing with your own problems. And I don't know, I just felt like and maybe this isn't quite right. I mean, well, Sarah and yourself included, like, there's no, it's not like you're saying I don't have problems, but it just feels like you don't focus on that, like there. Yeah, sure. There's some stuff that happens, like a launch might have some hiccups, or something didn't go quite right, or a customer wasn't happy. But it's not like that's where all your focus is.

Emily Thompson 48:10
I know that it is it's it's a huge thing.

Kathleen Shannon 48:13
And I think that what I've noticed with creative entrepreneurs that that feel more Zen is that they're really they're focusing on the good stuff whenever they're posting to Facebook. And it's not that they're being Pollyanna ish about it. They're just not choosing some. They're just not choosing to dwell on the bad stuff. And I feel like even so, on my vacation in Florida, I will admit, I was dwelling on the hard stuff and feeling real sorry for myself. And then I see you coming off of your 40 day road trip where you've had to pack up at 3am. Because you were getting rained on, you know, and like, yeah, where but you turned it into I feel like you spun it into Oh, and you also mentioned that you were getting eaten up by bugs like email, live by bugs, it's raining, but you weren't like it was like the crappiest night in my life. Instead, you're like, Oh my gosh, you won't believe what happened. And, you know, like, it's not, it's not the end of the world. And so that's just for me, an attitude that I would love to take on. And that's why I'm glad that I have bosses like you and Sarah Vaughn bargain to look up to because I feel like you guys are just so much more. It's not like bad things don't happen, but you just don't dwell on them.

Emily Thompson 49:24
I'm about to come give you a hug in there. Well, no, I think it's huge. And that is something that I've thought a lot about. And doing this because because this has been huge and yeah, there's even like, there's even like biblical references to like 40 days in the wilderness sort of things like like 40 days is a big thing. And it's across like multiple religions. So it's not just like a biblical thing. Like there's something super symbolic about a 40 day thing and we did not plan it that way. But it is funny to us that it is like whenever we started calling it a 40 day adventure, we were thinking out of probably about 45 days, like we're gonna you know Hit up some stuff, but it is actually going to end up being exactly 40 days, which is nuts. But one of the things that I have I have definitely learned and that is the story of the grassland where we we decided to just sort of winged it, we decided to camp like just off the highway in a national grassland in South Dakota. We set up our tent, it's beautiful outside, and then the bugs come out. And we could not leave our tent. It was horrific. But it was literally one of the most beautiful places I've ever been out. We didn't put the rain fly on that night, because the stars were magnificent. And I remember laying there in the tent with like the mesh over the top and watching a shooting star go by, I mean, like, this is the kind of shit that actually happens. And then at three o'clock in the morning, I get woken up because we're getting rained on. And so we like Lily's asleep, David scoops her up like in our sleeping bag and puts her in the car, while David and I tried to get our tent packed up while the bugs are out, and it's starting to rain and, and we leave at three o'clock in the morning, David drives for a couple of hours, we finished sleeping in a parking lot. And wall South Dakota. And it was it but it was an adventure. And I feel like you know, we kept talking about this being our 40 day adventure. But it really has sort of become like a life lesson. And that even like the shitty things that happen is an adventure. Like it all compiles up to mean something. And it's going to mean something super negative, if that's what you focus on. But if you think of it as a positive adventure, even if something bad happens, and expect bad things to happen, like I think that's like part of the lesson too is like we weren't going going to go on this road trip. And nothing bad happened like 40 days, something bad's going to happen. We got a nail on our tire isn't really that bad. But, you know, we had some small hiccups along the way. But it's all part of the grander adventure that if you if you can focus on the positive aspects, then whenever you get home to tell your stories is going to be all the positive things that you remember and that you tell others about

Kathleen Shannon 52:08
Oh, see, I love this like. And so I've been feeling like this tremendous amount of regret over my Florida adventure because I focused on the fact that my baby was going through sleep regression, and that he was like super whiny, like probably teething the whole time. And I cannot find the positive spin on it.

Unknown Speaker 52:29
And I still

Kathleen Shannon 52:29
can't really find the positive spin on it. But other than, like, talk about that. even get a take a vacation, but I don't know anyway. So what I found, whenever we went from Florida to Charleston and things started getting a little bit better, I think the baby he was maybe his teething episode was over, but and he still wasn't sleeping well. But one of the things that I did is just kind of reframe it in my mind. Okay, this sleep regression isn't a good or bad thing. It's just a thing that's happening. And so kind of neutralizing my emotions. And the same can be said for for business and neutralizing your emotion. So for example, the really awesome launch, I'm not waiting for the other shoe to drop necessarily, but I'm trying I'm not trying to get overly excited about it. So I can avoid just more of that evenness. Like I want to celebrate it and it's exciting. And I want other people to have success like that. But I also don't want to hang my hat on it. And you know, and be done because I'm not done. So um, anyway, just just finding more neutrality in the moments. Basically, like maybe I just need to be on mood altering drugs like that that's it. Instead just a little more even. So like maybe like our businesses or you know, creative entrepreneurs in general, put your business on a mood altering drug so that you can just be more even. And I think that I'm speaking, I'm speaking at this from like, I was just observing the Facebook group, because a lot of people in there are really vulnerable about their lows. And then a lot of people are really excited about their launches. And so it just feels like a little crazy. It does.

Emily Thompson 54:31
It does feel really, maybe there's a little bit of that. It is I think finding some neutrality is super important. And oh, I do but I also don't I also think that that I'm also coming off of a 40 day crazy road trip where I'm just like, whatever. Just be happy about everything and travel the world and meet all the people and be positive.

Kathleen Shannon 54:56
Yeah, but you're still even and you're still like even from a Place, you know. And so that's, that's, I think, something to aspire to. And yeah, go you, I love it that you did it. So are you going to go on more road trips every

Unknown Speaker 55:10
year like,

Unknown Speaker 55:11
if you want to do this kind of like long term travel

Emily Thompson 55:15
a long term, definitely it will definitely change the way we do the one of the whole things about doing this trip this way was we just wanted this kind of see as much as possible. What that meant, though, is I've been driving full time, like David and I have been driving the car like easily, easily five to eight hours, most days, probably over half the week, which has been super, super tiring and totally has this wanting to change the way we do I will definitely do more road trips, we hope next year to either do Colorado or like Washington, Oregon and drive up and spend a month in like a central place.

Kathleen Shannon 55:52
Like Yeah, area, maybe not

Emily Thompson 55:55
really experiencing an error because there was a lot of times that we had to like move on to the next place when there were you know, buckets of things that we wanted to do still. So we will definitely be doing it and doing it long term. I am now a camper like we've been talking about, you know, we're moving to Chattanooga and wanting to camp at least once a month, like pack up the tent and some s'mores and go like sleep in the woods for two nights. There's Oh, there's something so I don't know, like calming, which is not surprising. Go out and enjoy some nature guys. It's good for you. It's a really, really good for you. But I want to sleep outside more like I'm totally okay with doing that. It has been it has been such such a fun time. And we'll definitely be doing a lot more traveling.

Unknown Speaker 56:43
All right.

Unknown Speaker 56:46
I feel like I didn't do very good job today.

Emily Thompson 56:49
Well look at you thinking about the negative things. Kathleen? I think you did fine. You got super vulnerable about a lot. No, no,

Kathleen Shannon 56:58
this is just, it's just, you know, like catching up and being real. And I'm just excited about it almost feels like Season Two of being boss is about to happen. Because it has been a month since we've chatted. So I'm just really excited about what we're going to be talking about here coming up in our next few episodes and the kinds of experts that we can bring on. And then also our New Orleans trip. I'm super excited about that. Um, and yeah, I just feel like there. I mean, there really is I things are just falling into place and happening well, and I think it comes with and this is something I want to talk about in a future podcast, or maybe in a newsletter, or something is just kind of trusting the process. And the process is consistently showing up and being seen and doing the work every day. Whether you're on vacation, or at home, wherever you are, if you just keep doing the work, good things are gonna happen. And I feel like we're definitely seeing that in all of our business ventures right now. So yeah, that's all I got.

Emily Thompson 58:12
There you go. That's it, just show up and do the work right.

Kathleen Shannon 58:16
If you like being boss, be sure to sign up for our newsletter at love being boss calm, where you'll get episode worksheets, secret content, and other goodies delivered straight to your inbox every week. Again, that's love being boss, calm. Do the work. Be boss, and we'll see you next week.

Like, uh, you know, it's so funny because it's been a minute, since we've done a podcast and now I'm starting to Okay, so every time we record a podcast, I get a little bit of a vulnerability hangover. Yeah, we

Emily Thompson 59:02
both do it.

Kathleen Shannon 59:03
After we record I'm like, Oh, god, what did I say? And now I'm kind of in the moment. Like, oh my god, what am I saying?

Emily Thompson 59:12
Welcome to it, Kathleen. We're right back at it. I know I know. I feel like I feel like I have to like restructure my mind to do punk podcast sometimes like, I can have a general conversation. But sometimes thinking video, podcasting is hard. My life is so hard edit that part out kind of gory.

Unknown Speaker 59:33
See exactly, this

Kathleen Shannon 59:34
is what I'm talking about, though. Like, maybe we should start over.

Emily Thompson 59:39
No, we're not starting over. Oh, we'll make this sound good. Cory make it sound good.