Forget the Hustle—Here’s How Savvy Entrepreneurs Actually Manage Their Resources

Welcome to the Overgivers Anonymous podcast. My name is Angela Mondor, also known as the Geeky Girl. In this podcast, we’re going to be talking about some amazing things to help you get over overgiving.   

 

 Hi, and welcome to this episode of the Over Givers Anonymous podcast. My name is an Angela Manor and I’m also known as the Geeky Girl. Let’s dive in. Today I wanna talk to you about how to forget the hustle. How about that? We actually wanna talk about how to get rid of it because. Savvy entrepreneurs actually manage their resources differently, and especially with us neurodivergent people, we have to really be on top of our resources and the hustle can actually drag us down and take things away from us.

 

In different ways, so let’s get honest. The hustle sucks. I have never found a hustle to be something that has ever in the history of my business helping me at all, and I certainly don’t have the resources at my fingertips to be able to make the hustle work based on my lifestyle as well. So let’s dive into it if you’re feeling the same way.

 

If you’re feeling uncomfortable, then we’ll, we’ll look at it and talk about how you can be more resource savvy in terms of your business and life, and you can do things differently. Just, let’s put aside the things that you’ve been told along the way because we have been taught over and over again that nonstop work is what equals success.

 

But in reality, that has only ever led to burnout For me, I know that a lot of other entrepreneurs, same thing, it’s, it literally leaves us in a place where we are deficient and unable to continue. We’re overwhelmed. We’ve raced it, wasted resources along the way. It’s certainly not something that’s sustainable for us.

 

Short term, short blip, sure, I can work hard for a short period of time, but I need, I need to see the end of the, the light at the end of that tunnel. So we’re gonna dive in to rethinking your resource management, and that includes your energy, your time, your and your money. And we’re doing this so that we can have a sustainable success around us.

 

Okay? So there has been. Many times when I have certainly felt like I have been working really hard and I’ve been sitting in this burnout because I’ve been trying to work nonstop. One of my biggest memories, of course, is when I was doing this corporately because. As neurodivergent people we’re, we’re all in.

 

Like regardless of whether they’re working for somebody else or working for ourselves, we’re working really hard. And so when I find myself in a place where I’m, they’re literally like a duck, right on top of the surface looks fine, but underneath your feet, you’re just going like crazy. That to me is what that hustle looks like.

 

You can only sustain it for a short period of time. You can’t continue to tread water and expect to be able to get to the other side. So I know that for myself, I have done this in a few different ways in my career, working corporately as well as working for myself in my own business. And when I’ve done this I’ve ended up.

 

Literally burning out, but also missing important opportunities, missing some cues or clues along the way. I don’t know if you’ve ever read a book and you’ve thought like, why didn’t you like protagonist, maybe watched a movie or something. Why didn’t you pick up on that? Like, I saw that two scenes ago, or read that a few scenes ago or something.

 

And that’s because we have that 2020, you know, you can look back and you have 2020 vision. That’s because you have that in your repertoire to do when you’re watching somebody else go through it. But when you’re in it, it’s harder to see that forest for the trees, but it’s even harder when we’re hustling.

 

I literally burnt myself out so hardcore in my corp, blah, blah. That very last corporate job that I couldn’t get off the couch for five days. I got up, I got the kids ready for school. I took them to school. I spent the day on the couch. I got up, I picked up the kids. I made sure they were got what they had to for the evening.

 

I got them to bed and went back to bed myself. So I literally was so burnt out. I couldn’t even function outside of the things I had no choice but to get done, which was the things for my children and my family. I don’t wanna ever live there again. That is never a place where I ever want to spend any time again.

 

I have other times in my business where I’ve burnt out to the point where I’m just uncomfortable. I’m cranky. I am not looking after myself. I certainly don’t wanna be spending any time with any humans. I don’t have patience for. I don’t even have patience for my own self. Nevermind the patience around me.

 

Those are all signs of burnout. Signs of putting ourselves in a place where we’re working too hard. So I certainly have felt like if I just worked harder, if I just did more, if I just spent more time working, that I would get more results. And that never worked for me. And a lot of times the guilt monsters came up at that point because I would be working really hard in the business and be like, oh, I wish I could spend time with my family.

 

I wish I could do these things that are fun, but I can’t ’cause I’m working too hard. And then if I was working, if I was spending time doing those things, I’d be like, oh, I should, right? Those should words, the guilt monsters. I should be actually working and not having any fun. So all of those things come up when I’m working.

 

Too hard, but I’m trying to hustle when I’m trying to get more done than I actually can get done. That’s the cues. Okay? But you know what? When I made changes and when I chose to make some different choices in my life and my business, that’s when I started to work smarter, not harder. And ultimately I’ve become more productive.

 

I get more done. It feels better. I am not only productive, but I’m enjoying things better. And when I start to not enjoy things, that’s when I need to. That’s my cue. I go, okay, hold on a second. What’s going on? What’s happening that is going on that I need to make a change with? And can I make that change?

 

Or is it one of those situations where I have to put my head down, but there is the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s not gonna last long. So those are some important things for me. Because it is important for you to know that there is a different way. You don’t have to just work harder and harder and harder.

 

A lot of times I hear people say, oh, but you know what when I was working, I was working eight hours a day, but I’m not working eight hours a day. I need to work harder in a business. I gotta tell you, it’s bullshit. I’m sorry, but it’s true. When you were working corporately, maybe they paid you eight hours a day, but you weren’t working eight hours a day.

 

There was plenty of times when you got up to go to the bathroom or you went and talked to a friend at a different cubicle or their office, or you were stopped in a hallway to have a conversation with somebody. There’s lots of these lull times even when you’re working corporately or you’re working for somebody else.

 

So stop being so hard on yourself, please. Please, I encourage you to really take a step back and go, oh, okay. Yeah, no, I wasn’t actually working all those hours. And so you can translate into your business as well. Okay. So we wanna shift. We really wanna make a big shift, move from hustle culture, and we actually wanna move into having better results, but with more joy in your life.

 

I, I mean, that’s where I would love for you to go. It’s certainly something that I personally work towards every single day. So what are some of the things for us as neurodivergent people that maybe work differently than a neurotypical person? We have a lot of us, I’m not saying all of us, but a lot of us are very impacted by energy and so having energy crashes is something that happens to us as neurodivergent individuals. We are more sensitive to the energy around us. We are much more empathetic. Generally speaking. A lot of us are now, some of us aren’t and that’s totally cool, but. Sometimes that can be part of it.

 

Even if you’re not super empathetic with other things, you can still feel the energy around you differently, and the energy crashes can also impact the way we feel about ourselves. We might feel like you’re on the top of the world first thing in the morning, and then you have this massive crash and you don’t even know why you’ve had this crash, and it might not have anything to do with people around you, but it’s simply to do with all the things you’re trying to get done, and you’re just working on trying to get the to do this done.

 

Okay? That can cause an energy crash as well. The inconsistent focus. Something that if you’re going through an inconsistent focus timeframe or if that is your normal, or if it is, you know, just a specific kind of day you’re having, I encourage you to embrace those kinds of things. If you’re having an inconsistent focus piece, how can you use that to your advantage?

 

Work on figuring out how you can work on, on things that are unpredictable in their energy levels. Or Julie, let’s try that again. How can you find a way to work with your energy levels or with your focus levels? And I like to break things up different kinds of tasks so that I can have things to pick from, oh, I’m in this kind of energy focus right now.

 

I can pick from these kinds of tasks. That way it gives me the ability to be able to. You know work within the energy that I have now. Sometimes we don’t have that opportunity. Sometimes, like I said, it’s a head down. You have no choice. Those are harder days but having people around us to support us can be much help, can bring us a lot of help during that time.

 

Now, we can also have trouble delegating, and there’s a few different layers to delegating that can be very difficult for us as neurodivergent human beings. First of all, the, the, you know, there’s that I need to do everything myself. It’ll never get done as good as I can get it done. Now I want you just to slow down and if you’ve ever said that to yourself, just stop for a second.

 

Take a breath. I’ve said it to myself too. I remember that having that moment of going, well, nobody else can do this like I can, and so I have to keep going. The problem was, is that it wasn’t that only I could do those things. It simply was that if I peeled it back like the onion and I looked at what the problem was, the problem was that I thought a couple things.

 

So, first of all, I thought if I write the process down, then it’s gonna take me so much time to write the process down, to hand it off to somebody else. It’s just faster and easier if I do it myself instead of writing the process down. It wasn’t until I realized that if I wrote the process process down once, and I took a long time to do that task.

 

Once, then I was able to hand that off to somebody else, which saved me time over and over and over and over and over again. Okay. See where I’m going. The other thing is not being able to determine which tasks I actually had to do versus tasks I could get somebody else to do. So let’s take this one for example.

 

I’m recording this for you right now and I’m doing an audio version and a video version now. Only I can do this. Nobody else can do it for me. I have not yet embraced deep fake. I do not have a deep fake of me. I have to be present to do this, but in order to get this out to you, so you’ve either listening to it or watching it yourself.

 

Maybe you’re even reading a blog post about this. Either way. There are other people in this process tree that allow me to be able to get as much done as as we can, right? Geeky girl itself can’t do, I can’t do all the things geeky girl does. But as a team, we each have special things that we can lean on, special talents and skills.

 

And when you start to look at those as resources, it’s more helpful to be able to say, ah. That’s something that this person can do, and that’s something that this person can do. I don’t have to do it all myself. The other thing about delegating is the concept that you are concerned that, remember I said nobody can do it like you can sometimes we have to let some of that go.

 

I know I’m hearing you already, but sometimes the way you do it, you think it’s the best way, and then you write out your process. You give to somebody and they’re like, oh, well, would you mind if I do it this way? You’re like, oh, I never thought about doing that way. That’s so cool. Yeah, go for it. Okay. So being open to allow other people to bring their own feedback, the chances are that somebody else might have even a better way of doing it.

 

I know, right? But delegation can be difficult. With all of those different pieces that you have floating around in your brain. When we don’t let those things go, we become micromanagers. You have to do it this way. This is the way you need to do it. I need to check everything you do before it goes out.

 

I can’t. And literally what you’re telling your team is you can’t trust them. They’re not worthy of your trust, then they’re not going to feel like they’re valued by you. They’re not gonna stick around, or it’s gonna be a strange relationship. You need to find the people you can trust. And once you’ve gone through this, you’ve done the training with them, you let it go.

 

Okay? Delegation is one of those fun things about running a business. You think about any large business, they’re not doing it on their own. There’s lots of people working in the business with them, so that’s an important piece to let go of Time. Blindness affects each and every one of us in its own beautiful, wonderful, rainbow way.

 

I have time blindness in, and it depends on the day. It depends on what’s on my plate. So in some ways, I can underestimate how long a task can take, or I can overestimate how much time I’m gonna need, or I can think, oh, I have this much time, so therefore I can do this task. And then I go down this rabbit hole and I’m screwed.

 

That actually happened to me today, which was hilarious because I got, I had these notifications set up. I had to go do something. And I got on the call with my Julia, right? My executive assistant. They were working through some problems and the notification came up and I’m like, yeah, I’m good.

 

I got a half an hour. Oh yeah, I’m good. I got time. And then it was like, oh no, I have to be there in five minutes. I gotta go. So it happens all the time and so you need to figure out what are the things that are gonna help you. Those notifications generally super, super helpful for me. I didn’t have a choice on that particular task.

 

I had no choice but to have it at that time of day. It was an appointment so I couldn’t work around it. I generally don’t like to have appointments in the afternoon like that ’cause it’s hard for me to get work done. And also do those things on time. Luckily it was a flexible appointment. It wasn’t like a hardcore appointment and I had enough time to get there, so it was good.

 

But these kinds of things can sneak up on us and they can cause a lot of problems for us. One other thing that can cause problems for people is the double booking, which also comes with the time blindness. ’cause you don’t realize that there’s something else going on and then you book over top. So those things can really cause some problems as well when we’re talking about our resources and how do we handle those kinds of things.

 

Now the guilt over rest. So I talked about a little bit already, remember talking about the guilt monsters. Oh, I wish I, I should be doing this, when I should be doing that. Those kinds of things. What I have found that has helped the most in this moment is simply being present. It’s a, it’s a simple concept, but hard to implement sometimes.

 

So when you’re thinking about, i’m taking time for whatever it is. For example, every summer my husband and I do Freedom Fridays. That means that Friday I am not working. Everybody I work with knows that I’m not working. My clients know I’m not working. Julia knows I’m not working. Everybody knows I’m not working on Fridays.

 

It only works because I set boundaries around that time and that time is sacred to myself and my husband. If I. Set it out to do, but then go, oh, I should do this, I should do that. And I ended up working on those times. I am no longer actually getting the value of that time. My husband’s not getting any value from me being present ’cause I’m not present.

 

I’m not getting any value ’cause I’m not present either. And so when you do those kinds of things where you let the guilt monsters take over, you don’t allow those boundaries to be strong. You are not getting any value from the time off. You need to get value from that time off. ’cause that’s what’s going to help sustain you through the times when you’re having to work really hard.

 

Okay? So same thing. If you say, I’m only gonna work till this time today, then honor that for yourself and make sure that you only work till that time today. And then when you’re not working, let it go. Be present, whatever you choose to do. Last week, what was last week? Yeah, not this week. Last week, my husband and I went to a comedy show on Monday night, and never once did I think, oh, I need to check my phone to see if I needed to do X, Y, Z.

 

My clients all know I don’t work at night, and so they know that they’re not gonna receive a response from me at night. I always tell my clients, you can email me anytime of day you like, go ahead, have at her, but I’ll reply to them during business hours. That’s a boundary that’s important to me, so that when I am taking time for myself when I’m.

 

Off work. I’m actually off work. So taking away that guilt is really important because when we, when we struggle with this. Guilt monster and we are constantly thinking we should be working. You’re back in hustle mode. That is going to cause some great pains for yourself in it’s gonna reduce your, your creativity.

 

It’s going to reduce the clarity in the difference between working and your personal life. It’s gonna drain your energy, it’s gonna suck you dry. So it’s really important for you to figure out what works for you. Like I said, for me, being present was the thing that worked for me. So when I was with my, this is, you know, a lesson I learned a long time ago, but when I was with my kids, I was a mom and I was with my kids and I was present with them.

 

I wasn’t also present at work. And then when I was at work, I was present at work and doing the work things that I had to do that helped me with these guilt monsters. So you gotta find what works best for you on those ones. But. Having guilt over rest isn’t actually helping you get rest. In fact, it’s taking away from the experience.

 

It’s taking away from that rest, even if you set time aside and therefore it’s not actually going to be helping you in any way. Okay, now, resource drain. I mean, all of these things we’ve talked about of this in different ways throughout this entire thing, but you can waste or drain your energy, or sorry, resources in so many different ways.

 

It could be your time, your money you could, you know, be draining the resources of your team, even their time. And what ends up happening is that when you do those things, you’re gonna find that you aren’t actually aligned with your strengths. And your core goals inside your business, you are allowing sort of everybody to take on and take from you all the things that they want to.

 

Okay? So what’s really important when you think about your resources, being really, really clear on how you want to utilize those resources. So your time, making sure that you’re focused doing the things which comes back to the one we just talked about, right? Being present. These, this, I’m taking my time and I’m going to do this here.

 

Your money being focused, knowing what it is. And these things need revising and revisiting often. Okay? But when you’re looking at all the things that you’re paying for inside the business, you might go, oh, I need to. Revisit that every quarter or every month or whatever works for you and say, here’s where I’m spending money on a monthly, quarterly, yearly basis, depending on the bill.

 

Is this still serving me? ’cause I know that when we, we do changes in the business with different SaaS programs, the first thing we do when a new SaaS program is. Showing us that it’s something we need is we look at it and go, will this replace slash interchange with something else that we’re doing? If it’s going to do that, then do we lose or lose?

 

Do we stop now using that other software that we were using? That can be helpful in the in, in the interim moments when they actually happen. That’s like a cause and effect kind of thing, but you might be paying for something that you purchased. Six months or a year ago and thought, oh, this is gonna be great.

 

I like this thing. And then you forget you’re paying for it ’cause it’s not a lot of money. And you look back and go, oh, I haven’t used this thing in three months or something. And so then it’s like, oh, do I actually need this thing? Is it a resource? I should, I should on you. But is this a resource that I would like to bring back into practice to use?

 

Or is it something that really wasn’t serving me the way I anticipated and I need to let it go? So the same thing can be said for your time, for the time that your team works. If your team is working a lot of hours, obviously you’re paying them. So it comes back to the money piece. But are they working on the things that you want them to work on?

 

You know, what resources are they using and, and how are we doing those things together? So we wanna look at all of those pieces in there. So let’s talk about what you can do. So conducting a audit. So look at all your resources, and this is, we’ve, I talked about this in a few different ways through here, but let’s just roll it all up for you.

 

Tracking how you spend your time, tracking how you spend your money what does your energy look like looking, if you were to track all these things for a week, I. Just to see how you feel, what are all these things? Then you can notice which activities are draining you. What moves your business forward, what are the things that are actually bringing you closer to your goals?

 

I personally like to use clickup. You could use spreadsheets or journals. You could visualize it on a, a whiteboard. Whatever works for you. But have a place where you can actually track these things. Obviously the Rockstar Planner is also a great place to be able to record this information, especially ’cause we have the weekly weekly planners in there so that you can manage what’s actually working and how you’re feeling every day.

 

That’s a really, any of those ways to track for a week to see how it’s going. Something else you can do is prioritize your return on investment time. So they talk about this as ROI all the time in business, which is just return on investment. So when you put time, energy, money towards something, what is it that you’re getting out of it? And so you can look at what is it in your time, your money, and your energy that you’re putting in.

 

And what are you getting out of it? Okay, so you gotta focus on tasks and investments of time and energy and money that leverage your strengths. You don’t wanna be spending a bunch of time trying to be better at things that you suck at. Unless you have to. Right? Delegation and mitigation are your friends with those things.

 

So not just what should be done, but what actually brings you joy. Where does your energy feel? Great when you use it? How can you best serve people? Those are the things you wanna focus on. And how do those things then translate into earning you the income in the business that you require? So remember, delegation and mitigation are gonna be really important to you. Automation is something else that could work for you. If I always say to my clients, if a computer can choose option A or option B or C or D or whatever without a human input, then we can automate it.

 

So same thing happens in your business. Think about the things that you do, moving data from one software to another having, if this occurs, then we’re gonna do that. A lot of these things can be automated for you. And there’s a lot of different kinds of really cool automations out there. We love building automations, so that’s something that also can help you a lot.

 

Okay? So especially with tasks that are more administration tasks or tasks that you feel are sucking all your energy and life force out of you, those are the kinds of things that you wanna look at, delegating, mitigate them in different ways, or automate, which is also a fun way to do it. Then I want you to also think about actually scheduling your rest.

 

Make it non-negotiable. Make it part of the plan, how you’re going to resource your time. You wanna treat your recovery time just as important as anything else in your business, whether it’s creating content or whether it’s interacting with your clients. Regardless of whatever else you do inside your business, make your rest or your recovery time as important as that.

 

Look out for the things that are gonna work best for you. Block time on your calendar and actually take breaks. Don’t back to back your appointments. Make sure you have space in between so that you have time to reset, move. Sometimes you need to, I don’t know, light a new candle or go for a dance or something to get the energy you need for your next call.

 

But always make sure that you are taking breaks and putting time in there for creative play and downtime. Look after yourself. Really. That’s all I’m asking you to do. Just look after yourself. ’cause you’re important, your business needs you, and so does the people in your life who love you. So really important when you’re talking about, you know, managing your resources.

 

You wanna work smarter rather than harder. And you know, to see if you can find a way that you can track your energy, track your money, and your time, and see how that’s all working out for you. Find the things you love about what’s going on, and find the things that you need to either mitigate, delegate.

 

Or automate and put some time in your calendar to rest, to recover, look after yourself.

 

And if you’re looking for a way to deep dive into this, to really get the most out of doing this for yourself, you might wanna look at our masterclass. We have the A beautiful masterclass that will help you to plan your perfect day. It’ll help you to figure out what works best for you and give you the tools to be able to pivot and change as those things change in your life as well.

 

So we’ll drop that. In the show notes as well as below this video if you happen to be watching the video. And please take note, this could be a really great masterclass for you to be able to truly take control of everything that’s going on in your life and your business and make it your own.

 

And you won’t have to worry so much about all of the stress that other people are trying to put on you about this hustle culture that just doesn’t work for us. Okay, I hope you have a fantastic day. I’ll talk to you next time. Have a great one. Bye for now. ​