What I Want YOU to Learn From My Illness Life and Business Revelations

What I Want YOU to Learn From My Illness: Life and Business Revelations

Welcome to this episode 245 of The Determined Mom Show. I am your host, Amanda Tento, and today I want to share with you what I want you to learn from my illness. And this episode is about life and business revelations, which were revealed to me through this process.

If you have yet to listen to episode 243 to find out why my voice is like this, what exactly happened to me, and what my illness was, please go back and listen. So then this episode will make more sense. I was intubated. I will say that, and that’s why my voice is the way it is, and I’m still working on getting that to be back to what I would call normal or close to normal, and I look forward to sharing this with you. 

When I went into the hospital, I thought I had to have everything, all my eyes dotted, all my ts crossed, everything ready for the baby, which is normal, like nesting for being a mom, ready for a new baby.

I had all the baby stuff and my business stuff ready, only partially, so I could leave for eight weeks and not have to touch it. That was not the case. I was expecting to be able to be back, to be able to answer questions. I was hoping for just a couple of days that I was going to be out.

Everything I planned for did not happen as I wanted it to. And it was a huge learning experience. One of the things that happened when I woke up was I realized that I didn’t want my life to be like it was before. How was my life? I worked all the time. I woke up and got the kids off to school, got to my desk around eight, and I sat there until six o’clock at night, minus getting them off.

The bus and getting them started on their homework, and eating lunch. But for the most part, I worked all the time, and I didn’t have all that much to show for it. I had a lot of clients, and we had a great income coming in, but it wasn’t that I needed to work that much. I don’t know even know what I was doing at this point.

Now that I don’t work that much. But anyway, I was just, Maybe, addicted to the work, and I just felt like my purpose was work, and that was it. So when I woke up, I realized, Hey, I don’t want to live like this. I don’t want my family to be like this. I don’t want anything to be like this anymore.  I talked to my husband about it and said, look, I don’t want anything to be as it was before.

Because it wasn’t great and I shouldn’t have been working that much and I shouldn’t have been focused that much work and the kids and you both just were bitter and it was just a huge revelation. I knew that for my life to be different, my business had to be different. I’m thinking, okay, if I can not touch all of this stuff or six weeks and see what happens afterward, and if everything’s still okay, then you know, It’ll be fine.

I had gotten two huge new clients before I went into the hospital. One has a Google business optimization project of a hundred locations, and the other one has a Google business management project of 26 locations. So we went forward with those projects, and I assumed that I could answer questions and be there for my team and the client.

And that was not the case. My husband had to reach out to a colleague whom I had hired VA through, I trusted this person with everything, and I did not think they would let me down. And in the end, they ended up letting me down. So this is another lesson that I want to share with you.

And that is, don’t just trust anyone, even though they promise you the moon, don’t trust them because it’s very likely that they will not come through free. And when that happens, it can be devastating.  I lost the client for whom we had 26 management profiles per month. 

And that’s simply because she did not pay, even though I was paying her like it was coming out of my account, auto-draft her payment. She was not paying the VA that was supposed to be working on my project. And that VA did not do the work because she wasn’t getting paid. And here we are, like Christmas time and she has kids and things and she needed money.

She needs to get paid for the work that she’s doing. And so she ended up not doing the work, and I couldn’t figure out why. And so, finally, I figured out why. And it was because literally $180 of her pay was being withheld from her and for no reason. And this person was not replying to my messages or her messages.

So I ended up paying her the $180 because I do not like people being unpaid, especially on my watch. Even though I’d already paid her the $180 through the other person, actually way more than that I just, said, okay I don’t want you to be suffering because of something you’re supposed to be doing for me.

Here is the payment. So the moral of this story is that we ended up, because of the poor response time, losing that client even though it was extenuating circumstances, but it was a very big corporation and they did not want to move forward with that type of response.

So that was a big customer service lesson for me. A big lesson in trusting others with your business is for me. My husband was already busy. If you’re thinking like, oh, why didn’t your husband step in? My husband was busy making sure I didn’t die. He was advocating for me. He was coming to the hospital every single day rubbing my feet.

He was taking care of an absolutely 100% newborn baby. And he was also taking care of our other three kids, making sure they got to school, got their homework done, and had lunches. He was doing absolutely everything. So he could only take on one thing.

It was just a lot. The whole experience was a lot. And what I want you to take away from this experience is that I want you to realize that you do not have to work as you’re, as much as you’re working now, you can work probably half of what you’re working and still get the same if not better results because you’re.

Concentration is going to be more focused. Your efforts are going to be more concentrated. It’s just going to be 10 x your results. So since I got home from the hospital, and now I’m recording this in June at the end of June, I got home from the hospital; I want to say the beginning of February, I didn’t even open my computer until I want to sound like mid-March because I literally couldn’t like I could, I was trying to relearn how to walk.

That was my biggest task when I came home, I was trying to walk and walk for longer distances, and I was so excited that I could walk from here to the bathroom at first and it’s just crazy when you find out what’s really important in life and the things that you take for granted.

So you do not need to be working as much as you do. My business was fine for however long probably that’s more than eight weeks. That’s 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, probably 12 weeks. So my business was fine without me for 12 weeks, minus a couple of client and team communications.

But other than that, I could do all of that from my phone. So I did not have to log in. I did not have to do any of that, and it’s grown since I got home. So that is amazing too. So you need to make sure that you evaluate what you’re doing and where you want to be and focus that time on your life.

My family. Now that I don’t work anywhere near as much as I did, I probably work three hours a day, if that. Just because I have a lot of therapy, I wanna spend time with them; I want to be able to do things around the house. There are so many things that I want to focus on that are not work that I need to ensure that I have that time.

That’s what I focus on. And I hired an operations assistant, which has made all the difference and she is helping me get organized. She’s helping me to get my client onboarding. She’s allowed me to do that. We’ve worked through a lot of things together, and she’s also going to eventually become that person where my husband can send her one message and she sends everybody a message and lets them know what’s going on.

And takes over everything. So it is amazing to have that and to know that I’m setting myself up for success in the future, and also setting myself up so I can step even further back from my business whenever I want to or get ready to take a couple of days off as a family. And I would never have done that before.

I would’ve never been able to take two days off of work and not do anything, nuts, and message anyone who still needs to do something. But I have complete confidence in Danielle and hope you’re listening. But I just am so grateful to be alive. I’m so thankful to have gone through this experience because I wouldn’t know these things if it hadn’t been for this experience.

I would still be thinking that I had to work all the time. If I didn’t work this amount of hours, this would happen. You are your own boss. I am my own boss, and we make the rules. We make the schedule, and we can get as much done in three hours as we can in eight.

So that is my lesson for you today. I hope you take this and evaluate your life and business and imagine yourself in a situation where you can’t touch your business. What would happen, even if you want to for 12 weeks, then make an emergency plan? Figure out what is important to you, what parts of your business you enjoy, and what aspects of your business you don’t enjoy, then cut all that stuff out that you don’t enjoy and only focus on those things you want.