Mastering Work-Life Balance as a Digital CEO with Donna Dube | EP233

Ever feel like you're on a never-ending treadmill trying to grow your online business? Donna Dube stops by the Mindset & Action podcast with a fresh perspective that could just get you to step off and take control like a true CEO. She’s dishing out a sneak peek into her strategy for scaling without burnout, emphasizing the power of prioritizing time, talent, and tactics. As Thursday's full episode awaits, Donna leaves us with golden nuggets about the mindset shifts necessary for anyone ready to lead their venture with more intention and less perpetual hustle.

In our chat, Donna gets candid about her personal turning point—a moment where family intervention made her realize the cost of being lost in the minutiae of daily tasks. Her relatable journey from overwhelmed entrepreneur to strategic leader will not only inspire but also offer practical advice on how to 'eat the frog' and tackle the most crucial tasks at the start of your day. Tune in as we explore the transformational impact of managing business priorities, all while keeping well-being and family time on the forefront. Whether you're a seasoned business owner or just starting out, this episode is a guiding light to navigating the challenges of entrepreneurship with grace and effectiveness.

Connect with Donna Dube
Check Out Her Website
FREE Download CEO Power Hour Playbook
Her Podcast CEO Amplify Podcast

FREE 3 Part Audio - Access Here

www.donnaeade.com

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Speaker 1 0:33

You're listening to the Mindset in Action podcast , the place to be to grow and streamline your business . I'm your host , Donna Eade . Let's jump into the show . Welcome back to the podcast , everybody . For this mini Mindset Monday , I have a special guest with me today . She's joining me on Thursday so you can get to find out all about her and her expertise then . But , Donna , welcome to the podcast .

Speaker 2 1:04

Thank you , so happy to be here , donna .

Speaker 1 1:06

Brilliant , so tell everybody just a little bit about what you do . Obviously , they're going to come back on Thursday for all of the details , but just a brief overview for them . Sure , so we know who we're talking to .

Speaker 2 1:25

Yes , so I help online entrepreneurs grow their business without having to work 24 seven , and we do that by helping them leverage three things their time , their talent and their tactics .

Speaker 1 1:31

I love that Lovely , lovely , lovely and concise as well , which I love . So in our mini mindset Mondays , what we are sort of trying to do is just to to make business relatable to everybody in the fact that we all have blocks that get in our way and get us stuck and we're not alone in that and it's really about sort of showing people that what they think is their block and nobody else deals with it . We all deal with these things . So can you let us know what's the biggest mindset block you've come up against in your business so far and how did you kind of navigate that ?

Speaker 2 2:14

Yes , good question . So I would say , for me , the biggest mindset block was really believing and acting as if I am the CEO of my business , as if I am the business leader . So , like many of you , we start our business by ourselves and I was doing everything right .

Speaker 2 2:33

Whatever little tasks needed to be done , I was there , chipping away at it , working too many hours , definitely , and , you know , on the track for burnout , even though I didn't see it at the time , and so it was really my family who said , listen , something's got to stop here , because we've lost you Like , you're physically in the house , but we don't spend any time with you anymore , right ? So it was a real wake up call to say I need to be able to do things different . I wanted to grow my business further , but the way I was doing it wasn't going to work , and so I really had to take a step back and say how can I still be productive and still , you know , do what I need to do , get clients in the door without being in the weeds continuously ? And how can I start thinking and acting like the CEO of my business so that I'm making strategic decisions ? Right , I'm not just saying yes to everything that flies my way , I'm not just opening my laptop and responding to everyone else's demands . No , I have priorities that I need to do in my business this week and next week and really allowing myself the time that I spend on my business to focus on what those priorities are . That doesn't mean I ignore customer requests or , you know , don't go to my inbox for three weeks , right ? No , but there's a set time , right ?

Speaker 2 3:59

So , just to give you an example , I used to open up my laptop in the morning , you know , go straight to the inbox and of course it's flooded , and I'd read through every email and then , ding , ding , my phone would be dinging something on Slack , oh , let's check Facebook . Ding , ding , and right before you know it it's 2 pm and I haven't done any of the things that I had planned right . So when we flip that upside down , sure I go in my inbox now in the morning . I'm looking for emergent things that need to be dealt with . The other things that Sally Sue is having a sale and this one's going to do this . Those are great things . I'll look at them later , but they don't need my attention right now .

Speaker 2 4:43

So there's nothing . Needs that my attention Now . I need to eat the frog first , as they say , and I need to do that thing . That's the priority in my day , and the reason I do it early in the day is because life happens right . I might get tired , I might decide that's it for today , something might go wrong that I need to attend to , and so blocking that time really early to say this is my priority . I need to get on it and start it , then I can go back to other people's demands .

Speaker 1 5:09

I love that that is so good , and what I'm sort of curious to know your thoughts on is I literally you could have described exactly what I used to do with ?

Speaker 1 5:20

my emails and I did exactly the same thing . It was like no , I'm not , not doing this anymore . Um , but A lot of people like to work with their circadian rhythm , or you know , some people just work better during the mornings and some work better later in the day . I love what you said there about doing that priority task thing first , because life happens , the kids get sick , you get a phone call from the school and all of a sudden your day has gone up the swanny and all sorts of things like that . Things like that will happen . So getting it done first gets it out the way . Gets it done gets you moving forward . But what if you're somebody who's just like actually my really creative , my time where I can be really mentally on is actually 4 pm in the afternoon . That's that's when I'm at that in the morning . I'm just kind of a bit sluggish . I'm a bit like you know , I need the light stuff . I can't handle that , you know . Can we still still kind of get the same effect by doing doing it the other way around ?

Speaker 2 6:22

Absolutely , absolutely . And again , it's knowing you as a person and how you work best , right , and so for me it might be morning first thing , that's , that's my time . If it's 4 PM for you , when you're , you know , the most creative and that's when you like doing those those harder tasks that take more mental energy , that's fine . Block it off , right , so you can't have that and school pickup at the same time . Obviously that's not going to work Right . But you know , if that's a time you can block off and you can not be interrupted and you know , focus and really get into that groove , there's nothing wrong with that . And then put those lighter things for the morning time , when you know you need to take your time and get into things . Yeah , not a problem at all . It's just that you have to figure out what works for you and follow that routine .

Speaker 1 7:09

Yeah , and plan as well , because obviously what you're saying there is great If you need to get it done in the morning , because if something goes wrong in the afternoon , you know it's fine , you've done it . But if you plan ahead and you make sure that you're not leaving everything to the last minute which I think a lot of us can be guilty of certainly putting my hand up up then you've got the time . So , for example , today , as we're recording , I had another recording before you for another episode of my podcast and the lady who was going to come on has had a malfunction with her laptop and now she can't .

Speaker 1 7:46

She couldn't do the recording with me , so now I'm a recording down and I'm not sure when I'm going to be able to get her back on because obviously we've got to schedule calendars again and she's got to wait until her laptop's fixed . But I've planned ahead so I can shift our episode into her spot if I'm not going to get hurt . So it's all about having that kind of foresight to like not put things on the list for the day of the deadline , but having it a few days .

Speaker 1 8:12

So if you are in the afternoon and this is your productive time , you're ready to go . And then you get a call . You know Billy was at football , he's twisted his ankle . He needs you to come and pick him up early from football practice . You can go and do that . And you can do that thing tomorrow in your priority time because you've planned ahead for mishaps happening . So I love that .

Speaker 1 8:33

And going back to your mindset block of being the CEO , I think that is a mentality that a lot of us struggle with .

Speaker 1 8:42

We kind of come out of corporate or you know , from day jobs in retail or whatever , and we're so used to having that employee mindset .

Speaker 1 8:52

So taking that step into you know I I'm the boss here , I'm not the employee , and acting like the boss rather than the employee is , is one that I think a lot of us struggle with . So thank you so much for sharing that and kind of sharing how you manage to overcome that and and make changes in your business to work around it , because I think it's one that a lot of us , especially in the early days of our business and some even longer , you know . I remember hearing Amy Porterfield talk on her podcast about how she had to step into the visionary role and that was so much later on where she had Chloe who worked with her as her full-time employee . It was just the two of them in the business , but she was always kind of defaulting to doing everything and Chloe had to sort of say to her you know , you need to be the visionary here and you need to take on that role , and that was something that was difficult for her from coming from corporate .

Speaker 1 9:48

So I think it's something that a lot of people struggle with , so I really appreciate you sharing . Yes , okay , guys , so we're going to be back on Thursday when we're going to be talking about , you know , our businesses , how we can sort of prioritize things , what is important in our business . You know we're going to lean into this eating the frog and schedules and all of that jazz . Donna has some fantastic tidbits in there and also a brilliant download that you can get , so make sure you come back on Thursday to listen to that one . All of Donna's links will be in the show notes of this episode as well , so you can head down there and go and connect with her , find her website and we'll be back with you on Thursday , so we'll see you then . Bye for now .