Episode 192: Building a Productive Business Model that Works for Your Energy Capacity with Anne-Sophie Pelletier

9 May

What happens when you find yourself in a cycle of burnout and unsustainable commitments in your business? How might you break free and make a change so that you can not only keep your head above water but also love how you work and get things done?

Anne-Sophie Pelletier joins the podcast today to share her story of how she navigated through creating and changing a business model that just wasn't working for her.

In this episode Anne-So shares:

What made her realize traditional productivity strategies weren't working for her and what to do instead
Building a business model around ADHD
How to setup a task inventory and prioritize your tasks by energy level
Setting tangible work boundaries
and so much more!

Let's get into it!

Links Mentioned During the Show:

The SIGNature Podcast
Follow Anne-Sophie on Instagram

Transcript:

Sarah Steckler: Welcome back to the podcast, friends. You are listening to the Mindful Productivity Podcast. And I'm your host, Sarah Steckler. And do I have a treat for you today. We've got an amazing guest joining the show and we're having this lovely conversation around productivity, activity, energy management, and more specifically, what it means to shift and build a business model that works for you, your brain and your mental capacity. So allow me to introduce you to our guests today. Anne-Sophie Peltier is an operations consultant and she helps businesses optimize their business systems and improve their productivity through the tools they use, their workflows time management, and helps them find clarity in their work. So their time and energy goes where it matters. She's also the host of the Signature podcast. And oh, man, she is truly a productivity expert. So let's go ahead and dive into this episode. I'm so excited for you to learn from her and let us know if any of this sparks any conversation talking points in you. We'd love to hear you over on Instagram. Let's go ahead and get into it.

Welcome to the Mindful Productivity Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Steckler. And this is the place to be to live a more mindful and productive life. If you're ready to turn daily chaos into calm and start your days with intention, then get ready to join me as we dive deep into mindful living and personal productivity. It's time to connect with your true self so you can live the life you want to live. And it all starts now.

Welcome back to the podcast, everyone. I'm so excited about our guests today. We're going to jump right into it. We've got Anne-So here today and we're going to be talking all about productivity and your energy levels and so much more. So before we get into all this juicy good stuff Anne-So could you give us an introduction and tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do?

Anne-Sophie Pelletier: Absolutely. Well, I mean, first off, thank you so much for inviting me. I'm super excited to be here today. So Hi, everyone. My name is Anne-Sophie Pelletier. I go by Anne-So and I'm the owner of Pelletier Consulting where I work as an operations consultant. So my goal is to optimize and improve business systems. So realistically, the goal of that is to basically make sure that your time and energy goes towards where it matters most for you, whether that's creating value to your clients or making sure that your time and energy goes towards things that bring you happiness, that fuel you, whether that's inside or outside of your business. My main focus and my main specialty is to really bring in the cycles of energy that we have.

Right?

Being able to work with the periods where we have a ton of energy, of motivation, of creativity, but also the ones where we have a lot less. So I feel like a lot of the business advice that's out there really focuses on consistency and picking one thing and kind of just running with it. However, how do you apply that when you have, as I mentioned, that cycle of energy where you have days, where you have more and we have less and kind of bring that in together into building a successful and sustainable business?

Sarah Steckler: I'm so glad you're here because I relate to everything you talk about so much. And I know I definitely have felt this way starting my business throughout my business. Like even now, just trying to navigate all these different productivity strategies that I hear online or that I read in books, trying to apply them to my life and being like, something's not working like this should work. Right? People wrote a book about it.

Anne-Sophie Pelletier: Some people are really successful applying this.

Sarah Steckler: Why can't I use this template for my life? And one thing I know that you say a lot. We've talked about it before, and I just love this so much because it really, really relates. And I'm excited to dive deeper into this. But you talk about how you no longer apply standards of productivity that don't work for you. So could we maybe talk about any specific things that you tried when you first started your business? What shifted for you?

Anne-Sophie Pelletier: I've had my business for about five years now, and the majority of that has been just as a side hustle. And I think just because of the limited of time, amount of time I had to put into my business, that is what was forcing me to keep all of my Ducks in a row. And as I built my business, I got to the point where it wasn't sustainable for me to do it on the side and keep a full time job. So I made the decision to go into my business full time, and I thought I knew what I was doing. I remember specifically being like, okay, I'm going to work from nine to five. These are going to be my hours. These are going to be my time blocks. I'm going to work from Monday to Friday. It only took a couple of short weeks until I figured out that it really didn't work for me. And the way that it was really clear was because I would work for a couple of weeks, I would be super motivated. I would create amazing content. I would develop all these new ideas in my business and then hit a wall where I would have basically zero energy or motivation to do anything, zero creativity.

Nothing I did was worth posting or worth hearing about. And so I would take a break from my business for one, two, three weeks until I felt motivated again, until I had that drive to get back into my work, until I felt inspired again. And I would start over again where I would have a couple of weeks really great work and then hit another wall. And for me, the tipping point of that was again, I was still building my business for it to be a full time job. And I remember signing a client instead of feeling really excited about working with them and thinking that they're awesome. And I couldn't wait to dive into my work was I just felt incredibly overwhelmed that I had someone else not only to support, but I had another place where I had to pour energy into, and I already felt like I couldn't fill my own cup. So how was I going to provide value to this new person? It was incredibly overwhelming and kind of just to summarize, what really wasn't working then was the idea that for me to be a successful full time business owner, I had to be working my business from nine to five.

I had to be working from Monday to Friday. I had to offer a certain type of offer and have a specific business model that was basically a copy of what others had been very successful using. And that unfortunately just really wasn't working for me.

Sarah Steckler: I feel like there's tons of people listening right now being like, oh, mom, I know I went through something very, very similar and really just trying to, like, replicate what we see other people doing because we see success and we're like, oh, I Canva do that. Right. Like that's working for them. Clearly it could work for me. And I think what you're really hitting on here is your own energy capacity, which I'm so excited to talk more about today, and how the corporate world doesn't always translate into what we do as creative entrepreneurs and how we work and also in being a creative. And I think anyone that creates content is a creative period. Like, just totally amount of brain power and ideas that go into that and how you want to do things and produce things. And so when we're using all that creative energy all the time, it's a drain in a different way. And I know that I have to be so mindful of how I use my brain and what I even think about during that time. Otherwise all of a sudden it's gone. It's like the cup was spilled and I don't have access to any more of that.

Anne-Sophie Pelletier: I think also related to the corporate world is this idea of linear output, linear progress. But when we think about creativity, creativity isn't something that you can just have on demand plan to do something creative, whether it's creating content or coming up with a new business offer. It's not just say, oh, I'm going to wake up today and get it doesn't always work that way.

Sarah Steckler: Yeah. And I love too, what you said a moment ago about how not only does productivity work different for all of us, but that pressure to have a certain offer or like a certain service. Could you maybe talk a little bit more about that. I thought that was really interesting. Okay.

Anne-Sophie Pelletier: So to give you an idea, when I first started, I almost acted as a business coach/va/online business manager. So you can already kind of see the idea that I would basically tailor my services to the needs of the people that came to me. And the only value that I saw that I was bringing to clients was in terms of the hours that I spent on video calls with them, because that was the main way I was delivering my services was on calls. I'm very introverted. I love meeting new people. I love networking. But the reality is that this kind of connection is very draining to me. Except here I was building a business where the only way I was making money was by showing up in this way. I think that could also lead to the other principle that we often see when people transition is the fact that they build their hours or they see the value of their services based on the amount of time or hours that they provide to the client, where it's like, just based on this system, you're creating something that is not sustainable because you're going to reach a point where you're not going to have enough hours in your day, in your week to keep serving and to keep delivering that if you want to keep growing your business.

Sarah Steckler: We are so similar in this way. I know when I was on your podcast while back, I think we talked a little bit about this, too. Like, just building a business model doesn't work for you. And I found myself in the same way. Like, when I first started my business, I started doing coaching. And I remember having this thought, well, if I just had ten client calls a day, like, back to back then, I could be a six figure business owner, one not even realizing the amount of effort it would take to have that many clients and the amount of mental energy. And I remember, I think at one point, the most clients I had ongoing at one time for, like, a three month container was like six. And I remember just at the end of it, yes. Just barely able because you know how much when you're on a call with somebody, especially when you're supporting them in whatever way, it's so well, at least I'll speak for me from an introvert standpoint, it's so incredibly draining. Not during the call. I always felt so invigorated during the work, but then afterwards I'd be like, I don't have anything left.

Like, my husband would be nowhere. Are you staring at a wall? Yeah. This is great.

Anne-Sophie Pelletier: Totally.

And I find that was so interesting for me, too, because before going into my business full time, I actually had a couple of months where I worked as a personal trainer. And that was one of the biggest discoveries that I had was that I couldn't keep up with seeing people back to back. And then I went into my business and I saw all of these people who were really successful having that kind of business model. And I was like, this is what I'm going to do.

Sarah Steckler: So what shifted? Like, when you have this realization I am super overworked, I don't have the capacity for this. How did you start tangibly making shifts and changes?

Anne-Sophie Pelletier: As I mentioned, for me, the tipping point was signing a new client who is an awesome individual and awesome person. Like, we still talk. I still work with this person and not being excited about it and really just feeling super overwhelmed. I turned to a business coach and I was like, hey, I need help to repackage my offers, to rethink what it is that I sell, because this is not sustainable. We work through the foundations in terms of, okay, what are my goals with my business? What are the values that I want to live by? What is my big goal in terms of where my business is going to take me and then slowly working your way into what is more tangible when it comes to a business. So in terms of what are my strengths, what are my weaknesses, what fuels me, what drains me? I was like, lucky enough that obviously already had a business. So that was a lot of data when it comes to things that I enjoyed doing in my business, because you might be able to relate to this, but it's super different to do something part time because you enjoy it versus doing it full time and having it be your main source of income.

Sarah Steckler: Yeah, 100%.

Anne-Sophie Pelletier: So Thankfully I had a couple of months of that to kind of pull from. So that was the first step was basically just rethinking my business plan. We also talked about the kind of content that I wanted to create and what felt most natural for me to show up and to make and yeah, so that was kind of like the more logical, tangible stuff that worked really well for some time. But I found that the constant cycle of work and completely drained and work and still kept going until I got tired. And I reached out to my therapist because I was like, this is not sustainable again for me, for anyone around me, for my business. Do you have any tips to basically help me be more productive? That was exactly what I came to him asking for. And that's when I learned that I have ADHD. So that was a huge wake up call in terms of I needed that label to justify making a change. And I'm not saying that everyone needs that, but that is what I needed to have that wake up call of you need to change more things. And during that discussion, there were two big things that really were key to me, kind of finishing that transition.

And the first one was that I needed to take care of myself before I hit zero in terms of energy. So I kind of like to see my energy level on the scale from one to ten. And so basically the promise is that instead of waiting until I'm at two to refill my cup is to start taking care of myself. When I notice I'm in an eight, why wait until I've hit the ground to do something about it? And I found that applying that made it so that the wall that I was inevitably going to hit wasn't really a wall anymore. More than like, hey, okay, I guess I'm just going to take things slow, kind of change a little bit. What my schedule has, maybe do some things that fuel me more. Number two was that this event flow, those highs and lows are inevitable, and I can do way better and be way happier by taking that into account and building my business around that, as opposed to trying to shove it to the side and ignore it and still be stuck in that cycle.

Sarah Steckler: And I love what you said. I needed that label to justify making a change, which reminds me a lot of what I hear a lot, which is basically kind of like, name it to tame it, right? Once you can identify something and give voice to something. And it sounded like what that really did was give you validation for your own unique brain, personality, work style, whatever.

Anne-Sophie Pelletier: Totally.

Sarah Steckler: And it sounded really empowering. And I love that because I think too, when it comes to neurodiversity or learning about different ways that we think and learn and grow, sometimes people can feel really overwhelmed with a diagnosis like that. And I love that you were like, oh, this actually really helps me understand myself more, which I think is such a beautiful thing. I know, like, for a lot of people, even just watching TikTok videos and hearing more and more about all these different ways that we all function in the world and how there is really no quote, unquote normal way of being there's all these diverse ways of existing. And totally, I just really appreciate that you're sharing that story with us. And thank you, too, for these tangible ways that you kind of moved forward. Would you mind telling us, for people that don't know, like, what living with ADHD is kind of like, what are some of the differences that you find? Maybe, like, some of the things that don't necessarily apply to you when it comes to productivity.

Anne-Sophie Pelletier: The one thing that we've already talked about is that flow of energy with these highs and lows, and you find yourself in that period of low. It can be really hard to motivate yourself to do work. So when people just tell you, oh, just sit down and do it, that doesn't really work, or when you start tasks and you struggle to see them through the end. So how do you build systems that can basically help support you to make sure that you do if they are still relevant for you? So having that check in period where you can be like, hey, this is still something that I want to do. If yes, how am I going to move forward to apply it? So that would be another one. Prioritizing things can be really challenging. So whether that's, like, on a small scale of what I need to do today or on the bigger scale of I have this project, I want to launch a new offer. I want to create and be able to see what needs to happen before other things or what is must have for this offer to exist, as opposed to what would be nice to have.

And kind of along the same line, people with ADHD often struggle with some level of perfectionism as well. So again, being able to see what is an absolute must have to create something versus what is a nice to have. Right? Kind of following the 80 20 rule when it comes to 80% of your progress will come from 20% of your efforts. And I can be applied in multiple, in multiple settings. But yeah, being able to distinguish what is absolutely a must have versus what is just not worth your time and energy. Another one would be time blindness. So when you work and work and then suddenly you look at the clock and like, oh, the entire day has gone by and you had so many other things on your to do list and that just completely went out the window, another one would be executive dysfunction. So that is basically when you sit there with your head full of things that you have to do and you just cannot get yourself to do it, which, again, when it comes to business, you're not always going to be doing things that you love or that fire you up.

So how do you take that into account to tackle the things that are a little bit less interesting, a little bit more boring? And again, how do you set up system so that you're able to see these things?

Sarah Steckler: It's really interesting because, and I've never had like a formal assessment for ADHD, but I thought for a time I thought I might have it because I was recently diagnosed with Mosser, with PTSD, which actually can mimic a lot of ADHD stuff. So I remember thinking this really applies to me, but then trying to remember I was like, but a decade ago, I don't know that it did. You know what I mean? It's been interesting to learn what some of these things are and how I may be mirroring my experience, may mirror some of these things, even though I probably don't have ADHD. But a lot of these ADHD tips are very helpful for me. I'm like oh, I totally relate to that. I definitely experience that. And I think, too, that it's really interesting because I think there's a lot of different things that people go through where some of these characteristics may really apply. And so I just love that this is a conversation that more people are having. And also, too, just the fact that recognizing these things like knowing, okay, if I have ADHD and I have time blindness, like, what can I do to help myself?

I recently bought this Cube timer, and I know you have one, too, and I love it changing my world. Well, first of all, I had no idea how quickly, like, an hour or even 30 minutes would go by. And the first couple of times, for anyone listening this Cube time, it's like a Cube, and it has four different options, 515, 30, or 60 minutes. And you just turn it on its side and it beeps, and then it starts counting down, and then the alarm will obviously go off. The first couple of times I used it, the alarm scared the shit out of me. Like, I jumped. I was like, because I was so in the zone, like, hyper focused on something, and I couldn't believe that an hour had gone by and it really made me aware that I was like, okay, I have no perception of what I'm doing when I'm working on certain projects. So that really helped me. And I think finding tools like that that you can use that kind of can either be a reminder or something. Like, one of the things my husband and I always joke about is we love having tea in the evening.

And more often than not, like, my husband will make us tea and we'll be watching a show, and then, like, an hour later, we'll be like, oh, shit, the tea. We totally forgot about it, right?

And now it's, like, cold. And so what happens to me all the time? We'll have to set these reminders on our phone to drink the tea in, like, five minutes. Otherwise it doesn't exist anymore. You know.

Anne-Sophie Pelletier: I've been debating getting one of those heating mugs. They're really expensive, like a $100. But I'm like, you know what? If this actually helps me drink my tea or coffee or whatever I'm having before it goes cold, maybe it's worth it. Yeah.

Sarah Steckler: And I know, too, because it can be so hard to focus on. And again, I'm sharing this from my experience, not saying that this is what it's like when you have ADHD, but it can be so easy to hyper focus on things that you are interested in. So if I'm not, I will procrastinate the simplest things. Like, oh, I need to look at my sales forecast or something. I'm like, I don't want to oh, look at this. And then all of a sudden, I'll build out, like, a new sales page for a new offer that doesn't even exist yet. And I'm like, wait a minute.

Anne-Sophie Pelletier: Do you mind the times you go down the rabbit hole for something that is just, like, completely irrelevant to your business, but that's not your main focus and that you're just sitting there like, my whole day, my whole day has just gone by.

Okay.

Right.

Sarah Steckler: And it can be so frustrating. 100%. Yeah. So there's this graphic that you created. We're going to share it in the show notes and link to it, too. And it says how I plan my work for maximum productivity. And there are six different tips. I feel like we could have six different episodes about each one of these. They're such good tips.

But I was thinking maybe we could touch on a few of them. I don't know if there's one that's your favorite, but when I wanted to start with was your tip for listing out your low energy tasks for slower recovery days and energizing tasks for fuel? Could you break that down? Tell us what you mean by that.

Anne-Sophie Pelletier: Okay. So this tip is based on a framework that I call my Task inventory. And basically the goal of the Task Inventory is to list everything that I would do in my business, regardless of what process it is for. So is it like something that I would do for a client? Or is it in terms of my content creation or is it in terms of my business development? I list all of them there, and then I identify a couple of different things. So one of them would be how and when I do it, because that's really good data for me to help put that in my schedule in a way that is going to make a ton of sense for me, and that is going to make the best use of my time and energy. So, for instance, one thing that comes up a lot is like checking emails. Right. Having people that check emails 15 different times a day, as opposed to, let's say, having one or two dedicated time blocks for it in your day. So again, having the how and when you do this task is just to help us give a little bit more insight as to when you do this task.

Another point of data that I use for this task inventory is how much I don't look forward to it. I call this the Poop scale so much.

And that's just how much I'm like.

I really don't want to do that. And basically, I'm going to try to not have a ton of high Poop scale items in a single day or when I'm really not feeling motivated to work because that's not going to help. I'm probably going to get stuck in executive dysfunction and procrastinate doing anything that day.

So that's one. And then another parameter that I use is how much energy something requires out of me. So is it something that requires a ton of energy? For instance, a lot of work that I would do for clients would be things that require a lot of energy versus things that don't really require a lot of energy. So, for instance, personally, for me recording a podcast episode, not a ton of energy, I absolutely love doing this. I found it fairly easy. And so using that list to highlight what takes a ton of energy versus what takes very little. So this tip to have a list of low energy tasks is for those days where you don't have a lot of capacity, right? We're talking about how you can have days with a ton of energy, a ton of motivation, et cetera. Those days where you have very little. And so what I will do is make a list of all these little items that require very little energy and that will just be collected. I personally have that in ClickUp, which is what I used to manage my business. And so if one morning I wake up and I'm like, wow, I just have very little in the tank, that is going to be my go to in terms of what I'm going to tackle for the day.

So really, the premise is that if I don't want to just take a day off, I still want to get something done. These are tasks that I know for a fact are relevant in my business, and yet don't take a lot of capacity from me. So when I wake up and I have very little energy, these are things that I can easily tackle and then I can easily get through and that are still going to help my business grow, that are still going to help move the needle, but are almost going to be just an easier day for me and my business.

Sarah Steckler: So brilliant. I love this.

And I feel like we have the same brain too, because I do something similar. But I really love how you broke it down. You did such a great job of explaining this in such a tangible way, because I think too, we just judge ourselves so much for even the small things. And I think it's worth celebrating the things that we do accomplish in a given day, totally, no matter how small it is. Like this morning before our podcast today, I went and I dropped off two packages at the post office and I was like so proud of myself. And I bought the stuff ahead of time. I just had to drop them off and I was like, I am so good at life. It's like such a small thing that I'm sure people do all the time. But it sounded like I was dressed and I left the house and I came back. That was worth celebrating. That's definitely something that it takes a certain amount of energy for me to be able to get out of the house and do that. But I really like how you broke this down. And also too, it just gives yourself this really lovely win and it kind of takes perfectionism too.

Of maybe I'm not doing all these huge energy draining tasks today, but I'm still doing something and that's okay.

Anne-Sophie Pelletier: Totally.

Sarah Steckler: I think too. It also comes down to I'm sure prioritizing tasks too. What works for you in terms of okay, one thing I hear a lot is eat the frog. Right? Don't want to do in the morning when you hear that advice, does that apply to you?

What do you do when you have one thing like that?

Anne-Sophie Pelletier: So I always start my day with something that I find really easy. And for me that's just checking notifications on social media and email. And I know that it Canva be easy for people to kind of get lost in scrolling when I will set to make sure I don't just go from checking my messages on Instagram to scrolling for 3 hours. But that's something that's really easy for me to start today. And like you mentioned, it might not be a big thing, but I get to check it off the list. So it'd be like one thing I'm able to build momentum and then depending on where my energy is at most of the time, my next task is going to be something that I find really exciting and inspiring and motivating to do. Because again, to me, eating the frog nods are if that's how I'm starting my day, I'm going to find 50 different things to do before that, which include but it's not limited to cleaning up my kitchen, making my bed.

It's because I spent 3 hours hyper focusing on cleaning up. That is definitely what I'm going to start with is something that is really motivating, that I'm Super excited to Steckler. And following that, that is what I'm going to quote unquote, eat the frog and do this thing that I don't want to do because I already built momentum, then I get to do this thing that I don't really like. And usually at that point I'm going to do something that I really enjoy doing. So whether that's like a client project I'm Super excited about or even something that is not business related, spending time on a hobby, going outside, spending time with my partner. But this is basically like my reward, my candy to finish the day on a good note. And there you go. That's my little sandwich of something good, something I don't really like and something good. Again, I love this.

Sarah Steckler: Well, Anne too, it's like why can't we challenge this notion that things have to be hard in order for us to be successful or productive? Like we don't have to start the day doing things that we don't want to do. Like we can move them to different areas.

Anne-Sophie Pelletier: Especially first thing in the morning. I don't know about you, but I take a while to wake up and for my brain to be in the game. So if the first thing I have scheduled is something I really don't like, it probably won't happen when we're talking about the systems that don't work. That was one of the things that I had to change because I found out that if that's the way I scheduled my day, because that's what a lot of people do, I would literally end up wasting hours, half a day, a full day again, just doing other stuff that aren't really relevant. I didn't really map them out, so they're not really helping me in this present moment in my business. But all in order to avoid doing that one thing I don't want to do.

Sarah Steckler: I'm just thinking of how well, how much this applies to how I like to start my morning. Like, I'm with you. I take a minute to wake up. I like to have a slow morning. I like to get my cup of coffee, come into my office. And one of the first things I do is I put on a live stream of some jazz music on YouTube, and I just listened to that. Like my current go to is like Seaside morning jazz. I'm like, yeah, love that. Like, ocean waves in the background. It's like. And I'm like, yeah. And then I'll just kind of start with something. And I love this tip you gave about email, too. I always like to think of parallels, but it'd be like if throughout the day you just kept running to your mailbox and opening it. Is there anything in here? No.

Anne-Sophie Pelletier: Okay. That's something that is so common in the core, and I'm sure some places are different, but speaking from personal experience, it is expected for you to always have your inbox open. So the moment an email comes in, you're on the ball and you're responding right away. Yeah. And if you think about it, that is the least productive thing you can do. I don't know if you've seen the data on productivity and focus multitasking. Basically, the moment that you shift your focus onto something else, it can take you up to 20 minutes to refocus on that initial thing you're working on. And you're not spending energy doing the tasks. Things require a lot of brain power. Maybe creating content for your needs, working on client projects. And just because I got distracted by the email, which is probably not urgent that I'm doing, suddenly I'm completely lost. I'm not in my flow anymore. It's going to take me 20 minutes to get back into it. Okay. What was I doing?

Sarah Steckler: Yeah. And you know what's really interesting? Just reflecting back, I'm thinking back to my first corporate nine to five job out of College and how I was astounded at how hard it was to set boundaries at work with my older coworkers at the time. And I think a lot of that was just different work cultures. Right. What they grew up with. But I remember I was the youngest person working there at the time. I was like, I don't know, 22, 23. And I remember I would get an email and if I didn't respond within literally 60 seconds, they would be at my office store like, hey, did you not get that? And I'm like, yeah, are you not reading stuff right now? Also, I'm working on this other report for you. Right. But now I remember putting, like, closing my door and putting a note on my door. Like, I'm doing focused work on this Excel spreadsheet. Like, I'll be available.

Yeah, I'll be available at 11:00 A.m.. And I remember different managers being like, yeah, that's not going to work. And I'm like, Why? Because you can't monitor every breath I'm taking.

Anne-Sophie Pelletier: Right.

Sarah Steckler: And so it's just fascinating. And when you're your own boss, there's this moment of, oh my gosh, I can work how I want to work. This is so much better. Yeah, it's just wild.

Anne-Sophie Pelletier: It's so much better. But I feel like there's a lot of having to dig to see what boundaries work best for you. Because again, if you've never really had the opportunity to put them in place in your other environment, it's like suddenly, okay, but what do I do instead? What do I need? Because everything is possible. You're calling the shots. It is.

Sarah Steckler: It can be so overwhelming. And so it's that catch 22. And so maybe that's somewhere where maybe we could kind of end the podcast talking a little bit about this, about setting those work boundaries to protect your energy and how you kind of create that space to recharge. Kind of coming back to I love what you said earlier about not waiting until you're a two on the energy level to refill your cup. But starting sooner.

Anne-Sophie Pelletier: Sure. One of them that I feel like it's fairly obvious is like, what are your business hours? Because they don't have to be nine to five. Yeah. What time are you available? Right. Like, I was talking about looking at emails in the morning. Well, maybe I make that really clear to my clients that I check my emails once in the morning and then once at the end of the day. So if they want to reach me to ask me a question or write something like that, they can expect a reply at these times. It's unconventional. But really the biggest key to sending something like that is just to make it really clear people are going to get upset when they don't know when they're going to hear back from you again, especially if it is different from what a lot of other people are doing. So as long as you make it clear, hey, this is when you can expect to hear back from me. Most people are like, okay, cool, that's fine. So that would be one. Along the same vein, I like to make it really clear where I like to communicate with my clients because I don't want to have to check Instagram and Facebook and Slack and emails and what else is also out there.

So pick one. And if I think it can be a really nice way to almost increase the value of your services because it's really just a channel that is specifically for your clients. So it's super easy for your clients to get in touch with you, it's really easy for you to get back at them. You're not actually getting distracted with a bunch of other stuff. And that's just a really nice way to get your time and energy goes where it is most, where it matters the most. That would be one. I like to have a time that is my absolute cut off time. So for me that's 05:00 p.m. Because at that time my partner is also done work and that is now time for us to go do hobbies, to train, to go outside, right? But basically just to do something else and just work. So what I will do is half an hour before 530 I will start to wrap things up so that I know I can was working on the next day or whatever, I've decided I was going to keep working on this. So I wrap it up and at 05:00 p.m. I am done work.

Because what I found was that especially if I felt really motivated and inspired to work, I would work, work, work, work until 09:00 p.m.. The next day I'm still fired up. So I do it again. I start work early, I work until 09:00 p.m. And then there's so many days where I can do this back to back. And the only way that I'm going to stop doing this is if I hit a wall again, putting that cut off time where it's kind of non negotiable, that's where you're done work, that's where you're going to go do something else. And this work boundary can also be something like oh, I get really tired in the afternoon. So part of my work boundary is going to take maybe a longer lunch break where I'm going to go for a walk, I'm going to do yoga. Whatever it is you want to do, they're still going to impact your work even though they're personal life things. But again, as long as you make it clear that at lunchtime you're out and you're not going to be answering messages, emails, et cetera, people are generally fine with it.

Sarah Steckler: This is such a good point about how you can set basically any boundary in your life and business. It's all just about effective communication like you said. And I think that's one of the reasons why people either are hesitant or failed to set boundaries that work for them is because they're like, well, how will other people receive it? And I think a lot of times the issue is just a lack of communication, a lack of saying what it's going to be. And one thing I didn't hear you say was and explain why. Explain why you have a boundary, right? You don't need to explain yourself.

Anne-Sophie Pelletier: I would say, yeah, exactly like you don't have to. But one thing I would say is if I found that creating your standard operating procedures to be is a really nice tool for people who struggle to create these boundaries. Because this allows you to really take the time to write black on white how you do things, then the moment that they are mapped out, it is so much easier to communicate them with clients. And if someone is kind of getting out of steps where they're like, hey, why aren't you replying? When you made it clear that it wasn't one of the right times where you would reply, you wrote it black and white, that this is how you do things and it can just help get the confidence to do things differently. And along that same line, maybe it's something that you also put in the proposals that you sent to clients if that's something that you do in your own business or in your contract. So that way it protects yourself from literally a legal point standpoint. But again, if someone is not respecting that, you can always go back to it and be like, hey, this is how I do things.

I took the time to map it out, to make sure that it was going to serve me and you in the best way possible.

Sarah Steckler: I feel like I've said this a thousand times, but I appreciate how tangible you make. All of these tips like we've talked about so much today with task inventory, low energy tasks, work boundaries. And you've given us so many tangible steps that people can walk away with. And it's one of the reasons why I feel like I could listen to you all day, which is why I'm so glad you have your own podcast. So before we leave today, could you tell people more about your podcast and where they can find it?

Anne-Sophie Pelletier: Totally. So yeah, my podcast is all about productivity systems frameworks. I really just tried to talk about what happens behind the scenes in my own business, but also with some of my clients to make I want to make this information more available. I want to make it easier to talk about these things. And if you want to check out the podcast, it is linked in my bio on Instagram and it is something that you really enjoy learning about and applying. Actually also created a quiz which helps you identify where your biggest timely questions and it will tell you what is the one area of your business that is most worth looking into to recoup the most time and energy into your business. And I send you an email with a couple of different suggestions and systems to implement in order to slowly start to fix that.

Sarah Steckler: Well, I am going to go take the quiz. I'm curious now. I was like, oh, I need to sign up for this but we will definitely have all of this linked in the show notes as well. And then you're over on Instagram too and you let everyone know what your handle on Instagram is.

Anne-Sophie Pelletier: Yeah, so it is an so in one word. So A-N-N-E-S-O dot Pelletier. And if any of your listeners have any questions or want to discuss any of what I mentioned, what we mentioned in this podcast, they are more than welcome to shoot me a DM. I'm always happy to chat about any of these things and to see how it can be implemented for just about everyone.

Sarah Steckler: Yay. Well, thank you again so much for being on the podcast. For everyone listening, please make sure to go follow ano and check out her website and everything she has to offer. Truly you are the productivity expert so I'm so glad that you are on the podcast today and thank you again just for sharing all your wisdom. This was so, so helpful.

Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of the Mindful productivity podcast. As always, you can find show notes, resources and links to anything we talked about over mindful productivity podcast. Can't wait to see you back here next Monday for a brand new episode. Have a lovely week ahead.