Today's episode is inspired by How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days and Andie's gift of a love fern to Ben.

When he nearly kills the fern through a complete lack of attention, she goes into over-the-top theatrical hysterics, asking "Are you gonna let us die?"

How many of us entrepreneurs are letting parts of ourselves die in (alleged) service of our businesses? How many of us put our most joyful and restorative past times on a shelf so that we can focus on our online business or side hustle?

::sheepishly raises hand::

I am 100% guilty of having done this.

• Launching a business is hard work.
• Maintaining flow in an existing business is hard work.
• Finding time to do all the things that just plain old adulting requires is (you guessed it!) hard work.

But I also know that, if I don't carve out time for me, literally nobody else is going to do that. Life and work will gobble up any time I'm hoping to have left over for myself.

As Oliver Burkeman reminds us in one of my all-time favorite books, 4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals: “The day will never arrive when you finally have everything under control—when the flood of emails has been contained; when your to-do lists have stopped getting longer; when you’re meeting all your obligations at work and in your home life; when nobody’s angry with you for missing a deadline or dropping the ball; and when the fully optimized person you’ve become can turn, at long last, to the things life is really supposed to be about. Let’s start by admitting defeat: none of this is ever going to happen.”

Our full selves deserve better than leftover shreds of time and settling for slivers of ever-shrinking margins.

The real win is that, when we take time to roll around in something that is genuinely restorative, our lives and our work become infinitely better.

So consider the hobby or activity that you've shelved in an effort towards streamlined productivity and pull it back down off the shelf today.

A counterintuitive cosmic wonder is that you just might find that your work becomes more joyful and productive for the respite your reclaimed hobby gives you - in spite of the extra time it takes to really enjoy it.

A Few Resources Mentioned

Here's the article I mentioned: My Brain Is Itchy & There's No Cream For That

Here's the episode in which my friend Erik Fisher and I discuss taking restorative action: Practical Productivity For The Modern Parent

And here's the free mini course about naming your values: laurengaggioli.com/values

It is my great joy to share with you a conversation with my SEO client and owner of my very favorite local yarn store in the Puget Sound area, Mr. Benjamin Bentler.

As is true of so many entrepreneurs, Ben is no one trick pony. He is highly motivated, incredibly productive, and juggles a lot across his myriad businesses.

(Did I mention he's also my voice teacher? There's nothing this guy doesn't do.)

I find people like Ben incredibly inspiring. They make me feel less alone in the chaos and I hope his wisdom that he shares from the trenches of his many businesses helps you on your journey as well.

And - remember - if you need support as you traverse the tricky landscape of the online business world, I'm just a phone call away!

With my Phone-A-Friend Business Mastermind, you can schedule time for us to check in and work on your entrepreneurial mindset and online business strategy @ laurengaggioli.com/mastermind.

We meet most Mondays and Thursdays. Each 60-minute call is limited to just 4 entrepreneurs, so you're guaranteed plenty of time to talk through your challenges and receive feedback. Plus, there's no long-term commitment required and your first session is just $25 when you use the discount code FRIEND at checkout.

Click here to register for your first virtual mastermind call today.

See ya real soon!

Gosh we love our online businesses. But do you sometimes feel like it's a little too exciting?

In my last conversation with Nick Corona, he emphasized the importance of process over recipe.

Which, because I think in movie quotes, instantly made me think of Ben Stein's character from Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Bueller. Bueller. Anyone? Bueller.

Because - let's face it - most of us are not here in the entrepreneurial world because we are methodical. We're often here because we love the dopamine rush of pulling all the levers available to us.

Social and services and conferences and products and mass emails and YouTube and masterminds and podcasts and...

I'm not alone here, am I?

It's a bitter pill to swallow, but the reality is that when we are engaging in too many activities that deliver a dopamine hit from variable rewards, we are seriously depleting ourselves and undermining our business's potential.

So let's let Nick's advice about brewing be a lesson to us all.

You want to win big? Take some time to focus on the "boring" minutae and track your results over time.

You just might find that it helps you hit the jackpot in way that shooting-from-the-hip grand gestures never did.

Free Resource To Help You Streamline Your Systems: laurengaggioli.com/toolkit

When I wanted to start a podcast for entrepreneurs, one person that I knew wanted to feature was homebrewing pal Nick Corona.

Nick is the owner and head brewer of Five Suits Brewing in Vista, CA. We initially met through our homebrewing community in San Diego, CA.

Whether we were sharing pours of homebrew at QUAFF meetings, competing against each other in the Stone Brewing Homebrew Competition, or tipping one back at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, we've always had a great time tasting incredible beer together.

Nick's the kind of guy who is curious, inventive, and relentless. When it became clear his ambitions reached beyond dominating homebrew competitions, my husband Mike and I were thrilled because, let's face it, his beer is bonkers good.

Einmal, please and thank you!

Since moving to Seattle, we've continued to follow his journey to professional brewer closely. There have been ups and downs but, through it all, Nick's commitment to quality has been readily apparent, even at a distance.

So today we're going to dive in and unpack what it takes to go from inciting sip of inspiration thanks to Avery Brewing's Maharaja to getting great beer made on the professional scale.

Cheers to Nick for joining me - and to you for listening! :)

And, if you're ready to follow Nick's sage advice in this episode and begin focusing on refining and improving your processes, I've got a free mini course just for you.

Head to laurengaggioli.com/podcast to sign up for the free course and begin leaning out your systems and refining your online business processes today.

In my last episode of The Digital Entrepreneur's Toolkit with Julie Voris, I mentioned a story in which my eldest kiddo coached me through a bit of a panic at the top of the Space Needle.

While that was a really powerful personal moment, there's another layer to this story - one that is vital for each of us as entrepreneurs to remember.

I hope you enjoy this business lesson I learned 605 feet in the air.

As business owners, our mindset is our most important asset. Explore it. Grow it. Nurture it.

Be sure to snag Jen Sincero's You Are A Badass At Making Money as a great place to start. Or, frankly, dive into any of these amazing books for entrepreneurs.

I promise, the time you invest here will help you continue to build a business and life you love - even if you're scared to death while doing it.

I'm cheering you on. You've got this!

Well - this episode of The Digital Entrepreneur's Toolkit is accidentally quite timely and relevant as this week BODi (formerly Beachbody) announced that it will be sunsetting its MLM structure in favor of an affiliate program.

And it just so happens that our guest today is Julie Voris, a BODi Diamond Coach as well as a business and mindset coach for women.

In this interview that we recorded months ago and calendared to release this week, we discuss how Julie has always followed her instincts and has built a business that leveraged the MLM model, to be sure, but also included products and offerings that were borne from a sense that Julie's impact was destined to be bigger than just BODi.

Regardless of your personal thoughts on MLMs, I highly recommend that you listen to this episode because Julie is the real deal. She genuinely believes in the transformative power of fitness - both mental and physical - and has so much wisdom to offer us.

As I shared with her yesterday, I know she will do so much more than weather this temporary storm. She's going to ride it and use it to propel her into the next iteration of her business.

I can't wait to see where the next evolution of her business leads.

This episode of the show is dedicated to my dad. He was my first business advisor and would've made a hell of an entrepreneur in his own right. I'm grateful for his business insights; however, I have to share a story that I still find quite funny but he...well...didn't.

On a trip to New York in May, I was reminded of this story when I entered the John Golden Theater to see Stereophonic. It's one of those quintessential New York buildings that feels borderline claustrophobic. If you've ever been inside this Broadway house, you know how memorable it is primarily because it has no lobby.

So when we entered, I turned to my husband and said "I'm pretty sure this is where I saw Avenue Q." He pulled out his Playbill and went to the theater's history page and, sure enough, it was.

Which brought to mind a story in which, one cold November night, my dad made a series of not-so-wise decisions.

Here are the takeaways that his experience holds for us...

1. Plan well for your journey.

Dad was not dressed for walking blocks upon blocks up windy avenues on a crisp fall evening.

How many of us are guilty in doing this in our businesses?

We favor motion over strategic action. We leap, then figure it all out in a panic as we try to juggle too much and end up dropping balls.

Take a step back and take the long view of the next year, quarter, month, and week.

What's coming up in your calendar? What will give your future self more ease or peace of mind? What systems can you put in place or safety nets can you set up now to alleviate future stress?

2. Get the support you need.

No man is an island. Olympic gold medalists have coaches. High performing executives have mentors.

Are you thinking you're supposed to just do it all yourself based on instinct? Reinvent the wheel much?

One of my favorite quotes from Mr. Rogers reads “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”

While this is true in crises (and thank goodness for those people - Helpers with a capital H!), there are more everyday helpers that we tend to overlook.

Books can mentor us. Podcasts can guide us. Attending entrepreneurial conferences can introduce us to our next online business coach or virtual mastermind group.

There is so. much. support.

Find folks you trust and let them help you. Just like an MTA worker can open up a much warmer way to navigate Manhattan, these helpers who hold knowledge you don't yet have can provide less harrowing journey to your goals.

3. Maintain margin for when things go sideways.

Things rarely go to plan. If you insist on continually skidding to the finish line with zero wiggle room in your deadline and your gas tank empty light on, you're living life in the Danger Zone friend.

And that kind of stress is a distraction, not an asset.

So give yourself more space to genuinely enjoy your work and pad your deadlines and temper your expectations a bit. Not overly so, but enough so that, when you inevitably find you've taken a wrong turn, your blood pressure doesn't spike to hazardous levels.

If you were the captain of your own ship - and you are - you wouldn't pack your vessel with provisions for a course you charted counting on only the very best conditions with the bare minimum of food, water, and crew for that trip.

Chart your business adventures with equal care.

And if you want to...

You know when you meet someone for the first time and things just click? It's like you've known them for forever and - within minutes - are finishing each other's sentences?

That's what it was like when I first met our guest today - Kyra Mitchell Lewis.

I was on her podcast, Glow Up Gyrl, as a guest and knew before we stopped recording that I would absolutely be inviting her to be on my entrepreneurial podcast right after we were done.

It's really easy to con ourselves into thinking making friends is hard. But if you're clear about who you are - what you value and what gifts you bring to the world - and approach each new meeting with lightness and openness, you might be surprised who you find.

I'm so grateful to have met Kyra and can't wait to share her entrepreneurial journey with you in this episode of The Digital Entrepreneur's Toolkit Podcast.

And, if you'd like to learn more about the practical, tactical steps I encourage folks to take as they name their purpose, be sure to check out my episode on the Glow Up Gyrl Podcast.