Productivity for women starts to change when work-life balance stops being a reward for doing enough and becomes part of how you build without burning out.
Productivity for Women: Sophie Cliff Shares Why Better Work-Life Balance Starts with Unlearning Hustle Mode
REALISTIC productivity for women isn’t about hustle mode, it’s bringing joy and intentional work-life balance into your business so you perform better, for longer and without burning yourself out.
Craving better work-life balance but still running your business like you’re waiting to be rewarded for being the “good girl” who always works the hardest?
(No shame, this is most of us! But you deserve a change and this episode is the start…)
In this episode Sophie Cliff, aka The Joyful Coach, shares how you can ACTUALLY use your time better and run a business that feels good….you know the kind that lets you step away and breathe?
The freedom you were promised?
Sophie talks about how productivity for women entrepreneurs goes way beyond time-blocking, hustle mode, and pretending your nervous system is totally fine because you answered only three emails before coffee.
We talk about why hitting the goal doesn’t always make you feel as happy as you thought it would, how hustle mode quietly ties your self-worth to performance, and why your nervous system might be held hostage by inboxes, social media noise, AI overload, and the pressure to keep proving yourself.
This episode is especially for mompreneurs, solopreneurs, and early-stage women entrepreneurs trying to build something meaningful without burning out!
What you’ll learn:
- Why productivity for women entrepreneurs doesn’t fit with male-written books
- How good-girl mentality traps us into overworking
- Why joy is critical to creativity in your business
- Why nervous system regulation for entrepreneurs matters more than income
- What better work-life balance looks like…esp for solopreneurs and mompreneurs
Listen For
TIMESTAMPS
01:27 — Unlearning our good-girl conditioning in business
05:33 — Why reaching the goal still doesn’t make you happy
08:00 — How modern work wrecks your nervous system
13:22 — Separating self-worth from hustle and performance
15:30 — The Five Whys exercise to truly find YOUR purpose in work
18:51 — Why energy management matters more than time management
25:13 — Why productivity advice needs a female perspective
MORE ABOUT SOPHIE CLIFF
Sophie Cliff is The Joyful Coach, a positive psychology practitioner, public speaker, and author of Choose Joy and The Hustle Cure. She speaks at major companies about joy, wellbeing, and productivity, and her work challenges the idea that success has to come from stress, overwork, and pushing through.
CONNECT WITH SOPHIE CLIFF
Books:
The Hustle Cure
Choose Joy
Instagram: @sophiecliff
Podcast: Practical Positivity
LISTEN TO NEXT:
From ‘Meh’ to Meaningful in Your Business
RESOURCES
Instagram:@chardetryel
Listen to the Secrets to Standing Out Private Podcast
MORE ABOUT THIS SEO TYPE PODCAST EPISODE
“I found that I was reading all of these productivity books and ninety-nine percent of them were written by men.” – Sophie Cliff, The Joyful Coach
- Productivity for Women looks different from what you’ve been taught
- Work-life balance that’s truly based around joy AND performance
- Nervous system regulation for entrepreneurs IS strategy
- Energy management beats another productivity hack
- Mompreneurs and Solopreneurs will have different productivity seasons
What if the reason you feel so tired is not because you are bad at productivity, but because you are still trying to be the “good girl” who gets rewarded for doing everything right?
That question sits at the heart of a much bigger conversation about Productivity for Women, ambition, motherhood, anxiety relief, and the kind of work-life balance that does not ask you to abandon your business or yourself. Sophie Cliff, also known as The Joyful Coach, speaks about the “good girl mentality” many women carry into work, business, and success. And once you see it, you cannot unsee it. The spreadsheet might be organized, the calendar might look impressive, the inbox might be mostly handled, but underneath all of that can be a woman quietly wondering why achievement still feels so heavy.
Why Productivity for Women Needs a Different Conversation
Most traditional productivity advice assumes you have one job, one body that behaves the same every day, and no invisible labor waiting in the wings. Sophie points out that so many productivity books were written by men with “structures and systems and assistance” already around them, which is a very important detail and also, frankly, a bit rude.
That matters because Productivity for Women does not happen in a vacuum. It happens inside real lives, especially for the Mompreneur building between family needs, the Solopreneur wearing every hat, and the woman searching for working mothers work-life balance while trying not to lose her own name somewhere between the school run, the client call, and the voice note she still has not replied to. The usual “just time-block it” advice starts to feel laughable when your actual life has plot twists.
The Girlboss Era Is Over, and Your Nervous System Knows
Hustle mode often looks impressive from the outside, but Sophie describes modern life as keeping the nervous system “very jacked” and on “high alert” all the time. That line lands because most women entrepreneurs know exactly what that feels like.
Your body may be sitting at your desk, but your attention keeps getting pulled by notifications, inboxes, social media, AI noise, news cycles, and the constant pressure to prove that your business is alive, relevant, and worthy of attention. This is why Nervous system regulation entrepreneurs need is not a cute wellness extra. It becomes part of how you create, sell, lead, decide, and recover. If your nervous system is being “held hostage,” your productivity problem might not be a planning problem. It might be a pace problem.
Work-Life Balance Is Not Laziness in a Nicer Outfit
Many women entrepreneurs want work-life balance, but they feel suspicious of it. Sophie names the fear beautifully when she talks about wondering what it means “if I put down this ambition” or slow down for a while.
That fear is real because many of us learned to connect effort with identity. If you work harder, you must care more. If you reply faster, you must be more professional. If you stay available, you must be more serious. But this is where better Entrepreneur advice needs to make room for emotional reality. Work-life balance does not mean you stopped caring about your business. It means you stopped treating your life like the cost of entry.
The Hidden Problem with Being Rewarded for Overworking
If you were praised for being reliable, high-achieving, helpful, impressive, easy to work with, or “so on top of things,” you may have learned to turn performance into self-worth. Sophie speaks about finding her “value” and “self-worth” in being ambitious, top of the class, and promoted before her peers.
That conditioning can follow you into entrepreneurship with a very convincing clipboard. Suddenly, your business becomes another place to prove yourself. You become the boss and the overworked employee. You crave freedom, then recreate the same pressure you wanted to escape. It is not because you are doing it wrong. It is because hustle mode can feel familiar, and familiar can masquerade as safe.
Joy Is Not a Nice Little Bonus
Sophie’s work challenges one of the biggest lies ambitious women are sold: that joy is what you earn after you finish the serious work. She says “everything we care about” gets better when we prioritize joy regularly, including relationships, health, resilience, and career success.
This is where the conversation gets deliciously inconvenient for hustle culture. Joy is not the opposite of productivity. Joy can support productivity because positive emotions change how we think. Sophie explains that we “solve problems more creatively” when we experience positive emotions, while stress can make us “lose part of our cognitive functioning.” So yes, joy has ROI. Not in a fake corporate wellness poster way. In a deeply practical, brain-based, business-relevant way.
Why You Still Do Not Feel Happy After Reaching the Goal
So many entrepreneurs know the emotional weirdness of reaching a goal and feeling good for five minutes before the next desire appears. Sophie describes the trap perfectly: “when I land that client” or achieve the thing, “then I will be happy.”
But happiness is often circumstantial. Sophie explains that “happiness” can depend on something happening, while joy can be cultivated even when life feels complicated. That difference matters for women in business because it exposes the treadmill hiding inside achievement. If every goal only gives you a tiny hit of relief before the next chase begins, you may not need a bigger goal. You may need a different relationship with wanting.
Anxiety Relief for Entrepreneurs Starts Before the Inbox
For many women entrepreneurs, anxiety relief does not begin with a full day off or a dramatic life overhaul. It begins with noticing how quickly your attention gets hijacked. Sophie talks about seeing “green before you sit down at the screen” and using “pen to paper” before the rush of everyone else’s updates comes in.
That small shift holds a big truth. Less stress at work often begins before work fully starts. It begins before your inbox becomes the boss of your nervous system. It begins before the world hands you fifty opinions, three urgent requests, and a tiny panic spiral disguised as “just checking messages.” You do not need to become a different person. You may need to create a softer entrance into your day.
Energy Management Beats Time Management
One of the most powerful reclaims in this conversation is Sophie’s move away from “time management” and toward “energy management.” That phrase deserves to be stitched onto every laptop sleeve owned by a woman who has ever tried to force deep creative work out of a depleted body.
Time management assumes every hour has equal value. Energy management knows better. Some mornings, one focused hour can move the whole business forward. Other days, six hours disappear into tabs, tiny tasks, and the fog of trying to push through when your brain is already waving a little white flag. Better Productivity for Women asks what helps you feel creative, regulated, focused, and alive enough to do the work that matters.
What Mompreneurs and Solopreneurs Know About Seasons
Sophie says there are “different priorities in different seasons,” and that line is especially important for the Mompreneur, the Solopreneur, and the working mother trying to make sense of ambition inside real life.
Some seasons ask for expansion. Some ask for maintenance. Some ask for visibility. Some ask for privacy, recovery, or a slower rhythm that lets you remember why you built the thing in the first place. The problem comes when you judge one season by the rules of another. Working mothers work-life balance conversations need this nuance. You are not failing because your capacity changed. You are living inside a season that deserves to be understood before it gets judged.
Stop Working Like an Employee in Your Own Business
Sophie calls it a “corporate hangover,” and there may be no better phrase for the moment you realize you left employment but kept the internal manager. The one who thinks rest is risky. The one who treats every unanswered email like evidence. The one who panics when you take your foot off the gas.
This is especially common in the first few years of business, when everything feels like it matters because, honestly, a lot of it does. But building a business does not require you to recreate the most exhausting parts of your old work life. The freedom you wanted may not arrive automatically. You may have to build the conditions for it, choose it, protect it, and stop apologizing when it looks different from someone else’s version of success.
The Five Whys and the Question Beneath the Goal
Sophie uses an exercise she calls the “five whys,” where she asks herself why she wants something five times. The power of that practice is not in turning ambition into a worksheet. It is in revealing what sits underneath the shiny goal.
Sometimes the goal is not wrong. Sometimes it just has a hidden desire beneath it. You think you want more revenue, but what you really want is more breathing room. You think you want more recognition, but what you really want is reassurance. You think you want the bigger business, but what you really want is the feeling of being free. When you get honest about the “why,” your next move becomes less performative and more aligned.
The ROI of Joy in Business
Positive psychology gives language to something many women entrepreneurs feel but often dismiss. Sophie talks about positive emotion creating a “positive upward spiral,” where feeling better helps us broaden our thinking, connect with others, learn new things, and build new resources.
That is the kind of business growth that does not come from squeezing yourself dry. It comes from being resourced enough to see opportunities, trust your ideas, ask better questions, and make decisions from somewhere steadier than panic. Joy does not make business easy. It makes you more available to your own intelligence. And for a woman building something meaningful, that is not fluffy. That is foundational.
A Better Kind of Work-Life Balance for Women Entrepreneurs
The real invitation is not to abandon ambition. Sophie says, “we don’t have to pick a lane forever,” and that might be the exact sentence a lot of women entrepreneurs need.
You can want growth and softness. You can want impact and quiet mornings. You can want revenue and room to breathe. You can want motherhood, creativity, visibility, privacy, purpose, and a business that does not slowly eat your life in the name of being “productive.” Better work-life balance is not about making everything equal. It is about making your business honest enough to fit the life you actually want.
Listen to the Full Conversation
If this stirred something in you, listen to the full Her First Three Years conversation with Sophie Cliff, The Joyful Coach. Her reflections on “joy,” “energy management,” “good girl mentality,” and The Hustle Cure will help you rethink productivity in a way that feels calmer, wiser, and much more human.
FAQ: Productivity for Women, Work-Life Balance, and Hustle Mode
What is Productivity for Women?
Productivity for Women means creating work rhythms that consider energy, responsibilities, emotions, and seasons, not just output; Sophie’s phrase “energy management” captures this shift.
How can women entrepreneurs create better work-life balance?
Women entrepreneurs can create better work-life balance by questioning the “good girl” urge to overwork and redefining success around the life they actually want.
Why does hustle mode feel so exhausting?
Hustle mode feels exhausting because modern work keeps the nervous system “on high alert,” which can make focus, creativity, and decision-making harder.
What is nervous system regulation for entrepreneurs?
Nervous system regulation for entrepreneurs means helping your body move out of constant urgency so you can think clearly, create better, and access “anxiety relief” more consistently.
Why is joy important for productivity?
Joy supports productivity because, as Sophie says, we “solve problems more creatively” when we experience positive emotions.
What does work-life balance mean for a Mompreneur?
For a Mompreneur, work-life balance means honoring “different priorities in different seasons” while building a business that supports family, energy, and ambition.
How can a Solopreneur avoid burnout?
A Solopreneur can avoid burnout by moving from “time management” to “energy management” and refusing to treat constant availability as the price of success.
What is the best Entrepreneur advice from this conversation?
The best Entrepreneur advice is to ask what you truly want beneath the goal; Sophie’s “five whys” helps reveal whether your ambition is aligned or borrowed.
TRANSCRIPT WITH SOPHIE CLIFF, THE JOYFUL COACH
Chardét Ryel (00:04)
I know how much we get stuck in the hustling and always trying to perfectly manage our time and do the productivity. This episode is about how to get out of that a little bit.
How to find some more joyful moments in your life. Because as much as we talk about business here, it is also about lifestyle, about enjoying what you have created, what you’re creating. And I have such an incredible guest to do that for you today. Her name is Sophie Cliff. She’s very, very charismatic. She is an author of two books, of which you’ll hear her talk about more. And we definitely recommend reading those because it’s just gonna make you feel a little bit better.
She is a positive psychology practitioner and a coach. She’s spoken at numerous big, big companies. She had a corporate background before. She became the joyful coach. And I just feel like this is the moment we need to breathe and to just enjoy everything that we’re doing. So take a moment, get comfortable, and I will see you inside.
Sophie Cliff (01:27)
My name is Sophie, also known as the Joyful Coach. I feel like I gave myself the best job title in the world. but this isn’t what I’ve always done. So I’ve spent the first decade of my career in corporate sales marketing. I worked for big global companies that the listeners will recognize, like the Walt Disney Company, for example. And I always thought that that’s what I was gonna do, but I always had this sense of like feeling like a square peg in a round hole.
And it was actually in twenty sixteen, it’s coming up for ten years ago now, I experienced a traumatic bereavement. And it was one of those things where it just like totally reshapes how you think about life. And I think before then, I had been so stuck in this good girl mentality of if I do everything right, like that’s how life will unfold. I’ll be rewarded for making the ininverted commas, right decisions and doing the things that, you know.
Teachers and colleagues and parents and all of those things tell us are important. And it was just this unraveling moment, I suppose, of r really grasping a lot of those things that we see on Instagram or Pinterest of like, life is short or like you only live once. It f it made those things feel less like platitudes and more like a real thing. I was so fascinated by this idea that at like the hardest point in my life, I could still find these glimmers of joy.
And that those glimmers of joy were really like sustaining. They were really like a life force. and so I got very, very like excited about this idea of joy. And I actually ended up going back to university to study a master’s in positive psychology to try and understand why joy, like why positivity, why all of that stuff helps us in those difficult times. And actually what research tells us is that everything we care about, whether it’s
our relationships, our health, our career success, our resilience, all of that gets better when we prioritize joy regularly. So that’s essentially what I do through all of my work, whether it’s coaching clients, writing books, going into organizations to deliver talks.
Chardét Ryel (03:33)
I wanna say first that I think it’s amazing that corporations are paying for this because it’s so essential, but I’m glad they’re valuing it, right? Like the difference it makes, even and they know like the difference in morale and ROI and all of those things. And I didn’t invite you here because of that stuff, but it’s so important to think about as someone who’s listening that’s a leader or creator or business owner of like you cannot fully
Get into whatever you’re doing and the rules that you have if you completely neglect your joy. You just can’t. You don’t have the energy. Yeah.
Sophie Cliff (04:09)
But it’s not just the energy, but it’s like research shows we solve problems more creatively when we are experiencing positive emotions. Whereas if we’re very stressed, we we literally lose part of our cognitive functioning when we’re in that fight, flight, freeze response. So it helps us to adapt, it helps us to be more innovative, it helps us to manage relationships, it gives us a sense of meaning and purpose. So companies that help to prioritize more joy have better levels of retention. It is like, you know, it’s very
commercially viable for organizations, but you’re right. I think it it often doesn’t it doesn’t feel like something like resilience training or negotiation training or that has a very clear ROI.
Chardét Ryel (04:50)
think even if you can’t say it’s worth this much, you can s you can see the difference when it’s implemented. And I know that people listening will feel that too of like, wait, I’ve been stuck in this mode for so long in hustle mode and I don’t actually know when I last just enjoyed something without worrying or overthinking or not to say those things will never be around, but like when did I take a moment to just have the moments of joy? And
You do a really interesting thing. I wonder if you’ll explain this. I know it’s a bit like it’s in your books, you talk about it a lot, but I think it’s so essential to understanding this is you speak about the difference between happiness and joy. And I think we should definitely frame that here for everyone.
Sophie Cliff (05:33)
Yeah, so this for me really goes back to, like I was saying, that experience that I was having of being able to find joy even at a time in my life that was very unhappy. And I think we use those two words interchangeably sometimes, but happiness, what the research tells us is it’s very circumstantial. So we are happy as a result of something happening. So we might be happy because it’s a sunny day and that boosts our mood or
We might be happy because it’s Christmas, but ultimately it is a fleeting emotion. It’s not a permanent state. And joy isn’t a permanent state either, but there is lots of research that shows it is something that we can cultivate. The other thing with happiness is that we adapt. so we have something called hedonic adaptation, which means that we basically are constantly on this treadmill of and your listeners will have experienced this, if you achieve a goal and you think, gosh, when I
When I land that client or when I achieve that thing or when I take that trip or whatever it might be, then I will be happy. And we get there, we’re happy for like five minutes. And then it’s like, okay, well, now I need the next client or the next trip or the next thing. And that’s because we have this adaptation within our brain. We’re told that the things that will make us happy lie on the other side of productivity.
Chardét Ryel (06:46)
You have these lists, right? Each month of like the joyful list. And this month you put change the screen for green, right? This is one of the ideas of like less screen, more outside, more nature. And that’s one of the things you can do. Just step outside. I mean, I don’t have a garden here, but like there’s some plants.
Sophie Cliff (07:07)
literally just sometimes it’s just feeling the air. It doesn’t even necessarily have to be like a completely natural space. It’s just like we experience nature by feeling the sun on our skin or feeling like the wind or like the smells. There are so many ways to experience it.
Chardét Ryel (07:23)
Yeah. And it’s such a difference too when you look at and I’m sure you’ve you covered so much of this in the studies you’ve done of like the impact on your brain and even just first thing in the morning, like if you’re able to see real natural light, all these small things that kind of set up your day to be a little bit more present, a little bit more mindful, and you don’t notice it.
If you’re used to always just ignoring these things, you’re just like running for the caffeine, you’re stuck on the screen, you never take these moments to even just breathe the air or whatever. And I think we forget that there’s another way to be.
Sophie Cliff (08:00)
Yeah. I think something that I’ve been thinking about so much. I I say for the last few months, but it has been for the last few years, is this idea that life keeps our nervous system very like jacked and very like on high alert all of the time. And, you know, yesterday I came off the back of like a day with my two kiddos on Monday, and then it was straight to the desk and you you know, you go onto Instagram and there’s all this stuff about like
how to automate things and how to do this. And there’s all these Metgala takes and there’s all of like the all of this noise. And then I’m in my inbox and ’cause I haven’t checked it over the weekend, there’s lots and lots there. And constantly battling with notifications, with noise, with updates, with you know, that’s before we even get to any of the macro stuff of like what is going on in the world. That’s just like the minushy of day-to-day life. That feels so normal to us now. It’s really hard to remember. I was having this conversation with a friend the other day about
When I first entered the world of work, you couldn’t check your email when you left home because it was really difficult to like get your work laptop to connect to Wi-Fi in different places. And there was this very clear separation. And that’s not that long ago. That’s like 15, 16 years ago. It’s like completely changed in that that time. Because it has become so normal, I think we sometimes don’t realize how
Our nervous systems are being held hostage, and therefore we don’t realize there’s something that we need to do. And we’re so used to living in that state that I think so many of us don’t even realize we’re compromising our own creativity, our productivity, our outputs. It isn’t huge shifts that we need to make often. Often it is like trying to see a bit of like green before you sit down at the screen, or I’ll try to just jot down a few thoughts in my journal, like pen to paper of like how I’m feeling and connect with that before like the surge of.
Everybody else’s updates and news and announcements come in.
Chardét Ryel (09:56)
It’s funny because when you bring up the nervous system like this, it’s it feels like you almost think and you do think this way that of if I just run faster, which is the equivalent of work harder, right? If I just run faster, I take less breaks, then I can escape this danger, then I can escape this feeling instead of realizing that it magnifies it and that the solution is to go a little slower, pause, take a moment.
But it’s so terrifying to think about that. I I love, for example, that you said I start my week on a Tuesday. Because to many people that will sound like wild. Like how what about Monday? It’s so important. But I bet that you are so much more creative and present because you have that extra time.
Sophie Cliff (10:42)
10 years ago, if you’d have told me that I wouldn’t take like I wouldn’t work on a Monday, I would have been horrified because my identity was very much like the ambitious, top of the class, get promoted before my peers. I found so much of my value and my self-worth in that. And it has been a long wrangling. And it is a like continuous work to be like, what do I actually want? And what have I built this business for? And what is most important to me? And I am in a season of life where.
I have a three-year-old and a one-year-old. We’re in this very short period before they go to school. And I’m very aware that when they go to school, things look very different and like, you know, there will be a a different routine for our family. But for right now, I feel like so lucky that I’ve built a business that means I can have. I have Mondays off with them and Fridays off with them. And that feels amazing to me to know that I get to have that that time. But I’ve had to do a lot of work of like wrangling with like.
I could earn more money if I worked those two extra days of the week. Or there are opportunities that I say no to, or I might not always immediately reply to a client and there’s a voice in the back of my brain that says, Does that mean that you’re not being a great coach? And there is a lot of like recentering that has to happen to come back to what is actually important here? I
Chardét Ryel (12:01)
Think
that’s so true too for a lot of people listening who started in corporate or started working for someone else or who maybe are still in that position and they want to shift. How do you separate that self-worth from your performance? And I think it’s so hard because in a work situation they are very tied. I mean, it it’s very tied. Who you are, what position you have.
what numbers you brought in, all of that stuff really does determine how much you get paid next, when you get promoted. And I think we we keep that switch even when we become entrepreneurs or coaches or freelancers, not realizing that actually you have this gift of you can start to separate that. And you brought up a really important thing, which a lot of people don’t want to admit, but it’s true is like, yes, it does mean that you might forego as big of money as you could possibly get.
Yes, it does mean that you don’t have like twenty times more clients, but it it means that you also get to have freedom and you get to be with your family and you get to have flexibility and you get to work on things you want. I don’t know. For me that feels a lot more valuable. I think most people listening too, but it it’s hard to separate. Like, do you remember what you how what helped you to separate the performance and the self worth? And I know like each day can be different.
Sophie Cliff (13:22)
Absolutely. I think that’s a really important point that it’s a constantly evolving thing. And I will notice like at certain points of my in my cycle, I feel like, I failed because I haven’t done this. Then in other times of the month, I’m like, this is amazing. And so there are so many factors at play. One thing that has really, really helped me is this acknowledgement of like life moving in seasons. And it will be seven years this year since I left my corporate job and I’ve been running my business full time since then.
I can see in those seven years there have been like distinct seasons in that I had that first year where you really are just throwing everything at it and you’re trying everything and you’re saying yes to everything and you’re figuring things out. And then I had some time where like I was writing my books and there were different opportunities that were coming and I was working in slightly different ways and I’ve had two children in that time. So I’ve had, you know, pregnancies and maternity leaves and all of that kind of thing. And
Knowing that and sort of like going through the ebbs and flows has allowed me to trust that there are different priorities in different seasons. So I’ve had some years in those seventy in those seven years that I’ve been all about work as much as I can, like achieve as much as I can, experience as much as I can, get my brand out there. And then I’ve had others. Like last year, I pretty much took nine months of last year. I was only working one day per week because I’d had my son and I was trying to like navigate, you know, being at home with him and keeping my business running and
So last year was not a season of like hustle and push and see what’s out there. It was much more of like a contracting year. And now I feel like I’m in this like hybrid bit where I know that what’s most important to me in this season is that time with my little ones. And I think it’s knowing that we don’t have to pick a lane forever. And that used to feel really scary for me is like if I put down this ambition or if I say that I’m slowing down for a little while.
What does that mean about me? And what does that mean about my identity? And what does that mean about like me as a person who has always worked really hard and achieved a lot? Actually just realizing like that person is still there inside of me. And in a couple of years’ time, when my kids are at school, I have no doubt that she’ll be like going all guns blazing. And in the meantime, what an absolute like privilege to still get to do work that I really love and have that sense of balance. So that’s something that’s helped me is the like noticing that things go in seasons.
The other thing that has helped me, it’s a exercise. I think it’s in both of my books actually. I call it the five whys. Whereas whenever there’s like a goal that I’m aiming for, I ask myself why five times. So I’ve had times in my business where I’ve been like, okay, this year I need to grow my revenue. And I’m like, why? And I’m like, well, because we need like a little bit of extra income as a family. Why? Because we’d like to travel a little bit more. Why do I want to travel more? Because I want to spend more time with my family.
Why is that? Because I’m feeling thinly stretched because I’m at work all the time. And I’m like, okay, a different goal might be I don’t need to make more revenue. I can just make the decision to to take a step back and slow down a little bit. And and actually a lot of what we want is there already, but we’re putting these obstacles in the way.
Chardét Ryel (16:27)
It’s your mind is is shifting the reality. Like the reality is basically there for you to take, but you see it in a different way because you’ve been conditioned by all of these things. You did a recent episode on your podcast, I think, about how your definition of success can change. And that’s what this makes me think of is like there was a point for me too, like you, where what was most important to me was revenue. What was most important to me was like being acknowledged in the right places.
that kind of shifts a little bit to well now it’s flexibility, it’s freedom, it’s working with the people I wanna work with. And that could change again, right? Like and it probably will, but it’s it’s okay.
Sophie Cliff (17:09)
feels hard sometimes to slow down because in my brain I’m still conditioned by that corporate hangover which tells me that, well, if you take your foot off the gas when you work in corporate life, that’s it. Like your reputation’s gone. You lose the opportunity for promotion. And like I see this with so many of my friends at the moment who are in a similar stage of life as me, like going back to work after having children. And they have to be there. They have to be present because otherwise
Their card is marked, they’re seen as the like less ambitious one, and that’s that. And I think sometimes we forget that we don’t have that same binary as business owners. I have slowed down this year. I’m working three days a week. My revenue is actually it’s a little bit higher than it’s been in previous years, even though I’m working less, because I’ve been able to switch some things up and work a little bit smarter. And I think that’s another thing as well that again can be quite grounding for our nervous system to know.
It’s not always trade-offs. Like actually, there are sometimes things we can do. And I’m way more productive because I’m having like because all of my needs are being met and all of my like desires of I’m not feeling really thinly stretched and at my desk all the time and then feeling like I’m not being present as a mum and feeling like I’m behind a live admin. I think we sometimes see time as this very fixed thing and this very fixed trade-off and
I like to encourage people to think instead of time management of like energy management. And sometimes we all know there are some days you can sit at your desk and you can get like a week’s worth of work done because we’re just in the flow and we’re feeling really good. And that’s where the joy comes back to is the more we can feel good, the more creative we are, the more productive we are, the more focused we are, the more like innovative we are. And that actually can have like huge returns.
Chardét Ryel (18:51)
I love that point actually because well the first one that you made especially about like it’s not binary and a lot of times the irony is that you take your eye off of one thing, for example, like more clients because you want to focus more on time with your family and then you actually get very creative about how you then run your business. So you end up getting more clients, but it’s in a way that works for you or opportunities and I think
It’s a lot less stressful that way too, in some ways, because you’re prioritizing, like you said, the needs that are met first. And then this other stuff comes. So I agree. It’s it’s important to know it’s not either or. And I think it can be in the typical corporate world, unfortunately. Like it really can be. The other thing you said that stuck with me so much. What was it? The last thing you were talking about where you were saying that.
The way you think about stuff or the way that you’re managing your business and the fact like you’ve had more revenue this year, even though you’re working less, like this is an amazing goal. And I think so many people don’t shift this because we know the first year you have to work super hard. I don’t tell anyone on this podcast that the first year is easy and you can just sit back. But I Right. Like it’s not possible. But afterwards, I feel like we have some choice, right? We can evolve a little bit with what we do.
Sophie Cliff (20:13)
It often depends like what background people have come from. But if you’ve been in any sort of role or organization where you’ve had billable hours or time very much equals money, it’s a difficult shift to make. Well, if I’m not at my desk as much, therefore I’m not gonna be as worthy or I’m not gonna drive as much revenue. And actually that sense of just opening up to like what drives your energy and what feels good. There is a really lovely theory in positive psychology.
called the broaden and build theory. And the idea is is that when we experience a positive emotion, we broaden our thinking. We’re more creative. We’re more likely to reach out to other people. We’re more likely to learn new things, to challenge ourselves, to get out of comfort zones. And that in turn helps us to build new resources. So we might build a new network. We might build a new offering. We might build a new skill. And it’s this like positive upward spiral. So the more we can lean into the things that feel really good to us and create that sense of positive emotion.
The more successful we are, the more creative we are, the more well connected we are. All things that we know are really important for running a successful business.
Chardét Ryel (21:20)
Now, because you’ve done so much research on this, you’ve got two books on it. How do you think of each individual person incorporating this into their day in some way? Keeping in mind most people listening are business owners, right? So it’s a little bit different of a reality than a corporate person. We talked about some things, but I’m just wondering like small things that maybe they could figure out for themselves that really matter. Because, for example, like I did your joy quiz, which is
A little bit older than you had and for me it was connection. But I know some people like they don’t want that.
Sophie Cliff (21:52)
Yeah, I think you’ve just hit on something really important, which is that there is no one size fits all to any of this. And we are all unique human beings of different environments, different contexts, different goals. It is, like you said, hard work to start a business and to get a business off the ground and it takes a lot. There is usually like a reason why we’re doing it, whether it is for more freedom, more flexibility, because we’ve spotted like something we want to have an impact on, because
The more we can like connect with that why and stay with it, that almost like becomes a filter for our decisions of like, am I saying yes to this because it’s ego, because it’s like, you know, other people in my industry are doing it? Is it because it would make my parents proud? Or like all of these things that we we make decisions because of gives us a filter to say, like, is this serving my why, or is this something that we don’t actually need? And then the other thing that I would encourage people to think about are some of the small
What do you know really helps to like keep your nervous system grounded? So for someone else, it might be like you say, connection. It might be having like a business bestie you can talk things through with. It might be different ways to be creative that might help. And then the other thing that I would always recommend to everyone. So there are two things that we know from research are huge predictors of or the biggest predictors of joy. One is connection, like you’ve just said, we are like pack animals. We’re wired for connection. And so whenever we can feed that in, that
like makes us feel good. That predicts joy. The other one is gratitude and being grateful to pastors for starting the businesses. So energizing and so joyful.
Chardét Ryel (23:29)
It’s almost something that you forget. So I think that that’s a great point to reference to about what did you why do you really you started for a reason. Like there’s something that you really enjoy about it. And remembering that is so fundamental when you’re dealing with all the admin and the emails and like the socials. But even just like you said, the moments to go and figure out what it is that you are grateful for and actually practicing it.
That really stuck with me, right? Because it’s one thing to say, I’m grateful for my body that has movement, but then am I actually gonna go and practice that? Am I gonna actually do that? I’m grateful for slow mornings. Am I gonna actually have my slow mornings?
Sophie Cliff (24:12)
I really remember when I started my business. I was like, in my old job, I used to have a really big commute on a Monday morning and it would take like two and a half hours and I’d be up at the crack of dawn. And I used to spend that train journey thinking, like, when I work for myself, I’m going to have this lovely slow start to the week and I’m going to light a candle and journal. And then of course you start the business and you start on a Monday and you open the laptop and you’re straight in. And like sometimes just reconnecting with
what we used to daydream about and like allowing ourselves to have a bit of that can be so powerful.
Chardét Ryel (24:44)
think that’s an amazing exercise actually for someone to think about like what was the thing you daydreamed about before before you had the business that you wanted with it and and can you have a bit of that now whether that’s like a lunch out or a cheeky day that you wouldn’t normally take off or something like that. I know that you have a lot more advice on this in your two books. So can you share the names of them, where to find them, also where to connect with you?
Sophie Cliff (25:13)
Yeah, of course. So my first book is called Choose Joy and that really explores those big questions of like what joy is, how we can connect with it. And then my second book is called The Hustle Cure and it really it explores productivity from a female perspective because I found that I was reading all of these productivity books and ninety-nine percent of them were written by men and ninety-nine percent of them were written by men who were already in like very established businesses or careers and they had
Structures and systems and assistance and all of these things that helped them to time block and, you know, do all like get up at 5 a.m. and all of the advice we hear. so that book really explores things like defining success on our own terms, working with our hormone cycles, basically connecting with all of the things that help us to feel good. And then I am mostly on Instagram. I’m at Sophie Cliff over there, and I have a weekly podcast which you mentioned called Practical Positivity, where
I basically look at like some of the psychology around the things that we wrangle with.
Chardét Ryel (26:13)
Amazing. We’ll include links to everything in the show notes. I really encourage people too to get the hustle cure in particular. I think that especially as a woman listening to this, there is a different way to think about productivity that we are never taught. And I think that’s a great place to start. And then also listen to your podcasts because there’s some really interesting things around even just like what do you think of success.
How are you making your choices? Stuff that really gets you thinking. So thank you so much for being here and really for the work you do, for the best amazing title you have as well.
Sophie Cliff (26:47)
Thank you so much. It’s been such a pleasure to chat with you.
Chardét Ryel (26:50)
And thank you so much for listening. I know if you’re sitting here and you’re like, okay, I’m ready for a different kind of productivity. I’m ready for a different way to approach my business because Sophie inspired me. She definitely inspired me. I I told her at the end of the recording that I was gonna go do something joyful. And she told me to make sure that I actually think about how it made me feel too, rather than just go and do it as a checklist. So I challenge that for you as well.
Please share this with all the amazing women in your life who are working hard, hustling a lot, and that could really use a moment of joy. I will see you in the next one.
