Healthcare Burnout & Business Beginnings: Real Talk About Energy, Boundaries, and Self-Knowledge

📺 YouTube Description (Corrected)

In this episode of Operational Harmony: Balancing Business & Mental Well-being, Nikki sits down with Emma Leivesley, a burnout and wellbeing coach for healthcare professionals. Together, they dive deep into two intertwined journeys: recovering from burnout and starting a business that fits your energy—not drains it.

Emma shares what it’s like to support overwhelmed doctors and nurses who feel guilt, pressure, and imposter syndrome—often while ignoring their own wellbeing. Nikki brings in her experience with realistic business launches and how protecting your energy before you go full-time is critical.

Find Emma Here:

https://programmes.emmaleivesley.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/emma-leivesley-coach https://www.facebook.com/emma.leivesley.coach/ https://linktr.ee/emmaleivesleycoaching

You’ll hear raw personal stories, real-world mental health tips, and practical advice for setting boundaries and building something sustainable—without ending up in burnout round two.

✅ Topics Covered:

• Healthcare burnout: symptoms, guilt, and culture

• Boundary setting that actually works

• How overworking as an entrepreneur can feel the same as corporate burnout

• Tips for starting a business without destroying your mental health

• Why your joy and values must guide your next steps

This one’s for anyone feeling stretched thin or craving something more aligned.

[00:00:00] Hi, my name's Emma Leivesley. I'm a wellbeing and burnout coach for healthcare professionals. I help stressed out doctors, nurses, and allied health professionals get work life balance and calm, live happier lives.

And I. Claim to end the stigma around suffering with stress and burnout in healthcare, and also to change the culture of healthcare so that stress and burnout is less likely to happen.

That's important in any field of business, but I'm guessing even more so because I don't want the dude operating on me. He'd be like, out of his brain with burnout. 'cause that would suck. Yeah, definitely. People who work in healthcare have to make very serious decisions. Mm-hmm. And they're doing that, working under immense pressure and with not a lot of rest.

So yeah, it's a big one. [00:01:00] So where do you start? Basically what I do with clients is I will have a chat with them first to make sure that I'm the right fit, because obviously you need to connect with the person that you're working with, and just explore what they're struggling with at that moment.

A lot of people working in healthcare struggle with guilt. That's a big one. So that could be feeling guilty for not spending time with the family. It could be feeling guilty. 'cause, hang on, I'm the doctor. I'm supposed to have all my. Stuff together. Why am I struggling? That's a big one as well. And I often say to people, nobody on the planet has all the stuff together.

It's just a thing that we all do going around pretending that everything's absolutely amazing when we're. All struggling. Everyone struggles from time to time. So we'll have a chat around what's causing the stress, any specific triggers. This could be at work or [00:02:00] home. I take a holistic approach 'cause people aren't just the job and we'll.

Figure out what exactly it is that they want less of, what they want more of, but also look at work life balance and look at what areas in their life they want to address. So is it they want to spend more time with the family? Is it that they quite simply just wanna work less and also look into their values?

So what do they value? Because if you are not working in alignment with your values, that is a big cause of burnout. So it's sometimes it can be a reminder of values that really help. Other times it can be, well, do you know what? I'm not doing enough of that side of the job. So we'll create a plan based on creating more of what they value in their life and also reality checking.

What we can actually add to make things easier to cope with, and then look [00:03:00] into strategies for coping and things like that. But a big one is boundary setting. Which a lot of people in healthcare find very difficult. It's like, oh, can you just cover this shift at the weekend? Okay, yes, I will.

Even though they've been working all weekend without a gap. So quite a lot of things, mindset issues as well, so that you are allowed to prioritize yourself. You're looking after everybody else, but you need to be able to reenergize yourself, otherwise you're running on empty. So that's a big thing that, that I cover as well.

Imposter syndrome. A lot of people struggle with that. So we kind of take a holistic approach and come up with a plan and then I help them implement that plan. Okay. Kind of talked about, a work-life balance with somebody yesterday and a [00:04:00] previous one of these that was recorded recently. But if it's the right one, it didn't go over very well.

But, so what are your main tips? What is the one or two tips that you give? Pretty much everybody, because they apply across the board, I would say, is look at what your time thieves are. We all have time. That's for us, even if it's not very long. Look at how you spend in that time. So for example, if you are coming home from work absolutely exhausted and just sitting, watching Netflix, not really taking in what you're watching, that's not really making good use of your time.

Where have you been drained? And you have to protect your energy as well. So are you taking on commitments and responsibilities that don't align with you? You're doing them because somebody else wants you to do them, and that's robbing your time as well. So [00:05:00] an example of that could be, doing things for a relative.

They need help with such and such, but then they give, if you give them an inch, they'll take a mile. You spend a lot of time with them. With myself, because I work in mental health, a lot of friends know that, and then would ring going, oh, Emma, I really need to speak to you about such a thing.

And I'm like, I've been speaking to people about this all day, about their mental health and I'm just totally tired, but. I'd then go, okay, and then listen to all of that. And that would just completely exhaust me. And it's, it feels, you end up feeling resentment towards people. Whereas if I just have said, do you know what?

I can't talk right now, I'll call you back whenever. Then that could have been quite helpful. So it is about really looking for those time thieves and protecting your energy. Do like filling your time that you've got off with doing things that, [00:06:00] that you enjoy. Because what a lot of people think is, I haven't got the energy to do that.

But if you, at first it takes a lot of effort, but if you force yourself to do that thing that you actually wanna do, it's gonna, even if it's something you really enjoy, you're going to resist. But once you start doing that, it actually gives you energy. So for example, I like boxing, so if I do.

Boxing training, even though after work I might be like, really could do without this, I come out there buzzing loads of energy, feeling really calm. So it's, instead of sitting, watching Netflix or scrolling on my phone, and especially at the moment you go on social media and it's just, it's okay. What can I do better with my time?

I have come to the conclusion that social media is a necessary evil for my business, but it is not necessary for me to spend time [00:07:00] on it. Outside of that, I've had that revelation today. I've got, I've actually thought, do you know what? I do need to be on here for my business, but after that I'm putting it down and I'm gonna do something else.

I end up listening to, am I the butthole posts and stuff like that while I'm working. I've got my music going and the, am I the butthole? No, you're not. Yeah. I'm doing this thing over here. Yep. Yep. That's great. That's great. Okay. Yeah, and it just, it like, it helps me concentrate on what I'm doing.

It's a weird way to concentrate on what you're doing. Don't get me wrong. Having music and voices. Working like would overload a lot of people, but for me it is just, okay, now I can zen into this. 'cause I absolutely cannot hear a thing happening in any other part of the house. Because otherwise it's like, oh wait, that was a weird noise.

Maybe I should go check that out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's whatever works for you. Everyone's [00:08:00] different. Some people need complete silence. I'm definitely not one of those people can't work in complete silence, I guess they're not. No, they kind of creep me out. 'cause then I'm hearing the birds outside.

There's some annoying frog that keeps going into a little pond that's right outside my window. And then things are the loudest things on the planet. I didn't know frogs could make that noise. It sounds like a bird, right? Gets right under the window. So like now you're getting driven No, my music on and the people talking into my headphones and I can't hear Jack.

Which is like the best thing for me. Yeah. And then again, it's a noise I like so I can actually listen to it. Yeah. I think, a lot of problems stem from social media as well. The comparison to other people. Oh, yeah. Because I know when I used to do 12 hour night shifts on a weekend, I'd look at my phone before going to work and everyone would be like, going out to this party, look at me, you my nice dress.

And [00:09:00] I'd be like, resentful and nobody puts the full. Truth of what's going on in the lives on there. It's all this polished version of what is life like At your lowest moment, you're seeing somebody else's highlight reel and it's making you think that your, their life is so much better than yours when honestly Yeah, definitely.

They have at least some of the same problems you do. Yeah.

So I mean. I have gotten over that because I'm like, so they have those videos where like this woman is going, yeah. I did this whole thing and there were no dishes afterwards. Yes, because I worked in a kitchen. I know you still used a hundred thousand dishes. You just washed them as you were going, which some people totally cannot do because it messes with the timing of things.

I struggle with that [00:10:00] and I mean, whatever. It doesn't mean that you can't cook or she's so much better of a cook than you because she has no dishes left after she's done cooking. No, it just means she spent the in-between times because she knows the recipe at all doing, you know, the dishes For me, if I'm spending an hour and a half cooking, somebody else is doing them damn dishes, it ain't gonna be me.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I don't care if what I cook took 10 minutes, I'm still not doing the dishes. Yeah. No, I cook. You do the dishes, you do the dish, you cook. I'll do the dishes. Like we're not doing the same thing. Like I'm not doing it all. Well, that's true. And that's another thing with work life balance as well, making sure that you're sharing.

If you're living with somebody else, you are sharing the workload when it comes to tasks around the [00:11:00] house. Yeah. You deserve just as much time with your kid as your partner does. Yeah. You deserve to have just as good of a relationship with your kids as your partner does.

Which means you have to spend actual time with them and do actual things with them and actually talk to them. Yeah, definitely. There's a revelation for you. Yeah, and I think sometimes blocking out time, can be really helpful as well. And even if you're on shifts, obviously it'd be easier we could go, right.

Okay. Every Saturday afternoon we have a day where we like just do something together. But if that's not possible, okay. At least once a week, like when I've got time off, we're gonna do whatever together can be something different every week. So a good rule that I go by is two hours blocking off two hours.

That's easy to fit into any busy schedule. And it's enough time for you to actually be able to [00:12:00] be there in the moment, because sometimes if you're very busy, it takes a while to adjust and to actually feel present there. So if you set aside the two hours, you can actually see the benefit. So that two hours a week is that you time to either spend with your family or do something just for you.

And then. If you can do more, great. But not everyone's got that luxury. And also, once you start doing that, it gives you the momentum to actually put yourself first and not just run yourself into the ground. Because what tends to happen is if you have time off, you become more productive and less stressed and everything just.

Seems to work. I remember a time when I was actually working full-time and running my business, so I was working pretty much all the time and we took my son to this water skiing weekend and I took my notebook. To take some notes. We're in the middle of nature. It was absolutely lovely. At first I just sort of [00:13:00] sat there and I was like, do you know what?

I'm just gonna enjoy being around this lake and watching my son water ski and it was all very nice. Just having that time out. I ended up coming up with loads of ideas because my brain was free to actually think rather than just do, do, do. I just felt so much more refreshed and it was literally a weekend, and sometimes you just need that break no matter if it's a couple of hours a day, a weekend, whatever, and you just feel so much better afterwards and the decision making thing as well because you've cleared your mind.

That just gets easier too. So it really is important to take that rest, because if you don't, your body or your brain, one of the two will work out. Hang on, I'm not going any further. And it will stop you in your tracks and it won't be convenient and it'll take you time to recover, whether that be burnout and just being mentally unable to work or [00:14:00] developing physical health problems.

So I was under a lot of stress once, and I ended up in, we call it accident and emergency. It's your emergency room. Ended up in an emergency room with very, very, very high blood pressure. It was, 1 98 over 1 3 9. And I had chest pain, which was radiated into my jaw, my left arm, my lefthand had gone numb.

I. Really, really bad headache. It felt like my eyes were gonna explode all like my nostrils. I could feel all the capillaries in my nostrils feeling like they were gonna explode. It was a horrible experience, and the nurse was like, whoa. Right. That's very, very high. That's not good with those symptoms. 

Gave me literally a tub of. Anti-hypertensive medications. There were loads in there. She was like, don't worry, that's the right dose. Take them. And I did. And I had have weeks off work with it because. Like I was at risk of a stroke or a [00:15:00] heart attack, so you really do need to listen to those signs that you're stressed.

I ignored the fact that I wasn't sleeping at all and that I hadn't untented my jaw for some time, and they were the exact symptoms that I had when I suffered burnout. 10 years ago. But I was like, no, no, plug on, carry on. Even though I knew full well that this has happened before and then that happened to me.

So you really do have to take a break before you bring all your body go. No. So it's really important. If you don't take the break, your body's going to make you. And there's Murphy's Law, right? Anything that can go wrong will go wrong at the worst possible moment. Mm-hmm.

Telling you, if you don't take the break, your body's gonna make you right in the middle of the biggest deal of your life. Yeah. And it's not gonna care. It's not gonna care. It's like, I'm not doing this anymore. Screw off. Mm-hmm. But two, there was a video that [00:16:00] I don't know, on one of the social medias, 'cause I scroll and I get all sorts of little videos.

But one of them was like, if you've gotten here, relax your shoulders. They don't need to be at your ears. Unclench your jaw, breathe deeply. Are you calm now? Now you can continue scrolling. And I'm like, okay. That was unnecessary to call me out like that, first of all, because like, I just kinda, but at the same time, those kinds of things, like getting slapped with that and like, oh yeah, yeah.

I am doing that. Mm-hmm. It helps you see that even when you think you're relaxing, sometimes you're really not. And if you're being bombarded by social media. 99.999% of the time, you are not relaxing. You are. You are being a prayer warrior or whatever warrior for whatever cause, or you're listening to somebody's fight.

And while I can listen to the T all day long and it doesn't affect [00:17:00] me, other people get seriously affected by listening to the problem because it's scary for them. Yeah, I can listen to the problem, it ain't my problem. Sure I can listen to that. It ain't, it's not gonna affect me none. But if it's my problem, I can't listen to it for more than five seconds.

'cause I'm gonna get all types of heated again. Yeah, yeah. Definitely. I can get re angry years later. It's funny as heck to some people. But like you have to know you, you have to, and like I said, in. One of the podcasts recently, you have to listen to your body. If you're not listening to your body, then your body's gonna act however it wants to and you're not gonna hear it until it's too late.

Hmm. Yeah. Very true. If you listen to your body and you go, huh, I might be a tad sketched out. 'cause like my [00:18:00] muscles feel like I was in a fight today. I don't think I was actually in a physical fight, so maybe. I, you should calm the crap down. You know, go outside and take a breather, touch grass. I don't know.

People keep saying that. I am allergic to grass, so I'd rather not, but, eat his own. Yeah, I've got terrible hay fever, but I do like being out in the countryside. That really helps. I'm like literally allergic to grass. You know how people mow the lawn? It will literally send me into a severe asthma attack.

Oh, right, okay. Like from blocks away, if I smell the slightest hint of grass being cut or whatever. Yeah. No, it's a bad idea.

This automatically gets full and I can't breathe. My lungs closed down on me. It gets pretty bad. I bet that's a [00:19:00] bit of a nightmare in summer. Whenever Smoke. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I stay inside. Everybody's like, oh, go outside. Take a walk. You'll enjoy it. No. 'cause if I go outside and anyone in a three mile range is cutting their grass, I'm gonna die.

Well, not literally, but I'm gonna have an asthma attack. I might end up in the emergency room if it gets bad enough. Like it depends on the type of grass. The grass here in Arkansas is bad. It's not as bad as the grass was in Maryland. The grass in Maryland literally sent me to the hospital more than once.

How long have you, how long have you been working for yourself? Do you still have a full-time job or are you just working for yourself? No, I just work for myself now. It was the end of November, 2024. So literally, I've been two months self-employed for nearly two months now.

So that's been a big adjustment. It's very strange 'cause you, you are in charge of all of your time and then you [00:20:00] Yeah. Like right, okay. I'm the one that's gonna have to make decisions about what exactly I'm doing, which is a very strange thing to get your head round. And setting boundaries with yourself as well.

Because it's easy to get into the habit of I'm just gonna keep working all day and all night and yeah, just leave me or carry on. So you need to be quite strict with that as well. Yeah. Some people have one or the other problem, I have the problem, or I'll keep working. I know I have a certain amount of things I have to do.

I'm not putting anything off till tomorrow because I know I already hate my future self. I'm not gonna like really make my future self believe that though. So, you know, I make decisions and let future Nikki worry about it instead of like dealing with it sometimes. But when it comes to work, I tend to like knuckle down and be like, okay, I gotta get this and this done before I can stop for the night.

Then I stopped for the night and I'm like, okay, I'm tired. Let's go to bed. I don't wanna do anything else and then I can't sleep. [00:21:00] There's that big, nice problem to have. So it just is the thing. But then there's other people who are like, oh, well I have three things to do today. I'll do them later.

Hmm. Maybe I'll do them tomorrow. I think I have two things to do tomorrow so I can just move these three things over till tomorrow. And then next thing you know, you're broke because you've done not done what you were supposed to do. And all your clients deserted you. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Clients, customers, whatever you call them, they have, you know, you're not doing anything for them, so why would they stay?

Yeah. So yeah, it is getting the balance between the two. But one, one thing I tend to do is. Okay, I've finished everything I need to do today. Hmm. What's my task for tomorrow? I'll just have a look. And then it's like, oh, I could easily get that done and that done and that done. And oh, I really need to, I have to do that research, this, this, and this.

[00:22:00] Why? What? Like, I'll learn about such and such and, and end up on a research rabbit hole and, yeah. Okay. Do you have any final thoughts on the mental health side? Um, I just think that if people are struggling, one, take a break, but two, open up to people and talk to people. Connection helps massively. Okay. I believe that as well.

Also, if you're in that much trouble, go to an emergency room. Don't do anything stupid. We do not do stupid stuff. At least not that severely stupid. Like I do stupid stuff every day, but not that severely, so. Mm-hmm. None of that. If you need to go to an emergency room, they will help you. Mm-hmm. Um, 

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And I think I have picked a topic that both of us can talk about really well, because I am talking about the actual starting of a business, your own business. You no longer wanna work for somebody else, you're like, corporate is not for me anymore. I wanna do it by myself. Well, what skills do you have?

Mm-hmm. What unique, what makes you unique? Out of all the 50 billion, people who have a business. Mm-hmm. So for me, my business is Nikki's office. I do [00:24:00] social media business audits. I also am an office manager for some companies, so I wear many hats and kind of fill the role that, you know, my pers the person I'm working with needs me to, I say working with, because I'm not working for them, I'm working for myself, but I'm doing things for them.

So I say I work with them because it takes both of us to get where they're trying to go, um, because it's not one sided. It's not them always telling me what to do. 'cause some days I get to be the one that wears the hat that says, ha ha, you have to listen to me. It's a very dangerous place for you to be.

Your business is coaching? Coaching? Yes. Mm-hmm. Okay. Sorry. So, um, so for me, there are not any, at least in the US there's not [00:25:00] any, licenses or anything that I have to have for doing office work on the computer. Hmm. Absolutely no extra licenses or anything else that I need. Mm-hmm.

You can, in some areas of the US need to have a small business license. I don't need that either where I'm at or where I have been. So I've been in Maryland, Texas, and Arkansas. None of those places require that you have a license of any kind or like a small business license in order to work from home.

If you need that, it's usually not that hard to fill out the paperwork. Always check with your local laws. 'cause I don't know them. I'm not a lawyer. I don't want to be, I don't care enough to be. I'm not memorizing all that. Do you know me? Uh, no. Yeah, there's no way you'd be able to memorize that for everywhere.

No. So you go figure out your laws in your area, but one of the things that you can do is [00:26:00] take stock of all your talent. Do you like to draw? Great. You can do social media images for people. You can create avatars for people. You can, there's lots of stuff as an artist that you can do to make money.

Papers that have like unique designs on them so that office has that paper when they go to write letters to people. All sorts of stuff. If you're more tech savvy, again, you have even, you have a lot of things you can do. Now I am tech savvy in a different way than a lot of people.

I can walk into programs and kind of know what I'm doing. I can't code that's a whole nother language and screw that. I can't do that. I've tried to learn coding and I get kind of into it at the beginning and then you get like three lessons in and I'm like, yep, this turned into French and I can't speak French.

I took two years of French, can't speak. None of it. So no, not [00:27:00] doing that again. Um, so if you can code you, you can do a lot if you can code mm-hmm. There are plenty of places that need that type of skillset. And we'll take you on as a consultant or whatever they wanna call that kind of a role. So that you're working for yourself, but you're coding for somebody else and you're making bank because you can make way more doing it that way in some cases than you can if you actually work for the company as an employee and you get like your protected days off and stuff.

So sometimes that's the best way to go about it. Um,

Do you know a whole lot of people? Maybe you wanna go into, what your connections can help you do. Mm-hmm. Some people, go be a realtor. Yeah. That does take a [00:28:00] license. You have to take a test to get your realtor's license. But if you have a huge network of people that know you and can recommend people to you, that's an easy thing to go into.

Not saying that somebody's spending, hundreds of thousands of dollars is easy, but if you know tons of people, that's maybe something you could do. But there's plenty of different ideas to help you along. Um, once you get to a place where you're like, okay, this is what I want to do for my business.

Do not. Do not, do not quit your business. Do not quit your work. As soon as you're like, I have an idea. Mm oh, no, don't do that. 'cause that is what we call stupid. Mm-hmm. Because you're not earning anything yet with that. And you'll have costs. I have costs. I have to pay for ai. I have to pay for [00:29:00] this, I have to pay for that.

And Canva, that doesn't cost much, but I still have to pay for it. If you're somebody who can use Photoshop, there's a whole world that can open doors for you. Yeah, and not get my mind to wrap around Photoshop. There are too many buttons, but, um, there's all sorts of things out there for you to do if you have skillset.

Now, if you are somebody. Who doesn't know anything about computers, has no idea, like barely how to use one, but you know how to get on there and go to YouTube and stuff like that. Then I would say that working for yourself might be more difficult. Hmm. Might not be the road you want to go down because there's no IT support when you work for yourself.

No. Unless you have a friend and that friend might get sick and tired of answering your questions after the hundredth phone call. Okay? [00:30:00] Us, it people have all the patience in the world until you've asked how to copy and paste for the 50th time because that's not all that difficult. So remember when you're going to start a business that you have to start with what you know.

And you have to have the money for that. Mm-hmm. So if you're somebody who is like, well, I'm broke and I'm working 80 hours a week, first of all, I'm very sorry that you're working 80 hours a week. That seems like an awful lot of time. First of all, you have to figure out what you have time to do while doing your full-time job, because it's gonna take a while for that job to match the income to your 80 hours a month or a week, or earning.

So you don't wanna quit right away. You wanna wait until you have the money that matches your current income. Now, there is a caveat to that. If you are somebody who is [00:31:00] work, who is at home all the time because of an, an illness, whether it's mental health or physical, and you think that starting a business will help you.

One, make sure that you can handle doing it because first of all, your mental health is something you should guard. Not in the way that it's, oh, well I'm never going into Walmart again. 'cause you know, there's too many people. But in a way that is, I have to respect what I can and cannot do. If your depression.

Makes you unable to do anything for days at a time. You want to be careful about what your business you're, what the business you're setting yourself up for is going to require of you. Hmm. Because if it requires at least five hours a day every single day and you can't do that, then you're setting yourself up for failure.

And that's only gonna make the depression worse when it happens. Yeah. [00:32:00] I am one of those people where depression means that I have to be busy, because if I go curl up in that nice warm bed over there, then I'm gonna go to that dark place in my brain. I'm gonna go into the void, and that's not gonna be healthy for me, and I am gonna be in a bad spot again.

I don't want to be there. So for me, working, helping people is how I stay out of the void and keep trucking. Again, it's knowing yourself. You have to, know yourself, listen to your body as you're doing these things to make sure that you're not setting yourself up for failure especially if you have a mental health illness and you fail, you're only gonna make yourself feel worse.

Yeah, I have days where somebody calls me and is like, well, I can't justify the expense because I only talk to you once a week. Okay. You might talk to me once a week, but I'm doing [00:33:00] things behind the scenes for your business that you know I'm doing, but you think only take me two seconds. I mean, look, I can put together things, right?

Newsletters and stuff like that in a pretty quick pace. Because I know what I'm doing. You're paying for my experience, not the time it takes me to do something. Yeah. You're charged by the time it takes me to do something, or I'd make $5 a shot, right? Because I've learned to be quicker with it. Other people, maybe you don't charge what it takes every hour because you take a really long time to get something done.

I'm not saying crafting wise, 'cause if you can sew or crochet or knit, those projects should cost a bit more than something else. Those things take energy and time and scale that not everybody has, especially nowadays. Mm-hmm. To be able to do [00:34:00] anything with the materials as well. The materials as. You get your materials and you can't just say, well, I only spent $10 on fabric.

Okay, but you spent a couple dollars on thread, you spent a couple dollars on the buttons, you spent a couple dollars on the zipper. Mm-hmm. So those parts add up. And then if, if minimum wage in most places nowadays is $15, and you just did minimum wage for every hour that it took you to get done with your project.

Saying you're an average speed sewer or cross, cross stitch or whatever, right? Then that might be pretty good money. Now, if you do that same thing, let's say, oh, this project that where I made this dragon, you know, with crocheting, it looks really cool, it's really intricate. I'm really fast at, crocheting.

So this only took me three [00:35:00] hours. But, so I can only charge you $45 for that? No, you up your price because you're quicker at it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You up your price. Because it may only take you three hours, but how much time does it take the average person to do it? And those are the hours you charge.

Mm-hmm. Hmm. So there's all sorts of different things you can do. Yeah. It depends on the level of skill as well because mm-hmm. If you have two, two of the dragons side by side, one of them's really well done and the other one Mm.

Like which one are you gonna pay more money for? Yeah, exactly. So, and it depends on, especially in that kind of situation where you're, making an a dragon out of crochet, you have to be able to multiply that. Mm-hmm. You have to make more than one thing look the similar. Not one raggedy, one great.

One polar. One. Good one. Because you're gonna be making them over and over again. [00:36:00] Yeah. Because people are gonna be like, oh, I love how great this dragon looks. And crocheting, especially crocheting and knitting. You can't do those with machines. Yeah. So you can't make a dragon out of, with crocheting yarn, and make it look good with a machine that's all personal.

Hmm. You deserve to make the money for the skill that to make. I would love somebody to make a dragon. That looks so cool. Yeah, I would, I'd like a dragon. I think if somebody watching this does crochet, they should make us both the dragon. That would be awesome. But, again, you have to listen to yourself.

You have to listen to. What you are, who you are. So if you're a very honorable person, your job isn't going to be telling old ladies to give you game cards, right? Because that's not exactly [00:37:00] truthful, that's scamming and illegal. So like, I'm not saying anybody ever should be doing that. So, let's not be doing scanning.

But you wanna make sure that whatever you're doing is legal, ethical, and isn't hurting anyone. Make the world a better place. Oh God, did I really just quote Michael Jackson? Oh, that's not a thing. Anyway, sorry. Like for me, everybody I help, every time I help someone, I'm making somebody else's life a little bit easier.

And that for me is the reason why I do things. I hate money. Easy to say that sometimes, but like I hate having to deal with, okay, this has to be paid. This has to be paid. We have to do this, that, and the other thing. All with money. I hate all that. I absolutely hate it. My brain goes foggy. I have anxiety with it.

It's a thing. I have help with all that. That's not a big deal for me. But again, [00:38:00] have, if you're like me and doing all of that makes your head go foggy and you like can't handle it, have somebody who can help you, whether they're paid or not. Have somebody who's helping you with that. Make sure they're trustworthy because if they're that far into your business, that might be a problem if they're not trustworthy.

But owning your own business, having your own business. While it's not difficult, you want to be sure that what you're doing is setting you up for success. You want to make sure it's actually something that can make you money before you drop the full-time job. Yeah, or even part-time job, whatever time job, the thing that is making you money right now.

Now if you're a stay at home mom and you're gonna have, time on, I don't know any, maybe you're all three of your kids are in school, but you're still a stay at home mom. Right. Maybe you wanna have something that you do. Maybe you hem kids' pants and that's the thing that you enjoy [00:39:00] doing the most.

Do it. Do what you can do in your space at your pace. Yeah. And I think it's, if it's something that you enjoy as well, that's the important thing. Because if you're doing something that you don't like doing, that's not a very nice way to live. And you may as well just go and work for somebody else doing something that you don't wanna do.

Whereas if you can do something that you enjoy it almost, it's not like a job, it's a life. Mm-hmm. You can put gates up to control how fast or slow you're growing. Usually those gates aren't really in your control, but if you learn what you're doing and you know what you're doing so well, so like say you're an Etsy person, maybe you crochet those dragons.

Maybe you turn your site, you know, your page on for three months and get all the orders in. And then [00:40:00] close it again and make all of those orders. And once they're all out again, you do the same thing. You open it up for a certain amount of time, get a whole bunch of orders in, you can, hype that crap up.

Temporary opening will be up for 30 days. Come order what you want now type deal. And then once you've gotten all the orders you can handle for the next six to 10 months, then I. You close it down and start working on everything again. You can put GA gates in so that you have what you can handle. Now, looking at that list of people that want things, you're obviously at the beginning gonna be like, holy crap, there's a whole lot of stuff to do.

I don't know what to do. No too much. Again, you take it project by project. Maybe you sort them out into. These are the bigger projects and when they're due, and these are [00:41:00] the little projects when they're due, and maybe after every big project you do two little ones or something like that. You know, you make it work so that you're filling in time for yourself and you're not making it such a big thing.

Yeah. Also, having the lead time on, these purchases could take anywhere from six months to. 10 months in order for them to get to you. Sorry for the delay, I actually have to make them. Yeah. Right. Or you make, maybe you make them ahead of time. Maybe that's what the break is. You make so many big ones.

You make so many little ones. You make so many key chains, whatever, and then you open up the store to sell all of those things. You restock the store, open it, sell 'em all, and then shut down the site again, and then you go make what you wanna make. Mm-hmm. Maybe you take custom orders from people on Instagram or whatever.

I don't have no idea what any of that stuff is 'cause that's not [00:42:00] what I do. But I get a wood case for every phone I have. 

See, I like my wood cases. They usually come from like Norway or something. They look awesome. They protect my phone. I'm not somebody who like scratches the screen or anything, so I don't need some big plastic thing that's meant to stop a falling phone from the Empire State Building, from cracking 'cause I'm not doing that to my phones.

They're usually right here on my desk or they're in my purse while I'm out and about. But, some people do need the big safety feature things because they work on roofs. So an OtterBox is the only kind of case they can have. Hmm. Um, 'cause those things can take a beating from falling off of a roof. Yeah.

I work with a couple roofers where that's all they can do. That's the other thing you, maybe you're really good at [00:43:00] construction, but you're working for somebody else and on their crew, you're only making a certain amount of money. You can go and work for yourself. Do you know how many handyman are needed in different areas?

No. Like if you could go and, install a new doorknob or fix a stuck door, or any of those handyman type things, you can get, at least in Tennessee, a home improvement license that says you're not gonna charge anybody over $25,000. Go repair people's places. Like that's so needed. I know one handyman in the central area of Nashville where my roofers are, when sometimes the person just needs a new doorknob and my roofers don't do doors.

No, it's not their thing. You can't call anybody nowadays to go get a doorknob fixed or a [00:44:00] unstick a window. Mm-hmm. So maybe you have those kind of skills become a handyman Again, that does require a license in central Tennessee. The license itself doesn't cost any money. Or actually, I think, I don't think so.

Not the home improvement one. At the very most, it's like 150 bucks. So even if you do have to invest, I don't think it's very much now getting a contractor's license is more, at least again, I work with roofers in, in the Nashville area, so that's where I know, but that's more expensive and it costs testing and you have to know a whole lot about a whole lot.

Mm-hmm. So maybe you don't have the skill for that, but you can do the smaller license and just go fix people's small problems. Little old ladies don't know how to get a window unstuck. Yeah. They don't know how to change the faucet when it's leaking. Mm-hmm. Or the [00:45:00] constantly running toilet. And if that's something you can do it.

Figure out a way you can make money doing that. Maybe you charge 200 bucks and you're like, okay, for an hour, you have me for an hour. What exactly do you need done? Hmm. Then you go around the house and you fix all those little things. Mm-hmm. So there's all sorts of different things you can do, but again, don't quit your job, whatever that may be, until you're making at least equally money.

Usually you wanna make a little bit more than what you're currently making at your job so that you can transition each.

Yeah. And as well, it's making sure it's consistent. So if you've done something and you've gone, oh, I've earned loads there, but you've got no way of [00:46:00] replicating it. You need to have a rethink about that. It does need to be replicable. That's why I was saying like, you know, handyman or crocheting or like, if you can type.

There are all sorts of businesses out there that will let you be their VA virtual assistant. For those who dunno what a VA is, I get, oh, you're a va. No, I'm not a va, I'm not one. No. But it depends on where your skillset is and how much you can do. Let's say you can type, but you're somebody who has mental health problems, so you can't be on everything a hundred percent of the time.

Well, some of those places will hire you to work so many hours a month and you, if you spread that out, your customer's gonna be happier that you've spread it out. Then if you did it all in one day, and then they can't talk to you until the beginning of the next month. Mm-hmm. Yeah. [00:47:00] So that shouldn't be a problem for you to have an off day and not be able to work.

Yeah, I think we did good. Do you have any final thoughts? I just think, yeah, people should follow what makes 'em happy. Mm-hmm. So, yeah, I think it's a combination of what makes you happy and what you can like, so I can cross stitch, I can crochet, I can knit, but I'm also one of those people who has problems finishing projects.

It would be very bad for me to go putting my services on eBay or any eBay Who goes to eBay anymore? On any of those kind of sites where you're selling those things, because I may or may not decide to finish that project. Yeah. Okay. And if you're like that, maybe get the goof to actually finish projects before you start taking money for them because you're only gonna set yourself up [00:48:00] for failure if you've taken all this money and you've got projects that are like 20% done, 50% done.

Because you can't finish them. I get a block in my head sometimes and I just can't get past it. Not only that, but make sure it's replicatable. So if you're crocheting and stuff, that is certainly replicatable, but maybe if you're somebody who can, I don't know of a thing. You have a very niche within a niche, within a niche thing that, is only going to apply to five people in the entire world.

Maybe you should take yourself out of the niche, niche, niche thing. Let's like broaden that out a bit. Not saying you have to be as broad as me, where one of my people can come to me about pretty much anything and I can help them fix it. You should probably not only be able to help five [00:49:00] people.

Yeah. Because how are you gonna become aware to those five people and why would they want to go to you when they've probably already got somebody else doing it? Yeah. And once you've done it, then do they need it more than once, like five people needing something? One time is not a business. No. Oh, okay. So if you're gonna make a business and you need help or you want to talk it through with somebody, you can go to my website, nikki's office.com and schedule some time with me and I would be glad to talk with people.