Episode 131: Conversations Over Coffee - October 2022

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Conversations Over Coffee – October 2022

Welcome back to another Conversations over Coffee Episode, where I take you behind the scenes once a quarter to let you in one what’s happening in my life and businesses. These episodes are meant to feel like we’re sitting in my sunroom together with a warm cup of coffee and a snoozing Jasper in the corner, with Padme running amuck and screaming at everyone for pets. (Sorry, she’s terribly spoiled, and yes, it’s my fault). If you’re new around here, I’m so glad you’re joining us! And if you’re an old friend – welcome back! You’re listening to episode 131 of Chasing Simple, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. Get cozy friend – let’s dive in!

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

What if strategic content marketing was easy, effective, and efficient? It can be!! Join my Club Content Batching Bootcamp today.
Are you looking to improve your content without spending a ton of time and mental energy doing so? Whether you’re looking for help knowing what to talk about, setting up content systems, or improving your launch strategy, the Chasing Simple Shop has something for you. From A Year of Content Prompts broken up by type of content, to my Launch Strategy Mini-Course – the Chasing Simple Shop is the quick and simple way to take your content to the next level. And you can get 10% off any item by using the code LISTENER at checkout! Just head to amandawarfield.com/shop/ and again, that code for 10% off is LISTENER!
This week’s action step: I’m thinking that adding in some fun questions to the end of these episodes might be a continued theme. If you’d like to see that happen – send me your own questions over in my DMS on Instagram or shoot me an email!
This week’s book recommendation: The Last Flight by Julie Clark. If you like books with twists, you’ll want to add this one to your list of books to read. It follows two women desperate to escape their own lives for their own reasons, who end up meeting at an airport and essentially switching identities with each other. Then, one of their planes go down – killing everyone on board, throwing everything into chaos.
Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield

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Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!

*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate.

Welcome back to another conversation over coffee episode, where I take you behind the scenes once a quarter to let you in on what’s happening in my life. And my businesses, these episodes are meant to feel like we’re sitting in my sunroom together with a warm cup of coffee and a snoozing Jasper in the corner with Padme running amuck and.

Screaming at everyone for pets. Sorry about that. She’s terribly spoiled and yes, it is my fault. If you knew around here, I am so glad that you’re joining us. And if you’re an old friend, welcome back. You’re listening to episode 131 of the Chasing Simple Podcast. And I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. Let’s get cozy friend and dive on in.

The first update I have for you is a house update. We finally made some progress on something for the last few of these. I think I just haven’t really had any updates because we were really feeling conflicted about, is this the house we’re gonna stay in forever? I didn’t, I’m not gonna reiterate all of that because if you’ve listened, you’ve listened.

And if not go back and listen to some of these other conversations over coffee episodes, but we really. there’s nothing inherently wrong with the house. We just struggled with knowing whether or not it was honestly the right house for us. we had gotten to this place of, okay, you know, most of the aesthetic stuff is done.

There’s still some things we could do, but we didn’t wanna pour a lot of money into the house if we weren’t going to stay in it forever. And also if it wasn’t gonna add value, first and foremost, we have decided that we probably won’t, this was not gonna be our forever home. Like we originally intended it to be, we don’t know what that’s gonna look like yet.

If we’re going to. move to a different house. If we’re gonna build, if we’re gonna stay in akin, if we’re gonna move to a different, we don’t know, we have no idea what we’re gonna do, and we’re not interested making any decisions about anything for quite a few years, honestly, but just knowing and having that agreement, that there will be some kind of change at some point, honestly, has been really freeing

and I think for both of us, I know that I personally enjoy the house so much more. I don’t feel so stuck. And it just it’s really freed up the space for me to be more grateful for the things that I do really like about this house, which has been an interesting turn of events, but we got all of the pine trees on our property cut down and.

While it won’t necessarily add value to the house. It is going to save our mental health so much. So we had seven giant pine trees on our property and they, for whatever reason, these pine trees dropped pine cones. All. Year long, it like pine straw. It really only dropped in the fall. And then we would break all the pine straw and it, that was it for the fall annoying, but it only happened once a year, but the pine cones for whatever reason dropped all year long.

and it’s not like I’ve never been around pine trees before. Like there are pine trees everywhere in the south. The house that I grew up in had, I don’t know if I’ve just never noticed or if they’re different species of pine trees where some drop ’em more than others. I don’t know. But the ones in our yard were dropping them constantly and it really held us back.

From doing any kind of yard work outside, which one? Neither of us are super inclined to do yard work just totally. Honestly, it’s not our favorite thing. we are not super called to gardening. We’re not super green thumbs, but when we did decide, okay, we wanna do some yard work. We wanna make some progress.

These beds are overgrown. The grasses needs to be mowed., whatever the case may be before we could make any progress on anything, we would spend an hour picking up pine cones, and then we would work on whatever it was that we really wanted to work on. And then we would be so exhausted because we had to spend at least two hours out.

Side dealing with yard work that we inevitably didn’t do anymore. Yard work for a while. And at that point, all the work we did was wasted essentially. And the frustrating part was that we would spend an hour picking up pine cones for Russell to mow the grass. Let’s say, and the next day we’d walk outside and there’d be 20 plus pine cones on the ground again.

And this was just a daily thing. We were just constantly dropping. So we never got any yard work done. We never made any progress. And frankly, every time I saw a pine coat at this point, I was like, stupid pine coat. I hate you so much. So we got the pine trees cut down and I’m so happy. it has made. but one it’s opened up the yard in ways that I didn’t really anticipate, which in hindsight is silly.

I obviously should have anticipated that cutting seven pine trees down would make a big difference in how open the yard felt and the curb appeal. But I was so focused on, like, I just never wanna see a pine cone in my yard ever again, that that was my focus. So it’s done that, but it also has made yard work so much easier and our yard still needs work.

Don’t get me wrong. , you know, we look at these projects and it’s not, we’ve gotta clean the yard for an hour before we can even start this project. It’s okay. When we feel like we wanna start a project, we can just jump into it, which feels really, really nice. So that is the house update. There haven’t been any like major, really any updates inside at this point, but I also feel more excited now that we know this isn’t our forever home.

I feel more excited about making updates too, which again, it it’s very counterintuitive, but. It’s freed up a lot of my, my mental blocks around upgrade in the house and doing things. So there will be more updates in the future, but the big one is the pine trees are gone. Praise Jesus, Halleujah I’m so glad about that now.

Personal updates. So the big one is that Russell has started a new. and he is now working a shift schedule. And if you follow me on Instagram, you’ve probably seen me talking about this because it has been a very, very, very interesting transition. We are still as I’m recording this just in the first month of figuring this out and because it’s a shift schedule, we haven’t even finished a whole like cycle, I guess you could call it.

And it’s been interesting. so I’m trying to. align my schedule with his days off as much as possible, but I’m not changing my sleep schedule. So when he works nights, I just continue about my normal days as I would. And I work while he sleeps. But when he has days off, like, let’s say he has a Tuesday, Wednesday off.

Well, I try to align my work schedule when possible to those same days off. So I would. On Monday, I would do my marketing and client stuff and on Tuesday, which is normally a project day and Wednesday is actually an, also a project day one for each business. Well, I would just shift those so that I’m then working Thursday, Friday, and then my Thursday, I would work Saturday.

And so I shift my schedule based on what his schedule looks like. and that has gone. Okay. We have been really lucky because it’s just kind of worked out at this point that I’ve had less to do on the days that he’s had off, which wasn’t intentional because we didn’t have his schedule early enough for me to plan things like that.

And it’ll be a while. It’ll probably be into the new year before we have like a firm set schedule form, cuz they wanna put ’em on different shifts before he start to manage it his own and so on and so forth. So it’ll be a while before his schedule is kind of established. And I’ll be able to actually plan things, but so far that part of it’s working out really well.

What I did not expect and has been a surprise is that letting go of the, this inner Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday are Workday has been really. difficult and this is good. This is all good for me to experience because I have to, I really have to learn to not tie my, my worth and my value to my business.

Right. And to my productivity levels. It’s not even just my business. It’s my personal productivity levels as well. And that’s the whole thing I’m working on in therapy, but this is gonna be a really great exercise, I think, in letting go of some of those. Thoughts and inner feelings that I have, but it has been really difficult to let go when he had a Wednesday and a Thursday off, it was fine.

If we were out doing, like, if we went to play golf, it was easy for me to say, okay, we’re doing this right now. I can work tomorrow. But if we were just like hanging out at home, that’s when it got harder for me. And I felt this need to go do things in my office instead of relax. which I’m still available for my clients.

I’m still checking my emails and making sure that all of that is well, but I don’t need to be working, working on those days off. So that’s a work in progress. That’s, that’s been a really interesting part of that transition that it necessarily foresee so we will see how that goes as that continues. By the time you hear this, hopefully we are in some kind of rhythm, even though things will still be changing a decent amount, but hopefully there, there will be a little bit more flow to that.

We’ll. And then the other personal update is that I have finally found a church home and I could talk out this forever and ever, and ever, and ever, but to keep it kind of short and concise, I really, really, really loved my church in Washington. And I was obsessed with my youth group kids. I had the greatest community.

Around me there and leaving was really, really, really hard. And of course we moved back and the pandemic started. And so I was leaving this great community and then we get further isolated. And then after the pandemic, I never, I just didn’t have a community here in this town. And I was really struggling with that and with some loneliness and the church I grew up at that I was going to didn’t feel very welcoming towards me when I did start going to it.

And so I stopped going to church at all because there’s so much grief wrapped up in like, okay, one, I had to leave this amazing community in Washington, but then two, this church that I grew up in, I was baptized in. I was confirmed in, I got married in no longer feels like a safe place. And. That was really difficult.

So I stopped going to church, but that was not the answer either. I really needed to find community. So I about midway through this, like sometimes the summer I started going to churches again and I found one that I honestly kind of felt resistance towards. At first I was like, this is not, I’m not going to, there’s no way I’m gonna like it.

And it turns out. I have already found such a great community there. Everyone has been so welcoming and so kind. And so inviting. I am helping with their youth group, which I never in a million years expected to want to do again. Never because it was so hard to leave my kids in Washington. And I just feel so plugged in and happy.

it is amazing what having community will do for you all of that to say, so those are my personal home and life updates. I’m feeling really good about just spending less time working and doing more for myself. And that that’s a new feeling. Those are those updates business wise? I don’t have quite as many updates.

Well, actually that might be a lie. So this business, Amanda Warfield content marketing strategy. I launched a shop. In July, which you can go to Amanda workshop.com/shop to check that out. There are a lot of really great resources there, whether you are more so in the beginner content creation phases, or you’re more so in the strategy and the launching side of things.

There’s a little bit for everyone there. So I highly recommend to go check that out. I also hired a. I hired a virtual assistant, which I didn’t think I was ever going to do. I thought I would be a solo per forever. And yet here we are, which is really, really exciting. And she’s working with me just five hours a month right now.

Hopefully we will be, you know, increasing that over time as she takes more and more off my plate and frees me up to work on more and more projects that will move the needle and, you know, grow the bottom line and things like that. But that has been a huge mental relief, more than anything. The time is great, but the mental relief of being able to offload some of these things that are more administrative has been incredible.

I also wrote a book, which is very much still in those early phases. As I’m recording this, I just finished it, finished the initial manuscript yesterday, and I’m now going to be putting it aside for the rest of the month and giving my brain a few weeks to rest. And then I will start the initial edits the first round of, so it’ll be a while before the book comes out, but I am chronically the book creation journey.

On my website and I will link to the book blog. I’m calling it in the show notes. If you wanna check that out and see where the behind the scenes of what that’s gonna look like and what that is looking like. And then I also launched a mastermind, the course launch mastermind. If you haven’t heard me talking about it, I’m so excited for this group as I’m recording this, it has not lost launched officially yet, but it’s getting ready to applications are gonna open really soon.

And the whole idea behind it is. We are going to spend six plus months together, walking through course idea, to course creation, to launch, to postlaunch, and then ready for the next launch before we part ways. And I’m really, really excited about this. It’s a weekly meeting group. We are, it’s very curriculum focused and each week their action steps for the members to take.

And so they’re walking away with a fully launched course at the end. if you’re curious about that, and you are thinking that that might be something you’re interested, I will link to the wait list in the show notes so that you can check out more about that. And then. the final news really that’s happening in this business is the one to one spots are opening soon.

I am not going to be taking as many clients for the new year, so I don’t know what that’s gonna look like. As far as clients that are going to stick around for another year, how many spots I’ll actually have. But if you wanna know more about that, I will link to that webpage in the show notes as well.

And you can see if I have space or not. I will have VIP days next year. If you were looking just for launch specific strategy. but as far as the ongoing, I don’t know what that’ll look like. So yeah, that was a lot of updates on the business side of things. The end of the year, there’s always a lot going on.

Q4 is just. A lot, but it’s a lot of really good things. And I am already planning for next year, in my mind. And specifically when I want to strategically plan for downtime, which again, a lot of that will be based around Russell’s schedule. And I don’t know all the details of that yet, but even though it’s only August as I’m recording this, I’m already thinking about it.

And then the magical escape, vacations business update. Honestly, there’s not, there’s not much of an update. I am. not spending near as much time as I would like to on this business. And that’s part of what I’m already like reworking as far as my schedule for next year and how I’m going to plan for different things.

Because I just, I have enough time to serve the clients that I have, but I don’t have enough time to work on those needle, moving projects for that business. So that’s what I’m working on for that. I have a couple of fun questions that were submitted in this year’s annual survey that don’t really merit their own episode.

So I thought I would throw ’em in here and just answer them really quickly. So the first one is, what do you think about the star wars area at Disney? Is it worth it? If you’re a star wars fan? So I am not a major star wars fan, which might surprise you since my cat’s name is pad. May I enjoy them? They’re good movies.

I’m not. There, you could not have a conversation with me about star wars though. Really there’s too much in the I’ve only watched them each one time, but I love the star wars area because I think they did such a good job theming it, they, you can tell that so much planning and detail and effort went into this.

And you really feel like when you’re walking around star wars land that you’re inside of one of the movies, does that hold up, if you are a major star wars fan, I really couldn’t tell you. I really enjoy the area and the atmosphere really feels real. How many times have you been to Disney? I, I couldn’t tell you.

I went four times growing up and then I went for my honeymoon, went to Disneyland three times while we lived over in Washington. And then I went, I feel like I’m forgetting something. And then in the last year, I think I went four times to Disney world and I’ve been to Alan. So I don’t know what, what is that like almost.

1314, something like that a lot. I don’t know it. The older I get, the more frequently I go, because I’m an adult and can afford to do these things for myself now. And then how do you decide what to share on social media and what to keep to yourself? Honestly, this is such a case by case very personal basis that.

I, I can’t give you guidance on this. It’s very much a gut instinct for me. And when I feel like sharing something, it’s a, like, do I share this? Do I not? What’s my gut. Say, there are things that I share really easily and openly about, like the fact that I have glaucoma and endometriosis. And things like that.

There are some really personal things that I do not share at all. And there are some things that I’m starting to share more about, but that also are really difficult for me. Like the fact that we are a child free by choice, and I go back and forth about how much of that I wanna share. So. It’s very much a case by case basis.

And I really ask my gut, what is it that I want this week’s action step. I’m thinking about adding in some of those fun questions to the end of these episodes as like a continuous thing. If you’d like to see that happen, if you enjoyed those random questions, being answered, send me your own questions over in my DMS on Instagram, or shoot me an email.

I’m hello@amandawarfield.com. Now this week’s book recommendation is The Last Flight by Julie Clark. If you like books with twists, you are going to want to add this one to your list of books to read. It is so good. And it follows these two different women that are both desperate to escape their own lives for their own reasons.

And they end up maybe in an airport and switching identities, and then one of their planes goes down and it kills everyone on board. And that throws the whole plane into chaos. I’m not gonna give you any spoilers, but if you like books that are like, kind of chaotic, but in a good way, you’re gonna wanna read this one.

And I will like do that in the show notes. Now my friend until next time, I hope that you will go out and Uncomplicate your life and biz.