Episode 22 - The Power of Saying No: Our Take on Entrepreneurial Balance
Aug 27, 2023Episode 22
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes, Sonya Songer, Acacia Smith and LaVonne Shields
Ever found yourself stretched too thin, hustling between multiple jobs, and trying to manage a growing business? Let's be honest, it's all too common in entrepreneurship. This episode, we'll hear from one our co-hosts, LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes, an expert CEO strategist who can relate to these challenges. She shares her personal story of being overextended, revealing the unseen costs and the toll it took on her productivity.
Together, we dig into the art of saying 'no,' setting boundaries, and the essential skill of delegation. We delve into crafting a business plan that doesn't just feed your ambitious dreams but is grounded in reality. Lakeysha spills the beans on how to set both external and internal boundaries to keep your entrepreneurial journey sustainable. In our candid chat, you'll find inspiration and practical advice to help you avoid overextending yourself and instead focus on creating a balanced path to success.
Thanks for listening! Please follow, rate and review.
Ever found yourself stretched too thin, hustling between multiple jobs, and trying to manage a growing business? Let's be honest, it's all too common in entrepreneurship. This episode, we'll hear from one our co-hosts, LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes, an expert CEO strategist who can relate to these challenges. She shares her personal story of being overextended, revealing the unseen costs and the toll it took on her productivity.
Together, we dig into the art of saying 'no,' setting boundaries, and the essential skill of delegation. We delve into crafting a business plan that doesn't just feed your ambitious dreams but is grounded in reality. Lakeysha spills the beans on how to set both external and internal boundaries to keep your entrepreneurial journey sustainable. In our candid chat, you'll find inspiration and practical advice to help you avoid overextending yourself and instead focus on creating a balanced path to success.
Thanks for listening! Please follow, rate and review.
Thank you so much for watching and for liking and subscribing. Hello and welcome to the True CEO podcast, the ultimate guide to navigating the challenging terrain of entrepreneurship and business leadership. I'm your host, sonia Songer, your HR strategist, and today's episode is a profound exploration into a mistake that many ambitious entrepreneurs fall into spreading themselves too thin and always saying yes, get ready to uncover the hidden costs, the art of delegation and the strategies for setting boundaries that will keep you on the path to sustainable success. As always, we have our all around CEO strategist and person with all of the CEO knowledge for you. Laquisha Cobb says who's going to start us out on this topic with discussing the hidden costs of spreading yourself thin.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
You absolutely be hyping me up.
Sonya Songer:
Like seriously, I'd be, like I mean, and all around you know, I can't do what I can.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
By no means am I an expert, expert, expert you know, I try.
Sonya Songer:
She's an all around CEO. That's what we're keeping it to. That's what we're keeping it to.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
Well, my goodness, hidden costs, Hidden costs. Spread yourself, are they really?
Sonya Songer:
hidden though.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
They're not hidden because they come. They come to light real quick.
Sonya Songer:
Real quick.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
They come to light real quick, especially when you're spreading yourself too thin, like just. I remember starting out I was sitting. I would just be sitting on my bed and my husband will walk in and be like, are you okay? I was like I think I'm okay, like I'm all right. I'm not quite sure I think I'll be all right.
Sonya Songer:
I think I'll be all right, your voice goes higher at the end I think I am Right.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
And I remember not sleeping. I remember not sleeping. I remember not really eating too well. I just remember a lot of you know, I remember one night I was literally waiting for this payment to come in, so I would stay up to midnight and wait for the payments and checking my account, refresh, refresh, and like I couldn't go to sleep until I saw that the money was in the account, and it was so daunting, like now when I look back on it, I was like so sad Because then I got to sleep.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
I was so, I'm so serious, I was so sad because I was just like, oh my God, like this money doesn't come in, what about payroll? And what are we going to do? And you know, am I going to have to take out a loan and I don't have this and I don't have that.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
And then, you know, I still have to get up in the morning, I have to go see clients, I have to go to the office.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
There's things that need to be done.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
As far as I think, around the time we had to renew our insurance, so we had our insurance audit and I was just like, oh my gosh, and then I was working another job because I needed to sustain this job.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
So not only would I work key essentials Monday through Friday and even on the weekends because I was writing reports, but then I'd go and work a whole nother job and I would have to be at the group homes from like I would leave my house at six o'clock so I can get there by eight, because it was about an hour and a half away, and then I was there until like 10 o'clock at night because I needed to get all of their hours in, and so I did that on the weekend. So Saturday and Sunday I literally worked at the group homes for 10, 12, 14 hours to make sure that they had all of their hours. I would go to three different homes and then I would come back to work on Monday because there was things we had to do at the office in the mornings and then I had to go see my clients in the afternoons and I did that for a few to two, to two, two, almost three years.
Sonya Songer:
I would call those days, always saying yes.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
Mm, hmm.
Sonya Songer:
Yeah, basically, and what did I say during those time frames?
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
That I should probably slow down, Keisha, you don't really have to work.
Sonya Songer:
I was like no, but we don't have to always say yes.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
Yeah, yeah. I remember one of our funding sources even calling and saying like, hey, we need people out in this rural area. It's an hour and a half away. I'm the only BCBA at the company, and so they was just like, yeah, we need somebody out there. And I was like I don't know if we can make this work. I immediately said you did say no. You did say no.
Sonya Songer:
But you said.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
I said yes, mm, hmm, so then on top of all of that then I then went and we started up, and so I would have to go not only an hour and a half the other direction during the week and spend at least one or two days out there on the weekends. I was another hour and a half away Talking about burnout.
Sonya Songer:
Spreading yourself to thin and and and tell. Tell us some of the those costs to the company, to your peace of mind, to your ability to run the company, to, to all of these different areas. What, what were some of those costs?
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
I don't know if they were hitting. They were pretty, they're very blatant. They were very blatant Slap you in your face. Uh, I wasn't running my business. I was actually being an employee. Um, I was missing some of those core tasks. Um, I don't believe we had too many SOPs at the time because I actually, I absolutely did everything. Um, I was, I was a non productive, productive person.
Sonya Songer:
That sounds about right.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
A non-productive productive person.
Sonya Songer:
No self-care was going on. Absolutely not Running yourself into the ground to where then, like you said, a non-productive, productive person. You were there, but you weren't there.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
I wasn't there, which means that everybody else ran my business. Which means that nobody was running the business. Which means that whatever you thought you should do, you probably did.
Sonya Songer:
Which resulted in less productivity. Meaning less money, meaning you having to then still work that much harder to bring in this extra money on the side. Losing money, Continuous cycle.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
Not paying attention to what was coming in and what was going out, not only tearing me down, but tearing my car down, my family down. So, yeah, there was a lot of setbacks Poor quality of service.
Sonya Songer:
Yeah, poor quality of service, Not necessarily from you, but definitely because there was no oversight to the other individuals coming in.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I mean we had you, which you did double duty at the time, so double duty meaning that she was the office manager and HR. So that was helpful.
Sonya Songer:
I tried to monitor them people as best I could.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
I did what I could.
Sonya Songer:
Hey, Keisha's not going to like that. You wait till she gets home.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
Basically, that's exactly what that looked like. That's the sad part about this whole conversation, because you have your strengths and you have your weaknesses. And managing people just because your HR doesn't necessarily mean that you have a skill set to dive into what an actual management session looks like. Nor do you want to. I just want to.
Sonya Songer:
Certainly not for clinical style, certainly not for clinical Absolutely. I can manage them in the sense of hey, you have too many absences, you want to work here, you need to actually come to work. And that's the extent of my management over the most people. If they were not doing the clinical stuff they needed to do with them kids, I had no clue.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
Oh my gosh, I can't even like that whole couple of years when I first started, business was such a blur, Like it was. It was good because I mean, we we scaled really quickly and we got systems in the place, but those systems were created at midnight. Those systems were created when I had time to sit down and actually do something or I'm sitting there at a track meet that I can finally make for one of my kids. So I think that overall we figured it out, but that's that's not the right way to figure it out. I absolutely should have said no, and some of those instances those were some really hard mistakes, Some mistakes that you know you can't bring back, like getting a loan and you know they have daily limits where you have to pay. Instead of that was that was costly, right?
Sonya Songer:
Don't say yes to predatory loans. Do not say yes to them.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
No, don't do that Don't do that at all, but I think what ended up helping was learning how to make decisions, making sure that I'm. I started looking at what was overwhelming me at the time, even though I hate that word.
Sonya Songer:
I hate the word overwhelming, but you know for me to say you always want a specific definition of what exactly do you find?
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
overwhelming. I'm gonna be a hero animal. Yes, I need an operational definition. What so? I can't stand-.
Sonya Songer:
Don't just come to her and say you're overwhelmed, yeah what about this is overwhelming?
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
What you're not getting your job done Like. What does that look like? Are you missing deadlines? Like? I need to know exactly what that looks like.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
However, I learned to make decisions. I learned to prioritize my time. I learned to create what we call in the behavior analyst world, a task analysis, to where I can get things done more efficiently. I started to play myself in, as you know, also as an employee, but also make sure that I was separating my time out. I started to look at strategic planning.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
I actually got into a couple of networking groups where they were just like, which really made my life a whole lot easier, Cause they were just like oh no, we're doing this over here. So then it made sense for me to kind of, you know, follow their lead. One because they've been in business way longer than me, and so looking at what they were doing and listening, so getting a mentor. I think by a year three, I had a business mentor. I may have went back to counseling a couple of times, just personally to figure out. You know, what is this thing called busy and why do I always want to be busy? I think I've been busy for over a lot of years. I think I've been at least two to three times had separate counseling and mental.
Sonya Songer:
You know just a little bit of a breakdown, which we all need. Yeah yeah, self care is a big part of all of these different topics that we're talking about on this podcast, and certainly when you're talking about always saying yes. Why do you always feel the need to please others and always say yes? We know it's going to be a potential hindrance for you, or your organization or your goals.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
Yeah, Not only that, you're spreading yourself in, which is going to lead to some kind of compromise strategies and rush decisions. Like it gets a little crazy out here. But I almost took myself back. I will not.
Sonya Songer:
I will not Back to the presence. Overwhelming decision paralysis.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
So how do you balance ambitious goals with realistic ones? What do?
Sonya Songer:
you say. I mean, I think it's really about having a strategic plan in place. It's about taking the time to put real thought into what that looks like in those two different categories. Yeah, but I'm sure that you're going to kind of give me the more specific, because I'm just I'm not looking at our notes for how we want to address this to all of you. I'm going based off of my knowledge of how we currently operate our you know, our businesses and what that looks like for us. But I know that we have some notes that give better details.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
Well, actually I wasn't going to actually go off the notes. Oh, okay, so there.
Sonya Songer:
Because she is our overall CEO expert, as I said at the beginning.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
Well one I think your ambitious goals are ones that kind of stretch you Right. Your realistic goals are where you actually are, and so from my background, it's kind of like, okay, where are we and where can we realistically go? And then, where is our dream? Where's our? You know what, if we could do and we can kind of get all of these ducks in a row, then we can get here. And so those ambitious goals versus your realistic goals not that you don't need to dream, but you also need to stick close to and or have three different figures of where you want to be. So, agreed, you know. I think that that makes better sense than saying you know, this year, just pie in the sky we're going to do. You know 50 million and you've barely made a million. Right that? That makes zero sense. How are you going to get?
Sonya Songer:
there. I mean, that is an amazing dream.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
I mean, I'm going to put it out in the universe and manifest all of those things. However, what does that look like and what does the numbers look like? So, you know, giving yourself an opportunity to stretch yourself and go as far as your dreams can take you, but then kind of backing your way into an actual plan to say, okay, this is what we're capable of, this is what we're going to need to get to even the next step and this is what we're going to need to get to that 50 million, right? So, accessing your resources, your time, your personnel, your finances before you even set the goal, and I think that's the part that especially younger and you know and I say younger in the sense of you know you've had your business between one and three years that's the part that you don't get, because you're not really looking at numbers at that time, right, unless you've already had experience in business, and that was your thing and you have.
Sonya Songer:
You know you're in corporate and you know you're used to giving numbers, you start to hit the ground running in that aspect, absolutely.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
Absolutely. But for those of us that started this business and didn't know anything about numbers or tracking KPIs you know key performance indicators or creating SOPs or you know all of these different areas then you're going to have a slower start because you only know your skill set, you only know your craft. And my craft says I understand how to break down behavior. I understand how to break down, you know, I know how to read a graph, but I only know it from working with the clients that I work with. Now, how do we apply that to business and what does that look like? Now there's a part of our, you know, I guess, the behavior analyst community that has the organizational behavior management. You know it's not very hard to make the switch, but also nobody's telling you that. You know that sounds lovely, kisha, but that sounds lovely Kisha, but people are quitting and you know, you don't know, that the pandemic is coming and you know you can't predict the things that you don't know. You don't, I mean, unless you have to give the foresight.
Sonya Songer:
That is so similar to a conversation that I just had the other day when we were discussing those individuals that have an overall business management degree. That sounds lovely, but you do have to study all of the different aspects of business to get that degree Absolutely. However, because you are not an expert in each individual area, because you just know each area in general overall, that's where kind of those difficulties will come in and you really have to consider delegating.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
Absolutely, Because you're not going to get anywhere without delegation One. You have to have delegation, you have to be, you have to delegate, and the other person has to actually buy into what you're saying. They have to agree to say you know what? I see your vision and I'm willing to follow you. And if that's not happening, then you don't have anyone.
Sonya Songer:
Okay.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
You know fun times right.
Sonya Songer:
Fun, fun times.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
So in order when you are delegating one, it allows you to leverage the strength and the expertise of other people and be a collective. It also identifies the tasks that align with other skills and expertise other skills and people that have those expertise to then bring to your company that you possibly didn't have before. So hiring people not for where they are, where you want them to be, but hiring them for where you want to be and not just you know. Do you have this one particular skills? What other skills do you have? I know one of the things that we say at Key Essentials pretty often is our goal is to put you where your strengths are. Our goal is to make sure that you're successful within the company, to be able to grow not only yourself but also grow the company.
Sonya Songer:
And grow other people around you.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
So how do you set those boundaries? What does it look like?
Sonya Songer:
I think there's that's a bit twofold right, because you have to be able to set those boundaries in so many different areas.
Sonya Songer:
You need to set those boundaries when you are dealing with outside entities that you may want to collaborate with. You need to be able to set those boundaries internally with individuals within your organization that you work with, and then you also need to set those boundaries internally within yourself. So I think you're looking at and those might not be the only three categories, but those are the three main ones that come to my mind. So, when setting these boundaries, I think it's very important to potentially maybe do a guess audit, which we have actually supplied for all of you in our bonus material that will be available. You want to look at trying to set that up in order to really analyze how you can start creating those boundaries.
Sonya Songer:
But those are the three main areas that I see where those boundaries would need to take place, and once you can determine which category that individual fits into, now you need to look at okay, how can I set up this boundary? How is this going to affect my organization if I say yes as opposed to saying no? What will saying yes look like? What will saying no look like and then it will help you further kind of create how you need to communicate that boundary to that outside entity, to that coworker or colleague, to within yourself, like, stop always saying yet no is a complete sentence.
Sonya Songer:
Yes, it is.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
No is a complete sentence and the good thing about saying no is there's various ways. Thank you, but I'm not available. I would love to, but my calendar is full. I mean, you can use anything to say no, or you can just say no, literally, just say no. Remember when we were kids? Well, maybe some of you guys don't but you know they had to just say no when I was in elementary school.
Sonya Songer:
Nope to do but to drugs.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
Yes, absolutely. That is so crazy. Oh, did I just say myself.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
But also why do you say no? You're saying no when it doesn't align with your mission, it doesn't align with your values, it doesn't align with your personal you know mission statement. You're saying no when it is time for you to rest. You cannot go to everything. You cannot be a part of everything. So making sure that you are very specific about how you're moving is going to be key and why you're going to say no to certain things, and knowing your why. What am I working for right now? How am I going to set up my life In the first couple of years? Absolutely, this is your baby. This baby requires for you to be there morning, noon, day and night. Then this baby turns into a toddler. You can sleep a little bit and, if you can, but you still have things that you need to do. So, making sure and equating it to okay, what does that look like for me? I'm going to need in the beginning for the first, and give yourself a time frame for the first two years I'm going to. This is what I need to do.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
I know one of the things that was very crucial to me was when I started a business and actually just kind of went on this journey my family and I. We sat down, we had a whole conversation. I'm not going to be home and this is why these are the things that you can do. Here's the people that you talk to. If you're going to need some support, because this is going to take up a lot of my time, then these are the things I'm going to need from the family for us to get to where we want to get to, and everyone there was very supportive. I mean, we've had questions, we've kind of gone through our own personal issues, or maybe there's things that get kind of left by the wayside that your partner or your family and friends have picked up along the way. But that's the important part of finding a tribe getting people in your corner, having set boundaries and then also being able to move forward.
Sonya Songer:
That's another area. I didn't think of boundaries with your family.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
Oh, absolutely.
Sonya Songer:
Absolutely Family and friends. Well, that wraps up another insightful episode of the True CEO podcast. We hope you've gained valuable insights that will help you steer clear of the perilous path of spreading yourself too thin and always saying yes. No is a complete sentence. Remember, being a true CEO means not just overseeing, but strategically piloting your business towards its ultimate goals. If you found this episode as enlightening as we did, hit that subscribe button. I don't know where it is to stay ahead of the entrepreneurial curve. Share your thoughts, leave reviews and join us next time as we uncover more gems of wisdom to guide you on your journey as a true CEO. Until then, keep your focus sharp and your ambitions balanced. I'm here to support you as well with my consultation business, vossi HR, and you can find me on all social media platforms. Vossi HR. And you can find me on Instagram at only Vossi HR.
LaKeysha Cobbs-Hayes:
You can find me at LaKeishaCopsHays and or strategic underscore behavior, and you can find us as a whole on strategic behavior consultants, part of the True CEO Network.