91 | Well hey there! (It's been a minute)

Annie: Well, hey there, Leah.

Leah: Hey, Annie. How are you?

Annie: I'm good. It has been a while since we have done really anything together. We haven't podcasted. We took a little break from the deeper dives over the summer. You were back for our deeper dive in August and September, but it's been kind of a little pause. How are you doing?

Leah: I'm doing good. Yeah. That pause was somewhat due to time of year because we usually take the summers off and that coincided with me also having a major back surgery, so I am recovering from that still, it's been a little over three months now since I had surgery and thanks to being a cheerleader and gymnast in high school, I had a fracture then and it just led to my spine moving and not being in the right position. So it had to be fixed and definitely not something that I thought I was going to be doing this year. So it really threw such a kink, and not a kink, bigger than that, whatever, a mountain in front of my entire life. And so we, yeah, we had to put some things on hold for the podcast. I had to put some things on hold for work. It's been quite a wild ride after 13 years in business, it was like the longest time that I had to like, Nazi clients and step away from my business and let it kind of keep going, but not with me so involved.

Annie: I felt like you did a really good job of actually doing that, of taking what your doctors were telling you about, like taking a recovery seriously as like that being your job. And I know that was really hard for you.

Leah: Yeah. I did it, but I did it somewhat kicking and screaming. There are many times that I know I reached out to you like, ah, I can't do this. It's so hard to like, I just want to get up and do what I would do and go back to normal life and see moms and babies and do all the things. And I was just like in healing prison, it felt like at times, but it was also, from like a bigger perspective, like a really good reminder that I don't have to be so involved in every single little tiny piece of my business at every single moment that I can like have times where I'm not. I have systems in place. I have a great administrative assistant. I have wonderful LCs that work with me. Like I have so. Many things that I think I was a little taking for granted, thinking I needed to micromanage all that because I'm the business owner, right? And then it was like a real learning moment for me of like, Oh my gosh, the whole thing didn't fall apart when I stepped away for a little bit, which was, wow, what a relief because it makes me feel like I can take more time for myself, which was like such a great lesson in all of this. The hard part was a good lesson.

Annie: Yeah, I mean and I'm sorry that you had to learn that lesson while also recovering from major surgery, like, I mean, it was a big deal physically what you went through. So I'm happy you're on the other side of it. This is like, this is life. This, these are things that happen. You can't plan for them. But I know like one of the things that I've been really mindful of is. Just how easy it is to delay getting treatment for anything minor because I'm just kind of like what? Like, it's so easy to say like, well, as you get older, things just don't work as well. I don't have time to go to the doctor why bother doing that? And I got really challenged on that a while back, just like, having enough things. Like, it was like a tipping point of like, it was one more time that I let something go and by doing that made it worse than it would have been if I'd got intervened early, like if I just had told somebody what was happening, like, instead of just being like, I must be doing something wrong or just do it, or I can power through it. And yeah, sure, I'll get better soon. I'll just wait it out. And like, I just decided, I'm like, I can't be that person anymore. Just like. tell somebody. So this is kind of a funny story related to that because I took it very far, which is I went in for like Annual physical with the, um, nurse practitioner at the OBGYN that I go to, and she's like, do you have any other questions? And usually I'm like, no, I'm like, what questions am I supposed to have? I am going to ask her a question today. I'm going to ask her why I have itchiness. On one breast and not the other and I was like, I'm just gonna ask her and if all that happens is she says put some hydrocortisone on it, then at least I asked her, right? So I asked her. She's like, just put some hydrocortisone on it. And I was like, I will do that. I put some hydrocortisone on it and it stopped itching. And it was like such a silly thing. People have no problem asking us those kinds of questions about themselves and their babies. Like, why do I feel like I have to hold, or like I'm imposing on them? Or, or sometimes I have a feeling if I say something about it, it's going to, like, I'm going to jinx myself.

Leah: Yeah. Like make it a bigger thing. Yeah. Totally. I can totally feel that. And I seriously, like, wanted to Do the same thing, like just kind of believe that maybe my back situation wasn't as bad as it was until we probably all come to that health moment where you're like, okay, there is no denying that I have to do something about this. But for so long, you want to almost not talk about it, not say it because you're like, I could just pretend like it's not here as long as nobody else knows about it. Like I can't keep pretending. And then you're like, Oh, dang, no, like for me, it was like, okay, no, my nerves are actually starting to not work in my leg, which is like, I don't know, really important if you want to keep walking, but I just for a while kind of was like, ah, I'm probably just in my head. I'm probably overthinking it. And that's just making me too aware. So now I'm analyzing it and that's probably it. And then, yeah, you get a little fearful of saying anything because you're like, is this going to make it a bigger deal than it really needs to be? Or I always worry, like, am I making a bigger deal out of something. You would go pull everybody and everybody would be like, no, that's totally normal. Like I have that too. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, it'd be that person that's like an alarm clock. And then they're like, no, that's just fine. Like, don't complain about that one. It's so hard taking care of ourselves. Why is that so challenging? It's crazy how. It's so easy to help take care of, like, even my kids. If I see something off with them, I'm checking in. I'm like, how are you feeling? Is everything okay? If they seem off. And then for us, I'm just like, just ignore, ignore as much as you can. Cause like, nobody's got time for that. Like, I ain't got time to be down or sick or anything.

Annie: The few times where I have been sick, where I can't work. I have this fantasy of I'm going to get sick. I'm not going to get sick enough that I actually am sick, but I am going to be sick enough that I can't do anything. And that happened for me. Uh oh. It was like last year sometime. It was like a year and a half ago. I was like, oh, no, I have a stuffy nose and a scratchy throat. And I took a COVID test and I had COVID. And we were, it was before we were going to hopefully go on a trip to see my mother in law. So I went and ran and locked myself in the room. I'm like, nobody talked to me. Nobody looks at me. But then I stayed in my room for five days until I tested negative, but I never got sick. I was just positive for COVID and I laid on my bed and I watched TV and I read books and people brought me food. And I was like, yeah. This fantasy of getting sick enough that I can't do anything but not, not actually feel bad is real. Like, I got that, that my dream came true and it was as amazing as I always imagined it would be because every other time when you do get sick, you're like, I really actually didn't want to be sick being right.

Leah: I thought laying in bed for a few days would be amazing. And it's actually not amazing when you have a headache and you're coughing and you have a sore throat, you're like, no, I don't want to be sick. I will keep working. I will keep doing all the things just to avoid all those terrible feelings. I know one thing that happened for me is like. I thought in my head, I'm like, Oh, I'm going to be laid up for a while, like with this back surgery. My big idea was like, I am going to make a list of all the things that I can do while just sitting or laying around. Like productive things like things that responsible business owners might do like I could revamp the website I could learn about this or that I could take these classes and you know what happened. I could not brain Anything, which was really frustrating because it was a very painful surgery and the recovery is very mental because you can't bend, lift or twist for three months. And so you like everything you do, you have to be really thoughtful. You can't just stand up and grab something or whatever you're needing to do. So I was like, it was so crazy to me that one. I just could not fit anything in my brain like that. Like it was just not going to happen. And two, like the desire that I had going into it, like that, like, Oh, this is going to be great. Because I'll have like all this time to catch up on all these projects that I've always wanted to just be able to sit around and do all this stuff and get it done. Yeah, but then the motivation to do it when you're in healing mode is just like Not there whatsoever. I just didn't want to look at one single thing. I wanted to vegetate mostly or read books and rest. It was so crazy to me because I went in with this big vision of coming out of this with all these things completed and accomplishments. And the biggest accomplishment was that I didn't do anything and I rested and I think it’s huge, actually.

Annie: Yeah. For me, it's really big. How do we, as business owners, Figure out how to give ourselves unlimited paid time off. Like theoretically have this policy. I own my business, meaning I can take off whenever I want to, but I'm like my corporate culture of me and myself is that, well, it's a bad idea to do that. There's always one more thing we could do.

Leah: A little bit more money that could be made. Yeah. It's really hard to let ourselves off the hook and we should all over ourselves. I've always loved that saying. I did spend some time while I was trying to heal in shame. Like, I should be doing more productive things. I should be. And thankfully I had friends like you. And my sister and other friends who are like, absolutely don't do anything. You don't have to do anything, but it's really hard as a business owner, because all tasks end up falling on us and our responsibility. And it feels like there is no room for just letting ourselves have that kind of space. It was a real lesson to me, but also coming back to like, I'm very glad that I had the systems in place so that this came up, it was probably like a month's time from the time I found out I needed surgery to like when I had the surgery, maybe six weeks, but it was a short period of time. Like, I was really grateful that it didn't feel like I had to spend that whole time, like prepping someone else to run my business. Like. There were already so many things in place that allowed that part of it to have ease, but I still was on myself, I should be doing more. I should be doing more. And I had to have a lot of loving reminders, firm reminders from friends and family to just take it easy and not put all that pressure on yourself because that also is stressful and doesn't help you heal.

Annie: Yeah. I'm so glad too because. You only get one body and you'll get one back and you get many other chunks of three months where you can work yourself into the grounds

Leah: But it's also such good reminders for me a lot of lessons came out of that and I think we've talked about before how the trials and struggles usually end up with a lesson in them, and we've, we've hashed a lot of those out here on the podcast of these lessons that we've learned, but definitely took away the fact that, like, I can take time off and I don't have to be all the time and I can still like have a business that's running, especially because the pieces that you put in play to make that be possible so some hard lessons learned in this time period, but I'm really excited about all that we have coming up though. And now jumping back in, like, we have some really great deeper dives coming up and certainly more podcast episodes. And I'm so excited to be back and at it again.

Annie: Definitely this month in October, a deeper dive into the first hundred hours with Christine Starica. She wrote a book this year about that. And. Her brain is so good at the scientific side of things and really breaking things down. And what I love about this topic is just, she really wants to help us bridge the gap. And sometimes I look at that postpartum period, even in prenatals, I'm like, At the end of the day, you're really just, you just got to get home, and there's not a lot you can do about those early, those first two days, those first three days that she focuses on, which is not about what can be done or should be done, but mostly about, like, the failures of the system and just kind of how things are set up, but I'm excited to hear from her, like what she sees that time could be and having that breathe some life into my prenatals that I, I just, sometimes I feel so like defeated about them. Like, I really want you to have this experience and I want to tell you how it could be. And I just have no idea how it's going to turn out, but I think she's going to have a lot of insight. For us about that. And then in November, we're going to be joined by Parker Stevenson, he is one of the co owners of the bookkeeping company that I've been working with now for the last couple of years, he has published a book called profit pillars, which is their way of organizing your profit and loss categories. And to come up with some metrics for how to evaluate like success and not just look at like, I made this and I spent this and so I'm really excited because I, this is going to sound like the infomercial using their system now for however long I've been working with them and it's changed my life, but it kind of has just in terms of like, I'm not really a numbers person and I have really tried to do it myself for a long time or felt like. The way they do it makes sense to me and it's helped me make decisions about my business. And then the book is going to be, and they just, he, Parker has great energy. I like talking to him. It feels like you're getting like checkbook therapy or something. I don't know, like business therapy. So that's coming up in November. And then we're booking for December. We're talking to a few people about that. And then we're going to have Jacob Engelsman coming in January to talk about working with queer families. And if you want to be a deeper dive guest, I know we have people reach out to us and it's always so exciting to hear from people who have ideas and want to be on the deeper dive. Send us an email. You can email paperless@Anniefrisbee. com. We have an email address for lactation business coaching. It has been overrun with spammers and now like, I don't even look at it. I'm really sorry. I actually went in and looked at, I'm like, did I miss anything? I'm like, Nope, Nope. Still full of spammers. So if you do write me there, we will see it. But. Maybe I only check it like once every three months because it's too depressing, but paperless at Annie frisbee. com and we've also started some new community features on the platform where we host the deeper dive. So if you're a deeper dive subscriber, you can be part of the deeper dive community. We also have a general community and we're going to be having some more little kind of broken out communities, but it's a hopefully a way for us to. Connect that isn't Facebook because I'm tired of being on Facebook. Yeah, get off Facebook. But in the learning platform that's hosting our deeper dives and the tools that you might be using from paperless lactation. So it's not like a place you would never go. Like, hopefully you're going there for other things. And then there's also a community there. So we're going to see how that goes. But feel free to get our attention there. We just have such a great community. Don't you think so?

Leah: Definitely. And it's that coming together. I think that our mission when we started this was like we want to bring people together because that's something that is the, our favorite thing when we go to a conference or we get to like get together because we happen to be in the town that somebody else is in and we get to just talk, like really talk to other people who are living this Elsie running a business life. And that community is just, it's grown. So I love seeing the familiar faces showing up on the deeper dives. And I love the new faces coming in and like all the contributions to the conversation from. All these different perspective and angles, I always walk away from a deeper dive inspired and my mind and perspective open to new things, which in the end is what is really going to help us continue to grow both as LCS and business owners, but like humans just remembering that there's so many angles to look at things and keeping us humble about what we don't know. And I hope that each and every one of you listening today will take the time to come to a deeper dive live. You can subscribe and get all the recordings too, but coming live is just, it's like where it's at. And you get to talk to these amazing people that we're bringing on and like. Really ask those questions that you're just itching to ask, but you can't get in front of them. It's like your chance to say okay, I read your book and I want to ask you this, or I've heard you on this thing or that thing, and I'm dying to know your opinion or your thoughts on this or that. I mean, this is your opportunity, it's just well worth the extra time to block out your schedule and, and come and be there live with us.

Annie: Yeah, definitely. It's so fun. We had a great time at the one in August with Alison Alexander about all the tongue tie controversy stuff. That one was like soul affirming. Yes. It was so good that we all agreed. And then always like talking to Erica Dudley about anything, but especially about communication. She's just got such a fun way of cutting through the nonsense when it comes to these habits that we have and how we talk to families. You get that live. I mean, you can always watch it and we always have that available. And I know a lot of you like to do that, that energy. It's something else when we're, when we're on together.

Leah: Well, it's been really fun just catching back up and I'm so excited for all that this season of the lactation business podcast is going to have for us. So I'm looking forward to it. And it's great talking to you today, Annie.

Annie: Always great talking to you. I'll see you soon. Bye.

Leah: Bye.