00:00

Welcome to Make More Money Without Selling Your Soul. The podcast for bold entrepreneurs ready to simplify scale and reclaim their time. I’m Polly Lavarello, Evergreen scaling strategist and cushy business pioneer. Join me and my occasional guests as we explore the themes of wealth, selling and well-being, because building a business that works for you changes everything. Let’s dive in.

00:37

Let’s dive in. Welcome to the show, and today we have a guest, Sophie Cliff, who’s also known as the joyful coach. Sophie is a coach and positive psychology practitioner who uses her expertise to help people flourish and thrive by finding more joy. She is also the author of choose joy, relieve burnout, focus on your happiness and infuse more joy into your everyday life and the hustle cure the new approach to burnout and productivity for women, in addition to supporting one to one clients, Sophie also delivers trainings on all things joy and well being for organizations. And her clients include renowned companies like the NHS, Adidas, Tony stroke alone, Freddy’s flowers, we are social, wild deodorant, and many more prior to retraining in 2018 Sophie spent a decade building a successful career in sales and marketing, working at global organizations such as the Walt Disney Company and Hallmark cards and some smaller tech startups. Her work has been featured in multiple national press titles in the last year, including the independent you magazine, I news, seeing traveler Marie Claire and half post, and today, I am so happy that she is a guest on the show. If you’ve been like me and spent a lot of time and energy consuming self development books and everything around productivity and how we can be the best version of ourselves, and felt maybe somewhat triggered or gas lit by what you read and wondered why it didn’t feel so appropriate to you, this episode is going to blow the roof off everything you’ve ever thought about productivity, and I cannot wait for you to wrap your ears around it. So let’s dive right in. Shall we welcome Sophie to the show. I’m so excited to be having another conversation with you, but for anyone who is being introduced to you for the first time, please, could you introduce yourself to my listeners?

02:29

Yeah, thank you so much for having me again. My name is Sophie Cliff, also known as the joyful coach, and I’m a coach and positive psychology practitioner. I help people to find more joy in their lives and work, and that looks like supporting individuals, but also going into organizations to help facilitate some of these conversations in workplaces as well. And I’m also the author of two books. The first one was called choose joy, which was published in November 2022, and the hustle cure. My second book was published in January of this year.

03:03

Biggest congratulations all around having a baby and after a pandemic. I mean, yeah, amazing, absolutely amazing. And I’m also going to for anyone who’s listening. I’m going to anyone who’s listening, obviously they’re listening. I’m going to be putting in the show notes a link to that first conversation I had with Sophie on joy, because I actually listened back to it this morning, and I was like, this is a stonking conversation. Really, really beautiful. How you prioritize joy, that’s the value I really relate to and productivity. Yeah, you have written a book on the hustle, on hustle culture, and how well more than that, you’ve written a bit on productivity, yeah. What was the inspiration behind doing that? Yeah.

03:46

So two and a half years ago, almost three years ago, I was pregnant with my daughter, and everyone kept telling me, once this baby comes along, you’re not going to have any time. And at first I thought there were maybe scaremongering me. Now two years in, I fully trust that they were they were correct to tell me that, but it kind of put me into a bit of a tailspin, because I work for myself. I run my own business. I knew that there was not someone to hand my work over to once this baby arrived, and so I thought, you know, I need to get smarter at how I’m managing my time and my energy. So I did what I always do whenever I’m faced with any sort of challenge or query like this. I went and bought some books. I’m a massive nerd in that way. I like to read around the problem, and I bought all of the popular productivity and time management books, and listened to the podcasts. Was watching the YouTube videos, and I very, very quickly realized that this was an area, and this was a conversation dominated by male voices. In fact, at the time that I was looking for these books, I went onto the Amazon top 50 time management charts, and there was only one book written by a woman in that chart, and it was about batch cooking. And that really just gave me it like put a bit of a fire at my backside, if I’m honest, because. I, while these books are great, and I was taking some, you know, useful tools away from them, it was just very clear that they were written by people with different challenges and different opportunities and different experiences to me, and I was just really craving a conversation around what does this look What does productivity look like as a woman, when biologically we might have different challenges. You know, our hormones ebb and flow in different ways. Societally, we have massively different expectations on women versus men. You know, we might have different sort of caregiving responsibilities or different work setups. And you know, even within that sort of like gender divide, there is so much more nuanced when you look at different intersections and different sort of challenges we face. And the other thing that I really wanted to explore was when I was reading a lot of the popular productivity and time management books, the thing that kept coming up over and over again was just like, how can we do more for the sake of doing more? And it was like this race of who could be busiest, who could achieve the most, who could get the most done. And that felt really at odds with the work that I do, which is all about helping people to live a more joyful life. And I kind of wanted to look at what does productivity look like when we are actually thinking about our own versions of success, and we’re not just chasing the next accolade or the next milestone or the next, you know, big thing, the big shiny thing that LinkedIn or Instagram might tell us or make us happy. What does productivity look like when we actually get really clear on our own definitions of success and and how do we facilitate some of that conversation? Because, you know, we’re certainly not taught at school to think about our own definitions of success were taught to strive for the same path that has been laid out ahead of us. So that was really the inspiration. Was it just felt like, you know, for such a huge topic, you look at the sort of non fiction best sellers list every single week, there will always be two or three books about productivity, but they were very much taking one specific angle, and I wanted to just add a bit of nuance to that conversation, I suppose.

07:05

Well, I mean, I love that. I downloaded the book today, and I haven’t been able to stop reading it. I was trying to get some of the work done, and I was like, This is amazing. It felt like it had been written for me, which is always such a nice feeling. Like you say it’s just so relevant, because, similar to you, I’m a bit of a geek. I love learning about things. I’m obsessed with all things self development and being self employed. Of course, I’m always curious to know, how can I be the most productive? I guess I don’t even like the word productive to a certain extent, because there’s that sense of like trying to do as much as you can, but you know, to find that balance, right? I guess that’s the thing that everyone bangs on about all the time, life, work, balance. And when I read the pages of your book, I was like, what? How has this net never existed until now? This is so relevant and so needed, and like you say, the nuance of hormones and the kind of the mental load that we as women can carry, the additional pressures of parenthood. I just want to thank you, just to start off with. But what was I mean? Were you writing this book while you were throughout the duration of your pregnancy, or you also writing it on the other side of when once your baby was born?

08:18

So I had the idea for it that summer when I was pregnant and my first book hadn’t actually come out yet. My first book was due to come out in that November, so I pitched this idea to my publishers, and they were like, yep, sounds great. Let’s explore it. And then my book came out. My daughter was born, and as any fellow parents will know, life gets a little bit chaotic on the other side of that. So yeah, it was actually when my daughter was about eight or nine months that I started the real research and writing process. I’d been doing a lot of reading around it and things while, while she was a little bit smaller, but the the main bulk of work started then, and I have to say that it was like such a great resource for me to be doing that work at that time, because, you know, I had a young baby. She was starting to settle into childcare and getting all of the bugs that they all get when they start, and I was having to try and juggle work. And, you know, I had less time than ever before because I was doing some of the childcare. And it felt, it felt really, really like pertinent to what was going on in in my life. I was in the struggle I was in the trenches of not having enough time, having to deal with everything. You just said, hormones, mental load, trying to refine my identity. And you know what my wanting my career to look like on the other side of this huge transition? And I really do think it’s been something that’s helped me to to navigate that transition was that I was working on this project at that time, and hearing from other women and thinking about, yeah, like you say, the nuance and the complexities, there is no one size fits all approach to any of this stuff, that was my biggest takeaway. And it really encouraged me to think about, what did I want it to look like for me?

09:57

Yeah, and I have to say that’s what felt so refreshing. Watching while reading the pages of your book, because I just suddenly realized it’d be missing all this time. I was so used to hearing some kind of old white man, because I quite often listen to these books on audible and to kind of read your words and just be like, yes, in the beginning of your book, you talk about getting together with friends. I can’t remember it’s a brunch or a meal, but some kind of meal, and that the whole conversation revolved around how busy you all were, and that was incredibly relatable for me. I often think that’s very often how conversations go when I get together with friends and family or even just other school mums, and it is worn like a badge of honor, but it is quite dangerous, isn’t it? It is.

10:38

And do you know what was really interesting? Because I was writing this book when I was sort of eight or nine months postpartum, I was getting so much feedback from people like, Oh, you’re smashing it. You’re juggling the baby and the work and the book and that. And I was like, isn’t it interesting that that is what we see as as smashing it like, you know, I think if we had perhaps a more grounded society, we would celebrate that people took adequate rest after a big life change, or that we had time to explore different projects, rather than feeling like we had to stack them all up on top of each other. But you’re right, it has been, and there’s lots of research that shows it has become a status symbol, much in the same way as like 20 years ago, it might have been driving a certain car or having a certain Watch now, being busy is the the equivalent of that status symbol, because it signals we’re in demand and we’re wanted and we have these valuable skills. And I think when there is so much change and nuance in workplaces, in businesses, you know, like you say you’re a self employed business owner as well, if we just look at the last five years, how much the landscape has changed and how much we’re constantly having to evolve. I think that can make us feel like we’re under threat in some way, and that we have to almost justify. Well, I’m doing a good job because I am busy, but it becomes so ingrained in our in our culture, and sometimes we just need to take that step back and go, What for like? Because being busy is fine if it’s helping us to build the sort of life that we really want, and it’s getting us closer to, you know, our own unique ambitions and dreams. But so often I see in my coaching practice that people are busy trying to achieve things that they don’t even really want, but that society has taught them they should have, or they need to impress other people, or to, you know, keep up with their peers, and I think that’s where it becomes really hard, is when we’re busy doing stuff that isn’t adding any value to our lives. Yes,

12:31

I feel like your book is more needed than ever, because I feel like there has never been a time where we can be on more than we are right now. I used to really resent people who are WhatsApp and they wouldn’t get back to me the same day. I have now become that person, because it’s my only way of healthily managing my screen time and and pressures, all the kind of micro pressures we endure throughout the day. And I think that’s one of the biggest challenges around productivity, at least in my personal case is that sense that you can always be on, particularly if you run an online business, there’s never a sense of being off. If you happen to open Instagram or open threads or any of these things that you might be on, you’ll see somebody doing something active. I know when I last took a holiday and I wasn’t being present on social media, I really regret it not just switching it off entirely, because every time I went on, there was a little question mark at the back of my head, thinking, Are you safe not posting right now? Are you genuinely safe taking a break? Should you be doing the same as them? Are they going to be succeeding more than you because they’re being visible and you’re not. So I’m really, really glad that you wrote this book and you also referenced, was it an economist who made a prediction about where we’d be in 2030 Would you mind sharing that? Because that blew my mind. Yeah,

13:51

so economics was actually my undergraduate degree before I retrained into psychology, and there’s a guy called John Maynard Keynes who in 1930 he was writing, and he predicted that in 100 years time, the biggest challenge that his great, great, great grandchildren, or however many generations removed it was, would face was that they wouldn’t know how to spend their leisure time. They’d have so much leisure time that they wouldn’t know what to do with it. And he predicted that if our economy continued to grow. And if technological advancements went in the right direction, that by 2030 we would be working just two days a week, and we would have a five day weekend. And, you know, we’re not quite there yet, but I can’t see that shift happening in the next four and a half years. And everything that he predicted that would have to happen to make that work has come true. You know, the economy has grown faster than he predicted. The technological advancements are like, way beyond anything he could have foresaw at that time. And yet, actually, we’re working more than ever. You know, even if we might be in the office for four days a week, or we might not physically be at our desks, if you look at the time we spend. And thinking about work or checking emails or, you know, responding to things, we are actually working more than ever. And it’s not just more work. Those advancements have added even more to the mental load. So there was some interesting research around we know more about parenting now than we ever have before. We’ve got more understanding of how to be good parents and what our children need, but we’ve also got less time to parent than we’ve ever had. So we’ve got this tension of like, we’ve got all the pressure of what we, in inverted commas, should be doing, but we don’t have the time to action it similarly, you know, we can now, like you said, see what everyone else is up to. So it’s much harder to take a break because that comparison, that fear is always in the back of our brains. I don’t know if it’s because of the age I am or what, but I feel like I can’t log into Instagram at the moment without seeing some announcement of some sort, whether it’s, you know, this person has bought a new house, or they’ve written a book, or they’ve had a the best ever month in their business. It feels like we’re constantly being bombarded with all these things, all these ways in which we might be falling behind, and, you know, other things as well, things like, as women, 20 years ago, we maybe had a choice of like, whether we would go and get our nails done or not, and that was about as far as like esthetics went. Whereas now we’re constantly being barred, bombarded with, this is what the new esthetic ideal is. And here’s all the treatments, or treatments, or, you know, different practices that you can get engaged with to to look a certain way. And ultimately, no matter what we choose to engage with or not engage with, there’s still a lot of energy that goes into that. So some of your listeners might think, Well, I’m not having kids, and I don’t want to have kids, but there’s still a mental process there of making that decision. And some might go, I love going for my Botox. And some might say, No, it’s not something that I would ever want to do. But there is still an energy outlay there that you know, that energetic outlay only gets bigger as the months and the years and the developments roll on.

17:02

No, that makes sense to me, because I try and eat as healthily as I can to support my slightly ADHD, fizzy brain, I find if I’m low sugar, for example, and I’ll see someone eating healthier than me, and I’ll be like, Oh, I should really try a bit harder, because that person’s done X, Y, Z. But then I’ll see someone else sharing like, Oh, it’s good to have a little treat. In the afternoon, I’m just having my little chocolatey biscuit, and me thinking, Well, if that person can have a chocolate biscuit, maybe. And honestly, I’m just like, trying to shut down the brain, like, Stop, like, these tiny things we’re constantly processing. And in the meantime, my head’s doing these slightly mental gymnastics between you should be doing better actually, go have the biscuit and conflicting stories from different people that you admire and respect. And it’s in every area, right? Like, I managed to get to the gym about three times a week, but then I see somebody who’s going five, and they look amazing. And I’m like, Oh, maybe I should be going five. And all these things we try and do and talking your productivity, you know, I’ve got various I can actually see them from here, like, various books on my shelves. And I think I only tried the 5am wake up thing like once, because I was just like, I am not a morning person. In fact, I like, I look forward to the day when I never have to wake up before the sun is up. I just that. That’s my ultimate life goal, which I can’t as the mother of a two year old, I hard relate. I can’t wait to be woken up by something that isn’t my child.

18:18

Yeah. I mean, that’s basically it, right? I know I’ll miss it, but I also really won’t. So yeah, things like someone choosing to get up at 5am I’m like, really. So all these things. So I guess what I might want to ask, and I know what my listeners will be curious about, is what is unique about your approach to productivity in this book,yeah, so similar to you, I’ve read all of those books, and what I found over time is that I would read that book, I’d feel really hopeful and excited of like, okay, here’s a plan. Someone’s written it down for me, all I need to do is follow the plan. And it would say on the back of the book, you know, this formula has helped millions of people to become more productive. And I would give it a go, and I’d go into it like gung ho, full of energy, ready to make it work. And then I’d get to day three or day four, and it wouldn’t be working. So I did exactly like you the 5am club. Quickly realized that if I was getting up at 5am I could only make it to 11am before I was absolutely, like, crashed and burned and I wasn’t getting any more done at all.

19:19

Basically, shame stacking every time.  Rather than seeing that as like, okay, that hasn’t worked because that doesn’t work for my unique life, I would internalize that, and I go, well, that must be because I’m lazy or I’m motivated, or I don’t have as much willpower as other people. And what I really that’s what I wanted to avoid in approaching this book was that I didn’t want anyone to read it and think here’s a one size fits all approach. I just need to put this into practice and then struggle to do that and use that as a way to blame themselves, because the truth is, we are all unique. We have all got different environments, different contexts, different pressures. And I think that is. What you know, the more I talk about this book and the more I have this conversation, that’s what I keep coming back to, is that when it comes to productivity, we’ve almost got this context collapse of some you know, we’ll hear a sound bite on a popular podcast, and that’ll say, you know, doing 20 minutes of exercise is more productive than doing two hours of exercise. And then we’ll click on another article and it’ll say, Oh no, you need 90 minutes every day to to, you know, for it to really work. And then we’ll click on another article that says you can get more done in the evening, or you can get more done in the morning, and all of those things are clearly working for the people who are sharing that advice. It’s what, you know, I don’t believe that anyone writes a book to bash people or shame people or make them feel bad. I think they write a book because they’ve got something that they that has worked for them, that they want to share. But what I know for do you know?

20:50

Because I think there’s an element of making it a bit more marketable as well. Because, yeah, there is definitely that they want the silver bullet solution, and there’s an element of pandering to that mentality, of saying it’s okay take this medicine.

21:02

Yeah. And we, we also know that you know, as people who run online businesses like those little sound bites are great content marketing, and that’s what people are more likely to stop and view but what I know as a coach and as a practitioner, and as someone who you know has researched this in depth, is that what works for you might be very different to what works to me might be very different to what works to whoever is listening. And the approach that I’ve tried to take in this book is helping people to get to know what they need, rather than me trying to prescribe something that they need. So there are lots of interesting things, like I came across this idea of sleep Chronotypes, which is relevant to what we were talking about. Of the 5am club that you read any article with a successful person, but particularly a successful woman, and it’ll say, you know, what’s your secret to success? And just say, I tried to get up before the rest of the household, and I have some time for myself. And we really put like early risers on a pedestal, and we celebrate them, and we push this idea that we could all be more productive if we woke up a little bit earlier, but we all have a unique sleep chronotype. So what that means is we all have, like, a different time of the day when we will feel most productive and most energized. And that sleep chronotype is determined by the length of one of our pieces of DNA. So it’s literally, like wired into us before we’re born. That is like the length of, you know, a physical piece of DNA. It’s almost like saying you should be able to change your teeth without making any different change, or you should be able to grow longer arms by, you know, willpower alone. But that’s what we kind of do. We kind of tell people, well, you should just be able to become an early riser, or you should just be able to feel more energized throughout the day. And of course, there are always little tweaks and things we can change, but that core sort of productivity peak is set within us. And learning that, for me, felt like a release from that shame of like, oh, it’s not me being lazy not getting up at 5am it’s because I am literally wired differently to someone who is more energized at that time.

23:06

That is fascinating. I’ve never, ever, ever heard that before. How do people go about finding out what sleep chronotype they are? Or is it something that you actually just need to listen to your body?

23:16

Yeah, it’s very much around that. So there are sort of four key sleep Chronotypes. So the first is the lion, which is like, akin to the early bird, which is, you know, you feel most energized when you first wake up. And then there is the wolf, which is kind of like your typical night owl. There is a bear, which they sort of like, get up with the sunrise, feel tired with the sunset. And yeah, me too. And then there is a type called the dolphin, which is like, we call it like the tired and wired chronotype, which is almost kind of feeling like that nervous system is always activated and, you know, you’re always on and maybe struggle to sleep. So there’s a little bit more detail about each of them in the book. But even just like giving it a Google, there’s so much research, but that, and thinking about some of the hormone stuff, it just made me really challenge why our society is set up in the way that it is. You know, why do we expect people to be consistent and work nine to five and like that works really well for maybe a quarter of the population, but it doesn’t actually speak to the majority of the population.

24:22

Yeah, and actually, that’s one of the things I find really sad, because obviously, when you work within a corporation, you have limits as to what you know. You can’t just only start working a four, four day week when everyone else is doing five. I mean, you could try, you could ask, but they’d quite justifiably be able to say, unless we can do it across the board, then no. Well, I mean, obviously I’m talking for someone who’s a mid level, obviously senior level, it can look different. But when you become self employed, the thing that’s really blown my mind, and actually it was my journey, too, was how we how we take those kind of toxic habits of reactivity, like I’ve received a message, I must reply right now, and that sense that we need to be on all the time, otherwise we feel guilty. I’m really struggling to switch off. I know inside your book you also talk about four archetypes in terms of what kind of productivity journey suits you best. What do those look like? Is that connected to the corona types? Or is that separate? No,

25:12

it’s something separate, and it’s something I developed off the back of my work as a coach. Basically, what I’d seen over time is that we were all kind of motivated in slightly different ways. And again, I really wanted to avoid this one size fits all approach. And as I was sharing some of the the ideas and the exercises through the book, I wanted to give people slightly different lenses that they could look through. And I found that when I looked at my experience and my sort of case studies, there were four clear productivity archetypes, and this is kind of how we relate to productivity and how we’re motivated. So there is the doer, which is very much, I imagine, from what you said around always liking to be busy. You may maybe relate to that, and it’s definitely what the category I fall into it. So it’s someone who’s always busy, very task orientated, gets a real kick out of ticking things off their to do list. And you know, they can get a lot done, but perhaps not always super intentional. Perhaps we forget to really think like, is this moving me closer to my version of success? Is this actually what I want? Or am I just chasing that adrenaline buzz that comes with getting something done or getting a reply or getting some feedback. Then there is the perfectionist who, quite self explanatory, they’re motivated by doing things perfectly. They really like a routine. They like structure. They respond well to that, but again, perhaps not always thinking about what works best for themselves. And can be more prone to burnout because they value doing something perfectly and upholding a routine or a structure more than they value listening to themselves and honoring their own needs. Then there is the dreamer. So they’re actually really skilled at knowing what their version of success looks like, and they can really picture where they’d like to get to, but perhaps struggle to take some of the action to make that change. So they feel frustrated that they know what they want, they know where they want to get to, but they’re perhaps stuck in the always striving rather than the achieving. And finally, there is the procrastinator. So they know what they want, they know exactly what they need to do, but they just struggle to take that action. And sometimes that’s because they perhaps feel cynical of like, well, what’s the point? Is it going to change anything. And sometimes that’s more driven by a sort of self esteem thing of, Can I do this? Can I want this? Am I allowed to sort of strive for it? But essentially, each of those four archetypes, and again, it’s not prescriptive. Sometimes people will feel like a blend of two of them, or they might be different archetypes in different areas of their life. So I always say I’m a doer at work and I’m a procrastinator in my personal life, it takes me, like so much, so much longer to get around to doing something that’s like for me or for my home than it does for my my work, but it hopefully gives people just some different ideas about what the opportunities are, but also what some of our pitfalls are. So like, I say, I know, as a doer, if someone asks me to do something, I find it difficult to say no. And you know, I get that buzz from saying yes and having another thing in my diary, but that means I don’t always actually have loads of time and energy for the stuff that matters most to me, or the things that are really going to move my business forward. So that’s a watch out as, like, you know, a, it’s great that I can get lots done, and I can, you know, on paper and inverter commas, be productive. But actually, sometimes it gets in the way of my productivity because I’m saying yes to things that don’t actually, you know, serve my higher purpose, or, you know, give me more of the things that I want in my wider life. Yeah, now

28:41

I really identify with the doer piece, and one of the things that I’ve kind of had to do as a doer is incorporate the things that give me joy in the things that I do to ensure so I’m not kind of breaking the habit of being a doer, but I’ve just rebalanced what my priorities are when you put the joy on the to do list, so you can take the joyful things off, as well as the other stuff. Yeah, so.

29:03

And actually, as I was listening to you, I was thinking, oh my goodness, I need to finish reading this book as soon as possible, because I could immediately identify those traits in the various clients I’ve worked with and recognize learning more about what will support them with their productivity based on the way that they naturally are inclined to relate. Productivity is actually a really powerful thing. So not only will this book benefit me, but I can see it benefiting my clients too. Because I was like, Yeah, I definitely know what dreamers are like. And as a doer, we’re both very triggered by each other, and that’s it. And you often, I find you have sort of opposites in relationships as well. So yeah, I’m doer, my husband is dreamer, and I’m like, why can’t you just get it done? But what’s the big picture here?

29:47

I love that. So anyone who’s listening to this right now, is it one thing you’d really like them to know about hustle culture and this hustle cure?

29:56

Yeah, I think the sort of two. Key takeaways that I’ve been trying to get across, as I’ve been talking about this, is something is only productive if it gets us closer to what we actually want. And I think that’s the thing that we miss so often in this conversation, is like we say, Oh yeah, I’ve had a really productive day. But if your version of success is to only work four hours a day and you’ve worked eight hours, it hasn’t been productive. It hasn’t got you closer to your definition of success or your key KPI. And I think that’s the bit that we often miss, particularly as business owners, is not defining what does success look like? Why am I actually doing this? What do I actually want? So it’s not productive to just do more. It’s productive to do more of the stuff that actually matters to you, and that might be work related tasks, but it might also be more days off, or more days without checking my phone or whatever it might be. And the second thing is to remember that we are all unique, and we all need to take a unique approach to this. So, you know, I have kids, there will be people listening who don’t have kids. They might have different needs around that I have, you know, certain hours that I can work around my my daughter and other people will have completely flexible time. I am very privileged to be healthy and I don’t have any challenges. There will be people listening who’ve got chronic health issues or mental health issues that inhibit their ability to work and to be productive. And unless we are having these conversations, unless we are acknowledging to ourselves, this is actually what energy and time I’ve got to work with, all we’re going to do is keep stacking up that shame, like you said earlier. So we need to really accept what have we got to work with, and also what can help us to work best. Because, you know, it sounds quite doom and gloom some of the stuff we’ve talked about around, you know, there’s more mental load, there’s more um, like challenges that we come up against as women, but there are also so many strengths and opportunities that we’ve kind of buried along the way, because we’ve been taught that we should do things how they’ve always been done. So we mask, or we hide, or we just don’t realize so many of the strengths that we have available to us. And I think the more we can get to know when am I at my best? When am I most energized? When? When do I feel my most powerful? That is the stuff that can help us to to be more productive and more successful, rather than instantly turn into someone else and go, Well, how have they done it? Or what are they telling me about productivity? Because ultimately, it doesn’t matter what works for them, because we’ve all got different contexts and different different needs. Yeah,

32:33

and I love that it’s all pinned around joy. I mean, ultimately, when I think about what you’re sharing, it’s not just about productivity. It’s about living a fuller life, more aligned with your own values. And that’s really beautiful. And it actually reminds me, because I was about to close that, but I was like, but listening to you, it really reminded me back in 2019 when I was a single parent with two small kids, a one and a half year old and three and a half year old, my first ever coach said to me, what do you want like? What are your values and what do you want your life to look like? And I burst into tears because I had been in this conditioned state of just doing and keeping busy and hustling for so long I’d forgotten what my values were, and I didn’t really even know what I wanted, and the idea of even thinking about what I wanted felt so big and scary and heavy and unknown that I just burst into tears, and my life looks really different now, thank goodness, but it does remember. And another thing that happened that same year was I went to some kind of women’s talk night, and I won this kind of bundle, this raffle, bundle of like self care gifts. And again, I burst into tears because it’d been so long since I’d paused to do something nice like that for myself. I hadn’t, you know, it was just bath bombs and creams and stuff, but I hadn’t taken the time to do anything nice for myself like that, because I’ve been so knee deep in caring for my kids, and so I know I was kind of sleep walking through life back then, exhausted, tired, borderline burnt out, getting ill all the time, chronic illnesses and stuff going on and the work that you’re talking about now. If I had had your book several years ago, I probably would have, you know, got to that place a lot sooner. So I think it’s really incredibly powerful, what you’re doing for women having written this book, and honestly, it’s on the best written books I’ve read in a while. A lot of the time, self development books are full of great like, nuggets of information, but they don’t read like, I mean, yours is a real page turner. I just didn’t want to stop reading. So highly recommend to anyone listening to dive into the book. But where can people find out more about you? Sophie

34:34

Yeah, thank you so much for those kind words, by the way. So people can come over to my website, sophiecliff.com there’s also a page on there that has links to where you can buy the book, whether you like to go to the big book retailer, or you prefer to order from an indie. There are all sorts of different links there. And I also share a lot over on Instagram, where I’m at Sophie cliff and I have a podcast called practical positivity, where I try. I give myself some grace, as I, you know, trying to practice what I preach, but I try to get an episode out there every week, and it’s always just sort of short, 1015, minute episodes, but with some of these reminders, I suppose, because you’re so right that it’s we can start out with the best of intentions, but sometimes life just gets in the way, and sometimes we need a little reminder to pause and recalibrate 100% and again, I’m obsessed with your podcast. I’m just a big fan over here. Big fan. Thank you so much for coming on the show today.

35:29

Thank you so much for having me.

35:32

Well, I loved that episode, and I hope you did too. And if you’d like to see me continuing to be able to invite on fabulous guests, like all the wonderful guests we’ve had on recently, Sophie cliff, a managed mail, Annie redo and so many others. I mean, it’s thrilling to be able to interview such fabulous people, and one of the things that makes that possible for me is the number of listens and downloads and subscribes I have. So if you haven’t already subscribed to this podcast, please do so I can continue to invite on truly inspirational guests to this show and share, share, share, away. But anyway, if there’s one thing you do today, please do subscribe, and I will be in your ears next week. If you have noticed, we are in a trust recession. The way people are buying has changed, and the way we need to sell needs to change alongside that, and we have recently, within my own business, been doing a funnel spring clean, and we have reintroduced an asset to our marketing, which is making all the difference with the time it’s taking for people to decide to buy. And I will be sharing more on that in next week’s episode,