60: Sherrell Dorsey on Shutting Down Your Business and Workplace Transitions
Sherrell Dorsey is an award-winning data journalist, entrepreneur, speaker, and author teaching the world to redefine who gets to create and participate in the future. She founded The Plug in 2016, the first Black data-driven tech news publication to syndicate on the Bloomberg Terminal, which was acquired in 2023 by ImpactAlpha.
As the TED Tech podcast host, Sherrell provides her in-depth analysis and commentary on technologies changing society, and how these advancements can provide opportunities for more underserved Americans to participate in an increasingly automated and digital world.
Her first book, Upper Hand: The Future of Work for the Rest of Us, published by Wiley in 2021, connects everyday people and communities to opportunities and resources to upskill or retrain for in-demand careers both present and future so that they do not get left behind in the sweeping changes technology is bringing across industries.
She has graced the stages as a keynote speaker, host, and moderator at some of the leading companies in the world, including Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Accenture, Bloomreach, Cisco, and others.
Her work has been featured in Vice, The Washington Post, Seattle Times, The Information, Columbia Journalism Review, and more. She earned her stripes working for companies like Uber and Google Fiber. She holds a Master's degree in data journalism from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree in international trade and marketing from the Fashion Institute of Technology.
Main quote:
I think once you start to not be as in love with the work, it's time. It's your own life telling you there's something else out there. You did a great thing and now you can transition out with dignity, with respect to your team and those who helped you build. I think once you start to get that inkling, you just can't ignore it. It taps on you over and over.
Additional Quotes:
I was brave and I didn't take any shit and I cried and I fought and I grew and I learned and I sacrificed. I had to become a very different person through this process and I'm grateful for it. But it wasn't always easy. It wasn't always kind, but it definitely refined me in many ways.
To connect with Sherrell:
To learn more about Leaving Well, visit https://www.naomihattaway.com/
To support the production of this podcast, peruse my Leaving Well Bookshop or buy me a coffee.
This podcast is produced by Sarah Hartley.
Transcript:
I've been a long time follower of Sherelle Dorsey's work, and she sent an email out last year that I was just kind of stunned by. The title of that was, Can Stop, Will Stop. And I knew as I'd been watching Sherelle do her own version of leaving well with her company that I needed to have her on to share her learnings and her lessons with you.
One of the things she said that stuck out to me was this, she said, Sometimes revision will take another person. That's really powerful, especially if you're a founder, especially if you're thinking about your longtime legacy. She also talks about working backwards and scenario planning so that you know what different opportunities you might have.
She also talks about delusion being your superpower. So I'm excited to see what you think about that. She also has a lot of conversation around the importance of advisors, as well as the loss of identity. This is the thing I'll leave you with before we get into the interview. She says that you need to give your team the opportunity to transition well, and that sometimes even when you are ready to go, you need to stick it out.
And so she talks more about why you'll need to stick it out. So here's the conversation with Sherelle. Enjoy. Sherelle Dorsey is an award winning data journalist, entrepreneur, speaker, and author teaching the world to redefine who gets to create and participate in the future. She has graced the stages as a keynote speaker, host, and moderator at some of the leading companies in the world, including Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Accenture, Cisco, and others.
Her first book, Upper Hand, The Future of Work for the Rest of Us, connects everyday people and communities to opportunities and resources to upskill or retrain for in demand careers, both Present and future so that they don't get left behind in the sweeping changes that technology brings across industries.
Cheryl founded the plug in 2016, the first black data driven tech news publication to syndicate on the Bloomberg terminal, which was acquired in 2023 by impact alpha. And that's the whole topic that I'd love to jump in and talk with you, Cheryl. So I'm just going to ask the first question. What do you want to say about shutting down a business that folks might be shocked or surprised to hear?
Yes. Well, well, first of all, Naomi, I'm just so honored to be on this podcast to have had the invitation, um, and to be able to share a part of this journey, you know, I think deciding to let go of your baby is never an easy decision. You know, I found that so much of my identity became intertwined with what I was producing.
I really started, you know, the plug and other endeavors. from a place of wanting to create something that I had not seen in the world. And I was very dedicated. I was still even working full time when I, you know, first began like building out this like daily tech newsletter, um, and starting to kind of build a brand around it.
And so so much of like my growth came through growing this, this accidental business. Um, the highs, the lows, the punches to the face, the, the, the triumphs, you know, the hard times. And so when I looked up one day and kind of realized I had. Exhausted or depleted myself of everything that I think that I, I sort of knew how to do, or I didn't feel like I was being challenged anymore, or the CEO role is very different from the founder role, right?
Anyone can kind of create something, but then to lead it to the next level, sometimes it takes a different version of yourself, or it even just takes a different person or even a different direction. And so I had sort of, About a year and a half even prior to, um, deciding to, you know, close the doors of the plug and then eventually transition our assets to Impact Alpha.
I had started to just think about like, what else do I want to do in the world? I set out and I accomplished what I wanted to accomplish with the plug. I wanted to end up on Bloomberg, you know, syndicated. Did that. We syndicated with business insider. Um, we have partnerships with vice and wired kind of everything that I had imagined around being able to bring like black innovation in black innovation, economy, new stories into the mainstream accomplished.
And then I saw the industry start to pay closer attention. And speak not just from in like an, an, an anomaly tokenization perspective, but truly taking black fund managers. Black entrepreneurs seriously and covering them appropriately. I felt like, listen, this is the change that we wanted to see and to lead.
And we did that when I looked at my team and I looked at how incredible and remarkable their work was and just how much they were contributing and sort of where they started with me and then how far they had ascended. You know, my thinking to myself was, This is as far as I can take them. And there's going to be another opportunity for them to take them into the next level.
And then also do I want to continue down this path, or is it time for me to now sunset and allow myself to kind of think through what is next? So yeah, so after seven years, you know, it really, It really was like a do or die. I think once you start to not be as in love with the work, it's kind of time.
It's kind of your own life telling you, you know, there's something else out there. You did a great thing and now you can transition out with dignity. You can transition out, um, with respect to your team and those who helped you build. And yeah, I think once you start to get that inkling, you just, you can't ignore it.
It kind of taps on you over and over. And I had a tapping for about a year and a half. Well, it's interesting that you were talking about knowing and having that awareness that you had gotten your team, even not even just the business, the goals that you had for what you set out to create, but that you knew and had the awareness that it was all the farther you could take the team.
That's really powerful. And I'm curious. When you talk about knowing that it was time, you said you had the tap for about a year and a half. Did you set out with those goals that you said, you know, you got acquired or you got syndicated with all of the different places that you said, was that part of your goal set in the beginning or did that happen along the way?
And I'm, I'm asking that question because I think a lot of folks that I work with as clients say, how will I know when it's time? And I think when you're there, you know, that, you know, but what could someone do maybe along the way to set them up for what the reality is, is that. People leave, people need to exit, that kind of thing.
Yeah. And I think a lot about this when I think about, you know, if I were to start anything next, kind of how do I apply those lessons learned? And, you know, part of it is really working backwards and kind of thinking through all of the scenarios that, you know, you would want. If, you know, scenario a B happens of scenario B happens of scenario C, what are all the kind of possibilities?
Um, I had a beautiful dinner last night with, um, a friend and her, her daughters who are like very entrepreneurial. They're in college and they have big dreams. They brought out that good young people energy, you know, and one of the things I said to one of the young ladies is like, you know, this is important time for you to go to conferences, to learn what the conversations are, to learn what new technologies are going to append, you know, The industry that you want to be in and start working backwards and thinking about what are the, all the possibilities you could think of around revenue models.
Is this enough to sustain, to sustain your business longterm? You've got to kind of think five to 10 years in advance because you need to be ready to pivot, to move, to transition or what have you when necessary. And then you have to decide what is very true for you. And so when I think about even starting something again, I definitely, I definitely kind of entered into, you know, into my, my business with a different mode of thinking in terms of building a media company.
Um, I knew that I couldn't compete on size. I couldn't compete on volume. Um, but I wanted to be able to define a market where people would slow down, read our journalism, leverage our databases, and be willing to pay for a service that they couldn't find elsewhere. Yes. And that's where we really won was, look, we can't be the biggest or the boldest, but we can be the baddest.
Yeah. And, you know, so we really relied, I didn't really raise any capital until year five, but we really relied on customer driven revenue, unique partnerships. Some great grant opportunities that we got through in various accelerators, like the Facebook journalism project or what have you and other, you know, and other sort of, you know, collaborative partnerships with some of our editorial partners, in addition to some ad revenue.
And so I always kind of went into it with a mix, having studied people who I thought or publications I thought were doing it very well, and I built slowly. Because I wanted to be intentional about ensuring that the business model worked. So I had a little bit of foresight there, Naomi. But if I, again, if I have to do it all over again, or I, I start from scratch on something else, I definitely would work backwards and work backwards and maybe really refine, okay, if technology changes this, here's potentially where this would go.
And this is how we stay afloat. Um, I would also look at, yeah, what kind of talent am I going to need? You know, in order to get this to the levels that I want, what is my hiring plan and process look like? What is my funding plan and process look like? And just kind of mapping out all of those scenarios and possibilities.
You know, you kind of have that design thinking, you know, brain that comes into it. Um, and if I had every single tool at my disposal, What would my, my business look like? What kind of a leader would I be? So I think thinking through those things, you know, can be helpful. I think the, the great thing about entrepreneurship is it's completely about being delusional.
And a lot of times that is your superpower. I think my naivety starting was my superpower because no one would sign up for the craziness that is starting a business, being worried and up and late at night, you know, trying to make payroll, you know, Handling when investors. Say they're going to invest and then a wire doesn't come through and now you have to find like 250, 000 by the end of the week, you know, like it really tests your, your, your grit and your ability to persevere.
And so, yeah, I think, I think there's only so much you can do because, I mean, we got hit with things like a global pandemic. You know, you get hit with a very different economic climate, um, that changes almost abruptly. So, I think mapping out certain scenarios at least gives you a little bit of ease in terms of, okay, I've already thought through this a little bit.
And if you have advisors or other peers who have maybe, or maybe a step above you to be able to think through your plans with, so they can give you. The right advice or right instruction that helps to, I think a lot of times we, we try to think through things in isolation versus like forever be a student, be a lifelong learner, talk to attorneys, talk to accountants, you know, talk to people who have a very specific skill set who can walk you through the forecasting and give you, give you some insight.
And that way you can, you know, again, you can work very smart and very simply as you're building. I love that you also said accountants and lawyers, plural, because I find that one accountant or one attorney might have one piece of advice for you, and you might need the advice of someone else that has a different take on something.
So, um, I think along with having advisors, it's really smart to also, um, Talk to multiple people. So you, you emailed your audience in December of 2023 to announce that you were closing the businesses and letting Impact Alpha acquire. And you talked about how much transformation had been required of you over the past year.
And then also as you started this interview today, you talked about the loss of identity. What do you want to say about Losing the identity and that transformation that was required of you. And what did you learn from all of that? Oh my gosh. Yeah. So many things. And, you know, to be completely honest with you, I feel like.
It's been a little over a year and it took me a little over a year to really kind of come back and meet myself again. Um, to understand the volume of work that I did, all the sacrifices I made, all the decisions I made. Like I went to grad school amid like the plug taking off. I ran another business where we had a tech hub in Charlotte that like on my break in school, like on a weekend, we decorated.
All together, had the mayor out, senators. No big deal. You know, like I was like, just crazy. I was like, Oh my gosh. Like again, delusion is a superpower. I feel like I'm still digesting. I feel like I'm still, I'm still looking at the outpouring of love, support, and respect. I'll go and speak at conferences and I'll have people come up to me who are like, I've been a long, I was a long time follower of the plug.
Like we miss you so much, but I just wanted to meet you in person. I get those kinds of scenarios all of the time, Naomi. It was really, really hard to say goodbye. It was hard to have a conversation with my team that, Hey, we're going to be stopping our work here in a few, in a few weeks. And that was one of the toughest conversations I've ever had, because you're looking in the face of people who decided to take a risk with you.
You know, I had, I had journalists from CNN and Forbes and the weather channel. And I mean, people who left very reputable environments. Who came to not just only work with a black woman, but to cover black communities that they were very passionate about, and they got to do the kind of work that they were never allowed to do.
And. And I know that we'll probably talk about this a little bit down the line, but for me as a leader, I also wanted, I wanted to be honest with them. And I also wanted to ensure that, okay, before we run out of cash, right. Before our cashflow runs out, I want to give them the opportunity to transition.
Well, Yeah. Sometimes what will happen is when a startup really has a hard time. They can't raise additional money. The revenue has slowed down. You know, you'll come in on a Tuesday or you're, you'll log on on a Tuesday and it's like, sorry, you don't have a job here anymore. And that's the worst thing on the planet is someone who has freelance is someone who has been laid off due to economic challenges.
I think that's the worst thing you could ever do to two people who. You know, and I'll be like, Oh, like you earn a paycheck, like that should be good enough. And it's like, we're still in the people business. And I cared greatly about my team and the work that they produce, but also just who they were as people and how much we lifted each other up.
So it was important to me. Um, and this, this is the thing too. It's like, even though like I was burnt out, I was ready to like release. I still had to stick it out for another year and a half because I had to ensure that, like, my people were okay. And So you put yourself kind of on the back burner and to ensure that everyone transitions as best as possible, you give them enough time to find their next thing and you support them.
There are a lot of folks I was able to support, connect people with, um, to find them their next landing place or, you know, give mentorship or advice. Resume, you know, updates, things like that. So I didn't get a chance to really think about my own process and that because I had, there's so many logistics.
You've got to shut things down. You've got to talk with your accountant, you know, and at the same time I'm negotiating, I was negotiating a cell to multiple different people, multiple different entities. Impact Alpha ended up being like the kind of the, where we decided to go, but there, you know, there needed to be, I think enough runway so that.
I could give my team what they needed in addition to severance, right? Um, which they earned and they deserved. So I think because I had to be so focused on the logistics, when I said my goodbye, that turned off my phone, I turned off my comments on social media. And then I went to the Bahamas. For a week and I just was with the turtles and I went to the rum distillery and I got a massage and I cried.
I think I, I went through a grieving process that no one had ever prepared. You know, no one prepares you for that. It was like a death. I hit many goals. And then I also had to recognize maybe some of the goals were based off of, you know, you saw the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world, right? Or you see people who like, Oh, they saw they're coming for a hundred million.
And you know, you think, Oh, this is the goal, right? This is a goal, you know, for someone who doesn't look like me, doesn't come from where I come from or what have you. And I had to find some solace and sure you were very successful. This is not the end for you. This is one chapter in so many other chapters.
And, and so that, that process of grieving and appealing and of. recognizing that I am my work, but I'm not my work. You know, it's that really interesting dichotomy. It took me about three months to like pop back into my email. And I just had this outpouring thousands of emails of thank you. Thank you for what you've done.
Thank you for, Hey, you know, because you all mentioned us and talked about our business. Like we got a check because of that. You know, we're going to miss you guys. Like we understand, but like, we're going to miss y'all. And that felt so good. And like I said, even just today to still have people who I'd never met, but had followed my work, leaving what we were doing.
I, I just, I'm just still astounded by how many people we touched and how many people truly believed in the plug and saw the value and saw the, the depth. I think we brought depth to a space that I think still in some instances prioritizes entertainment versus analysis. And that's fine. You know, it's just, it just is what it is.
And so, yeah, I think, I think that I'm still, I'm still in that mode of like, you're attached to what you've built, you know, and the plug isn't the only thing I've built. I've built lots of things. I've done lots of things. I mean, me and my best friend, we were business partners and we built a black innovation library in Charlotte.
You know, like we've done some great work and I have to remember that I'm in my thirties. I have so much where my grandfather is 91 years old. And I think about, well, if I have another 60 years to live, like there's so many other things that I'm going to do. And this is just one part of the building body of work.
And I was brave and I, I didn't take any shit and you know, I, I cried and I fought and die. grew and I learned, you know, and I sacrificed and I had to become a very different person through this process and I'm grateful for it. But it wasn't easy. It wasn't always easy. It wasn't always kind, but it definitely refined me in many ways.
Well, and as you were talking, just the power of this, what might seem simple to folks listening, and maybe even it might've seemed simple to you, but the simple fact that you took so much effort and so much care in the leaving while process for your team speaks volumes about your impact. And you'll never really know the ripple.
Of that and well, where they'll take those things, the kindness that you shared, the time and the runway that you gave them, helping those that you could to find their next landing spot. That impact goes well beyond what you may ever know. And that's really powerful. Yeah, it is. And I, I just have to trust that who I am authentically, how I've showed up authentically, how I've cared.
And attempted to lead with compassion, with fairness, with love, and a sense of community that it's valued. And even when it's not, it's like, I can go to sleep at night feeling like, hey, I had to make a really hard decision. And I tried to make the landing as soft as possible for those who, you know, were impacted.
And I give myself a lot of grace because I didn't always, I mean, no one in my family is an entrepreneur. I had to create things that I did not even know how to create. I had to extrapolate articles I've read or YouTube videos I've watched or podcasts that I listened to, to try to kind of create this amalgamation of leadership values and execution that I didn't have a direct guidance on.
Yes. And I think that we have to be clear that like, we are all human and we're all doing the best that we can to try to create things that matter and still lead well and be human beings, like be human beings, like have full lives. Like, you know, I lost, I lost a lot of, you know, a lot, a lot of people who had passed away, you know, during this process, you know, I ended a long term relationship.
I moved. Two to three times. Like I had to go through a whole home buying purchase as a entrepreneur, which isn't absolutely a whole, a whole another podcast episode. And so that's the other part is like, you know, people will see what you've done. They see the, the glossy photos and you know, the great announcements and only the people who are closest to, you know, what's happening internally, you know, you're going through health issues or functional depression, you know, or just trying to regulate your nervous system when you're putting out fires all day, which is mostly, yeah, all of that.
Right. No sleep, you know, or yeah, like, I mean, first couple of years I was on planes all the time, you know, and it's like, it looks glamorous from the back end, but you're like, Oh, my body is very weary. And it's not to complain. I think it's just to create a full picture of this journey isn't easy. I think, especially if you're starting from ground zero.
Yeah. And you know, I don't want to say ground zero because I, you know, I, I may not have had like, A check that my family could write, but I always knew that if something were to happen, I have a place to go, right. You know, and that in itself is a privilege and the other thing that you're doing, you said you don't want to complain, but it's also just normalization.
I don't think we hear a lot of the like, yes, it looks glamorous that I'm flying here and there and I'm exhausted before I even get to the airport, you know, and not even to mention all of the things that you still have to keep going as you're doing these other things. Like it's just so much of a balancing act, which.
You said in that same email, I just loved your email, which is why I reached out to ask if you would come on. You had a header that said can stop, will stop, which kind of flies in the face of the can't stop, won't stop idea of like almost hustle culture. Um, and I wonder if you could speak directly to the listener who may be at some point of realization that that moniker of hustle isn't cutting it any longer for their work.
We get to say goodbye. We get to say no, we get to say this no longer serves me. I know that that kind of becomes a little cliche in this culture today, but I think the, the core tenant of that idea is as living, breathing, iterative human beings, we are not designed to just do this repetitive, rote thing all the time.
Like we are changing. The world is literally changing. The climate is changing. Our values change as we learn who I, who I was at 20 to now, you know, in my late thirties, I was a fair, I'm a very different person than I was six months ago. And so that's also going to bleed over into your business. Now, some people, they want to build the biggest, You know, lifelong legacy, a family business, and if that's your track and that's your ministry, like by all means, but you also find out who you are.
I have to find out who I was. I'm a zero to one founder. I wanna, I create things that I see in the world and then I pass it on. You know, I sold Black Tech Charlotte a few years ago, which is a business, me and my, my best friend from college. Um, and, and, um, another business partner created and. That chapter of my time in Charlotte, creating a space, a hub for black tech entrepreneurs.
That was great when I was living in Charlotte and I wanted a space like that. And then I stopped living in Charlotte and it was time for me to be gone. You know, it's like we talked about just moving to different cities. There's different chapters of your life that require different versions of yourself and things that you no longer need to participate in.
Like, I'm a candy girl. I love candy. Candy is not my friend these days. So I had a whole chapter of like, I will go to the candy store all the time. Right. But I had to close that chapter as I got older, you know, and sugar does not agree with you, especially as a woman and hormones and balance and all that kind of stuff.
And so it's like, you get to be, you get to build, you get to have more than one thing. And I don't necessarily equate longevity with success. You have to define what are your goals Can you hit them? What is that timeframe for you? Especially if you feel like, Hey, I want to do other things. And I think, especially for women, we have to make very clear cut decisions about this.
Right. Because if you know that, hey, like I eventually want to marry or, or have children or what have you, like, you have to be very clear about how you design your life and your time, especially if working or building a company is significant, because those are different things. Right. Iterations of yourself that you have to prepare for and requires different versions of yourself.
And I even thought about that as well. It's like, I got approached by some investors to start another company and they were like, you know, we would back you in X, Y, and Z. And. Two, three years ago, Naomi, I would have jumped at that. Yes. Let's do it. You're going to, you're going to start me off with cash. I don't have to go raise it.
Amazing. But now I'm like, no, I've got some eggs on ice. I want to use. So yeah, I'm thinking I don't want to do the race and the sleepless nights when, you know, I want to be a mom and. I'm going to need to have most of that energy and time for my partner and my, my children. So it's probably not a good idea for me to go all in on a company when this next chapter in my life will be dedicated to family.
Now I'll still advise, I'll still invest, I'll still do all the things, but I can't be, I can't build something from the ground up. Now you want me to be CEO of a company that's existed for a while, has some great success over. Fine. Yep. Fine. Because if I can close my laptop at five o'clock and I can play with my different, it's a different world.
Right. Or my, my parents are older. My grandfather, you know, my grandparents are older. Like there's more time and attention at this phase of my life where I can't have all consuming work right now, or I need to have the capacity and the resources to have the team in place so that I can also have a balanced life.
In addition to being able to invest in, you know, building something of value and of substance. And so, yeah, I just, I'm like, yes, quit. I mean, now these are internal conversations you have to have. Like, did you give it your all? Did you truly, truly, you know, solve the problems you needed to solve? Did you grow?
Did you, did you really like put everything into this that you could? And then in your heart of hearts, do you know that it is time to walk away? And then what is your exit strategy? Is it, I need to find someone to replace me. I have some, um, I have actually just had breakfast with an, with an investor. The other day in New York, who gonna launch an eco resort in Cape Verdean, you know, and she's just like, I'm like, okay, girl, do your thing.
She's like, yeah, I'm like, I'm hired, I've hired a new CEO. I have lots of friends who stepped down, I have some who sold, I have some who just shut down and it's like, do what works for you, but also know that you are not a failure because you didn't take this into the next 50 years, you know, and it's like, and at the end of the day.
Who cares? Majority of people don't even have the guts to try and you will always have evidence of I, I did this. I took this risk. Here are the things that I learned. This was phenomenal. I brought something into the world that no one else had and the life cycle, whether it's short or long is fine, but I definitely had to get comfortable with saying, Hey, it's, it's time and I, I went hard for seven full years.
Yeah. I didn't have to take a paycheck from anyone else. I paid myself. Like, that was a feat in and of itself. Yes. And I know that I can do that again. Like that's the thing. It's like, I, do I want to do that again? I don't know, but I know that I can, I know that I can make things out of thin air. I know that I can make money out of thin air.
That's my superpower. And even after letting go of the plug, it's like, because of the body of work and because of the evidence, the amount of phone calls I had, the amount of people, the amount of clients that I had instantly, it just even down to Campaigns, you know, and brand campaigns. I'm like, I did not have to go chase or hunting.
The world came to me, which was beautiful Naomi, because I needed to rest. I needed to rest. I was sitting in a bar yesterday and, um, there was like a group of just everyone kind of chatting and this guy's like, Oh, you know, what do you do? And I was like, whatever I want. Literally, even the bartender looked at me and was just like, that was a great answer.
And I'm like, I just, I literally do whatever it is that I want to do. Um, and I think that we all need to get to that place. I agree. I agree. Are there three words or a phrase or a mantra that you have that you would use to describe your relationship to change and or transition? Yes, I came up with this last year.
The mantra I have is simplify the hustle. And I think I had started saying it to myself. To kind of keep myself from spiraling into all of the worst case scenarios and thinking more that things get to be easy, they get to be light, they get to flow, and I'm not a, I'm not a person that I feel like could just go and like live in a garden and, you know, just pick berries, right?
Like I'm, I need to be active. I need to build what I was building. put here, you know, to build. And so I still believe in hustling. I still believe like, if you have a talent and a gift, you cannot deny the world of it, but it doesn't have to, it doesn't have to ruin you. You know, it doesn't have to be your downfall.
And I care a great deal about mental health. I think we've lost a lot of people, very talented, very wise, very beautiful people who left us under the weight of. They're overproducing. They're having to be seen a certain way to give in a certain way and they didn't have a space to feel like I could put this down for a little while and take care of me.
And so my mantra on Simplify the Hustle is like, listen, if I need to take a wellness day, If I need to take a week off, if I need to push back a deadline, if I need to reorganize my life so that I don't have meetings that start before 10am, I can take walks, I can go to the park and take walks, I can meet up for lunch with my mom, I can have the moments that I need to care for myself and then jump into the work, then let me design a life like that.
You know, like I didn't become an entrepreneur to be held into a laptop and a desk and, you know, and, and crazy all the time. Like, I may need to do a sprint for a week or two, but I'm going to simplify this. I'm going to get, you know, a housekeeper, which for the last four years has saved my life and kept me sane.
You know, I'm going to, you know, contract out the things that I need. I'm going to have like, My wardrobe stylist assists me with pulling together capsule wardrobe and ensuring that I look good on stages that I don't have to worry about. I even started locking my hair again because I was like, I am so tired of sitting and the hair salon.
Like if I can figure out the nail situation too, like I will be together. And these things aren't, it's not prescriptive, Naomi. It's not, you know, I actually wrote a guide, an ebook guide that's called, you know, Simplify the Hustle. It's a 21 day guide to just kind of adding more ease into your life and into work.
And part of it, I tell people, listen, it's not about you doing exactly what I do. It's about doing what works for you, that you are conscious and you're intentional about how do I make this more simple? Like maybe I just get all of my prescriptions delivered from Amazon. And that saves me. an hour. It saves me an hour a month, which seems like, but you know, you were for a time, I don't know if you're still doing it, but for a time on social media, you were sharing your daily or your weekly simplify the hustle actions that you were taking.
And what was beautiful about that was you were noticing and letting other people kind of have an inside look into Maybe it wasn't easy at the time, but those things add up, and I think that that's a beautiful way to navigate change that maybe is happening to you that you don't have control over, but we do decide, we do decide how to bring ease in, and so I love, I love the concept of simplifying the hustle.
So much. Absolutely. Absolutely. And yeah, I was going really hard on social on sharing those tips and then I got tired and I was like, I'm the higher content person and I'll post when I want to post, you know, and I, and that's not to say like, don't be consistent, like be consistent. Um, but you know, I, I think, I think we just, I think what I care about is freedom and if you can feel free while you're building beautiful things, like that's, That's my goal.
You know, that's always my goals. Like I want to do great things. I want to find ways to save the planet. I want to find ways to, you know, to invest in, in, in the world and in people who are like, just so mission driven. And they are, you know, they're, they're building a new future where everyone is included.
Like. I want to do that work, but I also want to enjoy my life. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I don't think those things cancel each other out. I don't think so either. I 100 percent agree with you. My, my last question for you is what does leaving well mean to you? Oh, wow. I love that. It makes me think of, you know, just, just old school.
You leave police places better than you found them. I think about that, especially like when I stay with people, it's like, you know, you, you make the bed a little tighter, you make sure the trash is emptied. Maybe you leave a little something, you, you fill up the fridge or something. And so I think that leaving well is being hyper intentional about gracefully exiting and ensuring that the people, places, or resources that you tapped understand your gratitude.
They have a sense of your, your gratefulness for that moment, but also understand that it's time for you to move on. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yeah. We'll have your link to your website and your books in our show notes. I appreciate you for your modeled behavior of all the things. And I'm excited to see what happens with you in the future.
Thank you so much, Naomi. This is amazing. If you've not yet taken the Workplace Transition Archetype quiz to discover your natural relationship to change and transition, you can do that at Naomihattaway. com/quiz. To learn more about living well and how you can implement and embed the framework and culture in your own life and workplace, visit NaomiHattaway.com. It's time for each of us to look ourselves in the mirror and finally admit we are playing a powerful role in the system. We can either exist outside of our power or choose to decide to shift culture and to create transformation. Until next time, I'm your host, Naomi Hattaway, and you've been listening to Leaving Well, a navigation guide for workplace transitions.
