The Balance: How Having 2 Kids Under The Age of 2 Changed My Outlook On Business with Alexandrea Harrelson: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation! JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire! Brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the ideal destination for business professionals with great shows like I Digress. Today, we're pulling a timeless EO Fire episode from the archives, so the giveaway may not be active, and we'll be breaking down the balance. How having two kids under the age of two changed the outlook on business with Alexandria Harrelson. Alexandria built a multi-six-figure company in five years after losing everything in Fire Nation. That's what we're talking about here today. You don't have to hustle 24-7 to have a successful business.

0:38Have your priorities straight before thinking about scaling and don't be scared to spend a little more and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Alexandria and our sponsors. The Hustle Daily Show hosted by Juliet Bennett Ryla, Rob Litters, Ben Berkeley, and Mark Dent is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. The Hustle Daily Show brings you a healthy dose of irreverent, offbeat, informative takes on business and tech news, like a recent episode on Hackers vs. Casinos, where the hosts talk about MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment and the devastating potential of cyber attacks.

1:15Listen to The Hustle Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Ever thought about giving a TEDx talk? It's one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world, and four-time TEDx speaker Taylor Conroy from Thought Leader can help you get there. Visit thought-leader.com slash fire to join Taylor's Free Trading, where he teaches you how to land a TEDx talk and spread your message to millions. Alexandria, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Hey, everybody. Super excited to be here today. Okay, so I have been thinking about this one, And you know what it really boils down to me is we have a mixed bag here.

2:01I know some of you are going to say a lot of people don't think this and a lot of people do, but the hustle culture that so many of us fall into that hustle trap, thinking that we have to be on 24 seven to have a successful business when that is just not true. You don't have to do that or that fear of, oh, I can't do X, Y, and Z because I have to be working on my business. If I don't do this, my business will fail. that that trap that we get into that so many people kind of we're all in it together and we keep sharing that that is the number one thing I have learned personally that is just not true you don't have to do that you don't have to hustle hustle hustle all the time and fire nation that's why this podcast episode is aptly titled the balance and this is all about how alexandria had two kids under the age of two, and she also changed her outlook at the same time and 3X'd her annual income in the process.

2:58And let's just start off at the beginning, because what the heck made you do something crazy and launch a business in the first place? Tell us that origin story. Oh my goodness. I will give you the Cliff Notes version, I promise, but it all boils back to cows. You're not going to believe that one. My family had a farm and dairy. And literally, my dad ordered this box one day. It came from a different place. And he's like, hey, we should start a dropshipping business. And I'm like, OK, dad, let's do it. And I was in college. I was a sophomore at the time. And I had no idea what I was getting myself into whatsoever.

3:37I spent about six months just teaching myself everything about website design, design, graphic design, copywriting. Oh goodness. You should see my first graphic designs. They were awful, but you know, I was learning it all at that time. And over the next several years, it was my journey into entrepreneurship. That was my first taste of it. And it was a product based business. It was drop shipping, which is, is a beast in itself. Um, I got married and kind of looked at my husband. I was like, I don't want to go to, I don't want to go get a nine to five. I don't know if that's me being a little bit prideful.

4:12I just don't want to do it. I've been doing this business. I left the farm and dairy supply. I said, I'm going to be a virtual assistant, whatever this is. Learned what that was. And every door just started opening up. And then all of a sudden, here I am. Five years later, next week will be five years in business. Have a team of 12. We're a marketing agency now. It has been, it's been crazy. But what started it was just wanted some extra cash. so that's how I am here which is crazy in itself to even say out loud well I will say having been in the business for 10 years now myself launching entrepreneurs on fire back in 2012 I've seen a lot of my friends a lot of my peers go through transitions where you know they actually like launch their businesses when it's just maybe them or maybe them and their partner and whoever it is but then life does change and you know maybe kids come into the picture and stuff and I I hear a pretty common theme when a lot of them say, what the heck did I used to do with my time?

5:10Because I feel like every spare second now is taken up, you know, by my child or by my children now. And I just can't even picture or remember what it was like to not have this responsibility. Like, did I just sit around watching Netflix all day? Like, this is crazy. So you were running your business when you became pregnant with your first child. So talk to us about the shift that you went through during that life moment. It was overwhelming. It was, it was terrifying. Actually, I was a virtual assistant at the time. Just me was doing it all of myself. And I was in that hustle trap that I, uh, that I mentioned earlier.

5:46I really thought, you know what? I have to do it all. If I'm not going to be on all the time, my business is going to fall apart. I've built this amazing thing and I got pregnant with my son and it just hit me. I was like, Oh no, I have nine months. What am I going to do? It was like this time bomb was going to go up. And I said, you know what? Everybody has been telling me that I should hire help. So I'm going to hire a team and I'm going to hire some, some people and I'm going to do a VA agency and blah, blah, blah. I made so many mistakes. Um, but what happened was I learned so much through that.

6:20And I, in September, my son was born in December. So in September I was like, I'm going to hire all these people. Didn't train them. I didn't even really interview. I mean, it was like textbook opposite of what you're supposed to do when you start hiring a team. And I had my son had PPD really bad. There was some issues with the delivery. It was really rough. And the business, the team that I had put into place, it just wasn't working whatsoever. And I took everything back myself. And I kind of fell into that trap again of complete stress. I was so overwhelmed. I was so scared of losing what I had built.

6:57And I loved my son, obviously. I just had this baby and I still loved my business, which was also a little bit of a baby to me. And I just didn't know what to do and where to go from there. And then guess what? I got pregnant with my daughter four months after my son was born, which was, whew, that was crazy in itself. And then I'm like, Oh no, what do I do now? I've already, I've already taken back the reins. I'm like, I'm just going to do it all myself. And what I learned through this whole process was that when you go hire your team, you have to be smart. Okay. That sounds pretty common sense, right?

7:36A lot of people listening are like, yeah, you should probably go through a really good interview process when you're hiring a team, but you have to have the expectations laid out. What do you want it to look like? How do you want it to be? And for me, I knew that I wanted to spend time with my kids because I knew my time was about to be taken up drastically. And I wanted to take this time with my kids and not be so stressed out about business. I wanted to run with me still there and in it and being in my zone of genius rather than just kind of like, ah, putting out all these fires everywhere and freaking out and doing X, Y, Z.

8:12And so for me, my motivating factor was I just, I want to live. I want to have freedom. I don't want the very thing that I built to give me freedom to be the thing that took it away from me. So that was my big, that was my big aha moment right there. Fire Nation, get your priorities straight, but to get your priorities straight, you have to actually know what your priorities are. I mean, I'm telling you, there's a lot of times when I'll be coaching somebody or talking to somebody and be like, so what are your priorities right now? Like, what are your top one, two, three priorities? And they will look at me like deer in a headlight.

8:49So they'll be like, wait, wait. And I'm like, wait, you don't know your priorities. Like, how are you actually getting done what needs to get done? So know your priorities, Fire Nation. Don't have that deer in a headlight moment. And Alexandria, we have so many people, and I mean so many people, want to scale. They want to leverage, and they want to do it yesterday. They want to do this immediately. But you have a different philosophy. So share two specific things that we should always do before we even think, even consider scaling. I'm going to go back to what you just said. Have your priorities straight.

9:24Why do you want to scale in the first place? What is the reason behind you wanting to scale? Is it because you want more money? Is it because you want to make a bigger impact? Is it because you want to share your mission with more people, more companies, whatever that is? Have your priorities straight before you even think about scaling. for me. I, I thought tangibly if I, when my son was, was, well, when I was pregnant with my son, I thought if I hire more people that I'm going to scale, that's me scaling. That is not scaling. Scaling is when you can step away from it, right? Like you're not in it.

10:03You're able to be in your zone of genius because you know, now this priority of, I have this mission. I want to support these other companies missions through XYZ. I want to make a bigger impact through XYZ. You know that then you can go on to the next step of the scaling, which is, or yeah, into the next step of the scaling, which is much more tangible, but know what roles you want to hire for. But not just that, know where your time is going before you start hiring. So it's a very simple exercise, But I always say, take a week and take a simple Google sheet and track where did this five minutes go?

10:42Where did this 10 minutes go? Where did every single minute of your day go in your business? And then look at that and analyze and say, okay, this is what I need to cut off of my list right now. This is what I can hire for. This can fall under a customer service rep. This can fall under an OBM, maybe a director of operations, maybe just a copywriter and And start building your team that way. Because by freeing up the most amount of your time at first, you're going to be able to sit in your zone of genius. You're going to be able to create more, do more, be more, live more, all of the mores. And your business is going to scale.

11:18That to me is scaling. It's kind of like you can make all the money in the world, but if you don't have any money, you're not wealthy. That kind of mindset around that. For me, it's about time. That is my priority. I want time. I want more freedom. And so I scale my business with that idea in mind. Fire Nation, we're going to talk about mistakes. We're going to talk about hardships. We're going to talk about a dream team and so much more when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Can you believe we're already in Q4? This year has flown by, but Q4 is an exciting time and not just because the holidays are right around the corner.

11:55Something magical happens when the third quarter ends and the fourth quarter begins. The energy changes. The fourth quarter is where games are won, where champions are made, and in business, it's where sales teams become legends. That's why HubSpot built Sales Hub. To give sales reps the deal-making tools they need to win in Q4 and close the year strong, Sales Hub's prospecting workplace organizes your schedule, goals, and to-do list in one place to save your team precious fourth quarter time. Smart sequences help sales reps close deals faster than ever. And with an easy-to-use deal management tool, reps can find, track, and close deals all in one place.

12:32Plus, AI forecasting helps you accurately predict future success, which means less hoping for deals and more crushing targets. Put your sales team on the fast track to winning Q4 with Sales Hub. Learn more at hubspot.com slash sales. There are a lot of life to-dos that can be quite stressful, like finding the right life insurance. Luckily, Policy Genius makes finding the right policy simple. With Policy Genius, you can find life insurance policies that start at just$292 per year for$1 million of coverage. Some options offer same-day approval and avoid unnecessary medical exams. And because Policy Genius knows how valuable your time is, their technology makes it easy to compare life insurance quotes from America's top insurers in just a few clicks.

13:15Need a little extra help finding the right policy? policy genius has licensed award-winning agents who work for you not the insurance companies so you can trust their guidance bottom line policy genius simplifies the process of getting life insurance so you can protect the people you love no wonder they have thousands of five-star reviews on google and trust pilots your loved ones deserve a financial safety net you deserve a smarter way to find and buy it head to policygenius.com or click the link in the description to get your free life insurance quotes and see how much you could save. That's policygenius.com.

13:49Do you have a message inside that you know is meant to be shared with the world? Giving a TEDx talk is one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world, and Thought Leader can help you get there. Thought Leader is a speaker coaching company that has helped over 550 and counting coaches, speakers, entrepreneurs, authors, and experts land TEDx talks. Thought Leader is not affiliated with TED or TEDx, but they're able to get these results because their founder, Taylor Conroy, is a four-time TEDx speaker himself and past EO Fire guest. You might be thinking a TEDx talk sounds great, but where do you start?

14:23Taylor has put together a free training that's going to teach you how to land a TEDx talk in as little as 90 days. Join Taylor to learn exactly what TEDx organizers are looking for in their speakers, how to write a talk that goes viral once it goes online, and more. Visit thought-leader.com slash fire to join Taylor for this free training and get your message out of your head, out of your heart, and out into the world where it belongs. That's thought-leader.com slash fire. So, Alexandria, we're back. And before the break, we were talking a little bit about mistakes. And we've talked about a few that people make, but I want to dive a little bit deeper.

15:00Let's talk about some critical mistakes that Fire Nation can avoid when growing their business. So I mentioned the first time that I tried to hire my team. So have it. First mistake was I kind of went off the word of other people said, oh, she's really good. You'll love her. You have to figure out who is going to match you. Who's going to match your vibe? Who's going to match what you want in your team? Second thing that I did was I was scared to hire. I was so terrified of hiring anybody. I knew I wanted to grow the team, but I didn't want to hire anybody. So that's funny, right? And for me, I had to realize that when I was spending the money, I wasn't just throwing it away.

15:51I was allowing myself to then have that freedom that I had so wanted. And by doing that, I was able to then grow this amazing team. But I literally think my team right now is a dream team of people. It kind of goes hand in hand with that. But two is hire before you're ready to hire. There were so many times where I, oh my goodness, I have to hire because we have all this new work and I need to hire right now. And I would make the wrong hire. I would make the wrong decision. I wasn't following my gut. I was following my head of like, I just need to fill the spot right now. That's a huge mistake I see people making.

16:32hire before you're ready, get them used to you, get them used to how you work, how your company works, what your SOPs are, what your frameworks are. So that when you get more, if you're in a service provider business or, or wherever you are, you get more sales, you get more customers, you get more clients, whatever it is that you can say, okay, awesome. We have perfect person that can handle this. I'm not having to scramble at the last minute to find a perfect match. Let's talk about hardships because when you're scaling a company, especially in a short amount of time, there's going to be some hardships.

17:06There's going to be some struggles. There's going to be some obstacles and challenges that, of course, we can avoid by talking to somebody who's already been through those and come out the other side. So share with Fire Nation some of those hardships that come with scaling a company in a finite, short amount of time. A lot of mindset shifts had to happen in a very short amount of time. I had to see myself as a leader a lot faster than I originally did. I really didn't see myself in that leader position when I was going into this. I kind of just saw myself as somebody who was doing all of the things.

17:42I had to learn personally to step away and to step into the leadership role. and that was the hardest thing that I had to do. I had to realize that I can't be designing graphics right next to my graphic designer and then on the other hand, going and doing this high level strategy. The tug of war that that created mentally was a nightmare and I wasn't able to show up in my best self and serve our clients honestly in the best way because I was being tugged back and forth. So for me, it was truly stepping into that leadership role and saying, hey, I'm going to trust you. I'm going to trust my team.

18:27Let them live in their zones of genius. And that's going to be it. And that once I started to learn to do that and I embraced that, that was when we just started growing exponentially. And it was pretty beautiful. letting people live fire nation in their zones of genius it really is a beautiful thing i mean that's where they want to be that's where they thrive that's where they're going to do their best work and so you want to find people who are really focused on doing their best work within their zone of genius you know you can't just hire somebody and fit that square peg into a round hole and expect greatness to come out the other side because it's just not going to happen and so we talked about, you know, the dream team and how you really figure that out.

19:11But I love some more hard learned lessons that you've found while hiring that dream team, while building that dream team, while molding that dream team into not the mistakes you made round one, two, and three by being like, oh yeah, you'll love that person. They're so cool. And then being like, well, they might be cool and they might be great for somebody somewhere, but not for me in this time, in this position. So really finish strong over this dream team concept, some lessons that you learned and anything you want to share on this topic with Fire Nation. On top of the hardships of having to personally work through setting into that mindset of a leader, I had to be very weary of who I hired to.

19:57And this can sound kind of scary sometimes, but I had to be conscientious of when I went to put that application out there or the job, the job application out there. And I said, okay, I need a copywriter. I needed to be very, very specific about what I needed, what I expected, what I wanted out of a team member, because there were many times where I hired and it was on me most of the time that I didn't lay out the expectations of, I need you to do X, Y, and Z. I need you to have this type of experience. And then they came on and it was a nightmare. And the last thing that you want to do while you're trying to grow your business is have this turnaround of team members, right?

20:41Like nobody wants that. You want people that come on and they're going to be in it for the long haul. Another very important thing that I've learned is when you're hiring, pay attention to details. This is like a little side note, but in those job applications, ask them a question like, Hey, what's your favorite vacation spot? And the people that don't answer that, I kind of knock them off the list because that shows me attention to detail. I have learned that trick over the years and it works really well. But when you are interviewing and please interview, don't make that same mistake that I did where I was just like, Oh, they said, she's great.

21:17I'm going to bring her on. And I feel like a lot of people get stuck in that trap of, I'm going to build my business. I'm going to scale, but I don't know who to hire. So I'm just going to grab whoever to do it. Don't be scared to spend a little bit more than you thought you were. If you can financially afford it, remember that these people that you're hiring, they are supposed to be there to support you. You want them to support you. My ticket for hiring this dream team was making sure that we were all on the same mission. I wanted somebody, anybody that comes on, I want them to come on and I want them to appreciate the business.

22:00I want them to appreciate the clients. I want them to take the same care of everybody that I would take care of them. Right? Like that's so important for me. But for me, I had that moment where I would just hire people out of fear. I would hire people because I was scared or it was last minute. They didn't come on because of a certain mission. They didn't come on to be part of something bigger. They came on to just do the work. And that's not how I work. And I truly believe that's what has set our team apart. The people that are on our team, and I will talk their praises day and night, but they are truly there because they want to be a part of something bigger and it's a family.

22:40And when you start treating your team members like that, when you start allowing them to rise in their positions, everybody's going to rise. My own coaches told me this. I rise, we rise, they rise, you know, everybody rises together. And what happens when that happens is amazing. You see your clients rise, you see their customers just feel, feel the power behind it, right? Like they are so amazed by what you're able to give because everybody's stepping into their own zones of genius. But ultimately I do want to leave you with this is that when, when you are stepping into this leadership role and you're trying to grow your team and if you're struggling, if you know, I have these really big situations coming.

23:29My, my daughter's pregnancy was rough. She was a twin. We lost the twin. It went into a high risk pregnancy. She was premature. She was in the NICU. It was really hard. And I could have easily said, you know what? I'm done. I'm not going to build the agency anymore. I'm not going to go down this path. And it was 2022 on top of everything else. Um, but I just, I persevered through it. I pivoted. I didn't freeze. I said, no, this is what's going to happen and we're going to make it happen. And I had faith. I gave myself a ton of grace for saying, okay, I know that I'm going to have to be at a doctor's appointments four times a week, but I'm going to hire my team and I'm going to trust them.

24:11Step into the level of trust as much as you can step into the role of not micromanaging, treat them as family. And when you do that, everything else sort of just falls into place. It's really hard to grow, especially in a short amount of time. It is so hard. You will find yourself in a lot of positions where you're kind of up against the wall. You don't know what's going to happen. You literally are between a rock and a hard place. I don't know whether to go this way or this way or this way. And I will say I hired a business coach, a business mentor. And after I did that and I realized, Hey, I'm not crazy.

24:51There's other people out here that feel the same way that I do. And here I am wanting to give up. And she's like, no, no, no, you're not giving up. You're going to do it this way. And this is, this is the way to do it because I've been there. That was, that was the key for me to like fully release all of this fear intention that I had around growing because I'm, like I said before, like I had never really considered myself into this leadership position. Now here I am and it's worked out fine. And for me personally, I go into everything honest, genuine, transparent. I am a human behind the screen.

25:27Um, so many people out there is like this facade, right? We're all human behind the screens. And I have shown my team that I've shown our clients that the people I coach that like everybody like I'm a human I'm not better than you we're just in this together I might know more I might be on a different level but I'm not better than you like all of those mindset shifts that you have to do that is what's going to help you get through those hardships just a little bit easier so many value bombs so many great takeaways Alexandria I want to finish strong give us your final call to action Give Fire Nation that call to action, and then we'll say goodbye.

26:08So I am super excited to do this. I wasn't sure what I was going to do, but this is what I am really feeling led to do for Fire Nation, so I'm super excited. I mentioned that I love this genuine, honest transparency. I am a talker, if you haven't figured it out by now. I love talking. I love creating connections. There are two ways that you can technically work with us. We have the done for you marketing agency side, which is we act as fractional CMOs. Um, that is, that's what I've built. I'm also a business mentor and I help entrepreneurs who have been in the stressed out hustle phase and kind of break away from the stress.