If you want to do things differently but need some help making it happen then tune in for your weekly dose of coaching from me, Maisie Hill, Master Life Coach, and author of Period Power. Welcome to The Maisie Hill Experience.

Maisie: Hello folks, it is lovely to have you here joining us today for a conversation that I am really excited to have with one of my clients from the membership, Clair. Welcome, Clair.

Clair: Hi, nice to see you, Maisie.

Maisie: Hi, I am really thrilled that you accepted my invitation to come on to the podcast because I just wanted to hang out and hear more about your journey. I’ve had snippets along the way in the time that you’ve been a member, but I wanted to just hear a bit more for my own curiosity and also because I know it’s just going to be so helpful to anyone listening. Thank you for being so generous with your time and for coming on.

Clair: Thank you for inviting me.

Maisie: No problem. So why don’t we start off if you just want to introduce yourself, let us know your pronouns, where you are in the world, and we’ll just take it from there.

Clair: Okay, I’m Clair, I’m 38, and I’m currently living in West Wales.

Maisie: Amazing, which I’m hoping we’re going to hear all about your journey to Wales as part of this. Great. All right, so when did you join the membership and why did you join? Let’s start there.

Clair: In May 2019, I actually purchased Period Power on audio and in June I signed up for the emails. Then in July 2019, I returned the audio after crying and sobbing in my car while I was driving through Heathrow Airport. It was something to do with the say no section, don’t really know, can’t remember, but it just felt too much. I was under a lot of stress at the time, and we were living right by Heathrow Airport. There were potential third runways that were being consulted on and they’d excluded us from the compensation zone, so it felt a bit too much.

In March 2020, COVID then offered us up an opportunity and we put our house up for sale, betting it to sell maybe within a year, and it sold in three days.

Maisie: Oh my goodness. Wow.

Clair: We then visited four small holdings in one day on a day trip to Wales, because there were no overnight stays, it was COVID. We just did it. We then bought our last house, which was an eight-acre small holding, which had some income potential attached to it. We then moved there in October 2020, and it was way more rundown than we thought it was. So we took a lot of time to do that and get it renovated.

Then in January 2021, I started the podcast episodes again. I was like, I want to go again. I got really, really busy at work, insanely busy. So I signed up in my local town for a menstrual cycle workshop with Rachel Harvey yoga. She celebrates so much of your work and has a real passion for it. I also then joined up on her course, a nervous system reset course, in February to May 2022, at which point made me join on the waitlist collective that was the preview bit of it. I joined on because I wanted to see how much money it was because I’m not very good at spending money on myself.

Finally in December 2022, I actually did sign up and I went straight in for three months because I just knew that if I didn’t do that, I wouldn’t keep up the monthly payments. It’s not my forte.

Maisie: That’s been some of your journey in the membership as well, looking at money mindset. It is interesting how just that initial decision to actually sign up for the membership or for anything like this, what that decision actually creates in you.

Clair: Yeah, it was something that I would think nothing of spending money on wellies for the smallholdings and things like that, but I couldn’t spend that money on myself monthly. So I invested in myself. That was a huge thing for me.

Maisie: What was that about? Can you share some more about that? Because I know you’re not the only one, we get a lot of feedback about this.

Clair: Personally, when I’ve been working, I’ve always had quite a restricted income. We’re very good at putting stuff into savings, making sure all the bills are paid and everything. It left me with a small amount at the end to do what I wanted to do with. Then you have to pick, don’t you? It was not always my first pick to invest in me. There were other things that were happening that I wanted to join.

But I can now see looking back that actually picking myself is helping me elsewhere. I probably just didn’t have the funds when it very first started but that was why I signed up for the free podcast. The free resources have been really amazing and that just got me in the mindset of, you know, I do need to sign up. I’d say I knew I would chicken out after one month and I was not doing that. I’m going to join for three months. And then I kept that up.

Maisie: I love that you were onto yourself there because you could have known that but lied to yourself about it or you could have discounted it in some way. But it sounds like you really were willing to confront that in yourself and to take action to support you in moving through that.

Clair: Yeah, I’d had enough of being where I was with what I was doing. I did actually write a little note because I’d struggled with awful period pain and periods for like 25 years. I’ve tried all the pills. I was at the point where the doctors were putting me onto a coil, and they were advising if that didn’t work I was going to have a hysterectomy. I was only 34 and I was just not up for that.

Luckily, the coil worked for me, but for a very short space of time, and then it really didn’t work for me. I’ve had it taken out and I didn’t have the hysterectomy. I was then later diagnosed with PMDD, which I think I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t have been aware of the resources. I wouldn’t have picked up on that. Now using the resources, I’m pretty much pain-free. I was going from 11-day periods at one point and now I’m down to three. It’s really changed my life and what I do.

Maisie: That’s a massive difference.

Clair: Yeah, that was the reason. I’d had enough of not feeling great.

Maisie: Yeah, so then what happened? You joined us.

Clair: Yeah, I did join in and then I went back, and I bought the audiobook again in January 2023. I also started acupuncture as well with Maggie Cross in Cardigan, who’s lovely. She’s been fantastic. I just literally loved the book so much. It was such a revelation to change from being unable to even listen to actually loving it so much that I then went and bought the physical book.

I also bought Perimenopause Power. I’ve written through them, highlighted through them all of the information that I wanted to have. I’ve also got a seven-year-old daughter who one day she might need them so they’re just waiting for if I ever need them obviously again. I get them out frequently to refer back to and if she needs them then they’re there for her, which is fab.

Maisie: Yeah, and so when you got started in the membership, what were the things that you focused on? Where did you go first?

Clair: I was not really available for live coaching at the time just because my work was so insanely busy. We moved to the small holding during the Welsh lockdown and literally I was homeschooling from home in Welsh, learning Welsh, we were having the whole house renovated. When I say I didn’t have any time, I was not making that up. I was working five full days a week from home as well. I just didn’t have the time to do the live stuff. But things like the audio recordings were good to listen to.

I actually found that the webinars, I would sit down once a month and just sit down and make the most of that webinar and set myself an hour or so. One of my favourites is to just get in the bath and just put the webinar on while I’m sat in the bath, which is probably not the ideal time to do it, but it works for me.

Maisie: No, it is. It totally is. It’s interesting how this comes up, even with people who have been members for quite a long time, but it’s something that we emphasize again and again that there isn’t a right way to get involved with the materials and that what is most important is you do it in a way that works with your life and the way that suits you. I think we have this idea that in order to learn, we have to be sat at a desk, we have to be in a certain kind of mindset, etc.

We create all these rules around learning and taking in information. Even we see people doing that in terms of how much they think they need to use the resources and the membership or get coached. That’s just not true at all. But that’s just a result of our socialization in various educational settings. What’s actually important is you use it in a way that works for you.

Each thing that you learn or watch or listen to, you take action on, and you actually apply it in your life. I’d much rather someone’s listening back to something once a month, really taking in and applying it in their life than, say, be consuming lots of different things but not actually doing anything with it. There’s a huge difference between those two things. So I loved it, you were listening back whilst in the bath. How perfect.

Clair: I was guilty of doing all the education stuff. I didn’t apply myself at school very well. Although I had the ability, I just didn’t. But now, since leaving school, you go and do all of the school stuff, don’t you? I was very much like I sit down with my pen and paper in front of my computer and restrained to the desk. So to do that was a bit of a freeing exercise for me as well, just to do it like this.

I didn’t think that I was that good at listening to things and taking things in, because when someone’s talking at me, that’s not something that I do very well. But actually, the audios and the webinars, they just seemed to sink into my brain, which I hadn’t anticipated. It’s become the way that I use The Flow Collective because that’s my favourite way.

Maisie: Yeah. Well, that’s the whole point is that you just do it in whatever way works for you. But I have set things up in this very intentional way where how you interact with the membership is like how you learn the skills in your life. Part of that is unwinding this idea of being a good student or being a good girl and doing A plus work all the time and the idea that the amount of time that you spend on something is what equals results. I think it’s really fun to just undo all of that and create some new ideas about how we want to do things.

Clair: Yeah, I love it. It’s changed my life really on how I perceive I can take information in and what I actually need to do. So doing all the courses I’ve just kind of stopped education but I think I’ve used this instead which it doesn’t feel like education, yet it just feels like life lessons which are really valuable.

Maisie: Oh I love that. So what are some of the life lessons that you’ve learned?

Clair: I wrote down quite a few. Being a role model to my daughter has become one of my absolute passions. You should do that anyway, but I’ve really taken it on since I’ve been in the membership of teaching her all the things that I could have only wished to have learned when I was younger to help me. I physically see that she mentally and physically feels the effects of it. It’s something we share – love, emotions and rest and a full experience of life. She’s going to benefit from that forever. I know that.

Maisie: That’s incredible. Goosebumps and all the feels happening over here because it isn’t just about what’s going on for you and supporting you but it’s the knock-on effects of that and how it impacts your family and your kids and anyone else, any other young people around you.

Clair: She’s a lucky girl to get that in the beginning.

Maisie: I know. Isn’t that what we all would have loved?

Clair: Yeah, absolutely. Another thing that I wrote down, which is one of your favourites I’m assuming, is saying no, but in all the ways, small boundaries to huge ones and being able to say no without feeling anything about it. Without feeling all the feels about saying no, that’s been really strong for me.

Maisie: Yeah, I think that’s the thing. No just being a straightforward no. In the same way that you’re just like, oh that building’s made of bricks. The sky has some clouds in it and I’m saying no to this. It just becomes more matter of fact and that doesn’t take away, I’m sure, from all the feelings and work that goes into getting to that point. But that sounds like it’s been something really significant from the get-go, from reading the ways to say no in Period Power through to actively doing that work. So how has that been for you to do that?

Clair: It’s just so empowering I was, like you said, I could have been A-star, a good girl, doing everything. I’ve always been the nice, kind, which I still want to be the kind person, that’s who I am. But I can still be kind, but also say to someone, no, I’m not going to do that. Not because it affects them, I’m not worried about affecting them. I don’t want to affect myself and put myself in discomfort or overstretch myself and things like that. That’s something that I was probably doing my whole life and that’s changed.

Maisie: Yeah. I mean, how powerful to model that to your daughter?

Clair: Yeah. And I see it come out in her. She’s got the no. It doesn’t always go down well with everyone, but we just keep going on.

Maisie: But that’s interesting as well isn’t it? How is that for you as a parent and seeing that happen? So she gives a no and other people react. How’s that for you?

Clair: I see her almost look to me sometimes and I just reiterate whatever she said because if she said no then that’s what she said. But we also use it sometimes as a teaching moment with her friends. One of her friends might do something and then her friend says no, sorry, and Evangeline might keep going on and going on. I said to her, she said no. This goes both ways. If you say no you want her to stop but if she says no you have to stop too. So that’s been a massive teaching thing when the kids come over to our house. Even they’re quite surprised by it sometimes too.

Maisie: Yeah, very cool. What else have you got on your list?

Clair: I actually joined a celebration pod on WhatsApp with four other people from the membership – Ellen, Stephanie, and Marie. Because posting every little thing on the Facebook page felt, I want to say exposing, like I felt a bit silly posting every little thing. What it’s actually enabled me to do with the WhatsApp group is to do those little things and practice it without being completely fully visible on the Facebook group.

But what I actually now think I’m going to probably do is go back through my messages and write down all my wins and maybe post them on the Facebook group because I realize that when other people do it on the Facebook group that I read them, and I get benefit from it, but I just didn’t feel comfortable. So I think my own way to do it, or actually it was somebody else that started the group, but I was like, yes, I want that straight away.

Maisie: It’s so interesting to me because, like I said, the way I’ve set the membership up has been very intentional. As you know, as a member, we have a really strong culture of celebration in the community. What I want, what we as a team want, and I’m sure what all of you as members want, is all of those celebrations there. That is to help you to take up space, to help you to notice all the amazing things in your life, all the efforts you’re putting into stuff, to not just acknowledge the things that work out fantastically, but also the struggles and the challenges and the failures that amount to eventually getting there. I love that you have been able to do that in a way that works for you.

If initially doing that in a Facebook group with everyone else in there does feel a bit too exposing, that you honoured that and you did it and you took care of yourself in a compassionate way, because it is about building those muscles and thinking, oh yeah, I’m just getting used to working out in this way, getting used to celebrating myself, getting used to bragging about all the things that I want to celebrate.

Clair: Yeah, you can’t stop us now. We’re on the road today. We might have a break for holidays and things, but we were only going to do it for a set amount of time, but it’s just carried on, which is brilliant. It’s nice to see that so many other people just have similar things that are going on as well. I mean, there’s only four of us in the group, so just for us, there’s obviously lots of others in The Flow Collective as well.

Maisie: What do you think the impact of you celebrating yourself like that has been?

Clair: I think it’s making me visible, which is not something I am always comfortable with.

Maisie: Yeah.

Clair: It was hard to come today and do this today, but I was more excited than I was afraid of this today, so I thought now’s the time to come and chat today and share, shall I say, be visible.

Maisie: Yeah, I know, I love it. It was lovely to just kind of witness your process of receiving the invitation and you know…

Clair: I know you were laughing at me Maisie. I could feel it from the other side, but I was like come on Clair, you can do this.

Maisie: I think you received it in the way that is my hope when I invite people on, that you don’t feel like it’s something you have to do, but you are able to say yes to the opportunity to be more visible.

Clair: Yeah, I couldn’t understand why, but yes, imposter syndrome hits. And then I was like, when I look back through all of the things on the Facebook group and what I’ve done, I was like, oh, I do see why, but my brain still doesn’t see why.

Maisie: I know, I know. This is just how brains operate though. Is there anything else on your list that you want to highlight?

Clair: I wrote down so many wins. I said literally the list would be endless and I use the techniques daily if not hourly in my life that I’ve learned in The Flow Collective. It’s funny, in my brain, using them right now, which is nice.

Maisie: Yeah that’s the whole point. You learn these things and then you have them, and you do just use them, and they just become second nature, just like brushing your teeth.

Clair: Yeah, that’s definitely becoming apparent for me.

Maisie: Well, that’s a huge win in and of itself, that it has just become second nature to you and that you use them on an hourly basis.

Clair: Yeah. Again, I’m trying to brush it off, but no.

Maisie: I know. I do get a bit of pleasure kind of making you all sweat a bit in celebrating.

Clair: Yeah, I feel it. But right, we’re going to go for the win! Okay. Using cycle tracking, like I said, to reduce my period from 11 to three days has been just insane for me. I couldn’t walk some days. I started my periods really young, I was still in junior school, so that was just a real shock. That was hard to deal with at that time. But it’s gone down to three days now, which I just can’t even believe that’s possible for me, but it is. I think the acupuncture, looking after myself, being aware of the PMDD, which again has been huge for me. It’s not something necessarily that you want to have or get diagnosed with, but that is something that I am aware of all the time, which really helps me. So that was cycle tracking which has been amazing.

Learning that my thoughts have value and treating them kindly has been an important one for me. I actually got a special notebook for this which at one point in my life I would never have ever written in because it was too special to put anything down in, but I write everything in it now.

It is still only in pencil so I can rub some things out. I’m not using the pen yet. It feels nice to be able to put that down in a nice notebook rather than just scraps of paper and things. It’s giving myself a bit more value, I think, and my thoughts have value. The good ones and the bad ones, you can write them down, but don’t have to obviously act on them or anything like that. But just seeing them sometimes and to review back through them has been really strong.

Maisie: What an amazing way to just honour your brain and all it has to offer, instead of what I think we so often do, which is make the way we think a problem.

Clair: I have an idea comes up in my brain quite a lot and people go like it’s a good one but now I can actually go through it rather than just go quiet which is what I might have done before.

Maisie: Yeah, yeah.

Clair: Another thing I wrote is fully allowing my emotions to come to the surface whenever I can because again something that’s been taught to and it’s taught but encouraged to squash them, but I’m really working on that one and again using all the workshops and allowing them. There’s one little section that you did where just allowing you to feel your emotions. That’s been probably one of my favourite points of this.

Maisie: Such a key one especially with something like PMDD where it really can be such a roller coaster of emotion and some really intense experiences of emotions as well. So being able to work with those emotions and for them to emerge in you and to just acknowledge them and create some space for them.

Which I think, I don’t know, you tell me, my experience personally but also from coaching lots of people on this is that that can feel like a scary thing to do when it’s already feeling like a lot, the idea of leaning into that more. What was your experience of that like?

Clair: Yeah, I feel when I’m around people, I tend to put on the smile and happy and all the rest of it, but with the PMDD and being aware of the symptoms and that second-half of the cycle, I’ve really leaned into, I call it the dark side, but it is when I’m feeling not my best. I’ve really leaned into that. But allowing that rather than fighting it all the time, I think is actually, again, probably some of the reasons why I’ve been able to get periods less and things like that, because I’m not overreaching myself in that point of the cycle.

I’ve really calmed myself down. And again, using the word high achiever seems uncomfortable, but I’m happy to go out and get it done. That’s not something that worries me. But definitely would have overridden that during the second half of my cycle, which I try not to do now. I try to do a lot more resting and just taking time to get my thoughts down. I actually wrote down that the autumn is actually becoming my favourite phase because editing is my favourite thing ever.

Maisie: One of the great powers of the autumn phase of the cycle is editing. Did you ever think you’d be saying that autumn’s becoming your favourite season?

Clair: I don’t really think that… No, see, I think, I think back to how I would have thought about it before. I don’t think I really slowed down. I just wore myself up and wore myself out and then had an agonizing period of time. So I wouldn’t have necessarily, I probably was using it, but in the wrong way. Not the wrong way, but not in a beneficial way to me. But now I’m using it to be more helpful to me. Really, again, really strong for me, so very empowering.

Maisie: Yeah, it is. It really is. Coming into a relationship with all the parts of the cycle and through that, all the parts of yourself, I think really is key to, when I say balancing the cycle, I’m not a huge fan of the word balance, but I think everyone listening will understand my meaning.

I say that because I think what often starts off when you’re working with the cycle is if you do have intense periods, not necessarily the actual period, but if you have intense times in the menstrual cycle or particular challenges, symptoms, issues that you want to improve, then rightly so the attention goes to those specific times when it’s happening.

Then I think, certainly in my previous work as a practitioner, once you’ve kind of looked at those and reduced the impact of them, reduced the severity of them, then it really is about the whole of the cycle and looking at the relationship between the various aspects of the cycle and all the different elements that go into it and looking at it as a cohesive whole.

Clair: Yeah, that’s one of the most powerful things I think for me is to treat myself kindly during that process because I would have berated myself, why are you doing this and why can’t you do that and all of those things? But now I realize that this is something that I do go through, it’s who I am and it’s something that I need to take care of myself.

Otherwise, I’m going to burn out. I was very very very close to it. I think I only did it because I just did not have the option at the point in time when it was occurring. Literally, I powered through and that was when I started everything. So that was the tipping point for me, to say no, I don’t want to do that anymore. I don’t want to be here. I visibly have a memory of me working in my front room whilst all the renovations were going on and I was doing like four days at home and I had the construction earphones on, so that I could block out all of the noise whilst doing my work.

It was at that point I said I don’t want to do this anymore, this is not working for me. Now, due to resources and information, I’ve actually gone from working five full days a week, and probably evenings and weekends and everything like that, I’m down to three mornings a week. I’ve actually managed to get it down to three mornings a week by reviewing the processes and things like that, but also getting paid. I’ve upped my prices and I spend less time for more money. It’s something I just didn’t think I would be able to get done, but I have done it.

Maisie: But you have.

Clair: Yeah.

Maisie: So everyone’s going to want to know, how did you do that?

Clair: Little pieces by little pieces. I took steps, that was definitely a key. The first one was turning off my emails on the evenings and weekends because I was terrible for just having my computer in our front room at the time and just nipping on there to get done little bits so I could get done. So I turned off my e-mail, that was the first thing.

I then moved my computer out of the front room, because although it was easy for me to work, it was there all the time, staring me in the face. So I moved into another room and then set my hours. I was doing nine to five or something like that. I can’t remember what the exact hours were.

Then I reviewed all my processes. People have to fill in a lot of it, give me a lot of information. I think I probably reviewed my processes three or four times, which meant fully rewriting out forms. I took days off around Christmas and things like that when everybody else was off to do that work because I knew that by doing those processes, I would reduce my hours in the long term. Although I took that time for work over the holiday period, it would benefit me in the long run. That was a really key one. I noticed that almost instantly.

Another thing was, I wasn’t taking holidays, I was taking my laptop on holiday and working on holidays because when I initially started my business, my daughter was one and a half, so I could. She would nap in the afternoon, and I’d take my laptop and off I’d go, and I didn’t mind doing it then. I’m on holiday, I’m out of the sun because I’m not a sun lover and then when she stopped napping that became a real problem because I can’t now work while she’s napping. That was at the very early stages, but so taking the time to reduce my processes basically.

Oh yeah, holidays. Taking holiday. So I was working all through holidays and now I take, I’ve set out, I take four weeks a year and I’ve just said to my customers, cause nothing’s urgent maybe by their standards, but not urgent, no one’s going to die if I don’t do that work is how I say that in my brain, which seems extreme and no one’s going to die. But we have to remind ourselves of that, right?

When we’re in that kind of rushing, urgent mode, in terms of how our nervous system is coping with stuff, it’s thinking, oh, there’s an emergency, we have to tend to this, or someone is going to die. I mean, that’s not the actual thought that’s going on, but that’s the physical impact of it. It’s like, oh, we’ve got to survive this. So when you do actually go, you know what, there’s no risk of death here. That’s actually really key because as far as your body’s concerned, it’s thinking that there is.

Clair: Yeah, that was huge for me to literally take a holiday. And I didn’t do that until seven years into the business, which is a long, long time. Another step that I took was from the small holding, we have other income. So we enabled ourselves to get all of our bills sorted in my work, doesn’t go into savings, but it goes to repairing roofs or things like that. But because we’ve got all of our bills sorted, I was then able to say on my work side of things, right, this money is obviously all important. I’m going to say it’s not important. We’ll use it when it comes in, but I’m also not going to do the work for less than I want to.

So I then put my prices up and I had, you know, come back to my clients that they weren’t happy about it, but I just said, this is what I need to go forward and work basically to prioritize my time on this, on this work rather than do something else. Cause I’m trying to balance, obviously I want to do more in a small holding, but work pays me to be able to go onto the small holding. The small holding is not profitable in that sense. So I’m not looking for huge amounts of money, but I just need to be able to get the right balance of, if I’m going to sit indoors and work, it needs to pay me to do that. So I’ve got my prices and I’ve put them up yearly since.

Maisie: How’s that been for you to do that?

Clair: Initially, it was really scary because you think everybody’s going to leave and then they haven’t. People have actually given me more work and it’s slightly changing for me now what’s going on. Ultimately, they didn’t leave, and I just said, this is what I need.

Maisie: Yeah, and how was it for you when people were coming back and saying whatever they were saying about you putting your prices up? What was that like?

Clair: I went down the route of saying that I hadn’t put my prices up for a long time and it’s just what I need to continue the business. That was kind of how the route I went down, and I just stood strong and was like, this is the prices that we’re charging going forwards and it was as simple as that. I didn’t fluff, I didn’t make it all nice and soft and lovely for them. I just said this is what we’re going to be charging going forwards. I’m saying they all stayed.

Maisie: Wow. I think at the time when you were busy, you were kind of hoping that some of them might leave because you were so busy, but that was before you’d reviewed your process, I can’t remember which order you did it in.

Clair: Yeah, so it was really a tipping point of like, I needed more time in my day-to-day for the small holding. This is a transition.

Maisie: I’m just going to review things there just, I think, because it might be useful for you, but also just for anyone listening, is that you just got started with the things that you could get started with, right? In terms of being more boundaried with not being on your e-mail in the evenings and the weekends, with moving your laptop out of the living room. So you started with what you could. You brought in those boundaries, like time boundaries about when you were going to be available for e-mail, and that really started to set a different standard for how you go about your work, which then carries through into your systems and processes and simplifying things.

But also in terms of your prices and I imagine all sorts of other ways as well and you opted for putting in short term efforts for long term gain in terms of yes this is the holidays but I’m going to use this time to put some effort in that means I’m going to gain time and freedom and whatever else for the rest of the year.

Clair: Yeah, 100 percent. I knew that would change for me. I just remembered something else that I did as well, which was fantastic for me. I changed my voicemail to say, please don’t leave me a voicemail. All of my communication needs to be in writing because for compliance for what I do. It does need to be in writing. That for me, I just stopped answering the phone to numbers that I don’t know. Oh my gosh.

Maisie: Joyous, absolute joyous.

Clair: That voicemail and obviously these people already have my e-mail address because they’re already in the process and just said to them basically write me an e-mail. And then I obviously switched my emails off and went back to it when I was ready, which just, I can’t again, can’t tell you how much time that saved me but also how nice that was not to have to sit on the phone with someone going over something.

But a bit like you say with your books, I tell the people this information all the time. I repeat it for lots of different people. But now I’ve actually put it where I have, oh, I set up e-mail templates. That was another thing that I did so that I didn’t have to keep typing it out and repeating the information. So maybe wrote like a little mini e-mail book, which I can just forward on the relevant e-mail to them when they come back with that question.

Maisie: I love that you brought this up, Clair, because you tell me what you think, but there’s something here, I think, around valuing yourself and setting things up in a way in your business and in your life so that you have more freedom, so that you can do the things that you’re most skilled at. And I mean that in terms of repeating yourself on e-mail all the time. I’m sure it’s not the best use of your brain.

Clair: No, not at all.

Maisie: There’s something very practical, very tangible about when you start to work and improve your relationship with yourself that spills out into these things. What do you make of that?

Clair: I got annoyed if I’d have to keep writing it because a lot of this stuff I’ve really written down. I’m like why do I have to keep writing this down? Why am I writing this down constantly? So I just, again, set the time up just to make those copy and paste or forwards or whatever they are and just general answers. Obviously, if something specific comes in, then I can just adjust it if I need to, but the bulk of it was already there. But annoyance is what triggered that for me, probably because I just didn’t have enough time to do it.

Maisie: But that’s, I think, where we can, all of these feelings that we have are so useful because it’s like, what’s the wisdom that that annoyance is bringing? When we try and get away from that annoyance, we’re missing out on that wisdom. But when we’re actually like, oh yeah, I’m feeling really annoyed about this, what is that actually about?

Clair: For me, I think for what I do, I’d already given everybody the information and I have to remind myself that people are responsible for their own responses. I’ve given them the information, this is what I need to have back. And then when people ask you about that, I’m very, very clear in my emails, if you just give me this information, I’ll carry on and do what I do, I don’t really need lots of the other information that’s provided to me, I just need that. And then we can go forward. This really streamlined that to get that information just to keep repeat sending little thing, which I assume can be frustrating from the other side for other people. But to get done what I need to get done. That’s what I need from them.

Maisie: But even that, being willing to prioritize what you need, what you know you need in order to do your job well and therefore benefit your clients, being able to prioritize that even if they do get frustrated or they don’t understand it or they don’t want to do it.

Clair: Yeah, that comes up a lot. They don’t want to do it.

Maisie: Whereas you could have just catered to where they’re at.

Clair: I probably did in the early stages, but again, the busyness just, or the sheer amount of work that came, I just couldn’t, I just couldn’t afford them that time. So it really changed it for me, which was great. Feels cheeky saying it, but it was great.

Maisie: Well, you know, we’re all about the celebrations, so we got to celebrate it, but it did feel great.

Clair: Yeah especially.

Maisie: If that kind of fear mindset is there at all and it’s like oh no we can’t do this because if we do this then people are going to be upset and they’re going to be angry and they’re going to say this and they’re going to do this and you know like that’s the narrative that is often going on inside our heads so then when we do something like this and maybe some people do respond that way, but this is why, as you said, it’s so important to celebrate the wins.

Clair: My job is to help them. I’m not there hindering them. So for me, it works for me to let’s get the best out of it as quickly as we can, just get it done.

Maisie: Brilliant.

Clair: Yeah. Then I can get out to the animals on a small holding.

Maisie: Yes. So can we talk about the animals?

Clair: Yes, we can talk about the animals.

Maisie: You made this shift in your life, you moved to Wales, you have a small holding. How many acres do you have?

Clair: We’ve got eight acres on a hill, which is quite a steep hill, in Wales. We’re at the top of the hill. I say that because the weather has been very extreme, so we get hit by lots of wind, get lots of wind damage, but we don’t get hit by floods, which initially I wanted water on our land and now I realize that maybe I didn’t because that causes a lot of problems for people.

So I feel like we’ve bought this little place, eight acres, it’s got some stables and some outbuildings, and we’ve got some units that we actually rent out for income, which allows us to then have the animals on the smallholding.

We had a 10-year goal to have the small holding, have the units up and running, redo the house. Also, one of the reasons that we actually came here was because we wanted to improve the food that we eat. After again, reading the resources and understanding that we want organic grass-fed meat if we can, we want to eat everything grown from the polytunnel without being sprayed or chemicals or anything like that.

That was, although it seemed like a huge thing at the time, that was start of it and we’ve actually got there. We actually have got there. It was our 10-year goal to get there and we’re three years and eight months in and we were going to do it.

I think initially we wanted to do it commercially to have income, but we’re not chasing millions of pounds or anything like that. That’s not our aim. Our aim is actually to spend more time as a family, which now means that we’ve just recently decided that even though we got to where we wanted to, we’re going to probably bring it a little bit down and just keep the animals that we want to keep and enjoy and know that they’ve had a good life before obviously they do end up in the freezer, which is part of that we’re going to eat meat.

So I’d much rather eat meat that’s going to have been looked after by us and knowing that it’s been looked after really well. They get belly rubs and back scratches and all the best. The sheep have got shelters out in the fields which the local farmers think is hilarious, but I want to know that they’ve got shelter in the rain. They don’t like it. I wouldn’t want to be out there. But we’re just doing it our way because we want our animals to have the best that we can possibly offer. That was part of it.

Maisie: Yeah well that’s it. You’re doing it your way. What has it done for you? So having this 10-year goal and then ending up doing it in three years, eight months, what has that taught you?

Clair: Number one is that my husband is a machine. Shout out to your husband.

Maisie: Shout out to your husband.

Clair: That’s Wayne. I don’t think we would have got here without him but obviously it was part of our dream, but I’ve done a lot of the reading on how we get to where we’re going and what we’re going to do. I think it’s just made us realize that we can just achieve anything, which I don’t think we didn’t think we could achieve it. We knew that we could at some point achieve that. But to do it so quickly, it’s just been immense.

It all comes down to me, we have a process for everything. Process is always prioritized. Even if we have a process to do something like we might make a plan to do something outside, we’re limited by the weather, but we then have a process to do something indoors or undercover or something like that. It’s given us power to organize our lives. If you speak to people they’ll probably tell you that we’re organized anyway but it’s really highlighted the fact that we are, and we can just arrange and prepare and get things done.

Maisie: Yeah, well this is why I love working with a 10-year goal, because it’s enough of a chunk of time to completely change your life. But it is so much fun to see people doing it way quicker, and I don’t mean that quicker kind of rushing to get there, but to actually get something done that you thought was going to take 10 years in three years or four years or sometimes a few months as the case may be.

Clair: I think honestly it was purely financial. We gave ourselves that thing because we didn’t think we were going to get there but the processes that we’ve changed and done for work has actually ended up helping us to just continue and keep going and then just to completely get to where we wanted to be, ready to start a commercial business and then decide, actually, no, that’s not what we want to do.

We want to spend more time together as a family, walking the dogs and things like that. That’s been just, that’s been really good because it is hard work. I’m not going to lie, the animals are extremely hard work. But we love spending time with them and enjoying them. So let’s sort of have the best of both worlds if we can. And then get the time rather than wear ourselves out. I didn’t want to go back to wearing ourselves out again for money.

Maisie: Yeah, okay. Is there anything else that you wanted to come on and mention?

Clair: I think, so I did write, and it just ties in with what I just wrote, finding joy in everyday little things has been something that I, I think I kind of did it anyway, but I’ve, I now notice that I do it. I’ll stand and wash up in the kitchen and we deliberately don’t have a dishwasher because my dream was to look out the window at the chickens and the ducks and now it’s evolved to playing something in my ear like a coaching call or a podcast and just looking out the window and that’s become really important for me to notice and enjoy the joy in those little things and those moments.

I also wrote about knowing who I truly am and not being afraid to share it with others. And this is, I think, what today’s about.

Maisie: Oh my gosh. Yeah, yeah.

Clair: You know that person’s in there.

Maisie: Yeah. And yeah, like you said, that’s exactly what you’ve done today by coming on and sharing all of this with us. Wow. Wow. Clair, thank you so much.

Clair: You’re welcome.

Maisie: It feels like we could just keep going. I’m sure there’s more.

Clair: I’ve got so many other things that I think I should have mentioned this that I should have mentioned that but it’s been really really great working with you and one of the things I did actually write down was that obviously I’m still in the flow, I’m still in the membership now and I don’t know if or when I’m ever going to leave but that makes me a bit panicky about leaving. I don’t think that’s something that I’ll want to do but we’ll see where life takes us.

Maisie: Exactly, and you get to stick around for as long as you need or want to. There’s no limits on it. It’s been incredible just to see your journey unfold and all the different ways that you’ve used the membership to work on a real variety of things in your life.

But I love where the conversation went today because I’m sure there’s so many people listening to this who there is something that they want to do in their lives, or they want to reconfigure the balance between what’s going on with their working lives and their personal lives, and being able to really look at that with you and hear your story, I’m sure will be so useful to everyone listening. So thank you again, and congratulations on taking up this space and being visible and sharing everything with us.

Clair: Thank you Maisie and I’m sure on behalf of all the other members and people that aren’t members, thank you to them too. I’m sure they’ll be using this, your membership really, really well. So thank you.

Maisie: Okay, all right folks, that is it for today. We will be back next week.

Hey, if you love listening to this podcast then come and check out my membership, The Flow Collective, where you get my best resources and all the coaching you need to transform your inner and outer life. Sign up to the waitlist at theflowcollective.co/join, and I’ll see you in the community.