Updates from Heidi M Hovan

Once I discovered that unplugging from my system (accidental as it was), I discovered true liberation and freedom. 

We celebrated with a vacation.  About six months ago, we had booked some timeshare vacation in September.  That is the beauty and flexibility of homeschooling, so we wanted to enjoy it.  I have been dreaming of days and days of relaxing in the mountains or on the beach.  Kevin prefers the mountains, while I love the serenity and sunshine of the beach.  We all just packed up and planned to not only get our school, but also to focus on our family.  

Here’s what I learned from that vacation.

Mostly, though, I recognized that the axiom of time being the only currency you can’t get back, is TRUE!  We got to visit James Monroe’s Hatfield estate, the largest corn maze in Virginia, and played on a life-size chess board.  We visited all the pools at our resort one day.  And to top it off, we got to pet LOTS of animals, from the resort kitty to donkeys and sheep at Monroe’s estate, to the dog who runs the corn maze.  My kids loved it.

I pondered the axiom that hard work can be rewarded.  All work and no play make Jill a dull girl!

Here’s what I gained from leaning into that experience.

Here’s what I decided I would never do again.

Here’s what I determined I needed to immediately do!

Here’s what I implemented immediately.

Here’s how my vacation was, and here’s how things have been since then.

We relaxed!  We vegged out, we cooked, we played games, we enjoyed the porch, we just lazed around.  I needed it.  For weeks before that, I had been getting all these “signs,” in my devotional time, conversations with my husband, silly online quizzes, to take it EASY!  So I finally had the opportunity to do that!

Here’s how I have been able to reallocate my focus for my business and what it has meant for me and my family since then.

Here’s who else has been able to benefit!

My family benefits, for one, and my customers do, too.  They get the best of me, and they learn that they also can access the resources I have put at my fingertips.  Look at it this way.  I went hovering right outside someone’s mouth, waiting for them to get hungry, only to have them push back from the table because they were satisfied, and step away from the table before I noticed they were gone.  Now I serve a plate that stays warm, and put silverware right by the plate, even, trusting people to serve themselves when they’re ready, without me having to stand over them waiting for them to be ready to eat.  Much more mature, huh?  I agree!  😊

Life is short.  It’s so important to see an opportunity to retool your business to work FOR you.  It’s super critical to determine the right time to make systems to support your business so you can live.  Here’s how you know it’s “that time” to build and implement systems!

I mentioned last week how I almost had a “come to Jesus” meeting on the addiction I had to my business, right?  I also talked about deliberate ways I unplugged from my business to try another way to show myself that it was OK to spend time on parts of my life that mattered.

I have to say it didn’t.  I saw signs of this as early as 2014.  In 2013, it was interesting, because I felt very much God spurring me on to work hard and cast a wide net.  And I did.  

However, in 2014 and beyond, I started to feel the weight of the Lord telling me to shift my focus.  The biggest issue with it?  I didn’t change with the directives or the times. Whether hard wired into me or an inability to embrace and work toward change, I just kept putting more heavy work into my business because action yielded a booming business, so why wouldn’t LOTS of action?  

It took me a good seven years to realize I forgot to make a massive shift in the focus of my work, to SCALING it to meet the needs of more people and allow me to learn to work smartly instead of hard.

What did I notice initially that made me want to take this step?

I noticed that I got to the point where I was so physically and emotionally exhausted that ANY work felt like too much! By 2022, I couldn’t lift a finger to support my business without being completely bowled over with exhaustion.  I got tired of laying down for hours and days, too tired to do anything meaningful or productive.  I literally could NOT get out of bed.  I had hit a wall with my business.  And suffice it to say, I’m not proud I got to this point, but I am grateful I chose another way, to save my business, my life, and my family.

What did I try first to change things within my business?

I first tried hiring an assistant.  That worked for a while, but as Bob Kiyosaki talks about, I began to mull over the idea of transforming from a business owner who just gets along, to creating systems.  The next step after this will be leveraging those systems to help others so I can help others succeed, too.

Focus on working smarter not harder.

I remember distinctly thinking one day that an 80-hour work week would yield the same results as 5 hours a week.  I wanted those 75 hours back, so I began identifying systems I could implement, with the help of a business coach.  

I kept falling into the traps of analysis paralysis, all-or-nothing thinking, perfectionism, which obscures the success of 95% work and makes you think that extra 5% is where the hidden money is.  That extra 5% sucks the life out of you!

I started looking for help by paying expensive coaches to help me with mindset.  I also looked to others I thought were successful and had all the answers.  On the screen, I thought they had the life I wanted, so no doubt they had the answers for me too!  I paid for courses that really pushed me to get to work myself (although I didn’t).  For so long I expected there to be a golden ticket outside myself that held all the answers for me. Ultimately, I realized with the help of a strategic business coach that the answers were inside me and I just had to pray and trust my own intuition on what to do.  I also realized I did an outstanding job lying to myself about the real issues plaguing my business, so I had to learn to really dial in and listen and discern what the true issues were.

Other people’s suggestions and solutions were not mine.    I could keep spending hard earned money to find my answers, but ultimately, I had some hard work to do.    There was no avoiding doing the hard work ahead of me.  I also learned that timeless spiritual lessons can truly be applied to every area of my life.  I had learned to serve in my spiritual life, but why would that not be a lesson in all life?  The vast secrets we often long for are the first lessons we ever learned in life.   

What did I finally end up doing?  

I ended up pulling the plug on my former ways and deciding enough is enough.  What I should have done 8 years ago when I first felt led to change my practices is what I ended up doing in the end.  I didn’t always have the info I needed when I first started to discern it was time to change my business practices, but I was wholeheartedly dedicated to seeing that through to completion and implementing those practices in my business.  I think we think sometimes that delayed obedience is disobedience, and I do tell my kids that.  I’m here to tell you there’s mercy if that’s you.  It’s certainly me, and there’s margin and mercy for me, who took a long time to listen. 

I ended up stopping every single practice I had been doing for so long.  I then was able to evaluate each process as it came up.  How beneficial is this right now?  What is my end goal for sharing this information or sending this email?  What is my end goal for scrolling social media?  How will I connect with others?  How do I need to show up right now?  Each practice filters through these questions, then is evaluated for whether it needs to be completed.

I am two weeks into a new month with this new approach, and I am relishing the peace and quiet. We have traveled quite a bit this month for my husband's college homecoming/college visit, so I've needed that extra time and peace of mind.  Now I’m working on the framework I need to be able to serve more people.  So, I’m not starting over where I ended on August 30, but am anticipating serving more people.  How can I show up in the tasks that help people, in a new way, that position me to serve more people?  And how can I do that in such a way that harnesses the peace and prosperity we experienced in abundance in September?

Now I notice a clarity to move forward into my calling of serving others out of a heart of love, including those in my house.  I notice now I want to soak up all this life has to offer, to be present every day leading them in service, as well.  Now I notice that I have only so many sunrises on this side of heaven and my desire is to bask in those in the presence of my Father, knowing I am giving Him my all to everything to which He calls me.  And I recognize He is expanding my territory, and all I need to do is breathe deeply, enjoy the space, and evaluate the situation in front of me.  I need to rest and trust that I will develop that way to achieve more with better focused effort, to reach more, and serve more people as they need it.

The pandemic, with its many days we were at home with nowhere to go, left me days and days of blank canvas on which to paint my ideal day.  For me, it is several cups of coffee on the back porch as the sun went up, with my Bible in my lap and a pen behind my ear.  I just LOVE my mornings with the Lord with the sun on my face.  Then, I roll inside to greet my family and have a beautiful breakfast of peace.  Hubby leaves for work, and the kids and I start on our school.  We read a few books together, and after lunch, we enjoy the afternoon, reading some more, playing the cello, violin, or piano, and then head out for sushi in the evening.  Yes, this really happened recently.  Then we culminated the day with a cult classic, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.”  Didn’t expect me to say that movie?  Ah, you thought about it some, and you agree!  I know, right?  My kids really enjoyed it, and I loved reciting the lines! 

Back when I taught at the Christian school, in 2010-2011, when I was running out of the house every day at 6:45 am, with two tiny kids in tow and half my curriculum still on the bedside table, as I was teaching at a Christian school 30 minutes from my house, I was not enjoying my life.  That was hard, and it was hard on my kids.  I quit the soonest chance I got, which was 8 months after I WANTED to quit.  However, I did need to keep working.  It was a HARD life.

When my son was 3, just a year and a half later, I got introduced to a stellar home-based business with products I adored and knew I’d keep buying.  I decided to go for it.  I’d buy the products anyway!  Why NOT offer these products to my friends?  Why not also introduce them to the concept of also having their own businesses?  The compensation plan was amazing.  Here’s the latest official Income Disclosure Statement.  www.youngliving.com/ids

What happens when you’re wildly successful, but you don’t expect yourself to be?  You end up saddled with the burden of figuring out how to scale when you didn’t even expect you’d get this far. Combine that with several moves as a military wife as well as several geographic separations due to military assignments, and you realize that you NEED to change for your family’s sake and for your own sanity, but you don’t know how to. You struggle for several YEARS, but don’t really identify your problem so you can’t really make changes.

One day, you realize your business owns you rather than the other way around, but you don’t know what to cut.  So, you feel the pressure for a while and think, “if I don’t do it, nobody will!”  Entrepreneurship is in my blood.  My grandfather owned a store, and he was always there.  He didn’t pay employees; he and my grandmother kept that store alive until they weren’t, themselves, and the store promptly closed.  

So, I realize that I’m hard wired to completely throw myself into my business because I’m an entrepreneur.

However, without going into much detail, I stumbled on a matrix I first saw attributed to Bob Kiyosaki, which included the categories, “employee, owner, systems creator, and investor.”  The idea is that as you move through those types of employment situations, you gain freedom.  I was stuck on “owner” forever.  I’ve been working on moving to “systems creator,” and finally, to “investor,” through investing time, love and interest in others intending to grow their own businesses.  

The most glaring signal to me I have been stuck on “owner” as someone who is working when the lights are on is how few movies I’ve watched with my family over the years.  Now, this is no one’s issue but my own. I’ve contributed lots, treated many instances as emergencies, and made myself feel important when people were reaching out asking questions. I also realized that I was not transitioning well enough to systems creator in looking at my budget for paying an assistant to help me.  My assistant budget in 2015 was very similar to what it was in 2022, despite a large team size increase.  Ideally, my systems would have been automated and grown to accommodate the team growth.  Over the years, I missed Thanksgiving dinners, Friday nights, weeknight dinners, walks outside, because someone texted me and I made myself feel like the only answer was to respond.  I didn’t grow with my business; in other words, I didn’t create boundaries around my business and automations that would help people with their products.  I inserted myself as the service rather than the product.  UGH.  Think about that. People bought products and I tried to insert ME as their commodity!

In July 2022, I took a terrifying step.  I confronted my addiction of work. I let my assistant go, at least for the time being, till I could figure out what could be automated, then identify what I could have her do in a systematized fashion for me.  And more so, I stopped doing what I would normally have done for my business.  I am auditing all my practices right now, determining what to delegate, what to automate, what to batch, and what to eliminate.  I unplugged from my former way of operating.  It may seem terrifying to do that, but it was robbing me of life to continue the labor-intensive process I had set up for myself.  

The potential repercussions could have kept me up at night.  Did people think I wasn’t doing my job?  Would I lose business? Would people miss me or think I was taking advantage of a situation?  When I see it presented like this on black and white, I realize that everything I feared was an illusion, and I really owed it to myself and my family to take my family back, and to reorient my business practices to a system so that my time could be used well, people could be served well, and I could get back to living.  How ironic to have a solid income if you have no outlet to enjoy it.

One of the first days I did this was one of the most ironic days in my business to do it!  I unplugged on the last day of August, and the first day of September.  Traditionally, those are the busiest days of my month.  The kids and I went to a sushi restaurant almost immediately after school, and enjoyed green tea, sushi, and sashimi, and mochi.  It was a lovely evening.  Then we capped it off with a home viewing of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.”  My kids loved it!  They asked me about mine and my husband’s romance and wedding, and questions about Greek culture I could only answer because of my time in the Orthodox Church.  It was a marvelous evening, and I didn’t have questions waiting for me in my inbox, as I had conditioned myself to believe, almost to my detriment.

What would your ideal day be?  How does it compare to your typical days?  Take some time to write both scenarios in your journal.  What do you need permission to do and not do?  What is a hard-core priority for you that you need to refocus on and reorder in your day?  I give you permission to reorient that item!  Spend some time talking with your spouse or significant other or praying over this exercise so you can gain clarity on small shifts you can make that will have a monumental impact, as my shifts did.  How soon can you implement this change?

No doubt many of us feel that the last 3 years has been a water slide of change.  Things seem to be constantly changing, and we are left figuring out how to not only keep up but do our best to navigate the BEST way through the change.  How do we prepare for change?