#awinewith Tiffany English
MEET Tiffany
Tiffany is the Founder of Access Offshoring.
Find Tiffany here:
Transcript
Danielle Lewis (00:06):
Tiff, welcome to Spark tv.
Tiffany English (00:08):
Hey girl, how are you?
Danielle Lewis (00:10):
I'm so good. Even better now that we have hit record and we're going to get into all the juicy biz chats.
Tiffany English (00:18):
Can't wait. Thanks for having me. Of
Danielle Lewis (00:20):
Course. Anytime. I feel like it's been so long since we've spoken, so super excited to catch up.
Tiffany English (00:27):
Yeah, agreed.
Danielle Lewis (00:29):
Time's just flying by at the moment. It's just not good. Not good at all. So why don't we start with the way we always start this podcast, which is just who are you and what do you do?
Tiffany English (00:40):
Okay. Tiffany English, I go by Tiff most of the time. I, at the moment are spending most of my time in access offshoring. So we're an offshore recruitment company specializing predominantly in finance roles, but we do a lot of admin accounts, marketing, et cetera. So that's where I'm spending most of my time right now. But I also have a consulting firm that specializes in software implementation and trades and construction, and I've spent most of my career in that business improvement space.
Danielle Lewis (01:08):
Amazing. So obviously running your own business, have you had other businesses in the past? Was there a career? Were you from finance or recruitment? How did we get here?
Tiffany English (01:22):
Wow. How did we get here? This has been quite the journey I did. I went to uni and did a double degree in marketing and pr. I actually started doing accounting and thought I'm way too loud for this classroom, so I swapped, and then I went back and finished accounting.
Danielle Lewis (01:39):
Wow. So you've got lots of study under your belt.
Tiffany English (01:43):
And then I did do an MBA little later as well. So I did all of that pretty much before I was 26. I got all of that under, but I started work really early. I started my first business when I was probably 17, maybe earlier. I mean, if you can count selling sandwiches on the down low in the locker rooms at school. I started early. I count that I started early. That is
Danielle Lewis (02:10):
So funny. I love it. That's like the modern day equivalent to a lemonade stand, right?
Tiffany English (02:15):
Yeah. I bought my own toasty machine and I would bring all bread and I'd actually just toast it and be like, who wants a toaster sandwich for way less than the canteen? It's probably, I made some good money out of that. Oh my God,
Danielle Lewis (02:30):
That's so funny.
Tiffany English (02:31):
That's probably where it started. And then, yeah, I started an events business in Perth for a little while, which was kind of looking back, I was so naive and little. Right. I had a lingerie store in Perth for a couple of years. That's cool. That was cool. Enjoyed that a lot. So we had a shop front. We used to do parties, and then moved to Queensland, moved to Melbourne first, then moved to Queensland and started my consulting firm first, and then it kind of evolved and the offshoring business was next. And who knows.
Danielle Lewis (03:04):
Hang on a second. How did you go from retail lingerie to a software consulting? Good
Tiffany English (03:12):
Question.
Danielle Lewis (03:14):
So I
Tiffany English (03:15):
Was working a lot. So once I finished uni, I started in a door manufacturing company actually. So we did building products predominantly doors. And so I started in there and then I ended up working for a plumbing hydraulics company in a general manager position. And so we implemented software, we hired people. I made myself redundant, and then I basically went through trades businesses as a consultant, but most of the time they would bring me on the books and I would spend 12 to 18 months and I would implement software. And I have a real knack for what's going really slowly in this process. This isn't fast enough. My a DD brain. Oh my God.
Danielle Lewis (03:55):
Who your impatience would be a skillset that you take. Totally.
Tiffany English (03:59):
Totally. And so it kind of started from that. And so when I got to Queensland, I actually worked for Riviera for a while, which was awesome. But I did the same for them, built up their service division, implemented software, and then once I finished my MBA, I thought, well, I've got to recoup some of this money. Maybe I'll go out on my own. So that's kind of how it started. So I loved implementing software. I loved the idea of looking how a business flowed and went, okay, we could actually implement some software to make this far more streamlined. And then the other portion of that was making sure I had the right people to support that. And so the consulting firm still exists. I'm not spending a lot of time in it. I've kind of handed that over. And then the offshoring business is the other side of the fence, which is all about people and making sure we've got the right people to run the team.
Danielle Lewis (04:49):
That's so cool.
Tiffany English (04:51):
Yeah.
Danielle Lewis (04:51):
And have you taken, so your process or your awareness of going, I know what works into a business to make the systems and processes hum. Have you taken those approaches from your consulting business into access offshoring?
Tiffany English (05:07):
Yeah, totally. And I suppose there's two parts. How do we do it internally as a firm? And I'd like to think I'm as good, but I'm way better at doing it for other people's firms than I am our own.
Danielle Lewis (05:17):
That's always the course for every business,
Tiffany English (05:20):
But even for, I'm spending so much time now, particularly with accountants, because I'm going, Hey, how can you actually implement this person? But where do you put them? What makes sense? How are they working? What are the reporting lines? And actually just helping them restructure the way their business flows. And that's probably why we're standing out at the moment in terms of an offshoring firm is because we're going, actually, how do you do this? How do you set this up for success? It's not just, here's a human, let me place them.
Danielle Lewis (05:46):
Yeah, wow.
Tiffany English (05:48):
But yeah, business improvement never stops, right?
Danielle Lewis (05:52):
I wish
Tiffany English (05:54):
It never ends. And then you implement something and you might grow out of it. And then so it's that constant evolve, evolving.
Danielle Lewis (06:03):
How do you approach that? So I'm just thinking, so I always ask selfish questions, but I for it, think about people dialing in who are in the business, who are perhaps at that. Maybe there's that messy middle phase of business when you're trying to get to the next level, you're scaling a little bit. What is your process of actually looking into your own business or looking into somebody else's business and going, that's broken, that's broken, or we want to move to here? Do you have a process or a few questions you ask yourself that help with clarity?
Tiffany English (06:36):
Yeah. One of the biggest things is to look further than where we are right now. And I think that's one of the biggest mistakes is that businesses will implement something that suits them now and they underestimate where they're going. And you can grow out of things much quicker than you ever expect. So I think that's one of the biggest things is, okay, hold on. What does this look like in 12 months or two years or even five years? And then secondly to that, what do we need to succeed? What are the key metrics that the business owner needs to know whether we're ticking all the boxes? And one of the things that I always do is I sit down and get a pen and go, right, let's write out what you're doing. And I sit with frontline staff a lot of the time and go, show me what you're doing and who else could be doing that? And when you actually write out the process of what someone does, which tends to be what they've always done because they don't know any different, yes. You just go, oh my, look at this. It's turned into this huge workflow where if you've got a black text, you don't need half of it.
Danielle Lewis (07:39):
So
Tiffany English (07:39):
It's just breaking it down. What are we doing now? And then actually, what do we need to do? And then once you've got that, you can go, okay, what do we need to solve this?
Danielle Lewis (07:48):
It's really interesting too, because I feel like, and perhaps this is more service-based businesses, but I feel like a lot of times you have staff who say, I'm maxed out, can't do anymore. Too much. Too much. And the business owners freaking out like, I've got to hire more staff, but I don't have the revenue to actually support it. And then they're getting themselves on a bit of a hamster wheel of the more they grow, the more they've got higher. But this seems like a great way to actually try and stop the bleed a
Tiffany English (08:19):
Little bit. Yeah, yeah, totally. And I mean, a lot of business owners, this is actually quite a skill, and I talk about it a lot. It's not something that's taught even at university. The process of system implementation and optimization and business improvement is not something that's discussed or taught very well. And so it's that process of, hold on, what is that staff member doing? And there was actually a nice, inside our firm, I was speaking to one of the people in our accounts team, and I said, all right, let's just do a recap. What are you doing? And I do this regularly. Show me what you're doing. And she's like, oh, I'm pulling this together every week. And I said, how long is that taking you? She's like, oh, about three hours. I was like, I've never once looked at that. Why are doing that? I don't care. Oh,
Danielle Lewis (09:02):
Wow.
Tiffany English (09:02):
And so it's this stuff that you just forget that at one point it made sense, but now it's irrelevant.
Danielle Lewis (09:08):
Yeah, totally. I think it's interesting too, one of the things you said was what is the business metrics that actually matter? And to your point, oh, I don't even look at that report. So that process of actually sitting down and understanding what KPIs, what metrics actually grow the business and show the health of the business, versus you can measure everything. You can measure hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of metrics and use every piece of software to do it. But if you're not just focused on a couple of things, then you're typically just spending a lot of time reporting.
Tiffany English (09:43):
Yep, totally. And it's the same from an offshore perspective. When you start to grow your team, you're like, right, what is my current team doing? Where can I elevate them? Where are they doing grunt work that we don't need them to be doing? And offshoring is a great way to throw in someone obviously really as a cost effective solution and help elevate this person. The other thing, people get overwhelmed by grunt work more so than anything. So if you can remove that with cheaper resources, A that's helpful. But you're also now elevating and building a team of structure and
Danielle Lewis (10:18):
Growth. And like you say, when you elevate somebody who's, especially if they're in a customer facing role, they can be more strategic for that client, a
Tiffany English (10:27):
Hundred percent
Danielle Lewis (10:28):
Retaining, more business growing, more business
Tiffany English (10:31):
Opportunity costs. If they're stuck on entering data, what aren't they doing?
Danielle Lewis (10:37):
I feel like business owners should just do this on themselves.
Tiffany English (10:41):
Oh, totally. And I still, probably once a quarter I'll go, okay, where am I spending all my time? You just forget. And so I'll actually, it's a pain in the butt, but I go through and I spreadsheet it and go, should I be doing that? And it's eye opening.
Danielle Lewis (10:55):
Yes. Yeah. Mine's not a good process. I don't know how to say that. But what I do is whenever I'm doing a job that I hate, that's when I stop myself. I go, okay, I'm bored and I don't think this is actually the best use of my time. And I write it down. So I just have a little brain dump list. Love
Tiffany English (11:16):
It.
Danielle Lewis (11:17):
So it's a feeling for me. I go, this sucks. Okay. I
Tiffany English (11:21):
Probably
Danielle Lewis (11:21):
Shouldn't really miss write that on a list. And then every month or every quarter, I can go to that list and go, okay, who should be doing that? So I do it as I go rather than spending a couple of hours reflecting.
Tiffany English (11:34):
That's a great tactic.
Danielle Lewis (11:36):
Yeah. That's awesome. I guess it depends on your vibe. So question for you. So we've talked about obviously business improvement and how you add value to people's lives, but I'm interested in going from employee inside these organizations to actually doing it for yourself. What was that leap? Did you find it a big leap or did you find that you were already an intrapreneur inside those organizations anyway? Or what was the actual leap like going from employee to business owner for you? Yeah,
Tiffany English (12:12):
It's interesting. So within those roles, I was definitely running the show.
Danielle Lewis (12:17):
Yeah, cool.
Tiffany English (12:18):
I definitely had full ability to make decisions. I definitely treated the money. It was my own, although I must admit, it's much nicer when it's not your own.
Danielle Lewis (12:27):
It's less stressful,
Tiffany English (12:31):
Although it's funny and it's something that I probably take for granted, but I don't have a lot of fear over money. And so that was probably the biggest thing. So I remember the day that I decided this was I wanted to go out on my own, and my grandparents had traveled over from Perth who practically raised me, but my granddad is one of those very typical from that generation where he is safe, secure, get a job, earn your money, make sure you, and so I remember going back to my place and they were there and I said, right, I'm done. I'm going to quit tomorrow. I'm going to go out on my own. Now's the time I finished my master's degree. What's the worst that can happen, right? Grant's like, no, you can't do that. Right. Keep working and start it up on the side.
(13:13):
Because I hadn't even done that, right? It wasn't like a side gig. And I said to him, I said, I can't grant, I'm working 70, 80 hour weeks, right? I said, I physically don't have the time to do this as a side project. And it was getting to the point in that role that I probably was ready to move on to the next project anyway. Someone else could replace what I was doing at that point, basically. And I remember saying to him, I'm highly employable. The worst that's going to happen is I run out of savings and I'm on my own. And so that's what I did. I quit and I was pretty fortunate because I picked up a couple of clients really early on a retainer. So I was kind of secure, but I just did it. And I certainly haven't looked back. I mean, that was February, 2018, so this month is one of the anniversaries. So I think I've always been an entrepreneur at heart if I want to call myself that. I'm always, I dunno about that word a lot of the time, but it was always a no.
Danielle Lewis (14:08):
Yeah, it's kind of a catchall term, isn't
Tiffany English (14:09):
It? Yeah. So yeah, it was always going to happen. Didn't know where it would evolve to, and I can't ever have one thing on at a time, which is annoying in itself, but
Danielle Lewis (14:21):
I hear you. And so was it smooth sailing? I mean, you picked up a couple of clients early on. Has your business journey just been like all sweet? Everything I've learned, I've applied. It's all been good. Have there been any challenges along the way?
Tiffany English (14:40):
Yes, several. Okay. So at the start, it was pretty good. Of course, there were a few weeks that I remember I was talking to my husband the other day who I met about the same time as I started. He goes, you remember? He goes, I remember you saying to me one week, I don't know how I'm going to pay wages in two days. And he goes, but you didn't care. He's like, you had no worry. I was like, yeah, I'll just go find the money, right? Money's London, I'll go find it. It'll be fine. So there was always challenges like that where you're juggling that need to deliver and make sure you've got the cash coming in and all of a sudden you're overseeing so much. But we grew so quickly. I actually hired two full-time staff within the first six weeks. Sure. What? Oh my gosh.
(15:25):
It just happened. And at that point we went, right, we need to pivot because we were doing consulting across every facet of organization. So we ended up pivoting to trades and construction. No way everyone can be across the software systems relevant for every industry. So we pivoted and we did some clever marketing focused on association level. So we were doing one to many versus one-to-one. And we just built trust and built networks really quickly. So the consulting firm grew the biggest challenges with that as with any service industry as staff, because you're having to basically to get yourselves to get me out of income generating, it meant I had to replace myself. We were essentially consultants and hiring consultants and training them in the way that the company has identified as best practice is difficult.
(16:17):
So that's probably been the hardest thing. And for me from that perspective is as I started to step out of that to focus on particularly the offshoring business, I think the hardest challenge for me at that point was that I underestimated how much my visionary and just overall rumbling up of the team, how important that it was. So we actually lost five staff in the space of six months of me walking out. Wow. Holy shit. Yeah. So stressful. Yeah. Well, so you do, you go back in, you build it back up and you go, right, we've got to think through the business was at a point where it didn't operationally need me, but I didn't realize that I held so much of that visionary and pump up. And you really underestimate that as a founder and as the owner. People want that. They want the communication with the owner.
(17:12):
And when you start small and they're talking to you every day and then all of a sudden they're not talking to you at all because you've had to put in hierarchy, you can't have 10 direct reports. That was the biggest challenge for me. So basically that was a huge learning and it was like, right, let's build this with structure initially and actually get to a point where your arms length from team and you're building the culture, but at arms length so that they don't feel like they have to constantly be connected to you to succeed in their role. So that's the hardest part.
Danielle Lewis (17:49):
It is really interesting. I went through something similar with scrunch in the early days where we were super scrappy. Everyone's on the tools and it's fun, fun, fun. We're making it up as we go along. There's not a lot of systems and processes. And I remember it getting to that breaking point of we can't just keep hiring more people, so we have to really get smarter about the way we're working. And it's like everything got serious. And so the fact that we wanted people to report, we wanted people to follow certain processes, we wanted people to be accountable to metrics to make sure that we were improving. We lost staff too. Like this big change. Right?
Tiffany English (18:34):
Totally. Totally. It's just
Danielle Lewis (18:36):
Different than what they're
Tiffany English (18:37):
Used to. It's different. And that's probably, it's such an interesting transition when you go from startup, for lack of a better word, into that, hey, we're actually getting to a point where we're established. There's people that just fall over and it's to be expected.
Danielle Lewis (18:55):
Be
Tiffany English (18:55):
Expected. You don't expect exactly.
Danielle Lewis (19:03):
But you're right though. Then you kind of just come in and go, okay, this is what it's got to look like now at this level of business. And fortunately, the new people that come in now, that's all they know. Totally. So it's okay, things break and then you put them back together in a better way
Tiffany English (19:20):
And it just helps for the next one, right? Access Shor's a little easier. It's a half service based business, but essentially we're placing people. We're almost like a labor hire firm. Can you call that a product when it's people? Sure, sure, sure, sure. Technically we are. Yeah. So it's a little easier in that respect, but you do, you're still at that point where you need all these resources and then you get to a point and you go, alright, now we have growing pains. We're at that point where, crap, we need to change the way we do stuff. This won't sustain us.
Danielle Lewis (19:55):
Yeah. It's really interesting, isn't it? I think oftentimes when you start a business, you think if I just run, run, run, run, at some point I'll hit all of these amazing milestones and I'll be able to relax. But it's just like every milestone you hit, everything breaks and you've got to start again.
Tiffany English (20:12):
But that's the joy of it, right? To an extent, absolutely. And for those that want to go on this path, that's the fun of it if you can see it like that. But you do definitely need to find the balance. You and I have felt it. You've got to watch out for you. It's relentless. Yeah, true.
Danielle Lewis (20:30):
It is. So how do you look out for you? What's me strategy?
Tiffany English (20:35):
I've had a lot. So I hit a bit of a health issue last year, and that really threw me into gear significantly. I went from high performing a hundred hour weeks without a question with two kids, and I sit on charity boards and I literally didn't stop very happily though. I loved it. I was like, yes, yes. Run. Loved that. Drive under pressure, loved, loved the complexity of it. And then my body went, I don't enough, and threw me on my ass for months. And so when you go, do you want to say what happened? Yeah. I got mold poisoning, which caused swelling on my brain, and it started off with neurological pain down the right side of my body. And then it basically just went into all these neurological issues, poor processing, poor memory, couldn't remember anything at all. Chronic fatigue, chronic anxiety. I basically went from doing a hundred hour weeks to barely being able to do an hour a day.
Danielle Lewis (21:38):
Holy shit.
Tiffany English (21:40):
Okay.
Danielle Lewis (21:41):
That must have been so mentally frustrating to just know what you're capable of and then have your body go. Not interested.
Tiffany English (21:49):
I felt like my IQ dropped. Annie, literally, I felt like I'd turned dumb. What? It was like a kick in the face. And obviously at that point my body was, while I thought I was high performing, my body was obviously exhausted. And so I got sick because my body was already burnt out. So very much acknowledged that went through a few months of feeling sorry for myself as you would expect, and then went, right, I've just got to A heal, but B, work out what life means for me now. What if I can only ever do an hour a day?
(22:36):
And so I started thinking like that. So I really just started shifting like, okay, if I've got an now, what is absolutely the only thing I can do today? And if I got anything more than that, great. That was a bonus. And so for me it was really like, okay, I've got a protect my mornings. I used to train heavily. I was super feared, so that wasn't necessarily losing. But I think just from it, I wasn't mentally resting. Even when I was at the gym, I was listening to audio books constantly and I was doing high intensity training. And so everything I did was on overdrive. And so it's just helped me to slow down, definitely be more present and just put more structure around my life and go, Hey, these are the things that are important to me. And I found it really has changed the way that I work. And I'm really intentional about what it is that I'm doing. And there are still days where I'm, I'm now back to doing a full workday, which is great, but there's days where I'm like, oh shit, it's frantic and that's fine. But for the most part I'm far more intentional.
Danielle Lewis (23:44):
Wow. That's such a huge process. And it's really, I mean, I know there's going to be so many people actually listening in going, oh, I think I'm at that burnout point. But it's so easy for people to ignore early signs. You
Tiffany English (24:01):
Can't.
Danielle Lewis (24:03):
Yeah. And that's, you can't a message, right? If you just keep ignoring at some point your body, your mind life, something will kick you in the ass.
Tiffany English (24:12):
Yeah, it will. It will. Absolutely. And that's what happened to me. No doubt. I was getting warning, I was getting a chest infection every two months and my body was seriously slow down. But it will, it'll throw you. And I think one of the things I've done is I've not working emails on my phone this year. And do you know what my God, no one's died. There's been Stop it. Stop it. Nothing's blown up. Nothing's caught fire.
Danielle Lewis (24:37):
Oh, that's hilarious.
Tiffany English (24:38):
And I just go, do you know what? It just becomes a habit where you are constantly engaged and turned on by this device where you get, I was getting 350 average notifications a day, not including emails. And I'm like, okay, this is ludicrous. How can I perform like this? And so a simple thing, I'm just not doing that anymore. I'm not having emails on my phone if someone needs to contact me and pick up the phone and call me. Otherwise I'll check my emails twice a day. Yeah.
Danielle Lewis (25:02):
Wow.
Tiffany English (25:02):
And it's okay.
Danielle Lewis (25:04):
Yeah, you're so right. And it's kind of like what I find too is so I'm a habitual check my email on my phone person. But what I catch myself with is it's like you are in this constant expectation either please let something amazing happen. Let a huge sale come in or whatever. Or you're in this holy shit, I hope nothing's on fire.
Tiffany English (25:28):
And it's like this
Danielle Lewis (25:29):
Stress, this constant stress you hold in your body attached to this device that you're going and checking and checking and checking is like, okay, nothing. Okay, nothing. It's like,
Tiffany English (25:39):
That's so right. Waste
Danielle Lewis (25:40):
Of time.
Tiffany English (25:41):
It's the dopamine here, right? It's just tech. It's no different to scrolling to try and find something to solve the world problems. So it's been a big game changer for me. And I think it's just a matter of, hey, just slow down and really think about it. There's things that you're probably doing in your workday that if you didn't do, it doesn't matter. It fucking doesn't matter. Sorry to swore. You might have to edit that out.
Danielle Lewis (26:07):
No, this is a total sweary podcast. Don't. Sorry.
Tiffany English (26:11):
Yeah. I just think it's just being, just be intentional and I'm certainly no expert at it, but it's certainly taught me a lot.
Danielle Lewis (26:18):
Yeah.
(26:20):
How have you, it's good to say to people, be intentional. And I think on the surface, everyone very quickly can look at their, to-do list and go, okay, those are the things that are going to move the needle. But is there anything that you, I guess any advice on being intentional if you reflect on what's really worked to grow your business or what's worked to get the most out of your people, have there been key themes of things that you as a business owner had to prioritize to be intentional about making sure your business is a success
Tiffany English (26:57):
Goal? Planning is huge for me. So I block out and do 12 week planning. I don't do annual planning. I do 12 weeks because it is too much for me. I'm looking at them now. So I sit down and I go, right, what am I doing for the next 12 weeks? What are the things? And I actually break them down into my values.
Danielle Lewis (27:16):
Cool. Yes.
Tiffany English (27:17):
Keep going,
Danielle Lewis (27:18):
Enlightened.
Tiffany English (27:20):
That's how I go. So my core values are growth, freedom, connection, health. They're the things that are the most important to me. And so I break 'em down and I go, right for me to grow or for my businesses to grow, what are the core things that need to be done in the next 12 weeks for me to continue having freedom? And it might be financial freedom, it might be freedom to do what I want when I want. Then what does that look like? And so I go through and I actually break it down like that. And I've always got, I know what the future holds kind of thing or what I want it to hold. And then on a Sunday I sit down and I review those and I go, what do I need to do this week? And what did I do last week?
Danielle Lewis (27:55):
Yeah,
Tiffany English (27:56):
Wow. But one of the biggest things, and this is where I think people often go wrong and fall over with goal setting, is don't overpromise or over commit to yourself. Look at your schedule. If you've got five days of back-to-back meetings, the likelihood of you ticking off seven goals in a week is impossible. So then people get deflated and go, oh, screw this. Fucking, this sucks. So I intentionally look at my week first and go, okay, next week I'm traveling to Perth. There's probably going to be one goal on my list because I know I'm in Perth, I know I'm in back to backs. I just physically can't fit it in. So why apply the pressure to myself if I can't do it? So I think that's one of the biggest things.
Danielle Lewis (28:40):
You're so right. We've got to remember that life changes, like work life ebbs and flows some weeks, right? Literally the last three days I've been in back to backs got nothing done. But you can't beat yourself up. You got to go, okay, I know Friday's my clear day. That's when I'll do X, Y, z. You've got to remember that there's not just five free days of
Tiffany English (29:01):
Just working towards
Danielle Lewis (29:03):
Those goals.
Tiffany English (29:03):
Totally. Right? So that's probably one of the biggest things. And the other thing for me, I don't know necessarily, but we, in terms of size, sizes of business, but when we hit five or six people, probably, we implemented, I think I might've told you about, we implemented Traction. So Traction is Jenna Wickman wrote it. It's just this book and it's a really practical book around how to set up company goals and how to sit with your team and how to structure your meetings. So we set up that and that was the only thing that got us through.
Danielle Lewis (29:37):
Cool.
Tiffany English (29:38):
So that highly recommend. Yeah, highly recommend book. So that was what was kind of important to us and that was what gets us through. And I have personal goals on there too, just as important. Right? Definitely.
Danielle Lewis (29:51):
Definitely. There's got to be a balance.
Tiffany English (29:54):
And some weeks I'm a better mom than I am business owner and other weeks I'm killing it at both other weeks. I'm not killing it at it either. I'm just going doing my best. Absolutely.
Danielle Lewis (30:04):
That's all we can bloody ask sometimes doing
Tiffany English (30:06):
My best, but just spend and make it something nice. I take myself to a cafe or I go sit somewhere and I make that reflection of your week. And be honest with yourself. Did I do it well or didn't I? And if you didn't, that's okay, but look at how, and I think you just need that level of discipline. If you want to achieve cool stuff.
Danielle Lewis (30:28):
And I do love your, don't set yourself up for failure, actually reflect on what time you have.
Tiffany English (30:34):
Look at the calendar. Yeah. Yeah. I love that.
Danielle Lewis (30:36):
I love that. I make sure with mine, mine is so big and lofty, I go stop. I actually say stop looking at that big goal and look at all of the steps. So I chunk it down and I'm like, if you don't go through each one of these steps, that big goal won't happen. But
Tiffany English (30:50):
Sometimes
Danielle Lewis (30:51):
Just looking at that big goal, you're like, haven't hit it, haven't hit it, haven't hit it. Instead of going, oh, I made progress. What are the
Tiffany English (30:56):
Milestones? Yeah, yes, milestones. And I dunno about you, but I hit a goal and I've moved on. There's no rewarding. I'm like, what was that a goal? I can't even remember.
Danielle Lewis (31:09):
I have just decided I'm constantly drinking champagne for something I've forgotten to reward myself more.
Tiffany English (31:16):
That's what it's all about. That's why business isn't easy, but it's enjoyable to connect yourself with the right people and it's enjoyable. The part that I love the most is that I can give people so many opportunities.
Danielle Lewis (31:30):
So I'm going to just leave you with one last question.
Tiffany English (31:33):
Okay.
Danielle Lewis (31:35):
So reflecting on your time in business, any just standout piece of advice you would give to women in business who are in the thick of it right now? Anything that's kind of, I know we've talked about a lot of different tips and tactics today, but has there been anything, any kind of north star for you that's helped get you through the tough days?
Tiffany English (32:03):
I often tell myself, you've already gone through so much pain, so why stop now? Right. It's so much closer than you were yesterday. But I don't think if that's very encouraging. I dunno if its love that a good mindset to have, right? Why give up when you've already killed yourself a few times? Look, I think everything is possible. Absolutely. And I think is possible and it comes down to what you're willing to put in. But everything comes. Don't spend so much time stressing about it. Enjoy the process. It's so much easier to just be stressed and constantly on edge. But I don't think that's a nice life necessarily. So just enjoy it. I do not believe in work-life balance. I just believe in do what needs to be done at the time. Yeah, I think just enjoy it.
Danielle Lewis (33:04):
I love it. What better way to end a podcast. You are amazing, TIFF, thank you
Tiffany English (33:10):
So much. Thanks girl for
Danielle Lewis (33:11):
Spending your time with the Spark community. You are awesome.
Tiffany English (33:14):
Thanks for, and now we've got a dog barking says, working from home timing.
Danielle Lewis (33:21):
I love that.
