“I need to show (my daughters) that whatever they want to create, they can. They can create a life that is filled with wealth; wealth of time, wealth of health, wealth of money, wealth of leisure, wealth of pleasure.”
Laetitia Andrac
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Like most parents who run a business, I often feel utterly overwhelmed. I struggle with competing priorities, and in the past, I’ve pushed myself way too hard.
I shared my story of near burnout in the book, and I’ve talked about it on the podcast before. I didn’t fully reach burnout but I definitely saw rock bottom.
Sometimes you have to amp up the self-care, adjust your working habits, or change tracks altogether.
Today’s guest not only came back from burnout, but now coaches other small business owners on how to recognise the signs and avoid it.
Tune in to learn:
- How Laetitia dealt with her burnout, and the life changes she made as a result
- Why she moved away from her managerial position to start building her own business.
- How to prevent yourself from burning out with micro-moments
- How Laetitia uses public accountability and the Pomodoro technique to be more productive
- Why Laetitia is driven by three key values: empowering women, sustainability and giving back to community.
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“Such a helpful, no-nonsense book. Kate explains how to do stuff in a realistic way that makes sense.”
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About Laetitia Andrac
Fun fact: Laetitia flew on a plane for the first time at age 21 to go to India. She had a panic attack so she was transferred in Business Class. When she felt better, she was sent back to economy and has never traveled in Business class since.
Connect with Laetitia Andrac
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Transcript
6FISH Pod – Laetitia Andrac
Kate Toon: Like most parents who run a business, I often feel utterly overwhelmed. I struggle with competing priorities, and in the past, I pushed myself way too hard. I shared my story of near burnout in the book. I’ve talked about it on the podcast before. I didn’t fully reach burnout, but I definitely saw rock bottom.
Sometimes you have to amp up the self-care, adjust your working habits. or change tracks altogether. Today’s guest not only came back from burnout, but now coaches other small business owners on how to recognize the signs and how to avoid it.
Hello, my name is Kate Toon. I’m the founder of Stay Tooned, a busy business owner and an okayish parent.
And today I’m talking with Laetitia Andrac. Hello, Laetitia. I had to say your name like that. I’m sorry.
Laetitia Andrac: Hello Kate, thank you so much for having me.
Kate Toon: Oh, it’s very exciting. I’ve just been on your fabulous podcast, so we’re doing a bit of a pod swap, a bit of an energy swap, which is lovely. Let me tell you all about Laetitia.
Laetitia is an energetics and strategy business mentor, aka a business doula. Oh, I like that. She’s the founder of Essential Shift. I have to put my teeth in. Essential Shift, consulting. Pty limited, a number one bestselling author of ‘Light It – How to Trust Your Intuition and Build a Thriving Business’ with over 15 years of strategy consulting, startup mentoring, and corporate leadership experience.
Laetitia has led many successful growth and innovative programs in many high caliber organizations, including Telstra, Deloitte, Dublin, Capgemini, Bloomberg, philanthropies, and the French government. Good grief. Her passion is to bring a sense of the sacred and the intentionality to everyday life. She is a mother of two girls and lives in Cronulla.
Fun fact! Laetitia flew on a plane for the first time at age 21 to go to India. She had a panic attack. So was transferred to business class. She felt better and was sent back to economy and has never traveled business class since. That’s a great story. I might try and have a panic attack. Oh that’s not funny, I shouldn’t say that. I’d love to go business. Was it, was it sexy?
Laetitia Andrac: It was amazing. So it was the first time I was flying at 21. And I know when I say that people are like, Oh my goodness. And for my daughter, they flew for the first time when they were six weeks old to visit the family in France. But for me, I was 21 and I had this moment of realization because as I do a lot of things intuitively, I’m just like, I’m going to go to India and do this internship in India.
I had never been to India, never been outside of Europe, never flew. I had moments of realization when I was in the middle of the cloud being like, Oh my gosh, what am I doing? And I couldn’t breathe. First time that I had a panic attack in my entire life, never had any since. And so the lady close to me, a beautiful crone woman, you know, her 70 was like, we need like, we need to help her breathe.
So she called the, you know, the, the attendant staff and the came and was like, okay, we’re going to transfer her to business class. And then I was in business. I was like, I could fly like this for 20 hours, never been able to fly business since.
Kate Toon: I know. Well, that’s, it’s, you know, not dissimilar for me, like I never left England, you know, we went on holiday to Wales every year.
And I think we had one exotic holiday to Jersey, which as you’ll know, is in between England and France. It’s like France, England cross over. Very nice. And that felt very exotic. My son has traveled to like 25 countries already and he’s like 14. It’s revolting. It’s a different world. And I have only flown business class once, uh, recently on a trip back from Europe.
And I have to say it made no. It was comfy and it was nice, but I didn’t sleep. So I was like, I’m not going to pay this much money and still feel like crap at the end of it. So not doing it again. You know, it’s one of those things we were just talking on your podcast about all of this. I also have to caveat.
Laetitia just called a 70 year old woman a crone, uh, and I was a bit shocked by that phrase. Tell us what you mean by crone before we dig into the episode.
Laetitia Andrac: Sure. So you have four phases in your life. So you have the maiden phase, which is when you don’t have kids yet, or even when you are before 25, then you have the mother phase.
And even if you don’t bear children or you’re not a mother, you’re still embracing this mother phase through a creative project and so on, which is between. you’re 25 and you’re 40 years old, 45 years old, and then when you enter perimenopause, menopause, you enter the maga phase of your life, and then when you approach your 70s, 75, you enter the crone phase of your life, which is this beautiful phase of sagessence, when you’re very wise and sharing your wisdom with everyone around you.
Kate Toon: I love it. I mean, it’s not the most flattering term, but so we’ll go with sagessence, which sounds like a kind of vaginal cream, uh, to be honest, but I’ve got cheaper suggestions. I’m going to try it out, but, um, I love this. Laetitia and I, we’ve just been on a pod and we met at her book launch for her book, Light It.
And, um, I said to her, you know, I’m really cynical and I’m very unwoo woo, but I don’t know. I just did a podcast with you. And by the end of it, I felt very much more woo. So be careful. By the end of this podcast, the woo is going to have worn off and you’re going to be, uh, much more woo woo. Let’s get into the episode.
So, you mentioned that you’ve got two children and you live in Cronulla. Uh, do you have a partner? How old are your kids? Like, what’s your family? Just give us a little bit of family stuff. You don’t need to tell us all your secrets, but like, what’s the family setup?
Laetitia Andrac: Sure. So we have two daughters, one is five, one is seven.
So Lou and Zoe, which you met at my book launch.
Kate Toon: I did, very cute.
Laetitia Andrac: Because I love to involve them and for them to see the business, they pack my books. So it’s like they’re really involved in my business. My partner is called Johan, he’s French as well. And we both moved to Sydney 10 years ago now after my burnout, which we may cover in this podcast.
And we initially moved because we’re like, we just need to change our environment. Let me know what you Because our habits will not suffice for me not to burn out again, being a neurodivergent woman, and always about doing more, more, more, more, more. I knew in the setup we had in Paris, I will never be able to step away from the hamster wheel.
So we changed literally our entire life, packed everything, rented our apartment in Paris and moved to Sydney. When it was initially just for two years to kind of explore the world and be in a different place. And at that time I didn’t want to have kids. I was like not having kids. It’s not my jam. I’m just loving life.
I’m not going to be a mother. And then I arrived in Australia and I don’t know something took over and we decided to have kids after living one year here. And our setup is just the two of us basically. And, um, juggling our kids. And I want to be very present with my daughters. My parents were very present parents.
They didn’t have any career. I grew up in a very humble family. Um, not poor, but very helped by the French government’s, uh, subsidy to go through my study. Very grateful for that. So I come from a family where we had very humble life and I was like, this is what I want. I want to be. A humble, beautiful life where I can spend time with my daughter, drop them off to school.
Like I did this morning and picking them up for school, but I also involve them a lot in my day to day in my business, because I don’t want them to think that I’m just chilling. I’m actually, you know, having a business to run. So that’s my setup and my husband and I, we are a great team he’s awesome. It’s not an absent partner is really participating in many of the, you know, our lives. This morning he made the lunchbox before heading to work and he’s often on lunchbox duty because I hate it.
Kate Toon: What does he do? Does he have a proper job?
Laetitia Andrac: Yeah, he’s a general manager at WooliesX, so he has a very high demanding job.
Kate Toon: Does he have to wear a tie and a suit?
Laetitia Andrac: Yes.
Kate Toon: Oh, there we go. Oh, poor man. Uh, well, that sounds great. There’s a few things I want to pick up on there. A, I just want you to say hamster wheel again, because it sounded so beautiful. Uh, and, uh, you know, you talk about a humble life and we were talking about this on your podcast. I mean, gosh, if there’s one thing the French government is great at, it’s kind of benefits and helping its people.
Do you know what I mean? I think probably only second to like Norway and Sweden in terms of how. Much it supports working parents and all of that, and obviously Australia isn’t quite as good as that, but a lot better than a lot of countries, but I like this concept of a humble life, and I guess that’s not necessarily about, you know, wearing hessian sacks and, and, you know, eating organic food.
It’s about, creating that balance between the desire for income and money and things and how that challenges your desire for family life. And this is what I talk about in the book, you know, it is always a balance and not a balance, but it is a, there’s always an exchange. You can earn seven figures, eight figures, nine figures, but at what cost?
And are you happy to pay that price? Is that something you’ve accepted in this, this new version of you?
Laetitia Andrac: Definitely. So when we left France and moved to Australia, I wanted to create my business, but I didn’t back myself. So it was 10 years ago. And I actually, after six months of, recovering from my burnout and looking after myself and doing on a soul searching journey, I decided to go back to working for the big man and working for Telstra as a general manager in Telstra.
And that’s when with my husband, we’re both general manager in high demanding job and COVID hit and we had two daughters at the time, we’re very young. And I saw myself going down the rabbit hole of burnout. And that’s when I was like, I want to step away from that. And we actually don’t need that much money.
We’re living in a very fancy apartment overlooking Tamarama, the Arbor and Bondi beach. It was like all this. So am I happy? No, I’m just, talk to my laptop. I have to reply to the CEO. I have to do this. I have to do that. I have to serve this hundred people team. I don’t want that anymore. It’s time for me to be selfish and step away from this very, very rewarding job in terms of the satisfaction, the ego, the money I was making all of that, but I was not fulfilled.
So I was like, I’m going to go back to burnout. I need to step away and grow my own thing on my own term and going after my own vision.
Kate Toon: That’s very inspiring. I love that. Um, you know, and it’s a brave decision and some people don’t have that realization until much later in life. And then there’s a lot less of life to enjoy truly doing what they want to do and what feels right for them.
So you mentioned, you know, that you wanted to be a very present parent. Have you thought about what your parenting style is? In my book, I, you know, I use Bauman’s grid of, you know, responsiveness and you know, and they’ve got the authoritarian parent and the, and the, you know, the disassociated parent, to be honest, where do you feel you sit in that?
Do you think, do you have a label that you think fits you? Are you a helicopter, are you a tiger mom? What do you think you are?
Laetitia Andrac: So I think with my husband, we like to speak about positive parenting. So the way we try and raise our children is really through the lens of positive parenting. So we made a choice When I had this moment of realizations that I needed to step away from the hamster wheel, step away from Telstra, go on my own and launch my own business.
The catalyst was a friend of us, a dying of cancer in six weeks. And he was very young and he used to work with me in strategy consulting. And he was a catalyst for this book that I wrote, light it and all that. So we had a moment of let’s change our whole life. And so that’s what we did. And we decided to move our girls to a Manchester.
Montessori school because one of our girl is autistic and we needed to have a space for her to thrive and not fit in the box and all those kind of things. So we shifted our entire lifestyle, moved our family from Bondi to Cronulla, which I know for many people is like, it’s not a big shift for us. It is Bondi.
We had all our community. We had been living in Bondi for seven years. We had our support network and so on, but we shifted everything to, to Cronulla because we had space for the Montessori school, which the Bondi one didn’t have space for them. We could afford a house, which we couldn’t afford in Bondi because a house in Bondi is over five mil.
We didn’t have that kind of money. We could, if we borrowed across like 30 years and it scares me to death, the interest rate variable in Australia, but that’s a story for another day in France, it’s fixed. So for me, it was like, uh, so we decided to move to Cronulla and change our whole life. And this was driven by being.
Positive parent for Zoe. We needed special way, special needs, and we are really. prioritizing our kids above anything else. If I have to choose, do I show up for this podcast with Kate or do, or Zoe needs me at school, I will choose Zoe in a heartbeat, even though I love you.
Kate Toon: I’m very offended and appalled by that.
No, I love it. So I did similar, like when I used to work in big agencies and when I got pregnant with my son, we left. Sydney, we moved to the central coast, which is a big, much bigger move than Bondi to Cronulla. It’s like moving. People have said, Oh, it’s Mount Druitt by the sea and not, if you don’t know where Mount Druitt is, um, I’ll, I’ll leave that with you.
But people were like, Oh God, you don’t want to live there. You know? And back then there wasn’t much going on. Now it’s a really thriving, amazing community and I wouldn’t live anywhere else. I hope to be here till I die. But it was a big shift and we left behind all the. fun and delight of living in Leichardt and having all the cinemas and everything.
It’s a big shift, but again, it was, I can’t live the life I want here because the financial demands are going to force me to do things I don’t want to have to do. Um, and I don’t regret it. you know, do I do school canteen? Absolutely not. I can’t think of anything worse, but I do pick my son up and, and, uh, drop him off.
Not now he’s 14. He wouldn’t want to be seen dead with me, but I did when he loved me, uh, back when he was little. Um, so your parenting style is present. Positive affirmation, making space for your kids to kind of be who they are and accommodating that rather than forcing them into little boxes. How does that reflect on your business style?
Because I often find the kind of parent you are is the kind of business owner you are. Well, how do you go with your business style? I bet you’re going to tell me it’s kind of flowy and intuitive. This seems to be the words. What, how, how are you as a business owner?
Laetitia Andrac: So my clients call me a caring bully. So
Kate Toon: I love that
Laetitia Andrac: I think I am a bit of a caring bully with my daughter as well. There is a touch of authoritarian. I’m still French. And, uh, there’s still a touch of structure, right? So I think my business is really as my parenting style, which is. Flowy, positive and caring and understanding and all of that and intuitive.
But I’m a strategist at heart, so we need to fucking have a strategy. We need to know where we’re going. What’s the vision we’re aiming for? But it starts with you. What is your own vision? Where are you going? What do you want to achieve? And not because Someone else has told you that this is what success looks like, which has been my journey until I burnt out in my thirties.
So my, you know, all my twenties has been a journey of pleasing everyone else due to my, you know, IQ and the power I had and how I was called a stack cannabist when I was working in strategy consulting. And you give Laetitia as much as you know, you want, she will always fucking deliver on it. Now I’m not that person.
I’m not here to please everyone. So there is this part of me, which is really caring and understanding, but there is a part of me, which is, what are you doing? You said you wanted to do that. Where is that? So same in my leadership style with my team. They know that. Um, all about delegation and, you know, letting them be creative and so on, but it needs to fit in the strategy.
We need to make sure that we have some riverbank and then the river can flow. Otherwise we are overflowing or it’s dried. So we need to have the riverbank.
Kate Toon: I love it. Caring Bully, I think it’s fantastic. I would be leading with that. I would have t shirts with Caring Bully on them. I think that’s such a good merger.
I like that. I mean, I, making me reflect on my style because yes, I. I’m creative and silly and fun and full of ideas, but I do have boundaries and I do want to get things done. And there is a to do list and yeah, interesting, interesting. Um, now you told us a little bit about your business, but how big is it?
Do you work from home? Do you employ people? Tell us a little bit about your structure.
Laetitia Andrac: Definitely. So my business is called Essential Consulting. So I am the primary face of my business. In saying that I have three main team members, so I have an VA EA that works for me and do all the things that I don’t know how to do.
So as I’ve been a leader very quickly in my career, I’m just so bad at operations and doing the tiny thing. I’m just like so bored, bored to death, which has been very hard in my book journey. You know, when you have the editor coming with feedback, I was like, please, can someone take it? For me, no, ah, this is my book.
I need to do everything. Yeah. So, um, so yeah, I’m bad with details. So I have this EIVA who worked with me. She started from the get go. So as I started creating essential shift when I was still a general manager in Telstra, it was my exit plan. So I moved to four days a week in Telstra and started working one day a week on my business, disclosing it to Telstra.
Everything was, so if anyone is doing that, please disclose it to your employer. So I was very clear with them working one day on my business. So quickly, I had straight away hired an EIVA and a content marketer because I knew that content strategy marketing was really something that was not my forte. I am a strategist.
I am a visionary. I am great at giving ideas. I am a business doula, but I am not I’m not a marketing expert, SEO expert, copywriter, and English is not my native language. So straight away I hired, um, Maria who has been working with me from the beginning of Essential Shift, from the incubation, and both of them, Sheila and Maria, have been with me from the beginning.
I am all about empowering them, training them. I offer them trainings around different topics, you know, sales, copywriting, SEO, ads, and Whatever they need to train on campaign marketing when they need to take on your work. So those are my full time, like the two that are really in the core business. And last year I decided to hire an operation manager.
So dealing with everything back ends from my online courses, but also when I facilitate retreat and workshop, because I’m so shit at organizing those tiny detail, you know, it’s like everyone arises like, do you have coffee? No, I don’t. Gosh, go to Leanne. So Leanne now does all of this for me. So it’s a very simple and small team.
And then on an ad hoc basis, I love to hire experts. So when I launched my book, I had a publicist working with me when I am like, okay, I want to really expand on this new area of my business. Um, I will hire someone to review my website and redo my website for me. Things like that. So I love to hire people on expertise base.
And then I have a few bots working with me. So I used to lead AI in Telstra and commercialization around data and so on. So I’ve been immersing myself in working with data scientists, data engineer, and so on for quite some time. So as soon as Generative AI was out. I was like geeking out and creating bots.
So I have a few bots working for me in the back end, which are helping me in many simple tasks and, you know, doing what a junior would do, um, in strategy consulting. So starting to mesh through things and then I add my own spin on it. So don’t delegate to AI, you are the boss and you are the CEO of your business.
So use AI as a junior in your team. Is how I run my team. Very, very simple lean in terms of how much I generated. I’m very transparent with that. Last year in the business, we generated around 380k, not around 380k and I’m huge on paying myself well, because I used to be a general manager in Telstra. So last year I pay myself.
185, 000. And I decided to buy a Tesla as well with my account. I’m huge on profits with my business. Sorry. I’m huge on the profit first principle. And, um, I’ve been to my dinner in Sydney, which I know you miss so sad. I didn’t see you there, but it’s all about making sure that my business generate profits first.
Then I pay myself and then I look at the investment I make in my business.
Kate Toon: Hello, Kate Toon here, interrupting my own podcast to remind you to go and grab your copy of Six Figures in School Hours, how to run a successful business and still be a good parent. The book is available on Amazon, Booktopia and at all good booksellers, as well as on my website at SixFiguresInSchoolHours.com. It’s packed with doable. Practical tips to help you feel more productive, make serious money, and never feel like the worst parent ever again.
So look, I think that’s great. And you’re very much in my mindset of being very clear on what you’re good at and where you need support and, you know, bringing people in as you need them for as many hours as you need them.
I only have one full time employee. The rest are all just hours here and there, you know, and, and that works really well for me. I can dial it up. I can dial it down. Um, thank you for being so honest about your finances. That’s my final question. So you’ve ruined my last question, but I love it. It’s like, do you earn six figures in school hours?
And you do. And I love you paying yourself so well and the Profit First mentality. Love that. I’m all over that. Uh, so you’ve, you’ve ticked off about five of my questions there, which is fantastic. No, it’s great. It’s great. Okay. Um, let’s talk about. that burnout that we talked about and obviously that was your big driver to move here from Paris and then you nearly sniffed burnout again at Telstra.
How now as a parent running your business do you avoid it? How do you recognize it and avoid it? Because I’m sure you still have moments of manicness where you’re like, I’m just so into this. I’m going to go, go, go. And then you’re like, Oh, hang on. I’ve not slept and I’ve not eaten. And I’ve not been to the loo for five hours.
Hang on. How do you stop yourself from burning out again? I guess.
Laetitia Andrac: Yes. And so just for anyone who is listening to this, know that if you hit burnout once, you’re more likely to hit burnout very quickly again. It’s unfortunately, you’ve You know, run on adrenal fatigue for quite some time that even if you take time away and you rebuild your adrenal fatigue and you’re just like, I’m all good.
Now you will hit burnout more likely in the long run. So am I burn out now? I am not because I just enjoyed 10 weeks off. I had the eight weeks of school holiday Montessori school, longest school holiday. And my brother surprised me for my 40 years and came all the way from me. So it’s like my second day working and we are the 15th of them and I have a lot to catch on if I want to make sure I can pay everyone paying myself and grow my business and serve my community.
So I’m not after making, you know. 10 million in my business, even though I could by having little consultant working with me. I know how to run and grow consultancy, but that’s not what I’m interested in. So it’s like being clear about what I want to do and how I prioritize my time. So do I, how do I prevent myself from hitting burnout?
It’s really mindful micro moments every day. Every day I weave into my day moment of deep presence, deep connection with nature, going barefoot in my gardens. So for instance, we had a break between your podcast and my podcast. I grab a glass of water and I went barefoot in my garden, took a few deep breaths, looked at the sky, look at the leaves, connect with nature, the sound of nature, the weather, all those kind of simple things. It doesn’t require you to go for, you know, a very five star spa and just be like, it’s a self care ritual. We don’t need that. It can be as simple as listening to the water boiling or lighting a candle or incense.
So I’m all about those micro moments. which connects me within and I’m like, how am I feeling? Am I feeling tired? Am I feeling run down? Am I feeling inspired? So it’s this daily micro moments, which keeps me awake and away from burnout. So, and then know that there is a research paper, which has been published by Dr.
I did in Erica with a physician at Harvard Medical School. And she said that 70 per cent of individuals exhibit at least one symptom of burnout. In our society, more and more people are facing burnout because it’s not just business burnout, it’s parenting burnout. It’s looking after an elderly parent burnout, after a kid with special needs, which I will know is my daughter.
It’s like different moments of burnout we will face. What’s important is going back to self. And going back to those micro moments of presence, which nourish you, nurture you and give back to yourself the energies that you gave away. So for me, a daily yoga nidra is something I do. A yoga 20 minutes deep meditation that you do lying down.
Very often I fall asleep, even though you’re not supposed to. But those 20 minutes equals six hours sleep. Both my daughters are not yet sleeping through the night. They’re five and seven. But still. One of them is officially diagnosed with neurodiversity. She’s highly anxious. She needs us at night. She needs cuddle and so on and so forth.
And being, as I said, a caring bully, but a present parent, I am really hugging her at night and I’m with her. So it means non interrupted sleep is not really happening often to me.
Kate Toon: Yeah, wow. That’s a lot. I think, um, you know, I think back to when my kids were that age and I think the primary thing that I missed out on was the sleep years and years of miles, you know, several years of really bad sleep deprivation, but years and years of just disrupted sleep.
And I think that. ages us and has such an impact on our health, wellness, everything, you know, like it all starts for me with sleep. I think sleep’s massively important. There’s a great book about, we talked about books on your podcast, a great book about sleep and the whole process and you know, dreams and everything.
Um, Richard, somebody or other. Anyway, I, I, again, I, I agree with you. I like your idea, micro moments and literally just having a, little post it that says, how am I feeling? You know, sometimes I realize I don’t think I’ve breathed properly for an hour or so. I used our little break to go and have a wee, which doesn’t sound like a micro moment, but it is.
Cause I have just developed a bladder of steel because I’m like, I am so busy. I can’t even go to the toilet. And how ridiculous is that? I know we’re talking about wee on my podcast, but to tell yourself the story that you’re so busy, you can’t take five minutes to go for a wee is just ridiculous.
Laetitia Andrac: But you know that it’s happening a lot actually, Kate, and what I love to tell to my clients, and I was telling my team when I was working in Telstra, which was after my burnout was like, I am not a neuro, you know, I’m not doing, I’m not a neurosurgeon.
So I am not going to save life today. If I do that today, or if I do it tomorrow, I am not going to save lives because I am not a neurosurgeon. And if I was, Five minutes of my time could literally save someone. Today, if I do it that now, if I go for a walk or a barefoot walk or a swim, I’m not going to save anyone.
Kate Toon: I know it’s so funny because my line is, we’re not curing cancer unless you actually are an oncologist. So, you know, I don’t know how many oncologists are listening to, but it’s so true. I used to also tell me this myself, the story that I couldn’t do anything before work. I had to run to my desk pretty much and get cracking.
And it’s this whole impatience, I guess, and this whole pressure we put on ourselves to achieve things. And there’s a, I think it comes a lot from insecurity and fear that like, if we don’t get this done, someone else is going to take that from us. or we’re going to miss our chance or there’s not going to be enough room for us at the table.
None of which is true. None of which is true. So I think it’s something that we have to get over, but it sounds like you are, as well as having these moments and being present for your children, you are productive. You get done a lot done. Um, you know, productivity in and of itself is a bit of a stick to beat ourselves with, but are there any methods you use to, to get more done in less time?
Laetitia Andrac: Yeah. So I personally love the Pomodoro technique. I know it doesn’t work with everyone, but, uh, so I’m not saying to everyone, Oh, we heard this on the podcast. We need to try Pomodoro timer. It’s about finding what works for you. For me, the Pomodoro timer works really well. 25 minutes of deep work and I’m doing this thing and then it’s done and I don’t need to worry about it anymore.
And it’s imperfectly done. So I’m huge on making things in perfect. Don’t come to me. If you want to read a perfect blog, here, a perfect podcast, or I have perfect head on, like my hair as a messy as. But I am all about embracing those imperfections. So 25 minutes, I get done with one thing, then I have a break, and then I go back.
And I only have a little bit of that every day, because I really work around school hours. So I drop off my girls or my husband, drop them off, and I have a coffee, a moment to myself. And then I work, I start my day around 9. 30, 10. And I finish at 2. 30 because I need to be at the school gate at 2. 45 and I’m often going with my eggs running in winter or barefoot in summer because I am that person who’s like I finish at 2. 30 I’m finishing at 2. 30 and if there is traffic or things like that but this is I’m very clear around the boundaries and the time I have to dedicate and for some people it may work or not the Pomodoro but for me the Pomodoro works really well. The other thing that really works for me is Public accountability.
So I share with my team or I share with a group of friend or I share with my own community. This is what I am going to do, you know, this week or next month I’m releasing this for you or I’m going to teach you about astrology next month. So I need to fucking get along and do that because I said that I will do it.
And from being that person who likes to deliver on what I said, I would deliver. I’m doing it so public accountability helps me a lot as well to get productive and finally to be really productive. It’s about starting from a place where I am really inspired. So if I’m not inspired, I’m in front of my laptop.
I’m like, I have to do this today. The Pomodoro timer is not working. I may use a Pomodoro timer to go for a walk or to do some yoga movement or put some music or take my drum and drum or take my ammonium and play some music or draw, doodle, whatever it is. And then I have used the 25 minutes. Maybe it was not productive per se, but it was actually productive in the fact that I.
Move through that and then the next Pomodoro timer, I’ll be able to put it on paper to put it on the slides or to put it on, you know, whatever the podcast episode that I need to release.
Kate Toon: Wow. Okay, great tips. Um, again, I, I also love a bit of Pomodoro, but I can’t do many sessions. I can only do one or two and I can’t do it every day.
Yeah, I get that. It’s too much pressure. Public accountability was something I used for a long time. I’ve actually stopped doing that now because I realized that I was almost using it to pressure myself and that sometimes I would announce things and then I’d kind of have changed my mind or decided it wasn’t something I do, but I would feel like I had to do it because I’d said I was going to.
It’s a bit like, you know, the permission if you’re reading a book and you’re not enjoying it to stop reading it. So I also really at the moment I’m enjoying developing things in private because people can’t poo all over them, you know, if you tell someone you’re doing something, they’re like, Oh, that’s a stupid idea.
Um, I love that. I use calendar blocking as well. Um, great tips. Love it. Fantastic. And I love the thing of coming from a point of energy and are you going to enjoy this bloody thing. When I’m deciding if I’m going to do something, I’m like, will it make me money? Does anybody even want it? And will I enjoy it?
Those are my three key things. And there’s a few things in my business that I don’t enjoy. Um, you can outsource some of them, but some of them you just have to do. Like, you’re not meant to have a, be slapping your thigh with glee for every hour that you work, you know, and I think that’s a bit of a, a myth around business.
If you love it, it won’t seem like work. No, it will seem like work because it is work, you know, anyway. Um, we talked about, um, Uh, money already. So your profit fair, uh, profit first advocate, um, which I love. And also you mentioned that your daughters were involved in your business. You’ve talked about as well about self care and how it’s not necessarily a spa day.
It’s little micro moments of being aware and present and getting back to nature. I love that. Let’s finish up with your driver for success, because obviously you are a driven person. And you drive yourselves. to the, you know, to the edge of burnout a couple of times. And that is because you are a driven human.
You’re taming that drive, but it’s also an important part of you, don’t you think? Like it’s why you are where you are. Talk to us about your drivers.
Laetitia Andrac: So I have, um, my drivers go around my key values and one of my key value is impact. And I really want to have a long lasting impact. for women in business.
I’m a feminist at heart for women in business to know that they can actually create a profitable business around their own idea, following their own intuition. If they have the right strategies, the right team around them, the right process and all of that, it is totally possible for women to be successful in business.
And I want to change the status quo around the fact that only 7 percent women, you know, create a six figure business. Women take less holiday when they run their business as an entrepreneur, they’re more likely to burn out and all that. So I want to drive this change for women. And where is that coming from?
From one of my other value key value, which is family. I want my daughters, I have two girls and I need to show them that whatever they want to create, they can, and they can create a life that is filled with Wealth in the sense of wealth of time, wealth of health, wealth of money, wealth of leisure, wealth of pleasure.
So it’s really, my driver is really this impact that I want to have and change the paradigms for women. And there is no better time than now. We have AI now that we can use. And unfortunately there is a lot of bias around AI. A lot of men are adopting it, but not many women. So I really want women to be really empowered.
We are empowering women. in the home. I want to empower them in the business. And so that’s one of my driver. Another of my driver is sustainability. It’s one of my core value. I want to make sure that you run a sustainable business for yourself as the people running it, but also very important for me, for the people and the planet.
I really want to leave a planet that is not too shitty to my daughters. And I think as an entrepreneur, there is a big spiritual journey of finding ourselves and finding what we really care about. And if you are someone who look after the planet, you’re spiritual because you know, the connection with mother earth, you know, the connection with the universe, you know, the connection with a star.
So for me, sustainability is very important. I want to make sure that any business that I support are either woman led or for the planet. planet-first And my third key value is community. I want to make sure that I’m giving back to my communities that I’m honoring and acknowledging the traditional custodian of the land that I’m on.
I’m working a lot with First Nation mentor leaders and I’m all about how can I create a better impact for the communities that I take the resource from.
Kate Toon: Cool. Again, a lot there. I love it. Three values. And I think the other thing that I think that you do is you allow, I know you work primarily with women, you allow women to be women in, in business, you know, and, and feel their feels and have their emotions and be intuitive.
without having to adopt maybe more masculine, I don’t really like the feminine masculine thing because I think you can have, I think they’re just different traits of a human. But traditionally, you know, they don’t have to be as, they don’t have to adopt male attributes to be successful. You can be an intuitive, emotional, thoughtful, empathetic, sensitive person and still have a brilliant business.
You don’t have to turn that switch off and become a robot. Um, so I think you give permission for that as well, which is really lovely. Um, well, you answered this question already, but I’m going to ask it again. Do you make six figures in school hours?
Laetitia Andrac: Yes, I surely do. So I actually, um, it’s very funny because, um, Six figure was my driver initially when I started my business, because I was like, if I quit Telstra, and at the time I was a breadwinner, I was earning more than my husband.
So it was like, you know, this kind of egocentric thing. I was like, I don’t want to have a hobby. I want to have a business that generate enough for me to pay myself multiple six figure, and then, you know, deliver the same. Kind of contribution to our family and our generational wealth. And I come from a family with no money.
So I’m not like keen to have an empire. I just want to have some things that provides for my daughter to choose which schools they want to go to and have the support that they need. So I was very big on hitting six figure and I hit six figure in my business after six months. Why is that? Because I had 15 years of experience.
I knew what I was doing and I had three failed business under my belt before this one. And I had helped many entrepreneur. Create their own business and so on. So I’m not saying that it’s easy to reach six figure, not at all. It depends on your industry and things like that, but I definitely know it is possible.
And I want more women to know it is, and your book is going to help them so much with how they can do that because it is clearly possible. I want to, you know.
Kate Toon: Absolutely.
Laetitia Andrac: Some miss beyond the six figure. Which, you know, is the title of your book, but beyond making six figure in business is how much do you pay yourself and how much do you make profits because having a six figure business and throwing money in teams ads, products, um, making, if you’re a maker, it’s not going to fulfill you, you need to make sure that you’re paying yourself and you’re making profits.
So beyond a six figure business, I love to always ask, are you making a six figure profit? And are you paying yourself six figure? So then we can start talking and that’s my goal. And that’s what I’ve done in my business.
Kate Toon: Yeah, I mean, we cover this in depth in the book when we talk about six figures, we’re not talking about revenue per se.
We’re talking about, you know, it could be before tax, after tax, it could be gross profit, net profit. There’s a whole myriad of ways of looking at a six figure salary before tax isn’t going to get you that far in Australia these days anymore, unfortunately. So yeah, we break that all down in the book. If that feels overwhelming, have a read through that, but that’s amazing.
Well, look, Laetitia, it’s been absolutely lovely talking to you. Where can everyone find out more about you and your wonderful book?
Laetitia Andrac: Thank you. So my book is called Light It! How to Trust Your Intuition and Build a Thriving Business. So you can go on my website, Essential Shift. co and start getting this book.
You can listen to it on audio book. It’s not going to be my voice because of my French accent. We decided to go with a professional reader, but you will enjoy. Apparently she’s amazing. I haven’t listened to it. Uh, but, uh, or you can go and listen to my podcast, the essential shift podcast, where I speak about spirituality, intuition, and strategy for you to grow your business.
Or you can just hang out with me on Instagram or LinkedIn on Instagram at essential dot shift and LinkedIn. And I just love to chat. So just DM me and we can have a chat.
Kate Toon: Fantastic. Well, I’ll include links to all of those in the show notes for this episode. You can find those on katetoon. Com, but Laetitia. Merci bien.
Laetitia Andrac: Merci Kate, thank you so much everyone.
Kate Toon: Oh, that was lovely. I want to do my French accent all day now, but I won’t because it’s not very good. Uh, thank you to Laetitia for being on the show. And also thank you to Laura McRae for their lovely review of my book. She writes so well. ‘such a helpful, no nonsense book. Kate explains how to do stuff in a realistic way that makes sense.’
Thank you very much, Laura. And thanks to you for listening to the show. Don’t forget, if you have a minute right now, so look at the app that you’re listening on this, to this on, you can leave a little review. I’d be so grateful. Um, also check out the show notes on katejune. com. You can find links to all Laetitia’s bits and bobs, her book and our podcast.
Also, you can buy a copy of the book. It’s on Amazon, it’s on Audible. It’s uh, everywhere, and you can follow along the journey of six figures in school hours on Instagram at six figures in school hours. But the one thing I encourage you to do is come along to Facebook and join the Misfit Entrepreneur Group.
It’s packed with other busy business owning parents and non-parents. Lots of tips and advice. So until next time, happy juggling.
