Hey guys, welcome to this week’s episode of The Hell Yes Entrepreneur. I am your host, Becca Pike, and it is time for your weekly dose of Hell Yes Coaching. Let’s go.

Hey, guys. I’m Becca Pike and welcome to The Hell Yes Entrepreneur podcast, the number one show for entrepreneurs looking to create their first six-figure year. If you’ve got the drive and how to hustle but you’re not sure where to channel your energy, we’ve got the answers. Let’s dive into today’s show.

All right, guys. So at the time of this recording, it is August 22. My mom was supposed to come home many days ago, but she’s in the hospital. She was in the hospital. Her blood count, her oxygen levels, her pain, you name it kept extending her time in the hospital until last night. My sweet mama got to come home.

Not in the way that we expected. She is now on hospice. We have been working with the hospice crew to get all of the equipment that we need and all of the transportation that we need for medical appointments, and just getting her are really comfortable here at the house. 

A lot of this has just been, I think the craziest thing is just how fast all of this has gone. Just two weeks ago, she was at her house and driving around and popping over to my house and doing her little mom thing. Then she was in the hospital. Then it just went down really fast to the point where now she’s at home. She’s here, and she’s on hospice. She has a lot of trouble moving, getting up, standing, getting to the potty, even just turning over can’t be done by herself.

Still, with no diagnosis of what type of cancer this is. With no diagnosis, there is no treatment. So even as aggressive as this cancer seems to be and how quickly it is spreading, we still are just kind of in a waiting period. We can’t do chemotherapy or immunotherapy or anything until they know what they’re dealing with.

I think I’ve said in the last episode that they think it is in the sarcoma family, which they would request that we don’t use any type of treatment. They also said that it is rare for them to have to send it out of house to get a diagnosis because they are really good at what they do. They usually are capable of diagnosing what kind of cancer it is. But because it seems so rare, they sent it to Cleveland Clinic. We’re still waiting on that. 

But they said allow them to take their time because they do not misdiagnose. They are the big dogs. They know what they’re doing. They take their time, and they will not misdiagnose. So partially thankful they are taking their time and getting it right. Partially completely debilitated by helplessness that this cancer could be growing, is growing, and we aren’t doing anything about it right now. 

Nonetheless, she is home. As of right now, like I said, she is bedridden. The amount of pain she is feeling, her low oxygen levels, and just her overall weakness. I think the weakness comes from the radiation as well as the refusal to eat.

But I’ve created a room for her right here in my office. She’s literally three feet away from me right now sleeping. I’ve got my youngest daughter’s kitty ear headphones on her, and I’m blasting brown noise into her ears with these light up kitty headphones. She’s sleeping like a rock next to me. She’s probably really high on pain pills right now. Probably in a great place I would assume.

But she’s just three feet away from me where I can hang out with her while I work. I’m fortunate enough to have this abnormally large room as an office. Honestly, I have no idea why this room was built. I don’t know what it was used for before we lived here. It could easily be two rooms, if not three rooms. I’ve always used it as just a large office with a seating area and plenty of room to stretch and like do yoga between work. 

But now I have it kind of split up into two rooms with my office and then furniture on one side and just six feet away is my mom’s “room” with her new medical bed, the beds that go up and down, and her little bedside table, her little portable potty, and her walker. We’ve installed shower seats to make it easier for us to take showers. 

Although I have never pictured this room being anything of this form, I am so grateful that we have this room. I love the fact that I get to be with her while she’s sleeping, and I will get to keep her company so that she doesn’t feel alone. I’m not off working at some cubicle 25 minutes away, clocking in and clocking out and wondering how she’s doing and asking people to go in and check on her. 

On days that she feels good enough, I’m going to transport her little wheelchair out onto the office patio because we have a patio for this office. It overlooks all of our trees and our creek and the beautiful backyard that we have.

I can’t stop thinking about what we would have done if this had happened just three years ago when we still lived in our 1100 square foot house, one bathroom, six of us. The bathroom’s all the way down the hallway that a wheelchair does not fit down. She just wouldn’t have been able to do anything. She wouldn’t have had a room to herself. It would have been loud and noisy. 

Honestly, I feel like we probably would have had to set her up in the living room or take the kids and set their bedrooms up in the living room in order to give her a room. We are not dealing with that right now. So for what it is, I feel very thankful that we have what we have. 

I think living in a third world country for half of a year really embedded gratitude in me for what it could be like if we lived elsewhere. If you haven’t listened to episode number 50 of my podcast, and you don’t know the story, you should definitely listen to it. I think it’s my most listened to episode. 

I was in a terrible biking accident in Indonesia when I was 23. The hospitals were dirt floor. There was no pain medicine. They gave me a book to bite on while I was getting stitched up. Most people lived in actual shacks of like metal leaning against metal. Those that were pretty wealthy had a real floor, but they still had open air homes. Like stray dogs running in and out.

I remind myself that when I’m sick that I have a bed and a toilet and a clean comforter and food and air conditioning. I’m not laying on the floor that gets wet when it rains. I hope my mom has that same kind of appreciation. I know she does. I know she does. But I hope that there’s a glimpse of peace in her when she thinks about that. 

So while juggling going to the hospital and washing my mom and helping her get to the bathroom and stretching her and making sure that she’s taking her supplements and her medicine. Then also trying to hang out with my kids and get them to school and get them to their sports and take them to their friend’s house and spend time with them and cooking dinner and owning three businesses and performing a podcast and coaching my clients and trying to make sure that my husband feels seen, and dealing with probably the largest amount of grief that I could ever imagine. 

I have noticed something very jarringly apparent right now. I think a lot of us business owners have too much capacity for bullshit. Just crap. Like too much capacity for things that aren’t real, like total illusions. Here’s what I mean. 

My mom got sick. Everything was put on hold. Nothing mattered, right? I did not work at all for the first week and a half or so. None of it. Didn’t care. But then slowly, I started bringing back in just the necessities and nothing else. I started A, only coaching my paying clients, and B, only doing my weekly podcast episode. 

I stopped spending the day wondering what to post on social, what a future client may be thinking about joining with me, if my employees are doing things, meetings that didn’t need to exist, exactly how many people are opening my emails, not posting content just to be posting content because I’m supposed to every day even though it’s half assed. I’m not thinking of my business whatsoever outside of just coaching my clients and talking into the microphone. That is it. I am running on absolute necessity, right. 

I’m not saying that doing the absolute bare minimum is how we should run our businesses. But I do think that there has been a huge universal lesson here in reevaluating what the bare minimum actually is versus what we perceive our bare minimum to be. So here’s the interesting part. 

My business seems to be running quite smoothly, maybe even more smoothly than it was. We have not seen a dip in like anything. My focus has been simplified. Therefore the quality of my work has increased in those specific areas. I noticed that I am even more focused on my clients than I have been. I noticed I’m even more present. I feel like I’m very dialed in. There is no part of me that feels spread out with my attention. 

I get less time to do my work, right? So whenever I have time to do my work, I turn off all distractions, and I get super hyper focused, and I do the very best that I possibly can because I don’t have the time. I do not have the time to do anything else. I don’t have the time to dilly dally. I don’t have the time to scroll Instagram and wonder what all the other coaches are doing and wonder what everybody else is doing and wonder what everyone in my industry is doing. I just don’t do that. 

If you had asked me three weeks ago what my bare minimum was. Like hey Becca, bare minimum to run your business. I would have said okay, bare minimum. I need to coach my clients, do my podcast, one email a week to my audience, three posts per week, maybe like five Instagram stories a day, and I need the weekly staff meeting. Right? 

Now it is so blatantly obvious that that is not my bare minimum. My true bare minimum is podcasts and clients. It is blatantly obvious in my current situation how much of our efforts, our anxiety, our solving for problems that don’t even exist as business owners is consuming our time. For what reason, right?

Like when did I decide it wasn’t enough to just coach my clients and release one really amazing podcast every week. Some of my favorite figures release one podcast each week. They don’t fuss with emails or social media or reels or stories or Facebook Lives or going to networking events. You don’t see Joe Rogan out there emailing out promos and new pieces of content and newsletters each Monday, right?

Like his podcast is his content. He does one podcast. That’s his thing. Tim Ferriss does one blog email, and one podcast. That’s his thing. Amy Porterfield talks about the fact that she spends her whole week crafting one great email to send out. That is her marketing strategy. That is her content. That is enough. 

When we look at those three people, we know that that’s enough, right? But then when we look at ourselves, we think of all the things that we’re not doing. We tell ourselves that just because we have the capacity to do more, we should. Just because we have access to LinkedIn, Instagram, Tik Tok podcasts, YouTubing, networking events, emailing, Facebook, Threads that we should be doing so many things. 

For me, I don’t think that this happened overnight. When I first started my business, my only way of marketing was through word of mouth for like a long time. Then I started using Facebook after that, right. Then after a while, I don’t know another year or so, I ended up picking up Instagram. 

Then a while after that, I started a podcast. Then I started really focusing on emailing. I’ve been playing around with Threads, right? I have totally lost interest in Threads somehow. It was like so fun for like two weeks, and then I just stopped. I’ve been told a million times that I should focus on YouTube, right? 

It was like I was standing tall. This is how I picture it. The beginning of my business, I’m standing tall. I’m feeling good. So I decide it’s a good time to take the plates that I was holding, and start spinning them, one in each hand. Then I added more and more spinning plates to my hands, one at a time. Started stacking up my arms. I just thought like well, I’ve got the time for it. I’ve got the arms. I’ve got more hands. I can start spinning one on my knee. I still have an empty foot I could spend one on. Spinning plates as in like the tasks that can be done in my business, right? 

I added more and more every few months. I just never really questioned again why I’m holding so many damn spinning plates. By the way, this is pretty wild coming for me because I am on the end of the spectrum of delegating so much compared to most business owners. I am quite conservative in what I do with my time in my business. So for this to be coming from me, I know for a fact some of y’all are out there with double and triple the spinning plates that I have. So let this resonate. 

So all of a sudden my mom gets sick, right? All of my spinning plates drop to the ground. To my surprise, no real consequences come out of it. I didn’t stop making money. My business didn’t take a hit or stop growing. I realized now that these plates were not all precious China. They were just an illusion to keep me busy. I have been keeping myself busy. 

Although I do want to pick up a few more plates over the next few weeks as I begin having more capacity, I do not believe in doing the absolute bare minimum anything in my life. Although I want to pick up the plates, I will be choosing which plates with much more intent, and I encourage you to do the same. I hope you have the best rest of your day. I will chat with you guys next week. Bye.

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Hey, thanks for taking the time to listen to today’s episode. If you’re looking to get more clarity and momentum for your business, visit hellyescoachingonline.com. See you next week here on The Hell Yes Entrepreneur podcast.