BONUS Tradie Wife: Why Winging it isn’t Working – Part 3

Andy
Hell yeah.

Ange
Welcome to a special edition Season of The Tradie Show. So glad you could join us. Over the years, Andy and I have authored a few books on how to be awesome trade business owners. And because you all love The Tradie Show so much, we thought you would love our audiobooks too. Tradie Wife: Why Winging It isn’t Working and Breaking Old Habits Will Help, is written and voiced by myself with guest contributor Dr. Gina Cleo. It’s crafted specifically for tradie wives and partners who want to feel more confident co-leading their trade business and life with their partners. We’ll be releasing a new chapter every few days, so if you haven’t tuned in yet, we suggest you rewind and check out the previous chapters. Make sure you subscribe to The Tradie Show, wherever you listen to podcasts so that you don’t miss a beat. Now it’s time to kick back. Listen and enjoy.

Part two.
Self-belief starts here. Self-belief is having confidence in our abilities or judgment. It is about believing in ourselves. It is a positive feeling we’re capable of anything. Let me guess, this doesn’t exactly describe you. Most of us struggle with self-belief. I would argue that the pressure to appear like we have self-belief weighs heavily on us. Especially now you’re working with your husband in the trade business. Even though you’re partners, you may hesitate to speak up in toolbox meetings because you are fearful your ideas will be ignored or downplayed. You may not back yourself when making team recruitment or system implementation decisions. You may be filled with doubt and ask yourself the question, can I really do this? It is not you. None of us are born with self-belief. Self-belief isn’t hardwired. Situations and circumstances mold the belief we have in our values, skills, knowledge and abilities. The way you view yourself could be a legacy from your childhood. Did your family congratulate you or tear you down? What role did your peers play? Do the people around you discourage or encourage you? How about your thought patterns? Do you always think of the worst case scenario or believe you are worthy? What is your inner voice telling you? This is important because social psychology shows us that our beliefs affect our behavior. If you have strong self-belief, you know your worth and value. If you lack self-belief, you’ll settle for less than you deserve. Self-belief is not a fixed trait. Beliefs can be changed. It will take work to improve self-belief. Then you need to make it a habit because the “winging it” mindset isn’t working for you. Winging it with no plan at all is just survival. Survival mode is when you’re doing everything you can to get through the day, but barely coping. Feeling defeated leads to unsupportive self-beliefs for the sake of yourself, your relationship, and your trade business. Wouldn’t a little bit of self-belief go a long way? You are capable of anything when you know how.

Part two – section one.
Why language matters and how to change it. Language influences how we see the world. The way people talk to us and the way we talk to ourselves reveals a lot about us and our self-belief. Going a step further, there’s an argument that this language is shaped by patriarchal traditions. That is, it represents and perpetuates a male perspective and defines women as inferior to men. There is a link between language and gender discrimination. You already know this. If you think about it, why do we still say mankind instead of humankind? Language is a mirror into how we see ourselves and our perceived social order. Could language be affecting your self-belief at home and in your role in the trade business? How would you describe the language used between you and your partner? How do you usually talk to yourself? Words are super powerful. For those of you who are a heterosexual marriage, do you refer to each other as husband and wife? I reckon most of us do. But have you given any thought to what these words imply? Historically, the words husband and wife carry a lot of baggage because they’re deeply rooted in patriarchy and gender inequity. I’m not gonna go too far down that rabbit hole. I just wanted to make the point that the word partner, on the other hand, infers equality, words can build us up or tear us down depending on the emotional response they generate. Is language a barrier to your self-belief in your relationship and work life? What language can we use to express that we share the power? Consider your personal situation for a second. Can you identify language that may contribute to how you feel about yourself and your status within the business? What verbal language and body language are you conveying in your intentions with your partner in the workplace? Did you take up the dutiful role of helping your husband and have subconsciously maintained that status? Even though you are now making a much more significant contribution to the trade business? Do you refer to the business as his or ours?

Dr. Gina Cleo says, changing your self belief in this situation starts with identifying both of your roles in the business and formalizing these roles into job titles. Your job titles are a signal to each other, your team and your customers as to where you sit within the trade business. It is a symbolic representation of what you do and the value you bring. Immediately, it elevates you from being someone who is helping him out to having a defined purpose. You will have already experienced the downsides of not having a job title that reflects your role in the business. One of the biggest ones is customers who dismiss you when you answer the phone, because they only want to have a conversation with the tradie. Ugh. Even in social settings, when someone asks you what you do, having a job title makes you feel a whole lot better about yourself. Your self-confidence is likely to come across in your body language too. Your chin’s up, you’re standing straight, and you’re maintaining direct eye contact. There is a hierarchy in every workplace, even if it’s just you and your partner in the trade business right now, having job titles sets you both up with language that communicates, you are equals. You could be the office manager, business manager, or have some fun and label yourself head honcho. The point is, give yourself a title and own it. What language instills strong self-belief? Once you lock in your job titles, go ahead and update your email signatures. Own your title. It is your identity badge. You are communicating what you do to the world and communicating this with your partner. Dr. Gina Cleo believes it’s important to get your partner to say your job title out loud. It is a start. The words we use have a profound impact. It puts language around how the duties in your trade business have been split based on your strengths. When we focus on our strengths, we grow in confidence. Self-belief is about accepting and trusting yourself and having a sense of control in your life. Of course, words alone won’t make everything equal in your relationship and at work. Clarifying your job titles is a tiny piece of a much bigger picture in your mission to instill stronger self-belief. The next most critical action is to pay yourself accordingly. If you had to replace your role and that person could cost say, $50 per hour, then that’s what you need to pay yourself. Don’t get into the habit of not getting paid where language also matters is how we speak. It affects how we think and interpret the world around us. We tend to subscribe to defaults, like the assumption that men’s speech is normal and preferable, especially in traditionally hyper-masculine cultures like the trade and consulting industries.

For example, as a leader in your trade business, do you feel like you need to change your voice to get cut through without sounding pushy or dominant? Researchers have found that the deeper tone of men’s voices is perceived as dominant by both sexes. It is implied that if we want positions of leadership, We need to lower our voices to sound dominant ourselves. Is this situation a reality in your world? Is it holding you back from being an equal? As Glenn Bassett stated, if you keep doing what you always have done, you will remain the same person who you always have been. What habits can help elevate my self-belief? Let’s look at what won’t help your self-belief being a Jill of all trades. You cannot be everything to everybody. A good mother, good partner, good friend, good trade business owner without losing the ability to be a good self, we are conditioned into believing we can have it all. We push harder and pretend everything is okay. We ignore our feelings and hope they will go away. It is a big fat lie. When we believe we can and should have it all, we end up totally paralyzed and miserable. Every single woman I know grapples with shame and guilt for not being able to juggle all the balls in perfect unison. It is not a failing on our part. The idea is false. Life has limitations. This is the truth, though it’s not talked about enough to have some things we have to forgo others. It is almost always assumed and accepted that we have to make compromises that our partners are far less likely to have to make. Why do we accept our partner’s blokey behavior and his choices as the default and the ideal? The constant chasing and rationalizing keep us handcuffed, unhappy and exhausted. For busy women like us, self-care is often the first thing to get sidelined in the chasing cycle because we’ve been told we’re selfish. If we put ourselves before others. We all have choices to make. There is a great deal of benefit to prioritize time out for you both mentally and physically. If you don’t look after yourself, then who will? In a business sense, both you and your partner are key elements to a profitable operation. If having self-belief involves valuing ourselves in equal measure to others, what choices will you make?

Some research tells us that we can rewrite our internal scripts by saying positive things to ourselves. Positive thinking often starts with self-talk. It comes back to the power of words and our belief in them. The trouble is neuroscience shows the majority of self-talk is negative. In fact, our brains are hardwired to be negative. The problem with practicing positive thinking is highlighted in a counter movement called toxic positivity. Being overly positive can backfire and lead to unhappiness, disconnection, and isolation. If you try thinking positively, you’ll also know it can be a difficult habit to maintain. Dr. Gina Cleo suggests there is a useful alternative, mental contrasting. Mental contrasting is a self-regulation imagery practice that involves imagining a desired future and mentally contrasting it with the present reality. It is a problem solving strategy that leads to selective behavior change, grounded in the recognition that life is a mixture of positives and difficulties. It is not all sunshine and lollipops, no matter how much positive thinking we pour into wanting things to change. The theory created by motivation psychologist Dr. Gabriel Otiengan is best captured with this quote from her. “Positive Thinking Fools our minds into perceiving that we’ve already attained our goal, slackening our readiness to pursue it by contrast”. Mental contrasting is a goal setting, intervention, and style of thinking that balances positive and negative perspectives when imaging our future reality. The crux of the mental contrasting theory is this, if you only visualize success, the end result will be much less than when you also picture the negative side of your current situation. Mental contrasting acknowledges the gap between where you are now and where you want to be, along with feeling the pain or tension which comes with that gap. It is designed to help you understand where you are in contrast with your goals. Interesting, huh? Would you like to give it a go? Mental contrasting is a three step process. 

Step one. Identify a goal you’d like to achieve. 

Step two. Do a positive visualization of how you are going to achieve that goal. The aim is to strengthen your belief that you are capable of achieving it.

Step three. Apply a negative visualization to imagine every roadblock. The aim is to turn your positive affirmation into a question. For example, affirmation. In the next three months, I will be a valued co-leader in our profitable trade business. Question, will I be a valued co-leader in our profitable trade business within three months?

What comes to mind when you ask this question? What roadblocks do you imagine? Write them down. Roadblocks. I don’t have the knowledge, I need to seek help to learn. I am not sure where to start. Who can help me? I don’t have clarity in my role. I need to identify and allocate responsibilities. Repeat the question until you can’t think of any more roadblocks or obstacles. The result of going through this process is intended to leave you with a self-belief you’ll be able to achieve your goal with full awareness of your obstacles you’ll need to overcome to get there. Make going through these steps for each of your goals. A daily habit of mental contrasting triggers the actions of self-reflection and connection with your subconscious mind, which stores your beliefs and turns them into behavior changes that become new habits.

Lived experience.
Stacey Yeadon, JDY Electrical Goulburn, New South Wales. Today the job title on Stacey Yeadon’s email signature is manager. The former childcare educator has struggled with a stereotype of being a woman in the trade industry, but the title sends an important message to the business’s customers. I was always asked by customers if they could speak to the boss. I’ve been called just a stupid woman and the office chick. Now most of our customers know I am the gatekeeper. Despite loving her 11 year career in childcare, a health event suffered by her husband, Jack changed the direction of both their lives. Stacey came home to find him clutching his chest on the bed, experiencing what appeared to be a heart attack. Thankfully, it wasn’t. But Jack’s blood pressure was dangerously high and his iron levels would triple what they should have been. Doctors told Jack and Stacey that if he didn’t reduce his blood pressure and stress levels, he’d be dead before he was 40 years old. Stacey remembers Jack pleading with her that he couldn’t go to the hospital because he couldn’t afford not to work.

In August of 2018, Stacey resigned from her teaching job and joined Jack in the business full-time with no idea what she was doing. Backing her own ability, Stacey thought the transition into JDY Electrical would be seamless, initially tasked by Jack to reconcile the accounts, pay the team, manage HR, and answer the phone. Stacey envisaged, they’d work happily ever after. In her own words, she was sadly mistaken. Within 18 months, tensions escalated due to no clear direction, no systems, and a lack of communication. Jack was still spending long hours on the tools, despite the doctor’s order to take it easy. Stacey packed her bags ready to walk out on her marriage and the business. She felt like she didn’t belong anywhere anymore. Balancing all her responsibilities, including being a wife and mother, led to what she describes as a big blowup. Calling on the mentorship of Andy and Angela at Lifestyle Tradie, Stacey and Jack resolved to try again. Having clearer boundaries at the start of their working relationship is one thing that may have prevented the downward spiral. It is easier to identify in hindsight. It was such a rush move for Stacey to come into the business because of Jack’s health. In her 2.0 move into JDY Electrical, Stacey immediately took to marketing, completed a business diploma, began systemizing and started to feel like she was doing the job she was meant to be doing. Jack started letting go more, seeing that he didn’t have to be in control of everything. Stacy’s job title has evolved with her, a reflection of her growing self-belief and strong sense of value. She provides the business. “I started off as an administrator. I built up to being an administration manager. Eventually I just dropped the administration off and called myself the manager”. It took about 12 months to get there. Understandably, having Stacey fully immersed in the business is a shift for her and Jack. The business was Jack’s baby. Now the business is where Stacey belongs to. “It’s not his business, it’s our business. We’re going great guns”.

Part two – section two.
Unchaining self-limiting beliefs. We all have self-limiting beliefs. Those nagging thoughts in our head that hold us back from being who we truly want to be. It is the enemy within that keeps us from pursuing our goals. There is a negative Nelly in all of us. There is a negative Nelly in me for sure, but who wants to stay in a comfort zone? This is exactly where self-limiting beliefs will keep you if you let them. Did I feel capable of being a trade business owner and leader in the early days? I would say I was reluctant to take on certain tasks because of self-limiting beliefs. Some of it had to do with being a woman in a male dominated industry. I had an ingrained belief that the team wouldn’t listen to my ideas, so I kept quiet in meetings, letting other people dominate conversations and decision making. Whatever we believe becomes our reality. For many women who’ve transitioned into trade business with their partners, we come to accept the rollercoaster as our reality. Failure becomes our mental frame of reference about ourselves, the business and our relationship. The success, happiness, and fulfillment we were hoping for are skewed by negative beliefs. We believe this is our lot in life. It is not hard to see why self-limiting beliefs are debilitating. The thing is self-limiting beliefs are personal. We all have our own filter. For you and your partner, this may mean you are interpreting the situation you are in differently because your self-belief has put boundaries and limitations on what you perceive to be reasonable behavior. Cue the tension. Here are some examples of self-limiting beliefs. I lack relevant experience. I could never do that. I lack sufficient formal education. I don’t have the confidence to do that. I don’t have enough skills or talent. I’m too old or too young. I don’t have what it takes to succeed. Taking risks always turns out bad for me. You need money to make money. Successful people are just lucky.

Want to know a few of my recent negative self-beliefs? I am sure hearing mine might make you feel a bit better about your own. If I’m co-leading a business, I can’t be a present and engaged mom. I don’t have time, which means I never make time for that thing. I can’t cook. Will people judge me for buying home delivered meal kits? What stories are you telling yourself? In the words of life and business strategist Tony Robbins, the only thing that’s keeping you from getting what you want is the story you keep telling yourself. How do habits influence the story We tell ourselves? Self-limiting beliefs are formed from the stories we believe about ourselves. They dominate our narrative. We tell ourselves we can. We tell ourselves we can’t. It happens on repeat. Always there directly influencing our behavior. As we learned earlier in the book, habits are automatic. The way we think is habitual, what we think is habitual. Once we change a belief about ourselves, our habits will automatically change. As women in the trade and consulting industry, one relatable and common self-limiting belief is that we lack relevant experience. The story some of us tell ourselves is that our partner is the one who’s the tradie. He knows technical rules and regulations around his trade, so he must be better at running a business. It influences our behavior in that we may take a backseat because we don’t believe we have the skills and confidence to be a leader. False beliefs are created over many years, mainly during our upbringing. We cement them in our minds without really questioning where they came from.

Dr. Gina Cleo warns that when we’ve bought into a certain story about ourselves, it becomes our identity. Because the root of behavior change and building better habits is our identity. We’ve got to adopt a new belief about ourselves to overcome self-limiting thoughts. Having a fundamental belief, for example, that you can be a leader, will make it possible to change your actions to achieve it. Most of us have a strong emotional bond with who we are. Every belief is learned and conditioned through experience usually over many years since childhood. We have listened to our partner, family, teachers, and friends, and they’ve helped create the beliefs and limitations that define who we are. How do we break free? Our habits are how we embody our identity. When we make our bed each day, we embody the identity of an organized person. When we stay hydrated, we embody the identity of a health conscious person. When we prioritize punctuality, we embody the identity of a trusted person. The more we repeat a behavior, the more it reinforces the identity associated with that behavior, putting it into action. The most practical way to change who you are is to change what you do. Each time you encourage your team, you are a leader. Each time you send an invoice, you are a business owner. Each time you ride a business social post, you are a marketer. Each time you lodge your bass, you are good with money. Each time you surround yourself with positive people, you’ll be more positive. Day by day, habit by habit. This is the process of becoming ourselves, unchaining our self-limiting beliefs will break us free from the deceptive story we’ve constructed in our minds. But there’s a transition in between that’s going to require strength, courage, and the conscious acceptance of some hard work. It starts with knowing what you want, then breaking old habits or creating new ones to get there.

Dr. Gina Cleo says, we all have control over our habits. We must be self-conscious enough to exert that control to break the habits that aren’t serving us. All the habits we have right now, good or unhelpful, are in our lives for a reason. Remember, habits are an efficient routine of behavior that provides us with a reward. If we feel good about something, we’ll do it again. For example, buying a takeaway coffee before work every morning isn’t going to help achieve your savings goal, but it does offer you the reward of getting your caffeine fixed. It is about weighing up the reward versus the consequences. Breaking a habit involves identifying the cues and rewards that drive the habit, and finding alternative behaviors, if that’s what you wanna do. What current habits do you wanna change? According to Dr. Gina Cleo, there are two proven methods to break habits. One, reprogramming. Replace an old habit or routine with a new habit that provides a similar reward. Let’s say your habit loop starts with feeling stressed out cue, which triggers you to walk to the kitchen and pour and drink a glass of wine routine, which then helps you to feel a bit more relaxed, reward. A way to break that habit might be replacing the wine with herbal tea, some stretching, deep breathing, or anything else that would help you feel relaxed. That way when you feel stressed, you’ll be reprogramming a new, more helpful habit and still achieving the reward of feeling less stress. Two, restructuring. Change the environment that triggers your unhelpful habit, and the habit is no longer triggered. So every night after dinner, you and your partner always head straight to the computer to check on customer emails. Even though you’ve requested, you don’t talk about work at home, your partner is automatically triggered to walk over to the computer because the screen blinks at him from the dinner table, drawing him in. In this case to avoid the triggering cue of the blinking computer, turn off the computer before you sit down to dinner. No trigger equals no habit.

Exercise.
If you have a digital copy of this book in the table on page 81, write a list in the first column of all the current habits you have that you want to get rid of. Refer to the Habit Loop by Charles Doig on page 37. Use the next two columns to suggest how you could reprogram or restructure your actions to break these habits and create new ones. Why is it worth the effort? Our self-limiting beliefs are amplified when we’re experiencing extreme frustration, pain, and disappointment when we make mistakes and in challenging situations, we can’t seem to resolve. Self-limiting beliefs such as I lack relevant experience. I don’t have the skills and talent, and successful people are just lucky. Become mental habits repeating on an endless loop, fueled by the loneliness of being isolated in a home office when you’ve thrived in a social workplace previously. There are no water cooler conversations, there is nowhere to go for help. You are making decisions alone. There is no one who gets what you are going through, even your partner. But remember, he has never learned how to lead a trade business either. It is obvious that self-limiting thinking is not making us feel good about ourselves or giving us the fortitude to kick butt. Letting you believe it sinks in and changing your story takes time. Dr. Gina Cleo believes looking for evidence will speed up the process because it reinforces our new beliefs. In speaking with our members at Lifestyle Tradie, this is the true value and power of being involved in a community of trade business owners, meeting and connecting with other like-minded partners who have similar goals and a vision for life and business and are kicking those goals gives members who may have self-limiting beliefs, the evidence they can do it too. Breaking free of self-limiting beliefs is definitely worth the effort. Day by day, habit by habit. We are the editors of our own stories. Anytime I feel stuck, I ask myself this simple question, what’s stopping me? Did you know? Incorporating healthier habits and self-care practices into our routines boost the production of happy hormones, dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins, which regulate our mood and promote positive feelings.

Lived experience.
Christie Baran, Voltair AirConditioning, Canberra. Christie Baran never envisaged. She would end up as heavily involved as she’s in the business with her husband, Steve. When he reached out to her to help with the administrative side of things in the early days, Christie jumped in thinking it would be fun. She was still working in a corporate role, ticking off tasks for Steve as a side hustle. Without any formal training in running a trade business, the couple was flying by the seat of their pants. Christie was buoyed by the trust Steve had in her. By the time the kids started school, she took the plunge, but the responsibility of being central to the business weighed heavily on her after a while, wearing lots of hats, firefighting and the sinking feeling you’re doing everything poorly in life and at work, affected Christie’s self-belief. It came to a head during lockdown in 2021 when Christie hit rock bottom. While Christie tackled covid compliance, managing the team and dealing with customers, it felt like everyone else around her was going into holiday mode. “My head was in an absolute spin. The resentment that had been building up inside me reached an all time high. I didn’t explode. I just shut down. I couldn’t speak. I cried a lot. I don’t think I have ever shut down like this or felt so low in my life”. In truth, Christie and Steve were both burnt out and handling the pressure in different ways. Christie felt a loss of control, like she wasn’t writing the script to her own life anymore. The business was starting to take a toll on their relationship. For Christie, who loves staying active and connecting with friends, the absence of time for self-care further exacerbated the situation, lowering her self regard. Christie admits it got to the stage where she didn’t recognize herself. “We developed a worker-boss style relationship, which involved a lot of me nagging in order to get things done and respond to customers”. I thought, who am I? Something had to give. Christie and Steve, and now making big changes together. Christie’s working towards not being in a frontline position after the pair made the joint decision to outsource the bookkeeping, accounting, marketing, and advertising, a task scheduling system has now been implemented as well. Stepping back a bit has allowed Christie to realize others are just as capable as she is. Her only regret is not doing it earlier. “I wish I didn’t have to reach the point of a complete breakdown before taking serious action and making changes. I am a bit sad. The business has consumed me so much over the past couple of years. I have lost valuable time in our relationship and time as a family”. Christie told herself the story that the business may not grow and thrive if she wasn’t the one doing everything on the administrative side, being who you truly want to be means being honest about how you’re feeling. It is okay not to be okay. “Your time is precious. You can’t put a dollar figure on that, your mental health and your relationship with your family. If it’s not healthy for you as a person, what price are you paying?”

Part two – section three.
Rising up means sharing responsibilities. So you wanna be a changemaker in your life relationship and in your trade business. If there’s no place in the world where girls and women experience equality, we’ve got to rise up in our own worlds with self-belief. The data is clear. An equal world is a better world for us all. Rising up is not about pushing someone else down. It’s about sharing responsibilities. A true partnership is about making an intentional effort to share power, taking into account each other’s thoughts and feelings. Why are we waiting for it to happen? Rising up means making it happen. The dilemma we face as women working in a male dominated environment and partners of men who may have only ever known the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of the trade industry is figuring out how to rise up. Of course, not all trade business, workplace cultures are the same. Things are changing slowly. With a work and home life that can sometimes feel like a battle zone. What’s the best way to approach your intentional effort to share power? Do we man up displaying behavior like one of the boys? Or draw on our so-called feminine qualities like empathy and nurturing so that we can be heard? Rising up is about understanding each other and getting curious. Get curious, ask more questions. You bring your perceptions about your current situation. He brings his perceptions about your current situation. How do we interpret them? What can you learn from each other? This will break the bank you’ve left unspoken. By developing the habit of asking questions and searching for answers, you’ll cultivate openness through having a curious mindset. Curiosity is making the choice to non-judgmentally look deeper into why things aren’t working, how you want them to. Seeing your problems from different angles will help you solve them more efficiently. Why? When you are curious, we’re more willing to experiment to see what works and what doesn’t in our effort to become a better version of ourselves.

For example, understanding why a behavior has caused your partner to feel a particular way provides you both with an actionable piece of information. We are all born curious. Studies show that this trait dwindles by the time we’re at school. Apparently curiosity killed the cat, as the odd saying goes. The belief that curiosity can get us into trouble is imprinted in our brains. I’m not pretending getting curious with our partner is gonna be easy. You will both be filled with fear. However you know what they say about fear, feel the fear and do it anyway. It will be game changing for your relationship and your trade business. Why? Here is a quote from business coach and bestselling author, Jess Lynn Stoner, that captures the answer. Curiosity opens doors, lame closes them. Curiosity questions to open the door. Why are we feeling this way? What are we trying to accomplish? What can we learn from this? How can you use what we learned in the future? What ideas do we have for solutions now? How do we crush the gender divide with new habits? For all of our curiosity and tension, to rise up and share the power right here and right now, there’s still a gender divide going on. You won’t be surprised to learn that on average women spend 64% of their working week performing unpaid care work almost twice as many hours as men. Crushingly, on average, we have to work an extra 56 days a year to earn the same pay as men for doing the same work. The pandemic has skewed these figures a little, but you get the picture.

We know the trade and contracting industries are environments where traditional views persist. You might have a male partner who defies the statistics. He is in the rare minority. The concept of women having it all was long ago replaced by this one. Women simply do it all, or at least we try to. Are you happy with the gender divide in your romantic and professional relationship? The reality is when you are working just as long and hard in your trade business as each other, it stands to reason that you share the house chores. If you are currently doing the lion’s share and you feel the balance is off kilter, then it’s time to do something about it. It is not 1950 anymore. A simple conversation about the list of chores and who is responsible could easily turn into an agreement to outsource to save time. For example, paying a cleaner fortnightly at $40 per hour relieves you of three hours. Time you could be using far more productively to make profit in the business. We need to stop doing activities we’ve always done if they don’t serve you. Getting curious to find alternative ways could be life-changing. Dr. Gina Cleo says, lasting change in the way we share responsibilities is the result of our daily habits, not a one-off transformation. What new habits do you and your partner want to introduce? Stay accountable with each other using our Habit Tracker app, such as Habitify, which is available on multiple platforms. Through the app you can, one, set up your habits. Two, get your cue. Three, see your progress. Using an app like this gives you visual proof of your hard work.

If you’ve got any questions based on this chapter or want to fast track your business, head to lifestyletradie.com.au or click the link in our show notes to book a free strategy session with Andy. Together, let’s transform your trade business and create the lifestyle that you deserve. But don’t just take it from me. Have a listen to what our Lifestyle Tradie members have to say.

Member’s Testimonial
Don’t wait. These guys are very honest and open. They share so much information, personal as well as, um, business. Uh, it’s a holistic approach to life, not just, uh, how to run your plumbing business.

Yeah, definitely joined Lifestyle Tradie, the amount of support and knowledge which, which is within the program is valuable. Um, the other thing is, uh, The community that Lifestyle Tradie has developed is amazing. There’s been so many times where I’ve learned on the community’s advice, where we’ve had certain issues that we’ve been able to bring up in our, you know, Facebook group. You get plenty of answers that you can actually action. You don’t know what you don’t know. 

Lifestyle Tradie has a huge sense of community, just a great group of people just hanging out. Helping everyone out and they help you out. Just hanging out after the events is always fun as well. Some great speakers come along and definitely always, always learning stuff from every event we go to.

Do it. Like don’t hesitate every year that you put it off, there’s just an extra year that you’re losing. You don’t get this time back. That’s one thing that we can never buy is time. So, need help? Get it.