The Traveling Introvert

Shownotes:

What does customer service mean to you and your business? Is it a team that you hire to answer complaints or queries? Is it a group that you hire to have someone be on standby in case something happens? Customer service isn’t just all about focusing on whether the buy-and-sell concept is fulfilled. Customer service is making sure that your customers feel valued for purchasing from your business.

Hello and welcome to The Traveling Introvert. Today I'd like to talk about customer service and what it means to you. The reason that I want to talk about this is for a couple of reasons. I've had one fairly large company that I was buying my product. It's a subscription product and I had been buying it for a good three years. I found a different product that I wanted to try and I tried it out. I kind of liked it better, the price was better, the things that I needed it to do at the time were better. I went ahead and stopped my subscription of the old company, and that was it.

I didn't get an email that said, "Sorry to see you go." I didn't get any of their customer support reaching out and like, "Hey, I noticed that you were thinking of canceling. Can you let us know why?" There was no exit interview. There was nothing. There was radio silence from this particular company. And it surprised me because they're very well known in remote work. They're very well known for being a great company and yet, as someone who's been using their company from earlier on in the day, I got nothing.

So, I reached out and I said, "Hey, you might not care, I'm just someone who barely spends any money with you, but it would have been nice just to get an email so that you noticed that I wasn't paying anymore." Again, I didn't get a response. And now, I don't think I'd ever go back even if they ended up changing their product and doing it in such a way that was a good fit for me, I'm not sure I would ever use them again because now I just feel like a number, and not even a number. People notice when their numbers go down.

Then, on the second hand, there was another company, again a very large company, that reached out to me and said, "Hey, we think you might be a good fit for this thing we're doing. I'd love to get on a call with you." I'm like, "Ah, really, me? Little old... I mean, sure, I guess," and I got a little excited about it. I started researching on the thing that they wanted me to be a part of and I found some information, but really not that much. I know someone who had been involved with them and so I asked them some questions, but there really wasn't a lot out there for me to gather myself if I didn't have a friend.

So, they said that they wanted to have her call me. The call was scheduled for 20 minutes. So, I'm on the line and waiting. I'm a little bit nervous. I have a list of questions from what I've gathered. The person is late to the meeting, and they were five minutes late. They did not message, but also they did not say sorry when they got on the line. They just asked me if I had any questions. They didn't even try to explain anything to me or pitch anything to me, they were just like, "So, do you have any questions?" My response was, "Well, you haven't really given me a lot of information. Please tell me about this thing that you want me to be involved in." As I said, this call was scheduled for 20 minutes. This person took five minutes to explain their product.

I then went ahead and asked the questions that I had on my list, and a lot of the questions were very much like, "Well, what happens with this information?" or, "Okay, well this happens and then what if I stop contributing or whatever happens?" and, "How long is this process?" A lot of the answers I got during this interview was, "Oh, I don't know. Well, I'm not sure. Oh, I'll have to figure it out." And this wasn't someone that was new to the company because I had checked on that. This person had been with the company for a long time. I don't know if they weren't expecting the questions, or I wasn't giving them the right... I don't know what it was, but they didn't seem to know the answers to my questions.

Now, we're about 12 to 15 minutes in and this person is like, "Oh, well, yeah, you can email those questions and I'll email a response back to you. I'm going to have to go now." I said, "But, the call was scheduled for 20 minutes and I have some more things that I'd like to ask and would like for you to explain a little bit more." Her response was, "Yeah, but just email them to me and I'll email you a response. I've got to go now, bye," and that was 16 minutes of the 20 minute conversation where they were trying to get me to do something. So, I waited with bated breath for this email to come through, and I got the one email, and I haven't responded yet, and I haven't heard from them since. This is a huge, global company.

Customer service is key, people. Just following up, and it doesn't have to be aggressive following up. It could just be like, "Hey, here's this information and if you have any questions," and follow up a couple of days later. It's the really simple things that make the difference. For example, I did an interview in a podcast, totally forgot about it, and a month later I received this beautiful box with information and it was a gift box. I'd totally forgotten about it but it made me feel special. That little bit of customer service goes a long, long way.

Listeners, please email me at [email protected] and tell me a time when you have had awesome customer service and what that meant to you.

Shownotes:

How many plans of yours succeeded? How many of them failed? The success of your plan depends on many factors including planning -- which most people don’t pay much attention to. Many people would rather go unplanned, but that’s not advisable if your plan is to achieve a goal. In today’s episode, I want to dive into planning and some tips that would help you stick to your plan and achieve consistency.

Hello, and welcome to the Traveling Introvert. Today, I would like to talk about planning. It's an area that I haven't covered, and I'm not going to talk about travel planning. Well, in a way, I am. But I want to talk about just planning for the upcoming month.

Now, most people sort of know how to have a rhythm of what's going to happen. At some point maybe you have kids and they're going back to school, or you know you have a big trip planned, or something else. But with your business, how much do you plan? Do you do a plan at the start of the year? Do you do a quarterly plan? Do you ever look back and see what you originally planned and see how far you did or did not get? What do you do to plan your business?

And the reason I ask this is because a lot of the time we get stuck in the weeds and we're just trying to get going. We just kind of keep going, trying to get clients, trying to keep those clients, and trying to get new clients.

But is there a plan? Do you have a goal? Do you have a direction that you want to go in? I know there are a lot of marketers out there, there's one marketer that suggests that you make one big, in depth, juicy blog post per quarter, and then use the theme of that blog to create other content for the rest of that quarter.

So, it could be Instagram, it could be Facebook, it could be how to get clearer skin, it could be beach body. Whatever it might be, but to write one big, juicy, in depth piece of content that then can be reused and repurposed and split up for other months.

And then, build the rest of your efforts with your business around that. Do you have a particular product that you could promote during that time? Could you run a challenge? What your emails to your subscribers going to look like? Making sure that everything is cohesive.

And one thing that I know another planner who's super into analytics does is each month, they name their month. It's normally something like, "Go-Getter Month," or I know some sports athletes use like [inaudible 00:02:28] or target, or whatever that one word will be so that when you wake up in the morning, you think, "Okay, I'm going to do this." And it has to be very, very specific to you and what you want to do.

Is it team work? Is it get stuff done? Is it automate? Is it get help? Is it delegate? Whatever that word is, it's really powerful if you have it for like your theme of the month. And you can have that one word, no more than three word theme, and then break that down into like what does that mean to you?

What does automate mean to you? Does it mean automate all of your accounting systems? Does it mean automate all of your customer service systems? Don't make it mean automate everything because you'll never get that done in the one month. But think about what that specifically means to you.

Document everything was one of my months, and that was a case of, I know at some point, I am going to hand stuff off to somebody else. And so, I need to start documenting now what I do and how it's done, so that someone else will have an idea and that I'm not stuck when I hire someone to be like, "Ah, I've got to do all this documentation now." I'm already doing it as an ongoing process.

So, that's one part of planning. The other part of planning is not stretching yourself too thin. We only have a certain amount of hours in a month, and during that time you have to sleep and eat and have a life and do things. So, the rest of that time, maybe 50 or 60% of your life can be spent on your business and gaining visibility and getting clients.

So, how do you want to spend that time? And you should go and look back and think, "Okay, what is my one goal for this month?" And then, what tasks do I need to do to get to that goal? How much time will those goals roughly take me? And then, how can I fit them in, in the time that I have left in the month, not forgoing whatever else that I'm doing.

So, planning is really, really important and will help you, if you have an overarching theme over a set period of time, to get stuff done and to move you forward. Like, one quarter, my specific thing was visibility.

And so, I made sure that I recorded a bunch of podcasts [inaudible 00:04:51] I was interviewed on other podcasters' podcasts. And so, I did many episodes. One was focusing on my book. One was focusing ... there's the different things. And so, it's really useful to have a micro focus within that month to get stuff done.

Thanks for listening. This is Janice from the travel ... actually, the Career Introvert, helping you amplify your voice through podcasting and publishing, and making sure that people know what your wonderful skills are as an introvert.

Shownotes:

Are you one of those who feel pressured or stressed out whenever you see your mailbox full of e-mails waiting for your attention? Even though some of it is really necessary, what purpose do the other emails serve? For today’s episode, I wanted to introduce a quick productivity tip for you -- inbox zero!

Hello and welcome to The Traveling Introvert. Today I would like to talk about inbox zero and it is not a myth, it is also not for everybody. But the reason I want to talk about it today is because I gave it a try and I've managed to more or less keep it for over a month. I wouldn't say I'm a convert but it's definitely helped with my workflow and my processes and stopped me feeling overwhelmed by my inbox. And so I'll walk you through what I did.

So the first thing I did was I had about, I think, 3000 emails in my mailbox to start with. And the first thing I did was I archived. Except everything from the past week, I archived everything else. And I archived because you can find it again. Yes, I could have gone through and checked what I needed to delete but that wasn't the best thing to do. I went and I checked for emails that I hadn't opened, or that I could filter.

So there's certain emails that come from certain organizations that I do want to read them, or they have it set up in a certain way that I get all the emails whereas I just want one or two of them or key words and so I set up filters for those. Then the next thing I did after archiving everything is went through the last week and I had a plan. If it was something that I could deal with straight away, I would email back. If it was something that was like, "Hey check this article out so you can read it". I would click it, open it up and then save it to Instapaper.

Now Instapaper is a read it later app that's across platforms and where when you then have time you can go in and read it later. Because you don't actually have to be reading it when you open your email, it's not urgent normally. So, anything that I could get away with messaging back straight away, I would. Anything that was an article or something that I wanted to read, I'd open it up, save it and Instapaper to read later. There are things that I was waiting on somebody's response, or I knew that I had to wait for a certain date so I would use the snooze function in Gmail. And so that's awesome because I'd go in and be like, "Snooze it," even if it's just for two hours because my day hadn't started yet, or it was going to be something that I have to have a meeting first and then knew I was going to respond to. And that was wonderful. Anything else would be archived.

And so I hit inbox zero and it was the first of the month and I was like, "Yay." And I sent an email to my accountability buddy. I was like "Look inbox zero," because she's a big fan of it. And I wanted to see if this method of doing things would work. And it did to a certain extent. I wasn't at inbox zero all the time because obviously you get a bunch of emails. I'd wake up in the morning and be like, "Oh, 68 emails. Wonderful." But during the first week after hitting mailbox zero, what I would do is look at the email and be like, "Do I need to receive this email? Is this on a mailing list? Is this something that I need every day? Is it useful information?" And then I tried to be harsh about it. If I didn't need it, I would unsubscribe.

And so that cut down on my emails even more. And then I know I'd set up a bunch of Google alerts. So I went into my Google alerts and was like, "Do I need all of these alerts? Can I refine them? Can I change how often they turn up?" That sort of a thing. And so it was really refreshing to see how much my inbox dropped, how much was coming in but also how I was dealing with what was coming in. And it was very rare that I got an email that I was like, "I don't know what I need to do with it. Do I need to do this or that or the other?" There were definitely ones where I didn't need to make a response straight away so I would wait until I was cleaning through my mailbox or there was something that I wanted to do.

The other thing, this was great, that I didn't realize was an option is if you go into your settings and you have options how you filter through your mailbox and how you work through it. And so what I got told was that there is an auto advance where instead of when you click and you delete or you archive something that it takes you back to your inbox, you should set it so it takes you to the next oldest conversation. Which is wonderful because then you just work through it. You'll open one email and then it's like, "Archive. Snooze. Instapaper. Archive. Answer." That sort of thing. And you go through and you knock it out and it's a wonderful thing and it's a very easy ... what seems like a simple thing, and I didn't realize how much of a difference it would make. So that is how I got to and stayed at inbox zero.

Thank you for listening. This is Janice at TheCareerIntrovert.com, please feel free to email me any questions at [email protected], helping introverts launch their podcasts with a minimum overwhelm.

Shownotes:

Self-care is not just about healthy eating or taking care of your body. Showing yourself some love can also be done on the inside like doing mental hygiene. Every now and then, you need to check on yourself and assess how you deal with stress, what’s going on in your mind and whether it’s healthy for you or not. Do you do mental hygiene? If yes, what kind of cleansing do you do? 

Hello and welcome to The Traveling Introvert. Today I want to talk about mental health and the reason that this has come up is recently I've had a lot of my friends go through some mental health issues for various reasons and I think it's something that doesn't get talked about often enough, but it also makes me introspect and think what do I do for my mental health?

And there are many different ways for people to look after their mental health. And something that isn't brought up enough is mental hygiene. As children we are taught that we need to brush our teeth twice a day and how much toothpaste to put on the toothbrush and the correct way to brush your teeth, which teeth needed a little bit more love and also your tongue and other areas of your mouth and mouthwash, et cetera.

So we get taught also how to clean ourselves. We get taught how to wash, and shower, and bathe ourselves. We get taught that this is good for us and this is what we should be doing to be a good human being. However, when it comes to mental health, I don't think we get taught in the same way if at all how to look after ourselves mentally. And this is becoming more and more of an issue. Not only due to the way life is now, but the things that we do and the way we do things, our life is very different from how it would've been 50 or a hundred years ago. We deal with a lot of technology. Our life is much more fast-paced to then it used to be, there is a lot of outside influence, a lot of things that happen that are more reactionary and we don't do things in the same way.

You know when your email goes off, your phone goes off you jump straight away like Pavlov's dog when that sort of a thing happens. But you know, a hundred years ago that wasn't really a thing. And so having this constant bombardment of information, and things, and notifications leads our brains to be wired up slightly differently. And also the expectations that are set upon us societally how we're supposed to deal with things. What is a good or bad way of dealing with something is taught in a really interesting way, but it's not taught necessarily directly.

You're not taught directly how to take care of yourself mentally. You are taught directly how to brush your teeth but you're not taught directly by your parents, "Hey, meditation might be a good thing to do." Or examining why you do things and what your triggers might be. So what I think is a great idea is to set aside some time and think about what mental health or mental hygiene might mean to you and how you would like to achieve that.

And also how you've seen it with other people, what they've done, what they've tried to do and maybe failed at. And it's okay because you won't always know what works for you mental health wise, and that might change over time or when something happens. I know definitely there was an incident that I had last year that changed my view on a lot of things because of what had happened and so I then had to try and deal with that and I'm still dealing with that and that's fine. That's okay. Don't expect everything to be solved straight away.

That's the other problem right now is the instant gratification thing. Yes, you can go to therapy, but you you should only go once or twice and then you should be fine. And that's not the case. Sometimes healing takes years and that is okay. So I'd love to know listeners, what is it you do for your mental health.

Do you spend 20 minutes a day writing a journal? Do you spend 10 minutes coloring? Do you meditate? Do you do yoga? Do you speak to a therapist? What works for you and why is it important? And is it something that you used to do and you stopped doing and you'd like to take it up again?

Because just like brushing your teeth and showering, mental health, you shouldn't just deal with it when something happens. There should be constant care and attention, even if it's once a every six months that you go to a therapist just to talk it out. And yes, your friends semi-count as therapists, but they're not professionals. So I'd love to know what you do for your mental health. And if you don't do something now, what you would like to do before the end of the year. Thank you for listening. This is Janice from The Career Introvert, helping introverts launch, their podcast with limited overwhelm.

Shownotes:

Have you ever wanted to do something but failed to do so because of the excuses you’ve had for yourself? You might have said you don’t have enough time, or that something else needs your attention. This is something that you can easily resolve through an online marathon. The whole idea is to help you get into a healthy habit that will make you productive and will make you so much better in general.

Hello and welcome to The Traveling Introvert. Today I am going to talk about how I'm doing a marathon, but not a regular learning sort of a marathon. I'm doing an online marathon and I want to talk through the experiences that I've had because I've done this twice now.

So the idea behind this online marathon is that you have five key areas that you concentrate on. You have sleep, fitness, nutrition, most important, work. You know what? I've forgotten my last one, so let me look it up. Planning, and do you work with a team online and you get points for planning your day, hitting your fitness girls, hitting your nutrition goals, hitting your sleep goals, and then doing your most important work. So the thing behind the most important work is we get so caught up in our day to day lives of just doing life, that sometimes things that are really important to us get left behind.

So one of the times I did this marathon, my most important work was continuing to write my book. I have a couple of books that have been on the back burner for about nine months. I've been doing a little bit here and there but I haven't been consistent. So the whole point behind the marathon and is that you do at least 10 minutes on your most important work per day because that 10 minutes per day ends up being a lot of time, it ends up being over an hour per week and if you do up to 100 minutes worth of your important most important work per day, it leads up to a lot of time. I ended up writing half of a book basically the last time that I did this particular style of marathon, so the most important work.

So what I learned is that for the sleep patterns, I don't regularly go to bed at the same time for various reasons. It could be for travel, it could be I'm attending an event, but I put in plans that I know I could achieve, you want wins, quick wins that you can get. For nutrition, it was eat a piece of fruit per day and to help me make sure that I would get to that, I made sure that my fridge was stock to the Sunday before the marathon started, with fruit that was easy to eat that I liked. It could be strawberries, it could be cherries, it could be an apple a day. I just put a piece of fruit because if I put, eat an apple a day, it seems more of a chore but if I just put fruit, that gives me a variety of things to choose from that then I can say, "Well I had a handful of grapes that was eating fruit for the day."

For fitness, you try and sort of look at a wide range of things that you could do. So it could be, I will either run, or do cardio, or go for a walk in the park, or go to the gym, or I will cycle at least 10 minutes per day and that can be your fitness goal, even stretching, yoga, whatever it might be, it counts towards your fitness goal. So one thing that we've learned as a team is that some people like to get their most important work done straight away. First thing in the morning they'll go, they'll get it done, get it knocked out because then they find they don't have as much control over the rest of their day and things happen, fires happen, clients happen and then they never get back to their most important work.

What I have found is that happens, but I'm not the best in the morning, so me trying to do my most important work in the morning is a no win for anybody but I've, because of this, have realized when I'm most productive, when it's good for me to do things. I've started to get into a habit of one thing. I discovered a really cool app to go to the gym called Zombies, Run! Which I'm a little in love with, I haven't yet coughed up for the paid version, but we'll see. The thing with this marathon is it's supposed to get you into habits and because you then fall into a habit, you're using less glucose to make decisions. The less decisions you have to make in your day, the more things that you can do.

So the whole idea behind this is to get into a rhythm, get into a habit that makes you feel good and it's better and it gets your most important work done. Your most important work can change from day to day, from week to week but at least you have that feeling of accomplishment that hey, I did a hundred minutes of coloring today. I did a hundred minutes of self-care, I did a hundred minutes of gardening. There's one person who's done a hundred minutes of setting up his new home. He just bought a new place with his partner and he's setting it up because moving is one of those things where, because life is happening at the same time you are moving, I definitely know people who have boxes that haven't been opened in six months since they moved because they just haven't gotten round to it.

So this is the things that people use for their marathon. The marathon is done with a company called Ultraworking, who I love and I love working with them. They do many other things, but I just wanted to talk about setting habits and how sometimes your most important work can get left behind just because of life.

So my challenge to you moving forward is think of what your most important work it is and what can you do for 10 minutes per day towards that most important work and what a difference that can make in your life. Thank you for listening. This is Janice from the careerintrovert.com, helping you launch your podcast or your book as an introvert.

Shownotes:

Not all people can sit still while traveling. Other people can listen to music, read or sleep the whole ride, but some people don’t have the ability to do that simply because they get bored. Usually, when this happens, they try to find someone to talk to - which is the person closest to them. Though having a conversation with someone can help pass time, you still need to be mindful of whether you’re disturbing someone else.

Hello, and welcome to the Traveling Introvert. Today I am going to talk about... Wow, I had that thing in my head and now it has gone. So I'm going to go on feedback that I just got recently from one of my listeners. I'm going to talk about plane travel, but not just any plane travel, that plane travel that you have, when next to you sits someone who just can't stop talking.

So recently I was on a flight to Denver, and I was in the corner, I had my little window seat because it was a short flight, I had my noise canceling headphones on. They were on, I mean I wasn't listening to anything, but they were on my head and they were plugged in, and it looked like I was listening to something. And the guy in the aisle, he sat down, and so you're waiting and you're waiting and you think no one's going to sit in the middle seat and you're almost a little bit excited. You almost start to stretch out a little, and then someone comes and sits in the middle seat, which is fine.

I'm looking out the window because I like to see how they're loading in the bags because I tend to see my suitcase, because it's very recognizable. Let me rephrase that, it was recognizable, I had to buy a new one recently, which was sad. So now I'm on the side, minding my own business, looking out the window with my headphones on, and the two next to me start talking. The usual, "So where are you going? Where are you heading? What are you doing? Business or pleasure?" And all of that sort of conversation. And those two are having this loud enough conversation that I can hear them over... My noise canceling headphones are now on, but they've got the noise canceling function on, so there's that hiss sound, and that's fine.

And I normally take my headphones off when flight attendants are giving the emergency speech because I want to let them know that I'm paying attention, and also pay attention. No matter how often you have flown you should always pay attention, because all planes are different, and different airlines do different things. And you want it to be automatic, the thing why they tell you the same thing over and over and over again, is because when you are panicking you need to hit into automatic, and so you need to know it's under the seat or it's this, I need to do that. That's why you hear it time and time again and that's why you should pay attention, side note.

So they do that, and I put my headset back on because they've finished the speech. And we take off, and we're flying and it's wonderful. I get to look out the window, which I don't normally.

And then the flight attendants come around with the drinks cart and the food cart. And so, I'm not in the first row, we're three rows back and so they're like, "What would you like to drink?" And they're asking everybody and they're throwing pretzels at them, but they also have the option of ordering food or extra drinks if they wish.

And so our flight attendant gets to our row, and she asks the person in the aisle, "Hey, what would you like?" He's like, "Well, what do you have?" And she's like, "Well, here's our magazine and if you look on the pages here, you can then pick some things." And then she goes and deals with the other side and she comes back. She goes, "Well, what would you like now?" And he's, "Okay, I want this thing." And she's like, "That's the breakfast menu, if you turn over the page..." So he picks something, and then the lady in the middle is like, "Oh well, Oh, Oh there's a magazine. Oh, let me look at the magazine," bearing in mind she had all this time in between.

Anyway, she looks at the magazine, in the meantime the flight attendant asks me what I want, I already know what I want, I order. And the person next to me was like, "Oh, you already knew what you wanted, smarty pants, you knew about where to find the drinks and everything. You're obviously a frequent flyer.".

FYI, I still have my headphones on, and I just smile and nod. And we get our food and everything and I put my headphones back on and I've got my book out and the woman decides she's going to turn to... And you know when you see someone turning to you, like they want to talk to you but they haven't done so yet? And I literally pick up my book and put it in front of my face to be like, "I can't actually see you and I can't hear you," whether I could or not is beyond the point.

But then I did this for most of the flight, I actually slept for some of the flight, but every time I woke up I could... You know, you get that sense when someone wants to talk to you? And then at the end of the flight, to get off the plane, I took my headphones off and she starts talking to me.

"So what do you do? How are you? Do you fly often?" And I was polite enough, but the fact that for 90% of the flight I had headphones on, and was reading a book, should have been the universal symbol of, "Please don't talk to me," and that was for the short flight.

I've now realized I've rambled for almost my five minutes allotted time, so there will be a part-two of what to do when someone won't stop talking in an extra long flight, like a 13-hour flight to Asia.

The other thing about these two is they talked the entire flight. I knew about their grandkids, their mom, their dad, what they did for work, what they ate for breakfast. Because they were loud, they didn't keep it at a reasonable level. Yes, I know planes are loud, obviously why I listened, and have noise-canceling headphones, but you're sitting next to each other.

So that was my... it wasn't even a rant, it was just information about traveling. Headphones on, book out, as close to your face as possible to try to ignore them, or just do one-word answers.

Thank you for listening. This is Janice from the Career Introvert, helping you launch your podcast with minimum overwhelm using workflows and systems, so you can recharge quicker.

Shownotes:

Favors are an important part of our lives. It gives us a good feeling when we know we have helped someone and that we lessen their workload. However, not all favors deserve to be said yes to. We still have to weigh every “yes” that we will give because if not, we will be the ones to suffer the frustration. How do you decide whether someone is worth helping?

Hello, and welcome to the Traveling Introvert. Today I want to talk about how many favors is enough. This has come up a lot for me recently because I am very much the type of person that likes to support other people and give people a chance.

Recently, I've found it's bit in the butt and I've had to go and take a look and think how much is too much and what is good and what isn't. So part of that knowing when to say no, which I'm still obviously a little terrible at, and knowing when accepting something is good for you and your business and what you may or may not get out of it and what it benefits the other person.

So a couple of things have happened. One is where I agreed to support a particular business and they were going to send me something and I was going to go ahead and promote it with whatever I was doing at the time. This did not happen.

Even from the get-go when I was asking for contracts, when I was asking for information, I kept on having to follow up. But I was nice about it. I'd say, "Oh, maybe they're busy or and it's their first time trying this. Maybe they don't know what they're doing. They don't have a system in place." So I was asking questions and getting told, "Trust me, I got this." So I was like, "Okay, I'm going to trust you."

Fast forward a few months, I'm still the one chasing out, I'm still the one sending emails and only getting information if I follow up. Then it turns out, long story short, it didn't happen. They tried to give me some kind of monetary payment. Instead, I agreed that maybe it should be used to sponsor different event.

They liked the idea, wanted to talk about it. I sent them my calendar. They then were upset that I sent them a calendar and wanted me to just call randomly. I explained that I don't do that. This is how I work and we want to be able to give each other the full attention that is deserved. And so setting up a time in each other's calendars is the best way forward.

Fast forward a month, didn't hear a thing. And then they get upset about the money that they said they gifted and they made a request for the money back. Gave the money back, but sent them an email saying, "This entire process has been frustrating. I've been the one following up and the fact you asked me for the money back after saying it was a gift, after you didn't do what you said you were going to do, et cetera."

Turned into that person being very angry and very upset and saying that they were swindled and that they didn't agree to anything and there's a whole to-do. That was one thing.

Then another time when I've given someone the benefit of the doubt and tried to support their business was that I was going to do a mini-speaking thing for them, but it was on video. They gave instructions on how they wanted the video done and they wanted good lighting and a microphone and all of that stuff.

I got the best lighting I had. Not everyone's house has amazing lighting. I don't have lamps. I wasn't actually at home for maybe 24 hours before I did the recording. It needed to be done in a short timeframe because even though they'd announced that they were doing this particular thing three or four months ago, they waited until two weeks before the event to start actually going ahead and doing the video.

Apparently, I didn't have the video quality that they wanted, the lighting quality that they wanted. I ended up going round my house trying to find the lighting that was good for them.

I wasn't dressed appropriately, because they wanted it to look a certain way. I said, "Well, that wasn't my brand, but okay, fine." And also the weather. Wasn't looking to wear a bunch of clothing in the weather that I currently had. Their response was, "Well, it's hot here too." And ended up doing video.

What was frustrating at that time was I almost broke my computer. My computer and I ended up on the floor with me trying to figure stuff out. Also ended up breaking up my fan. I have an external fan for my computer and that broke, due to all the kerfuffle and everything that was trying to be done to get this thing done because they were in a time crunch.

At one point they kind of said, "Oh, are you okay," and that, but that was it. And I was like, "Well, yeah, my computer ended up on a tile floor because of all that. That could we just does not record this. And yeah. And I offered to reschedule a couple times, but ideally it wouldn't work for them because they were running on a short time crunch because they had not planned.

So think about when you say yes to something, what that means to you. How much time it might take, what the responsibilities might be, and if it works for you. Does it work for your goals for that month, that week, that year? How does it help them? Is there a contract in place?

Think about all of these things when you say yes to something, because just having a little tick chart of things that should be, is this good for my business, does this go towards [inaudible 00:05:12] goal, is there a contract in place, will help you in the long run.

Thank you. This is Janice from the Career Introvert helping you launch your podcast and do so much more.

Shownotes:

There’s a popular saying that goes, “an early bird catches the early worm.” It talks about how being early or being first in action would give you the most opportunities. Although it might be true for some, it doesn’t really mean that you’ll be left out when you come later than others. People work at a different pace and a different time. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is you get the job done right.

Hello, and welcome to the Traveling Introvert. Today, I am going to talk about not being a morning person. There was a conversation in a Slack group that I am in of people, and we were doing this particular thing that we were doing and people are like, "Ah, I'm going to get up early and I'm going to seize the day. Do exercise, and yoga, and eat right, and go for a run, and all the things that you do because when you wake up early, you're a better human being."

And we realized that there's really not a lot of information out there about not everyone has to be a morning person. There was a lot of Buzzfeed articles and listicles in general about the top things that CEOs do before breakfast, and why waking up early is good for you, and you have to dig a little bit to find any information on, hey, you don't have to be an early bird. You could be ... Wait, you could be a night bird because technically night owl is still a bird. But you can be a night owl and still be productive because there is definitely this myth surrounding the fact that if you don't get up early, you cannot be a productive human being.

And this is not the case. What you find is a lot of writers write at night because everything that could disturb you and bother you, is probably not around, be it your kids, or work, noise outside. At night, a peace tends to descend on certain places on earth, and therefore people find it easier to write, to compose, to paint. There was a famous painter who went, and she had access to a studio. She would only go at night because that's when she felt that she could be her, as she said, "Weird, but not really," herself. She could put her hands all the way in the paint pots and fling them around to create her art. She was free to express herself without other people judging. Whereas if she'd gone during the day, she'd feel like people would kind of judging.

You can be productive. I found that I have my most productive time between sort of 7:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. at night. That's when I can just sit and get either creative work done or organizational work done. It just works out better for me, but I found hard, with being productive in the evening, is that any communities that I am part of, generally the community events or the coworking events tend to be during the considered to be the normal working day between the hours of 9:00 and 5:00, and I found that I've had to find communities maybe on the other side of the world that will do things in their time zone when it's like 9:00 a.m. for them but 11:00 for me.

That's how I've worked being a night owl, and being a night owl, you can enjoy being by yourself. You can get a lot done. You can use tools that you're not getting pinged by your email, you're not getting interrupted, and what that will send your email out 8:00 a.m. In the morning so everyone thinks that you sent the messages at 8:00 a.m. In the morning. Being an early bird is something that seems to be prized in a lot of industries and communities and cultures. But if you take a look at it, as long as you get the work done, no matter when it is done, it shouldn't be a problem.

And this is something that should be true for remote work and remote workers. We definitely have a culture of, well we're having a 9:00 a.m. meeting because it's the start of the day. And so most people's Mondays are chockfull of Monday morning meetings to catch up on stuff when really you could have done it on Thursday and then doing on Monday afternoon or Tuesday afternoon instead when things have settled down rather than, "Oh, I have all this bunch of emails but wait, I'm spending my entire morning in meetings."

If you are a night owl or you work better in the afternoon, try and adjust your work or what you're doing or your creative time to enjoy that because you will feel better and you'll be more productive in your own way if you work with what times work good for you. Set up a spreadsheet. And if you don't know when you work best, and just do sort of 9:00 a.m., 10:00 a.m., noon, 3:00, 5:00, 7:00, 9:00, and take a note of your energy levels during those time over a week, and then you might be able to figure out when you will find it best to work. And honestly, I get so much more done in the evening than I do during the day because I figured out that, oh, it's okay for me to work at that time. And I also tend to try and have clients that aren't time pressure-sensitive for the stuff that needs doing.

How do you work best? Are you an early bird? Are you an afternoon bird? Are you a night bird? Are you none of the above? Do you like to do things in small chunks and then take a rest? How you work and how you work best is for you to figure out. There is no one right way. Thanks for listening. This is Janice from the Career Introvert helping you launch your podcast.

Shownotes:

As time goes by, many things now get charged for a price, and that includes being a guest on a podcast. It can be compared to guest blogging, there are certain sites that charge a certain amount if you want to promote a book, event, or a site of your own in a channel with a large audience. This happens because the hosts use a large amount of money to maintain their sites, and not all potential guests show up or fulfill their obligations. Have you ever paid to be a guest on a podcast? How did it go? As a listener would you like to know when someone has paid to be on a podcast?  And then there are companies like Forbes.

Hello and welcome to The Traveling Introvert. Today I'd like to talk about something that's come up recently and it is pay to play, and to some people, this might be triggering just because of the fact that they're like, "Oh wait, but pay to play. Isn't that something you can't do? Isn't that something to stop networks from taking over?" So the reason why I want to talk about pay to play is because there are some podcasts that now will charge people to be interviewed or be on that podcast, and some people are very open about it and some people are not so open about it, and there is a split amongst the podcasting community on whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. On one hand, it helps weed out people who might be wasting your time. There's a lot of time that's spent by podcasters setting up the interview, doing all the research, waiting for someone to come online and then they don't turn up for the interview and they may or may not reschedule, and that is time wasted by the podcaster.

On the same note, it could be that this particular podcaster has a huge reach and if you go on that podcast, it's almost like going on Oprah, if once Oprah says, "This is a thing.", the place sells out so you are buying basically advertising and so why would you not pay for that?

On the other hand, there is the camp that thinks that if you are going to pay for play, then you should state so very clearly and be upfront about it. The idea is someone should want to talk about something, not necessarily just go on to sell. It should be a conversation, it should be a growth, it should be a learning and so there is a divide on the pay to play. Now the thing is pay to play is not just with podcasting. It's also with companies like Forbes for example, they have a a council that you can be on, they approach you, they tell you how wonderful you might be as a good fit to be on this council like board and how you can, you are able to go and you can write articles and be quoted and they'll put articles together with best practices and that sort of a thing.

But you do have to pay a yearly, basically a yearly subscription fee to have access to a, being able to be published on Forbes and to have a badge that states that you are a member of the Forbes Council. So these are all things that give you exposure but they want you to pay for them and you are basically paying to advertise. And so there is definitely a split between the process of what might be seen as pay to play and what might be seen as advertising. And it might just be the mindset of how you go about it or it could be the, well you're not being upfront about it. Because definitely for the Forbes Council, if you try and look online about it, there isn't a lot of information. They reached out to me a couple months ago to be on board one of these councils and when I was trying to find out information how much content was out there and how things, their process was, it was just very murky.

I can't find a lot of information online. There were a couple of people who did put that information out there, but it's not very well stated. When you see a particular, you'll say it's a contributor for Forbes, but it doesn't say that that contributor has to pay sort of a monthly or yearly subscription to be able to post on Forbes. So it's very, very interesting how that works. I would love to know audience your opinion on pay-to-play, whether it be something for like Forbes or something like when you're being a guest on a podcast. Where do you draw that line? Where is it advertising and where is it paying to get ahead from somebody else, which is kind of what advertising is. Is there a wrong or a right way? It just depends how you look at it. I would love to hear your thoughts. Thank you for listening. This was a quick one. This was Janice from thecareerintrovert.com helping introverts launch their podcast with minimum overwhelm. I would love for you to write in, email me at [email protected] if you have any questions or any topic you would like me to cover on the show.

Shownotes:

Have you ever wondered why there are people who grow unhappy with their career as time pass by? Some people find dissatisfaction in their jobs because they feel like they are stuck on a wheel that goes round and round without end. And usually, this scenario happens because of our failure to reflect on our career and how it affects our life, both financially and mentally. Are you content with your career? Does it really help you and the people around you?

Hello, and welcome to The Traveling Introvert. Today, I want to talk about how to reflect on your career, your job, your business. You can do this at any time. People really like to do this at the start of the year, in the middle of the year ... every quarter. As long as you do it, it's fine. It doesn't matter how often or when you do it. So, I want to talk about a couple of things.

The first thing is, does your work matter? And the reason I say this is because it's a really fundamental question. Because, if the answer's, "No," then why are you doing it? Or if it's, "No, but it gives me the money to do other things that matter," that's fine. But, your happiness, both professional and personal, come from possibly doing work that you care about.

And so, you need to think about what you've done, why you've done it, what you've achieved, what does it mean to you, why does it mean these things to you, and ... Because, what we've found now, is that a lot of people, when they're looking for companies to work for, they want to have meaningful jobs. They want to know that what they do matters. And not just matters to themselves, but to the greater community.

So, just stop and take a look, and think about, "What is it that I do?" Not every single thing that you do as part of your work has to matter, but there should be something in there that, "Yes, I enjoy doing this part because of X, Y and Z." Or, "I enjoy this because I get to work with Y, B and X." It doesn't matter, but you need to think about what you're working that is and doesn't matter.

And also, not just to you, but does it matter to your employer? Or does it matter to your clients? Because the best way to get a synergy with work is to make sure that you're all on the same page, and one way of doing this is comparing your values, and does that work matter?

Now, the next thing is, right now we are in constant flux and constant change. Skills that you acquired last year might not be so good and useful this year. Technology changes so quickly, and there used to be just one, like ... Buffer used to be the thing that you used to use for your social media, but now there's Meet Edgar and there's Social Curator and there's all these things. Technology drives a lot of what we do these days, and how we do it.

Just today, I ended up trying a new software for someone as far as rendering your podcast, and sort of mastering it and digitally producing it. I got one thing that I use right now, but this person came up with a new thing, and I should try it, right? So, just take a look and look back over the past year, or six months, and see ... Have you learnt any new technology? Is there something new that's come out that's better for your business? Or better for your career? Or something that you'd just like to know more about? And take a look, because probably there is something that you'd like to take a look at, and just see what would happen.

Now, the other thing that's really important to think about when you're just doing an analysis, is your financial wellbeing. And, that can be your personal or your business, or both, financial wellbeing. I mean, money alone doesn't dictate how satisfied you might be, but it sure does help. So, when you're thinking about, holistically, your lifestyle, where you want to be, what you want to do, where you might want to be located, think about the funding needed and required for that. Also think about retirement, what you want to do, how that would look, and are your financial needs currently being met? If not, is there something that you can do to change it? Could it be learning a new skill? Could it be changing position? Could it be starting a new branch of your business?

Just stopping and taking stock of these three things can help you pivot or lead you in a different direction, because sometimes we just get so lost being in the weeds and just getting stuff day to day, that we forget to breathe and take a step back and think, "Okay, what are my values? What do I enjoy doing? What do I give back to the community? Or, my community ... whatever that might be. And, are my finances where they need to be?" Those are really important things. And then, "What technology can I use to get myself there? What technology can I use to help other people do X, Y and Z?"

So, these things are very much intertwined. You can use apps to track your finances. You can snap photos to see how much money you spend on these different things ... All of these things together will help you make a decision about what you want to do next. Maybe what project you want to work on and the type of people you want to work with. So, that's one quick way of how you can make a review if you're in a career, or if you have your own business, to see what the next three to six months might lead you to.

Thank you for listening. This is [email protected], helping you launch your podcast or your book with great workflows and strategies and systems to help you be consistent.