“Show Notes”
Ros Jones helps people grow their business while avoiding burnout.
Ros started in corporate in London, working in change and systems management. With her last job, she was feeling very discontented, getting bored and felt she couldn’t go anywhere. She was thinking of moving into training. But then she got a call to buy into a business coaching franchise, which she did.
Ros introduces a formula from the book “7 habits of highly effective people” by Steven Covey
Be * Do = Have.
She says there are two ways to look at this. Who I am, combined with what I do, gives me what I have. This allows us to take ownership of our lives. It also allows us to make a change. We can look at what we want to have (our goals) and we can then look backwards and see who I need to be and what I need to do to achieve these goals.
She says in some ways it is simple, but we often get in our way.We have constant chatter in our heads. We can control this inner dialogue, and we need to if it becomes negative. We have a set of internal beliefs and values, many of which are set when we are young, often before the age of 7. These can cause negative behaviours that affect the way we behave. We need to work on some of these to ensure that some of these beliefs and values are holding us back. The actions we need to take can also be a challenge. We can feel overwhelmed or fearful and not take action.
Ros thinks that to help with not feeling overwhelmed, weshould plan our day to ensure we achieve the things we need to. Marcus says that it can be hard for photographers as last-minute shoots can come in. Ros says this is a choice, and it’s important to set boundaries. She says it is also important to set aside time for yourself. For our well-being, this is very important. Marcus says this is also very important as part of being a creative person and allowing time for creativity. Ros says that when she went self-employed, she felt she hadto earn as much as she did when employed, so she just did nothing but sell. But this caused her to feel burnt out. So that personal time is really important. It doesn’t matter what it is you do, but it needs to be away from work. Exercise is one of the things you can do, and there is an exercise show you can listen to here.
As a solopreneur, your business is at risk if you are ill, so it’s important to keep yourself healthy. Ros says this links to the goals that you set to make sure you do
those personal things. One of the personal things Ros has done is write a book, which you can find here. The book is about family relationships and covers a period, so it contains some social history, too.
The conversation then moves on to burnout. Ros says it’s important to avoid well ahead rather than looking for signs of it. Ros says if you find yourself syncical and disoriented, with chronic fatigue, digestive problems, etc. But the key is not to get to this stage.
Ros says the thing to avoid is delaying the personal stuff until later. Avoid things like putting off your run as you want to do more work. Marcus thinks that men are generally worse at self-care and self-awareness than women. Ros says we need to get over ourselves and if we have a problem, we need to talk about it.
Ros also has a podcast, “Bold Business“. It is conversations with phenomenal female business leaders in Yorkshire.
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You can find Ros on LinkedIn here
Or email her at info@rosjones.co.uk
“Show Transcription”
Marcus: Well, hello there, Sam. How are you doing this week?
Sam: Not too bad, Marcus. How about you?
Marcus: Yeah, I’m very well. Thank you very well, indeed. And I believe we have a guest on this week who you’re going to introduce.
Sam: We do. We have with us Ros Jones this week. Hi, Ros.
Ross: Hello, Sam. Hi, Marcus. It’s great to be here. Thank you for asking me.
Marcus: Hi there.
Sam: No problem. And so, as usual with our guests, I’m going to hand over to Ros and ask her to introduce herself.
Ross: Thank you. So I’m Ros Jones. I am a consultant and business coach, working with business leaders to help them scale their business without burnout. That’s my idea, my intention, my goal. That’s what I do.
Sam: Excellent. That sounds a good balance. Get there without killing yourself in the process.
That sounds like a good way to go. And you’re there to guide us on the way. And then the next thing we usually ask guests as well is kind of, so how did you get where you are today? Do you want to tell us a little bit of your journey?
Ross: Yes. I’ll keep it brief because I can wax lyrical about this because it was such a sort of sequence of serendipitous moments. But in brief, I was working in corporate for 20 years, senior leadership in senior roles in big organisations, commuting to London every day and doing that kind of stuff. Anyway, the final place where I worked, I worked in three places, but doing the same kind of thing around about information management, systems, policies, those change management kind of things. And the last place I worked, I was feeling very discontented because I was one of the organisations that was chuped over to form a new organisation. And the culture really wasn’t good at the time, I’m sure it’s better now. And I felt I couldn’t go anywhere, I was getting bored at my job. My manager’s foot was firmly on my head, so to speak. And so I was getting very unhappy at work. And I was speaking with a friend about, I really needed to change direction and the friend who was in our HR was helping me work out what I wanted to do, what I should be doing. And by the end of the conversation, she decided that I should be working for a training organisation. Now, I just wanted to be a teacher when I was a kid. But when I came to do the KGCE, I realised I didn’t like children, so that was a disadvantage. So I went off to find my fame and fortune in London anyway, I ended up at this point. And as soon as I thought, that’s great, that’s obviously what I was meant to do, teach adults. And then literally 10 minutes after that conversation, my telephone rang and it was somebody from a franchise inviting me to or suggesting that I might be interested in buying a coaching franchise. Now, I didn’t say yes immediately, but the serendipity there was like, wow, this is a sign. Anyway, I ended up buying that franchise. I’m not in it anymore, but that’s how I came to leave corporate and change direction to become a business coach and consultant.
Sam: Excellent.
Marcus: Got you. That’s a great journey you’ve got there. And so I guess for this show, what we’re going to be talking about in particular, because you’ve obviously covered a lot of ground there, but in particular, we’re going to focus on mindset, mindset for photographers, how to get to where you want to be. And then if I’m available, we’re going to start talking about what you can do when you get there. And you said the two business all going wrong and you got yourself from burnout. So with that in mind, boys, let’s let’s start talking about mindset.
Ross: Yeah, well, I think one of the formulas that I use with myself and my clients and just generally when I’m talking to people or talking with people is a formula that’s actually in a great book by Stephen Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. I’m a great reader. I’m actually into personal development and reading and learning through reading. And this formula is B times do equals have. And if you think about it. B times do equals have.
Marcus: Yeah. Oh, OK. EMC squared, but like a mindset version.
Ross: But this is a really powerful formula. So if we go back to algebra and we there’s two ways of looking at this formula, we can either be really blunt and look at it and say, OK, so what this means is who I am, my B times what I do, the actions I take, my do gives me what I have right now. So what you’ve got in your life right now is a result of your actions times your do your beliefs, your identity, the way you think about yourself. So that’s the blunt truth that we have to accept or not as the case may be. But I believe that that’s what we have to accept if we take ownership for our lives. The other way of thinking about that is, OK, we don’t have to if we’re not particularly happy with what we’ve got right now, it can change. So what that formula also gives us the opportunity to to do is to look at what we want to have, say, look at the last bit of that equation. What is it I want to have? What’s my goals, what I want in my life? What’s my vision? And then some people don’t know that so it can take a bit of work. But once we’ve got real clarity on that, then we look backwards and say, OK, so who do I need to be to achieve those goals? What’s what are their beliefs? I need to change about myself and the values. What’s my identity need to be? And then the do what do I need to do? What actions do I need to take? Because as I think it was Einstein that said, if we keep doing what we’ve always done, we’ll always get what we’ve always got. So we can either be happy without being turned to do because have or we can change it. We can actually proactively take steps to change, decide what we want to have and then change ourselves and what we do.
Marcus: So it’s as simple as that, then if you believe it, it will happen.
Ross: It is as simple as that. But the problem is our thoughts. So we are governed by our thoughts. And so along the way, you know, along my business coaching journey, I’ve done a lot of training and learning or different things. I’ve actually I’ve done a lot of training on. I’m actually trained hypnotherapies as well. I’m not hypnotizing you at this moment, but all this NLP stuff. I’ve done a lot of work on that. And the way our thoughts work is really interesting because we there’s the conscious mind, our ego mind, if you like, that runs our show. Generally, it’s it’s always got this chatter going on in our heads. But we get to choose those thoughts. So it’s not as easy as that. But with practice, it becomes easier. We have to be aware of what we’re thinking. And if we’re thinking negative stuff, it’s not helping us. We just need to stop and decide that we want to think about something else. There’s a little little diagram that I like to show with people, which is that what happens with our thoughts? And this is like a loop. We have our so we have our internal filters, which are beliefs about ourselves and things like that that are actually set when up to the age of about seven years old, when we believe everything that everybody tells us. So a carer or an adult might say something negative about ourselves. And we can go on believing that for the rest of our lives. It’s where a lot of people get their problems with money at that time when people tell us made as ground trees or what do you think? I made a money, those kind of things.
Sam: So that’s interesting, because I’m just at the moment got reading, reading, listening to the audio book, the chimp paradox.
Ross: Yeah.
Sam: Exactly what they’re talking about there. They call them gremlin stuff that’s been programmed into your brain that are not helping you.
Ross: Yes. So what happens is that when we get so we we get an external event, so maybe we see something, we hear something, we smell something, we took whatever through our senses, we experience something that goes through our internal filters and generates a thought. This all happens at the speed of light. The thought then produces a feeling. The feeling makes us behave in a certain way, which gives us a result. And whatever that result is, if it’s a negative result, that gives us a negative thought, which makes us feel bad. So we take a we behave in negatively and it just goes round and round. So what we need to do is we look at the result we’ve got and we think, actually, I don’t like that result. So I need to change the way I’m thinking. Let’s try a different way and then change our belief. So this is going to work. And then with that positive thinking and feeling, really feeling that this is going to work, it’s going to make us behave in a different way, so we’ll get a different result. So it just goes around in a loop. So we are governed by our thoughts, but we don’t have to accept what our thoughts are telling us because they’re just thoughts. They’re not real.
Sam: Yeah. That’s it. So that’s about the B. And so that’s in terms of making sure that B is right. But there’s also the do as well, isn’t it? Because Marcus says it’s as easy as that. Just the doing isn’t always as easy as that. You think, do I know? Oh, my God, there’s this to do on that to do. And often that means we end up paralyzed, don’t we? Because there’s so much to do. We do nothing.
Ross: Yeah.
Sam: Or we will we go down a channel that’s just very random and narrow and actually not really helping us.
Ross: Yes. And I think there what’s there’s two things really useful again. We can we can overthink what we do. And so sometimes, as you say, we become paralyzed. And often that’s because we need to do something that we’re not used to and it’s uncomfortable. So we’re going to have to we’re going to have to get out of that comfort zone, which nobody likes doing. But when we do get out of that comfort zone and we realize there was nothing to fear, it was fine. Then that gives us a different feeling. So we’ll carry on doing it and get and continue to get out of that comfort zone. So there’s the fear that stops us. But again, that’s just thoughts. So we overcome those thoughts and we just do the thing. But in terms of having so much to do, that’s when you get to plan. We plan our day, we plan our week. There will be times when we have to react to stuff, but we can spend all day reacting and never get anything achieved. So yeah, we I always recommend that we actually design our day proactively. And interestingly, the Stephen Covey book I mentioned earlier, The Seven Habits. Habit number one is be proactive. So we have to proactively design our day. Choose when I’m going to do this from nine to ten. I’ve got to do this from ten to eleven.
Sam: And we talked about that on a few shows. So first of all, yes, we were all in all of the books. Ross talks about we’ll put links in the show notes so you can find those. And we’ve talked on that about a few shows, haven’t we, Marcus? Exactly that, because, yeah, I do like Ross. At the beginning of the week, I sit down and go, right, plan each day. And yes, it doesn’t always go to plan, but at least know I’ve got, you know, roughly the right amount of time on sales, the right amount of time I put aside on planning, the right amount of time on actually doing the stuff. Otherwise, you just kind of answer in emails and you just float away doing whatever anybody shows under your nose, aren’t you? And you don’t really achieve anything.
Marcus: It’s true. But, you know, I think photography as we’re very outward facing or generally speaking, outward facing, we’re dealing with other people. We have to go out and do these things. It’s your your week is very much is much more unpredictable, I think. And I think it’s hard to plan those things. I don’t know. I’m making excuses here, but I’ve tried time blocking before and it’s just gone out the window really within a matter of days because all of a sudden I’ve got my suit that comes in and my time’s all gone.
Ross: Yeah, I understand that. And I have met, you know, I’ve met photographers before who said I can’t I can’t commit to that because the state agent might call me and I’ve got to take some photographs of a house or something. So do get that. But I think the important thing, especially for photographers where you could you know, there’s a risk there, isn’t there? When you are at the whim of other people, if you like. So you’ve either got you can either you can either set boundaries and say, this is where I’m going to work. Or if you have to react all the time to your customers. But if you choose to react all the time to your customers, I think the important thing always is to set some time aside for yourself. And I mean, nothing to do with business. I mean, about yourself. Because as you know, that I am passionate about business, about well-being. And I think, you know, it’s so easy and it’s increasing the risk of burning out these delis. But the way to avoid that is to build in rituals, if you like, habits that are dedicated to ourselves. And if that means that you’re going to have to do it, you know, antisocial hours, so be it because you’re out working all the time. But is it really vital that you do that every day? Absolutely vital.
Sam: And then also how many photographers actually are literally called out at the last minute, like you said, was, yeah, it might be an estate agent. But if you’re working with, yeah, like you doing Marcus with, you know, with businesses, you know, surely a last minute brand shoot isn’t that common. Surely they usually planned ahead and you kind of know a week or two ahead. Well, I’ve got these shoots on these days. Right. I now need to plan my time for, you know, processing, but also for things in my business and like Rod says, personal time and whatever else.
Marcus: Yeah, I think I think it’s just doing things on a regular time on a weekly basis. And yeah, and for sure, you’re right. We’re not. It’s not hopeful. And our listeners are out there just picking up the phone, doing the job straight away or planning it in in that respect. But yeah, it’s I think it is a little bit difficult to do. I found it going to pass. But just moving on to what you’re talking about now and looking at burning out or doing too much and setting aside time for yourselves. I think, you know, I think as a creative process and I’ve talked about this in the show before, allowing time just to sit down and think to come up with ideas. I really resonate with what you’re saying there was.
Ross: And the thing is, like when I when I first started my business, a lot most of the stuff that I that I help people with, I’ve experienced myself. So and I’ve I’ve recognized it and I’ve developed systems and processes and just ways of doing things to help others. So when I first started my business, I was very much think of the I had a massive motivation because I walked away from my well-paid job and lots of people were telling me that they didn’t want me to. My husband, my husband didn’t speak to me for about three years because I did this. So my my main motivation was to prove them all wrong. So I had to in my mind, I had to exceed the salary I just walked away from as quickly as possible. And to do that, I was selling, selling, selling all day. As long as business people were awake, I was selling. And I very quickly did that for about two years with until I realized that actually I was burning out and you just grind to a halt and you can’t even bear to do anything. So it’s about it is about putting in that time to, as you say, sit and think or not even just sit and think about work. Think about nothing else. Go and look at a tree. You know, and just look mindfully at a tree. Because when you actually stop the thinking, you calm your whole nervous system down.
Because if you don’t calm your nervous system down, if you’re always thinking, that’s when you burn out. You know, you just you just get frazzled and burn out. So you need to be thinking, doing something completely different. I don’t know. It could be just reading it, reading a frivolous book for fun. Or it could just be, as I said, gazing at a tree. And actually, you know what, if you actually at this time of year, especially when you look and listen, you can actually hear buds breaking open if you’re still in it.
Marcus: Really spring is definitely springing fast, isn’t it? It’s incredible.
Ross: So that’s what I think is really important. And we don’t find time to do that enough these days. Yeah, it’s crucial.
Sam: And then you think kind of exercise is a good way of doing that as well, kind of go out for a run and go do the go to the gym, whatever it is people like to do.
Ross: Yeah, definitely, because it’s about energy. We need to be raising our energy. And it’s, you know, they just say that that you you attract the energy that you give out. So you’ve got to get your energy up, definitely. And you want to you need to be fit, you know. If especially if you’re a solopreneur photographer, like if you’re ill, your business is like in danger, isn’t it? You know, and so it’s vital that we look after ourselves. Whatever energy some people like to run, see if you could do yoga, whatever any whatever exercise it is, we need to do something because our bodies that we live in our bodies and they need to be functioning.
Sam: Yeah, and there is a whole show about that in the markets that we recorded.
Marcus: We have. I was going to say the same. Yes, we’ve done a sleep. I still have codges and recorded a show about how to keep it. What was in between about what you’re saying there was about the mindfulness and about looking at this tree. And I think, you know, I know you’re saying about stepping out of what your photographer just, you know, doesn’t need a camera in the hand all the time. But I would say that photography, I think, is this really well placed for looking at things for obvious reasons. But I just think it’s a good, you know, and let’s not forget. I know photographers were working to say, oh, I never pick up my camera for personal gain, personal work or anything. But let’s not forget how what a powerful tool that camera is for being looking at the world and being part of .
Ross: Absolutely mindful photography is I guess that’s a subset, isn’t it, really? But just, yeah, observing. I mean, like you are in the right place because I guess you’ll look at something maybe a different way from anybody else. I think that would be a fantastic picture. So, yeah, I absolutely agree that the photographers are in a good place to practice mindfulness, definitely. But then if they want to do something completely different, then that’s, you know, take up a hobby, you know. And that’s that’s the thing. It’s like when we set up business, sometimes it’s just a job. Like I set mine up originally as just a job. But then I realized I want my job to allow me to do things other things I want to do. So when you set your goals, it’s like, what does my business need to look like for me to be able to achieve that person stuff? And for me, I wanted to write. I always wanted to write when I was a kid. Another thing I wanted to teach and write. Took me a while to get to both. But now I set time aside each week. I take some days off so that I can write, you know, which I do for fun.
Sam: And and you’ve got a book published, haven’t you?
Ross: I have got a book published when I was a girl, published by Fisher King, you’ve got Fisher King.
Sam: Oh, yeah. Excellent. Again, link in the show notes.
Ross: Yes.
Marcus: What’s it about the book? What’s the book about?
Ross: It’s it’s got various different takes, actually. There is a lot in it, and I think people take different things. What I and what I plan for it to be about is about a mother, child relationship and sibling relationship. But also the going back to the beliefs of things we started, we were talking about earlier about the impact of our parents and their parents and their parents on on the person that we become. And is it possible to break that cycle? That’s the sort of deep meaning of it. But there’s there’s a lot about it. It starts off in this 1960s. There’s a lot of social history in there as well. It’s a lot about family’s family relationships. There’s a bit about this. It’s also about writing. So it’s got various angles to it.
Marcus: Great. I think Sam said we’ll put the notes that we’ll put the details in the notes.
Yeah. So let’s let’s let’s look a little bit more about burnout and talk about a bit more about how do we know we’re suffering from burnout?
Ross: Well, first of all, I would highly recommend that you don’t wait until you’re looking for signs of burnout, that the aim is not to get to that stage because burnout will take various forms. People have different experiences of it. You know, you can end in a heart attack, you know, you can die of burnout. So it is very serious. And I think we need to be taking it seriously and not thinking it’s never going to happen to us, because apparently one in three business leaders experience every month. So it is like it’s like a pandemic, you know. But I think, you know, when you’re suffering from if you find yourself getting really cynical disillusioned, chronic fatigue, maybe digestive problems, migraines, those kind of things, you might just like you. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve got burnout, but they are common signs of it. You know, the ultimate thing is you can’t even be bothered to get out of bed because you just don’t want to do that thing anymore. You know, so that it is really you are just fed up with it. You are burned out.
Sam: But you’re saying the important thing actually is kind of self-realization before that point of going right. When are we nowhere near burnout? But when are we kind of starting to push too much? And when do we need to push back? And how do we manage that while managing to keep our business afloat and profitable and everything else?
Ross: Yeah. And I think that’s why it’s really we all know this stuff, but we just like it’s like I’m just like I was in my business. I was like, regardless of everything, I just like everything else went out the window. I was focused on selling, selling, getting sales, getting to my business, which I did. But then I was thinking, I’ll go back to my running when I’ve reached that goal. I’ll go back to this when I’ve reached that. But that might never happen. Or there’s something else around the corner. Or we find we actually take two steps backwards. And so we’re back where we were. So when we delay things on the anticipation of a goal, that’s not necessarily a sensible thing to do. We need to be doing it now. Just weave in the self-care rituals right now. And I do believe self-care is the number one business strategy.
Marcus: Yeah, I was just going to say that those symptoms sound very similar to depression as well, actually. So I can see I can see the crossover. Self-care is something, you know, maybe as guys, and I was reading a report this morning on the paper. Well, the internet, actually, I don’t read the paper. I’m like that. I don’t know why it’s on the internet about men and men’s mental health. And I think as guys, I know I want to go down and cliched territory here, but we’re not good at self-care, are we?
Ross: Yeah, I absolutely agree.
Marcus: Give me some tips. Yeah. Yeah. So I said, give me some tips that we can do.
Ross: I think the thing with men is that you don’t tend to open up about your feelings. So that may be a cliche, but I think men are more reluctant to do that than women, typically. And so it could be that you find a counsellor, you know, or you get a coach, you know, I’m like a counsellor for business. But I think it’s really, even just taking exercise, I think going for walks in nature, when you do that, it increases your self-awareness about how you’re feeling, I think. And it makes you feel good as well. So it’s, you know, if you’re just taking a walk in the sunshine by yourself, or with friends, you know, join a club, there’s so many other things that you can do. But it’s really, this might sound a bit brutal, but we have to get over ourselves. And just think, really, you know, if I’ve got a problem, I need to be able to talk about it to somebody. There’s, there is help for absolutely every single issue that we’ve ever created for ourselves somewhere, you know, and get help. It’s like, you know, not that I’m not a specialist in suicide, you know, but the I have, I know people who have taken their own lives. And that is the saddest thing, because they’re people who can help. It feels to me such as a necessary thing. So we just really do need to get over ourselves and ask for help.
Sam: Yeah, talk to people.
Ross: Yeah, talk to people. Even if it’s online, you know, an online group or something, but I just think it’s that that’s what we need to do.
Marcus: On really online, you think it’s good. It’s not, but I suppose better than nothing.
Ross: Well, you know.We’re talking to like, sometimes people can, it can be isolated. But nowadays, we’re talking over Zoom, aren’t we? So, you know, I’m not, I’m not talking to, I’m not going down the weird route here. I’m talking, you know, reaching out, like, maybe you live somewhere and your brother lives in another country. Well, you know, let’s have a FaceTime talk or something. Just, yeah.
Marcus: Yeah, okay. I’ll get you. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s good advice.
Sam: And we are running out of time, Ros. Loads of interesting. So you want to very briefly mention your podcast?
Ross: Oh, yes, I do have a podcast. It is called Bold Business. You, there is, I found there is another, there’s others called that as well. So you might need to search it with my name in conjunction with it. But it’s on all the main platforms. And it’s, it’s conversations with phenomenal female business bosses in Yorkshire, which is where I’m based. And we just talk about journeys through business, times of adversity, and the good that came out of that time of adversity. Because I do believe that there’s lessons to be learned in everything that happens.
Sam: Yeah.
Marcus: Oh, yeah, definitely.
Sam: Amazing.
Marcus: Great, great stuff. That’s been very thought provoking podcast.
Ross: Thank you very much.
Sam: All sorts for all, all sorts for our listeners there to take away. And of course, you wouldn’t want to miss any of our guests. So to make sure that you don’t miss any podcast, you need to be subscribed to the newsletter. So go to shoot to the top.com, subscribe to the newsletter and the podcast will arrive in your inbox every week with all sorts of other stuff as well. But the key is you won’t forget to listen to the news, to listen to the podcast. So sign yourself up, shoot to the top.com. Ross, thank you very much. And Marcus, I will see you next week.
