Avram and Rachel were so thankful that their business kept running *mostly* smoothly while they took nearly seven weeks off when their son Lincoln was born. But with that time off came an intense realization. What they were busying themselves with day in and day out wasn’t necessarily missed while they were gone. This led them to quite the epiphany—what we think is important, isn’t.

This week on the pod, Avram and Rachel share a bit about their experience coming back from parental leave, and they share a framework for determining what really is important in your business.

 

 

 

 

Show notes

 

 

1:18 What happened to Avram and Rachel’s business after Lincoln was born?

 

 

2:03 Avram admits a delusion he had about what paternity leave would be like

 

 

2:57 The biggest epiphany of all that came during parental leave

 

 

4:25 Avram introduces a framework for determining what is really important in your business

 

 

7:47 An example of what’s urgent versus what’s important

 

 

8:48 Another invaluable lesson from our friend and mentor, Adrienne Dorison

 

 

10:33 Rachel unlocks the Queen Bee Role

 

 

12:40 Avram shares how business school can only get you so far if you don’t take the time to apply it

 

 

Mentions & Resources

 

 

Steven Covey’s Book “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”

 

 

Adrienne Dorison

 

 

Run Like Clockwork

 

 

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

 

 

Below, you will find a transcript of this entire podcast episode. Enjoy!

 

 

Avram Gonzales: Hey. It’s Avram Gonzales here with the Babies In Business Podcast joined by my beautiful and lovely co-host Ms. Rachel Gonzales. And today our topic is most of What We Think is Important, Isn’t, and we’re gonna talk about a couple different things here today as how it relates to your business, your life, and starting a family or raising a family.

 

 

And that’s our dog storing in the background. We’re recording this, the baby’s down right now. We’re spending this little time that we have together to record this podcast for you, cuz you know what, that’s what’s important to us right now. But I wanna take you back a little bit to the time when Lincoln was born and what happened as a result of his birth.

 

 

The business changed, didn’t it hun?

 

 

Rachel Gonzales: It did. Significantly.

 

 

Avram Gonzales: So we went from being like super active in the business on a daily basis to

 

 

Rachel Gonzales: Mostly stressed out

 

 

Avram Gonzales: Like nowhere to be

 

 

Rachel Gonzales: Getting nowhere.

 

 

Avram Gonzales: We actually went a full seven weeks where neither of us were doing anything in the business. Our team members held down the fort.

 

 

Shout out to Lauren and Kim for doing what they do and keeping this train moving along. There was just literal. , no capacity to do anything. I remember thinking to myself I’m not gonna be working necessarily there’s gonna be a lot of downtime. Maybe I’ll take some notes. Maybe. Maybe I’ll outline a book.

 

 

Rachel Gonzales: With your spare time

 

 

Avram Gonzales: With my spare time. That didn’t happen at all. And one of the things that we quickly realized especially as we came out of those first few months we had very little time.

 

 

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah. Especially time together like you and me doing stuff together didn’t happen at the beginning, but also, , the blocks of time that we had to do anything at all was really constrained.

 

 

Avram Gonzales: Yeah. You didn’t always know when those were gonna happen.

 

 

Rachel Gonzales: Correct.

 

 

Avram Gonzales: There was that element of not knowing. That certainly stresses a personality out that’s like mine where I just don’t like surprises. Stresses out somebody like Rachel who likes things on a schedule. It’s like very predictable. Hey, I guess we’re a lot of liking that way.

 

 

One of the things that we figured out after all of that time off was actually how few things that we were doing on a day-to-day basis mattered.

 

 

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah, exactly. Because what we found is that, While we were busy and we were stressed and we were putting out fires, we were doing none of, I mean saying none is pretty bold, but doing really very few things that really mattered that would actually push our business forward.

 

 

So we were able to actually get this. Is like almost like a third party perspective in our life and our business, and see that things needed to change in a very drastic way in order for us to get what we wanted in our personal life as well as in our business, and to get anywhere close to where we wanted to be in both personal and business.

 

 

Avram Gonzales: Yeah. And the ego takes a little bit of a hit too because it’s wow, they didn’t really need me when we were gone. . And what? What was so important that I felt so stressed on a day-to-day. Yeah, in the business. And so coming back in, we did have that fresh perspective, like you said, and we started to attack things in a very different way.

 

 

And that’s what we want to get into. And the second part of this podcast here is around identifying and understanding what is important to you, versus what isn’t. Cuz I think it is gonna be different. For each of us, but I want to help you with a little bit of a framework here to start figuring out what that is specifically for your business.

 

 

Now we may or may not get into super amount of detail about the family side and that big picture of your life here today. Maybe that’s a future podcast, but we can definitely pin down the business piece here. And I want to call attention to a book that most entrepreneurs are aware of.

 

 

And if they’re not, this might be your first introduction to Steven Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and the distinction between what’s urgent and what’s important. So a lot of stuff that Rachel and I were talking about before the baby arrived was like she said, putting out fires or really thinking things were urgent when maybe they weren’t.

 

 

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah.

 

 

Avram Gonzales: Versus what’s important. So the urgent things are the things that are required for the day-to-day of the business to move forward. So that, that checklist that you have, that’s a mile deep, those are typically all of the urgent things. But Rachel, what are some of the important things, the big picture that you have to take a step back to work on that don’t typically come up if you’re just face down the business?

 

 

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah. You really lose sight of the things that you should be doing on a regular basis because it gets muddled in mile, long list. So really nailing down the things that must happen. If you nail that down, then when things come up that aren’t expected and they could have potentially or could have the potential to blow up your day, that it actually feels less of a detriment and it does less of a emotional damage or blow to your mental capacity because you know that the things that have to be done are done.

 

 

It’s the things that have to happen all the time, but also what are you doing to move your business forward?

 

 

Avram Gonzales: That’s the key.

 

 

Rachel Gonzales: Because if you are not actually yes, the things that need to be done are getting done. You have those assigned, but what are you doing to advance your business? Are you able to talk about what you’re gonna do in the next year?

 

 

How are your systems going to change? Do you need to bolster some systems because things keep breaking? Do you need to make sure that your onboarding is more on point because you keep having to chase clients down and they’re not captive audiences. So there are a lot of different ways that you can deliver a better product, but also move your business forward.

 

 

And if we’re not moving our business forward, like you said, this is key, then what are we doing?

 

 

Avram Gonzales: Yeah. Good example of urgent versus important is like reading a book, education. That stuff is very important, but it’s not urgent. Like you don’t need to like do it right now. The fire’s not burning right now, but if you don’t do it and one day turns into 30 days, turns into one year you’re so much further behind on, like you were mentioning, you need to improve a process.

 

 

Do you need to get some education to help with some part of the business or one of your team members? So the next thing we want to look at is how do you know what’s important? And I’m gonna make the distinction real simple here. You’ve heard of the phrase working in the business versus on the business.

 

 

So literally there are only a couple of things that fall under the category of important and they need to be prioritized in the business. Otherwise, you will be chasing your tail for months and then months turn into years, and then you’re not where you wanted to be. When you look back. We learned this from great mentor of ours, Adrienne Dorison, who’s the owner and founder of Run Light Clockwork and the Clockwork Accelerator.

 

 

She calls this design time, designing your business, working on the business, so building processes for people to follow. That’s something that’s working on the business, doing your goal setting and planning. That’s working on the business. Sometimes budgeting can be a part of working on the business. I’m thinking about some other things

 

 

Rachel Gonzales: Like the vision, where we’re going.

 

 

Avram Gonzales: Oh yeah. the vision. Okay. Looking at like your core values, the things that you stand for or against, and developing those things, working on the culture of your business and maybe how you bring people in and how you bring people up right as they work with you. These are all things that move the business forward versus just tending to the day to day. Every business has its customers and its clients who have requirements. They have paid you money and they’re expecting your product or service in response. So you have those responsibilities and that’s a given. But if all you’re doing is tending to those needs, then you’re just doing the same thing over and over.

 

 

The business doesn’t grow, everything stagnates. You’re gonna lose. You’re gonna lose a lot of the heart that you had for starting the business. And you just kinda repeat the same thing over and over.

 

 

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah. And I think one of the things that we developed because of the Run Like Clockwork Accelerator that has really benefited our business is, are the core values that we stand by and our vision, where are we going?

 

 

What are we doing? What is why exactly. And developing our qbr, which is the Queen B role. The role that your business must fulfill at all costs. So what is that? We need to have great customer relationships here at Digital Harvest. So much of what we deliver is and I know that this is Babies in Business, but we have a business and that’s Digital Harvest.

 

 

So much of what we do is intangible. You don’t get to see everything all at once. Search engine optimization is a slow process, but what we can do is develop that relationship, make sure that they feel that we have their back, that we are their trusted advisor and thoughtful friend, and we have this one core value that I absolutely love.

 

 

And it has come up multiple times and really served us well. And that is we create together. And what does that mean? It means that, things aren’t always going to go according to plan, period. That is a fact of life. But what do we do when it doesn’t go according to plan? We could blame somebody.

 

 

We could scoot it under the rug or we could do something about it. And what we at Digital Harvest know we create together to mean to us is that we have some part to play in the breakdown of whatever happened. And when we take that ownership and then we ask the question, how did we participate in this?

 

 

And how can we move forward? Then we’ve not actually given away the power to change it. We’ve actually owned it, and then we go forth and do something about it. So instead of getting mad at a client or getting mad at a partner or somebody something else, we actually say, how did I. Contribute to this and move forward.

 

 

And I’ve just seen that serve us over and over in so many ways to help us understand what is important. Because if we are not taking responsibility for something when something goes wrong, we’re definitely not serving our clients to the best of our ability.

 

 

Avram Gonzales: And I had read books and I’d gone to schools, okay, I’d gone to schools.

 

 

I got the letters behind the name and they talk about having a company culture and defining those values. And I’ve heard this so many times and I didn’t do it. Why? Because I was so stuck in catering to what was urgent in my business for years before I took my head up long enough and put the time aside to focus on what’s important. I created these core values before Rachel joined the business full-time, and look at how well she articulated that and spoke it so passionately. That’s what it is a result of focusing on what’s important Yeah. Is lighting that fire under a team member and creating something that people can actually move even without you.

 

 

Rachel Gonzales: Yeah. Something that someone is actually really proud to be a part of. We know what company name, we know a company here in town in Albuquerque, New Mexico that the name. We’ve actually been told by another business professional that they would never join this business because of the name.

 

 

And we are, as business owners, we get the opportunity to make a culture that people would be proud of, a name that people would be proud of. Those kinds of things. So I know that started with a name of a business. But just remembering what’s important and what’s important is the things that actually move your business forward, move your culture forward,

 

 

Avram Gonzales: And so keep that in the forefront of your mind.

 

 

Maybe there are things that are on your list right now that just seem a mile deep. Guess what? They’re still gonna be there tomorrow. But your business, your customers, your clients, your team members are waiting and they’re ready for you to make those important things the priority that will move everybody forward.

 

 

That’s it for today on the Babies In Business Podcast. We appreciate you for tuning in. If you’d like to say, Hey, you can always shoot us an email at hello@babiesandbiz.com. If you’ve got ideas for a new podcast topic, some questions or something that we’d like us to answer, we’re there. Please connect with us on social media and if you haven’t already, hit that subscribe button wherever you’re hanging out, listening to us right now, whether that’s iTune, Spotify, Stitcher, somewhere else.

 

 

We appreciate you tuning in. We’ll catch you on the next one. Bye for now.

 

 

Rachel Gonzales: Bye for now.