Episode 447: How are you protecting your most important tool?
In this episode, Fiona discusses the importance of caring for the most valuable tool in your business. She shares personal experiences and offers insights into how business owners can maintain their health and creativity. Tune in!
You'll Learn How To:
Importance of taking care of your main business tools
The role of health in different professions
Practical tips for protecting physical and mental well-being in business
Reflections on Balancing Technology and
Self-care in business
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Welcome to episode 447 of the My Daily Business Podcast. Today is a quick tip episode, and if you're thinking that my voice sounds a little strange, it has to do with today's episode. Before we get stuck into that, I want to of course acknowledge where I'm coming from and acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of these lands. And that is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. And I pay my respects to their elders past and present and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. The other thing I wanted to mention is that we have just launched the Business to Brand my second book, and it's available on audio as well as the print version. If you'd rather listen to it, you can over at Audible, Spotify, and all the usual places. If you have ever dreamed of creating your book, and particularly a non-fiction book that will help your business.
Whether you're an interior designer or a creator of some kind, or you want to put your thoughts out as a thought leader in some particular space, we have a How to Get Your Book Published course running again in October. The course is available, but we are running a course and coaching program. You go through each module of the course and then you come for an hour of coaching and it's so fantastic. You have me, you have other authors that are in there, and also people from my publisher that come in. We had the managing director last time, as well as my publisher who's in charge of all lifestyle and gift publishing. Super exciting and we're up to the stage now where people are pitching their books to publishers and it's just such an incredible thing to be part of. If you are interested in getting your book out there, getting a traditional publishing deal, that is where they pay you to write the book, then check it out at mydailybusiness.com/courses. Let's get into today's quick tip episode.
As you can probably tell, my voice is not where it normally is in terms of its very quirky and really, I lost my voice a couple of days ago now, and it's starting, just starting to come. Good. If you're reading this in real time, I hope that I am overseas and enjoying my life and my voice is fully back to normal. But right now, I am recording this at the start of September, and my voice is not where it should be. And I guess this brings me to today's tip, which is how often are you looking after your most important tool in business? I have lost my voice now three times in 2024. I've lost my voice before over the years, but not so often. And I went to my GP recently and we talked about me seeing an ENT and a speech pathologist and some other people, and it's something I keep thinking about, but I put off.
I have thought about seeing a voice coach for a few years now. I made an appointment in April, and then I cancelled it because I had something else that I needed to do. And I guess it's only when your major tool, in my case, my voice stops working, that you realise how important it is for what you do. You might be a creator, maybe your hands are the most important tool that you have because, without them, you can't make your ceramics or whatever it is that you create. Maybe you are an architect. Your site and your vision are a huge part of it, I know some people are probably blind architects. I know there's deaf architecture in the US, I mean the UK, which is incredible, such a cool institution that's starting up. But maybe you are somebody like an architect who uses your vision a lot, and it's thinking about, am I looking after my eyes?
Am I looking after my vision? Am I wearing my glasses when I'm supposed to wear them? And am I making sure there's enough light when I am working? Often we can look at tools in terms of physical things outside of our body, outside of ourselves. And what my voice going for the third time this year, and my discussions with the GP recently is thinking about it from a perspective of this is my tool, this is my most important tool in my business is me and my voice. Thinking about what are you doing in your business to protect that important tool? For example, if you're a builder, let's say, a huge part of your tool is your body. You see builders, I go to physio every single week and the amount of builders that are there in the morning, and you can see them, we call them tradies in Australia, and they're looking after their body because I'm assuming that being on sites all day and physical labour, you have a lot of ailments in your body that you need to be looking after.
I know I've got some good friends whose parents were builders, and there's a lot of health issues that can happen later on if those things your body is not looked after in terms of Pilates, yoga, physio, stretching, all of these things. And I think so often we forget the body as a tool in our business. Even for example, like me, I'm an online business. I'm not out there building houses, but my voice is a huge part of what I do. And without it, it's detrimental to my business. I was also talking to another person I know who's a life coach and I was thinking about their tool. What they do is like therapy, like a psychologist. They have to really look after their mind, their mind because they are dealing with people's severe heartache and challenging life issues all the time.
They have to think about how am I looking after my own psyche, my own mental health so that I can help other people? Likewise, if you're a psychologist I know a lot of psychologists and a lot of them don't go and see a psychologist. Yes, they have supervision, but some of them are not practicing what they preach. How can they be there and hear horrible thing after horrible thing after horrible thing and help people through these if they're not looking after their own mental health. Likewise, maybe you're a GP, you work in some other allied health. Are you looking after yourself? Let's say you're a physio. Are you doing exercises and are you going to Pilates? And are you doing all the things for your body so that you can be as strong as possible for all of the people that you are helping?
That’s it. Thinking about in your line of work, outside of the tools, like for me, I would think, my tools are this microphone, my computer, making sure I've got strong internet, and I put effort into that. I make sure we have all of these things in our house to make sure that the internet can reach the office that I'm in. I have a really good microphone. I set my computer up in a certain way, but I'm not necessarily thinking about my biggest, most important tool that I have is my voice. Without that as I said, my business would be very difficult to run. I do have online courses and things, but even they, they need to be updated. It's my voice that is updating them. It's my voice that is doing the videos.
In your line of business, what is it? Let's say you're in a retail shop, you are standing you might be standing or sitting, but you might be standing for a lot of the time. How are you looking after your body? If you are a musician, how are you looking after your hands? How are you looking after making sure you're stretching them, that you're not overusing them all the time. What about if you are a lawyer or an engineer or somebody that has a lot of critical thinking to do, but also potentially a lot of reading or a lot of looking at diagrams or so thinking about, am I getting enough sleep? Am I getting enough rest? Am I exercising my eyes? I remember going to an optometrist years ago who said, that every day you should be doing some eye exercises, which were like looking to the left, looking to the right, looking up, and looking down certain things that would help the eye muscles not feel so strained, particularly if I'm looking at a computer all day.
There are so many small exercises that we can all be doing to protect our tools, which in a lot of cases, for a lot of creative people, is part of their body. If you are drawing all day, it's your hands. If you're a graphic designer, it's your eyes. My husband is a trained graphic designer. He's been doing that for a long time. An art director, two of my greatest friends are graphic designers. I mean, they are looking at like millimetres out of things. They're looking at lines, they're making sure everything is perfect and perfectly lined up and matches whether they're designing packages or animation or whatever it is. Looking after the eyes, looking after all of this is so important. And often it's when it hits the fan like I've had where I haven't had a voice for a few days, that you start to realise that I should be looking at this in a lot more detail.
I'm going to take my inner Beyonce and start looking after my voice a lot more than potentially I have been. That is it for today. What is your most important tool in business and what are you doing to look after it? Maybe it's thinking time. Maybe you are a creative director and you need thinking time. Where is that? Where is that in your week? Maybe you are some creative who is coming up with physical campaigns or creative ideas all the time. Where are you looking after your creativity? Where are you filling up that creative cup? Where are you going to watch documentaries or listen to particular music go and see some artwork or paint or do something else that's filling up your creative bucket? Where are you doing that? How are you protecting that tool so that you feel creatively fulfilled to be able to then help other people fulfil their creations through your creative concepts? There are so many things to think about, but so often in business we look at tools, the latest productivity app or this or that or something on your phone as opposed to you, your mind, your body, how are you looking after that? That is it for today's quick tip episode. If you want to go through this in text format, we always have the text transcript over at mydailybusiness.com/podcast. And for this particular episode, it's slash 447. Thanks so much for reading. I'll see you next time. Bye.
