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I want you to stop for a second and think about where you are right now and just really start to think about all the things you’re doing now that you, a year ago, would freak out about. I got caught in this line of thinking recently and thought it would be cool to share with you three things that have happened in 2024 that past me would totally freak out about.
You are an ever growing human being friend and I hope you know that changing, pivoting, and evolving is a natural part of life. You aren’t stuck, you aren’t always going to be where you are now. And that’s a really cool thing.
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[EPISODE TRANSCRIPT]
Maddy, hey, bestie, and welcome to the living in sunshine podcast. I’m your host, Maddy fry and around here, we are all about encouraging, inspiring and giving you the tough love that you need to hear to get out there and live as your best self. Each and every Wednesday, you can expect to learn tangible tips to help you find your bigger purpose, be given simple action steps that you can take in order to make progress toward your biggest dreams, and hear how you can purposely pursue joy on the daily so sit down, grab your favorite drink and let’s have a girl chat. This is the living in sunshine podcast. Good morning. Good morning, my dudes, and welcome back to the living in sunshine podcast. I am back again with a brand new episode, and I am actually super excited for today’s episode. And I say that like every other week, but I am actually genuinely, really excited for today’s episode. I had something else planned, but the original thought, just like, wasn’t speaking to me, and so me, being me, I stopped, paused, reflected, and then figured out kind of like where I wanted to go with today’s episode. And I’m really glad and excited about where I landed. So in today’s brand new episode, I am going to be talking through and sharing with you three things that I have done in 2024 that me a year ago, like literally would have not believed if I were to tell her that, like these things are happening now, and I think that that just shows a huge amount of growth, but also that everything and everyone is always transitional and ever changing and evolving in A season. And what you’re doing this year right now, today, when this podcast episode goes live or or when you’re listening to it in your ears, might not be where you are in a year, which is so crazy to think. Because I think sometimes we get stuck in the mindset that where we are now is where we are forever. And I’ve said this before, I think in the sunshine squad, which, if you’re not sure what that is, it is my online community for women to come together and seek joy and chase their dreams and get after their goals in a really intentional, supportive community online space. But we are not trees, and by that, I mean we are rooted in who we are and where we are, but unlike a literal tree that you see outside, your roots, can move. You can get up and move and change your environment and change what you’re doing, and change the way that you you know go throughout your day. You are not stagnant. You are not stationary. You can change your life and you and so much can happen in a year. And I think that this episode, and really where I am today in October of 2024 is a true testament of that 2024 has been such a transformation, transformational, transformative. I think it’s transformative year for me, personally and our family, and I know that in another year, that’s just going to continue to be be true. So me in October of 2025, if you come back and remember this episode and you listen, just be like, Whoa. Listen to me now and be like, I remember her. Um, so anyway, let’s go ahead and get into the show, but real quick, if you do not already, follow me over on Instagram. Please, please, please go. Give me a follow. My handle is at living the letter N sunshine. You can also feel free to follow the show or subscribe to the show. I think it’s different depending on where you’re listening. On Apple, it’s the little plus sign, and then I think on Spotify, it is follow. So that way you never miss a new episode. I put out new episodes every other week, which is actually something I’m gonna be talking about later in this episode as one of my things, but come back each and every other week to get joyful living tips, tricks, updates on my life, things to think about, conversations to consider, and all of those good things. Now without further ado, let’s go ahead and get into today’s brand new episode. Okay, so three things that I’ve done this year so far. Obviously, we still have, like, two and a half months left. Um, that literally a me, a year me a year ago. Hello, words. Slow down. Find your focus.
My undiagnosed ADHD is ADHD right now. Um, what are these three things that I’ve talked and that I’m talking about. Right Thing Number one, and this is a big one, and this has been both intentional and just a byproduct of major life changes. The first thing that I’m going to be talking about is the fact that I have actually taken a step back and a step away from core, living in sunshine offers that I built out last year to explore new passions and explore new ideas. If you followed me a year ago, or if you’ve listened to any podcast episode from like last spring of 2023, through probably the fall of 2020, Three, you’ve heard me talk about Clarity Calls and coaching opportunities, one on one, coaching opportunities. And while those offers are still there, they are just not core offers that I am toting and promoting. And you might be wondering why, if you are online in any sense of the word, I’m sure that you have seen people talking about coaching. Maybe you remember me talking about coaching and Clarity Calls and all these things. And the truth of the matter is that I find myself feeling a lot of anxiety when I have a lot of meetings on my calendar. I prefer to work and live this is no one, to surprise of no one in routine and structure, and I thrive when my daily routine is duplicatable and it’s the same every day. I get a lot done. I feel really productive. My brain is really clear, and I know that my brain takes a long time to pivot from one type of work to the other so I purposefully structure my day to be client heavy. The first, you know, you know, six or seven hours of the day, and then the last few hours of my day. I’m generally working on living in sunshine or my community or passion projects that I have going on, and that coaching container, those Clarity Calls, really didn’t have a spot in my day that felt good to me, and they were causing a lot of stress. They were causing a lot of anxiety to no one’s fault of my own brain, right? This is just how my brain works. And so I slowly started to just not offer them, and not just not offer them, but fold them into other offers, like the sunshine squad community within that space, I do co working calls each month where, if you hop on and you have a question, I’m more than happy to guide you through, to help you figure out kind of what your solution might be. And monthly masterclasses in that space that I get to kind of put my teacher hat on and coach in that way. And I have found that morphing those coaching calls into more of a group coaching container has been far more supportive to me in my business, but also far more supportive to the other people that I serve, because a lot of the women you probably included, are community focused people, and so a year ago, I was really working and really grinding to, like, build out this coaching opportunity and and fill it and make this like a big thing that I did. And just when push came to shove at the end of last year, I really did a lot of reflection and kind of thinking about, like, is coaching is one on one, coaching something that lights me up and brings me joy. And every time I visited that question and I looked at that offer, I thought it really does it like it doesn’t bring me joy, it actually causes me a lot of anxiety. It throws my schedule off, which causes me a lot of stress, and it just doesn’t work for my current schedule in my current season. And so is one on one, coaching off the table forever? No, I just think that for now and in my current season especially, it’s just not the right fit for me. And if you are someone who is like, I want to have a podcast and a course and a community and coaching like you can have all those things. There’s nothing wrong with that. But just know that if you find that one of those offers that you see someone else offering, is it jiving with you? That’s okay, like you don’t have to offer everything that you see other people you know offering on their social media or on their podcast or on their website, not every offer is for every human. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Okay. Thing number two, that Maddie 2023 would literally pass out about if she knew that I had made this big switch. So this is for anyone who loosely follows, just because I don’t talk about it too, too much. Loosely follows my other main business, which is being an online virtual assistant, which I love for the longest time. A lot of people and a lot of the work I was doing was doing was actually social media management, and I loved it. It was super creative. It gave me a lot of creative freedom, and I got to do some really great things with some really amazing people. But in the last, I would say, probably six months, I have actually almost entirely stepped out of social media management as an offer that I provide to my clients. I no longer do full service reels management. I no longer do product reels creation. And I’ve really pivoted this side of my life, this business of mine, to be more online business manager and project management instead of social media management. And of course, there’s like, lots of nuances that like go into what I’m doing now, but a year ago, and even more so two years ago, social media management, especially when it came to reels, content creation. Information was like my core offer and the thing that I was doing for everyone, almost my entire client load, was all social media management clients of different capacities and sizes and needs, and just over the last really, six months, all of my social media management clients have stepped away for various reasons that I honor and respect and love, and I have filled those spaces with OBM clients or online business manager clients, and I’m honestly surprised by the relief I feel to not be doing social media as often as I was six months ago, last summer. For context, I had six or seven individual clients that I was managing their social media for them. And I wouldn’t say I was stressed, but I definitely like could feel, and remember feeling really just overwhelmed by everything that had to get done. Because I don’t think that people understand just how much time goes into social media management and the creativity and the strategy behind that, and kind of the pressure to perform and to get results when social media management is a long game. If you are someone who has a social media manager or is considering it, please give them at least 90 days to show them what they can do for you, because social media management is not an overnight thing. You have to give it time, and it’s a long game, and that’s what I’m gonna say about that. But I stepped out kind of by need, but also by want. I felt my desire to step out of the social media space coming. And I think that that’s a really natural, you know, part of the process of being an online service provider, you kind of go through waves of, Oh, I really love this offer. I
love doing this for people. And then after a while, it just kind of like starts to get stale. It’s kind of like your hyper fixation meal, where you eat the same thing for months and months and months and months, and then one day you wake up and you’re like, I’m gonna hurl if I eat this meal one more time. That’s kind of how I feel when it comes to social media management, and I love for the two or three people who I do it for on a really low capacity, I love doing it, I definitely needed to lower my workload with doing social media management, and definitely pivot into doing something else. And what I’m doing now brings me so much joy, because I thrive in and you guys know this, if you’ve listened for long enough, in organization and structure, in leadership and management, I actually went to school. This is kind of a random fun fact. When I was in school to be a teacher, one of my professors actually came to me, and she’s like, I don’t think that you should be a teacher. And I was like, Excuse me, I’m paying like, $50,000 a year to become a teacher. What are you talking about? And she’s like, No, no, I think you’d be really great in Educational Leadership. She’s like, I think you’d be a great principal or a great administrator, and I genuinely, like, considered that path for for a while, and then we all know that my life went to shit after I graduated from college, and I needed to figure it out. So that didn’t work out, but I am kind of still tapping into that skill set and that that zone of genius, of being like, Okay, I thrive when it comes to, like, managing a team and keeping a project moving towards the due date, because I thrive and structure and organization is such a skill of mine, and being a self starter is such a big thing that I love to do. So yeah, it’s just the fact that, like, a year ago, literally a year ago, this summer, I was working with like, six or seven online business owners to, like, manage their their Instagram, and now I do one person and like, it’s such a low key thing, and it’s just crazy to me. Again, how much can change in a year. It just It blows my mind. And finally, the third thing that a year ago me would just literally follow her backwards if she heard me say this is that I have actually cut back significantly on things that I used to say. I can’t not do that like I have to do that thing. I can’t not publish a podcast episode every single week. I can’t not send a monthly sunshine email, like I have to do those things. And this is one of those things that is definitely a byproduct of the season that I have been living in, especially in 2024 but really, for probably the last year, if you remember, a year ago, my father in law broke his back, essentially, and Lucas has had to go back to Ohio for like three or four weeks. And that was kind of like the catalyst for all of these, like chain of events that have continued to happen through 2024 and a necessary byproduct of. Getting through that season and dealing with all of those constant changes that life was throwing at us, was cutting back and scaling back in spaces that I knew if I scaled back, I could still do, one of them being the podcast, becoming a bi weekly podcast instead of a weekly podcast. And it’s one of those things that I might go back to weekly podcast episodes in 2025 Oh, my God. I cannot, cannot believe how soon 2025 is. It might go back to being once a week podcast episodes in 2025 but right now, I honestly love having it be a bi weekly podcast episode. It works so much better for my current season, for my current workload, and honestly, is so good for my mental bandwidth and mental creativity and just overall work ethic. It has created such a more beautiful balance cutting back and a lot of different spaces to allow exploration of new things and growth in new areas and traveling and seeing friends and doing all the things that I’ve done so far in 2024 and things that I have on the calendar for 2025 it really is a good thing. And so I wanted to share this last one specifically, in case you are also in a season where life is just like throwing punch after punch after punch after punch. It feels like and you just like, can’t keep up. I want to encourage you to loosen your grip on the reins that you are holding on trying to do everything that you could do six months ago, when life was much slower, or life was much easier or felt much lighter, I think it’s okay to to loosen the grip that you have on those things in order to focus more so on sustainability and longevity, at least for a season, instead of push, push, push, grow, grow, grow. Right? Sometimes we need to really focus on tending our garden and keeping it alive, instead of being in production mode and reaping, you know, our the wares of our garden, I feel like that went off the rails, but I think you understand what I’m saying. So cutting back was one of the things that I had to do. And I remember having a conversation with a very good friend of mine, my OBM at one point and just saying to her, like, I can’t do this. I can’t offer this again, because I I’m going through a lot of stuff right now, and it’s too much to offer this again. This is in regards to the six weeks to you accelerator. If you remember, back July of 2023, I launched the six week studio accelerator for the first time. And I did not do that this summer because I was going through a lot of big life stuff, and I wanted to be able to be present in that space as much as I could, and I just knew that I couldn’t. And a year ago, I would have said, I don’t care. Put life can wait. I’m gonna do this anyway. I’m gonna make this happen. I’m gonna launch and that’s just not the case anymore. Think about me on social media. I’m very rarely on Instagram stories these days. Why? Because I just need to do the bare necessities to to maintain and not completely burn myself to the ground in all things, living in sunshine and loosening the reins, and the grip that I had on the reins for these things was really important for me, in order to sustain the love and stay in this thing, you know. And I think that that’s okay to say, and I think that’s a good point of growth and reflection for myself. And I’m excited to see where I’m at in a year from now, right? We never know. So with that said, those are the three things that I have done in or not done in 2024 that me 2023 version of me would not like, wouldn’t believe. And if you were to ask me, Are you proud? How do you feel? I would say that I feel good. I would say that 2024 is definitely a year that I did not expect in a lot of different ways, both good and bad, but I feel like I’m doing everything I can to take care of myself and take care of my family and take care of my business and my clients and my goals and my dreams and my joy, which is why we’re here in the first place. So I want you to think about this. Are there things that you are or are not doing this year that you a year ago would have been like, what girl, why are you talking about? What do you think you’re not doing that anymore? And is there anything that you were doing last year that you’re not doing now that you want to get back to? Right? That’s a fair question to ask as well. All right, that is everything I have for you today, my loves. I will see you again in another two weeks for another brand new episode that is so good I can’t wait for you to listen. I already recorded it, and until then, I’m sending you all. The Sunshine, good vibes, and I hope you make it a great day. Girlfriend. Thank you so much for listening to today’s new episode. If you loved it, please send it to a friend, share it on Instagram and tag me so I can see and consider leaving the show a rating or a review. Ratings and reviews are kind of like sharing or liking a post on Instagram, and they really help the show grow and reach new women just like you, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss a new episode, and until next week, I am sending you all the sunshine good vibes, and I hope you make it a great day. You.