🤷‍♀️ How Much is Enough? — Money & Social Media Part Two with Nicole Antoinette

Amelia Hruby [00:00:00]:
Welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast for small business owners who want to leave social media without losing all their clients. Hello, and Welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast about running a thriving, feel good, sustainable, creative business with no or minimal social media presence. I'm your host, Amelia Hruby. I am the founder of Softer Sounds Podcast Studio, the cofounder of the Lifestyle Business League. And here on this show, I am your fellow journeyer and guide on our path of marketing without social media. Today, I have an amazing return guest joining us for a conversation about abundance, about enoughness, about work, about money, about leaving social media, about basically all the things we love to talk about here at Off the Grid. It's one of my favorite conversations I've had for the show across all three seasons, and I'm so glad that you pressed play and are going to listen.

Amelia Hruby [00:01:19]:
Before we dive in, I want to remind you that this show is paired with an amazing free resource, the Leaving Social Media Toolkit. The toolkit includes a five step plan for leaving any social platform, a list of 100 ways to share your work off social media, and a creative marketing ideas database. You can get it for free at offthegrid.fun/toolkit, or head to the show notes for the link.

Amelia Hruby [00:01:44]:
And once you do get the toolkit, if you want to go deeper into this work, if you want more community support, then I'd like to invite you to join me in the Interweb, which is our annual membership for creatives, artists, small business owners, freelancers, influencers, entrepreneurs, and creators who want support sharing their work and making money without social media. Interweb membership is only a $129 a year, and it comes with on demand courses and workshops, special perks and fun things, and live community calls, retreats, and discussions. So I hope that you'll join us and that I get to meet you next week at our spring social.

Amelia Hruby [00:02:30]:
Now let me introduce you or reintroduce you to today's guest. Nicole Antoinette is an author, a long distance hiker, and the host of a few fun and supportive gathering spaces for folks who crave honest conversations and digital togetherness. She writes the Substack newsletter, Wild Letters. And this spring, she's hosting her fun and supportive co working group, Get Shit Done Club, which I will be joining when it starts next week. This conversation is a sort of part two to our episode from season two. In that episode, Nicole shared how she had really transformed her business after a period of needing to step back and take care of her mental health. She made some big changes during that time, including shutting down one of her most profitable offerings and leaving social media. So she shared that in the last episode.

Amelia Hruby [00:03:23]:
And today, in the first half of the conversation, we're getting an update on how all of that is going six months later. And in the second half of the conversation, we're talking about money and how we calculate our enough number so that we can feel resourced and supported and generous in our businesses. And we're really open and honest about finances, about money mindset, about so many things that I know we are all thinking about and trying to figure out. So I'm just really grateful to Nicole for joining us and grateful to you for tuning in. And let's go ahead and dive in to this conversation with Nicole Antoinette.

Amelia Hruby [00:04:09]:
Hi, Nicole. Welcome back to Off the Grid.

Nicole Antoinette [00:04:12]:
Amelia, one of my favorite people to talk to. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you. I'm honored to be invited back. So, thank you.

Amelia Hruby [00:04:20]:
Well, you are one of my favorite people to talk to about all things business, writing, social media, creator life, and also the listeners love you because your interview from last season is our most listened to interview. So I'm really pumped to have you back with us. And I wanna start by just kind of asking for some updates. So last time you were here, you shared some big changes in your life and business. You talked about why you had closed your Patreon community and shifted to Substack, thus taking a big pay cut. You talked about leaving social media right after launching your first book. So let's start with the social media piece. I'd love to hear how has business and life been since you left social media, I think you said, eight months ago now?

Nicole Antoinette [00:05:09]:
Yeah. It's been eight months. I think six months since I put up the final, you know, static nine grid, "bye bye. I'm out", but it's been eight months since I used it. I feel sort of self conscious about this because this sounds cliche in a way, but honestly, without hyperbole, quitting social media was one of the best kindest, most self supportive decisions I have ever made in my life. I do not regret it at all. I have it second guessed it at all. And I have friends for whom that's not the case, you know, maybe leaving felt like the right choice, but they're still feeling sort of like, "I actually do miss some of this. Do I really want to be off it?" So just, you know, to clarify, it's not like, I think this is the path for everyone and you leave and it feels amazing. And obviously, we can get into more of the nuance of it. But eight months out, I just feel like it was absolutely the right decision at the right time for me, for sure.

Amelia Hruby [00:06:02]:
Yeah. I mean, that feels very similar to my journey with leaving and decision to leave. I'm curious, is there anything you miss about it?

Nicole Antoinette [00:06:11]:
I was at the gym this morning thinking about how we were gonna be having this conversation and reflecting on what some of the benefits are that I feel like I've gotten the core ones, what some of the things are that I miss. And then what I would categorize as an, like the evolution of feelings that it was like this multistage process that right after leaving, what I felt was intense relief because it was absolutely the decision that I needed to make at that time. And then there was a period of feeling some real sadness at the people that I had lost touch with and the realization that it just was not reasonable to expect myself to now do the one to one relationship maintenance that would be required to transition those, you know, secondary, tertiary kind of like on the edges, relationships, friendships that I with people that I really do like respect, but to take those relationships offline into a different shape, just I didn't have the capacity to do that in a one to one way.

Nicole Antoinette [00:07:02]:
And so then there was really the acceptance of that that was the kind of thing that would be the price of admission that I had to pay to have the thing that I wanted more, which was a life without social media. So that was like, I feel like in the maybe month after leaving, those were the things that felt most prevalent for me. And then feeling a lot of gratitude after that acceptance for the steps that I was taking to lean more fully into what felt like my own right fit life and goals and definition of success, which became a lot easier once I wasn't paying attention to so much noise all of the time. And now it just feels really wild that social media has just stopped existing as a thing for me. It was this thing that I poured so much energy, so much of myself into and have a lot of fun with and experienced a lot of pain from, right? All of that is true. Over so many years and now it just doesn't matter. That in and of itself feels wild.

Nicole Antoinette [00:07:52]:
Leaving social media is not the same thing as being almost 13 years sober. I don't want to put those on the same parallel, but a similar thing that comes to mind is just how much I thought about drinking, not drinking right in the early years of sobriety. And it's not to say it's not something that I need to maintain and work on and stay in right relationship with myself. But it's just this thing that doesn't exist. I'm like, oh, people drink. That's a thing people do. And even that, how dramatically your reality can change.

Amelia Hruby [00:08:22]:
I can relate a lot to what you said of this sort of realization that you're like, wow, I spent so much time on this, and now it just feels like it doesn't matter. And you described how it's parallel to your journey with sobriety. For me, it was really parallel to my journey with what I call breaking up with diet culture, where it used to be every day was all about eating and dieting and all these different things, like, took up all of my mental space, and then it was just gone. And I was like, woah, I have so much more energy and attention. I felt, like, flooded with, like, possibility again because I wasn't draining all of my mental space and thoughts into this one thing that was actually, like, felt like it was harming me.

Amelia Hruby [00:09:04]:
So I love that you're drawing these connections, and I feel like perhaps something that's not talked about as much is the way we have these, like, parallel liberations or the way that, like, when we free ourselves from certain things, actually we end up opening all these other doors and freeing ourselves in all these different ways. Like, leaving social media isn't just about leaving social media. It's about making this really big mindset shift around what we can expect from the platforms we use, what we desire for our time and our attention. And in our businesses, like, what we're willing to do for our marketing and how that impacts our business. And so I really love that you kind of started us there.

Nicole Antoinette [00:09:45]:
I loved what you were saying about liberation. So, yeah, that feels wild. A very long way of saying eight-ish months later, the actual answer to your question. I think the two things I don't know that I would say that I miss them, but that it's become clear to me that I don't have as easy access to without social media is one more on the ground independent non mainstream news type reporting. Right? Like I think about this particularly about the genocide in Gaza. Like I think about anything that you that's not as propaganda-y and that there's certainly other issues and areas of the world and also things domestically that I feel that that's true about that there just isn't, you have to seek it out. It exists, but it's not as I think, easy to find as perhaps it is on social media.

Nicole Antoinette [00:10:28]:
And then two, really less frequent exposure to timely mutual aid requests. So really what that means is that it's up to me to find alternative sources for the, that information. And the gift of that is that hopefully what I have been finding and can continue to find is information at a pace that doesn't feel like just getting blasted in the face with the fire hose that then winds up making me feel so emotionally wrung out to the point where I'm frozen in my activism and can't do anything. So I have to keep checking myself on the fact that I have less access. But the things that I am paying attention to, like I do miss stuff. I just do. I miss stuff. And that has to be okay because even when I was being inundated with so much more information, was I really retaining it? Was I actually doing anything about it? Or was it almost this, like, false sense of feeling like I had done something about it because I had liked a post? I don't know that. I think that that gets a little bit tricky.

Nicole Antoinette [00:11:27]:
But honestly, that's that's really it. Those are the things that I've realized that I have missed, but my nervous system is way more regulated. I feel like my friendships are deeper. My relationship with myself feels more present. I'm a lot more free of the comparison doom spiral. I'm definitely doing better writing or at least what feels better to me, more focused work in general. And I just feel like there's so much more space in my brain, which is lovely.

Nicole Antoinette [00:11:47]:
And also this is like sort of a little, a benefit that has been, I didn't expect and has been really –I clearly have a lot to say about this– that's been really big for me is I feel like it's been a process after sharing so many things with so many thousands of people for so many years, I've been reclaiming my life for myself first. You know, like I think about this period of time since being off social media, I got married and didn't post about it. I adopted a new puppy and didn't post about it. You know, our chickens laid their first eggs. Didn't post about it. It was, you know, started going deeper into my herbalism studies, published my second book, got a big haircut and a septum piercing changed my look, not post like all of these things that would have quote done well, right? On social media that I just got to live them.

Nicole Antoinette [00:12:30]:
And then the, so like the delight of privacy, first of all, amazing. And then the joy of the one on one sharing, like, especially with the, I got an under cut and like, you know, the septum piercing and stuff and being able to text friends like little videos, like, "Oh, I did this thing. And, you know, I'm queering my look and it feels so good." And like that, it's just really sweet and being able to tell people things in video calls. And, you know, when we got married at the town hall, being able to send photos to friends and family, just one on one, there's just something about it that it feels like such a more manageable size of people to be in relationship with. And having privacy for the first time in such a long time just feels incredible.

Amelia Hruby [00:13:10]:
Yeah. So much of what you shared. As you kind of continued to unravel your experience, I was thinking more about, like, where do we get this, like, local news, these mutual aid requests? Because I think that one of the big offers of social media is that you can press a follow button and then it will just get served to you. You become a really, like, passive receptacle for so much. And I think there is a lot to unpack there around, you know, with the algorithms, are you actually getting anything that you've followed or want to see? But as well as, like, what does it mean when your relationship to hardship and horrible atrocities in the world is that you're just like a passive receiver of all of it. That really changes our orientation toward, I think, our role as human beings and, like, political actors.

Amelia Hruby [00:14:00]:
For myself, I'll just share that particularly with mutual aid, I've, like, I'm doing a lot less sending money to GoFundMe's since I left social media. But I found that I am doing a lot more, like, aligning myself with local organizations and donating larger sums of money to them because I'm feeling the needs that are closer to me more presently. And I'm keeping an eye on how do I still stay connected to things that are happening outside of my, like, immediate local community, and how do I recognize, like, the ways that I can get a little stuck in my bubble here. Like, I don't want it to be that my life becomes small, but I also have been able to let go of, like, not everyone is a member of my community. I am not responsible for donating to every single need in the world. And like, how can I really be intentional with this redistribution and sharing in response?

Nicole Antoinette [00:14:48]:
It's like, I wanna hold the belief that one person can make a huge impact and to not sell ourselves short in that way. But also on the other hand, when we expect too much from ourselves, I think that then we're more likely or speaking for myself, I'm more likely to be discouraged and to do nothing. And so it's like looking for ways in, when you're talking about money redistribution for me, it's looking for ways where I can be an ongoing financial partner for certain organizations or types of mutual aid that it doesn't have to be so give give money here, give money here, give money here. There's nothing wrong with that approach, and I'm glad that there are other people who are still on social media who do prefer to do their giving and redistribution that way. And that is what I really had to do because this thing that we're talking about was one of the reasons that I didn't wanna leave the platform.

Nicole Antoinette [00:15:34]:
And I think that I've talked to so many people, especially in the last eight months who want to leave social media, but for any number of, I would say reasons and or excuses feel like they can't. Right? Maybe they're really valid and true reasons for them. Maybe they're fears. Right? I certainly had both, but I'm interested in unpacking and almost like finding answers to those questions. Okay. Well, if the reason I'm telling myself that I can't leave social media is because I'm not gonna know where to redistribute money. Great. That's an opportunity for me to figure that out. And there's plenty of places to do that outside of social media.

Nicole Antoinette [00:16:08]:
If it's, "Okay, well, I can't leave social media because I have another book coming out." Okay. How else do people market books? Like I'm trying to look at so much of this as an imagination portal. Right? That's something that I hear a lot from people as well. I would love to leave social media, but that's where all my clients and customers are, so I can't do it. And something that I've been thinking about, which sounds like a flip answer to that question, but I don't mean it that way is, okay. Let's pretend that, you know, Mark Zuckerberg or whoever were to come to you and say, "Guess what? Three months from now, Instagram's going away," using Instagram as an example. Right? Or if it's TikTok or whatever your platform is, and you were to get the insider, like the insider trading type information of this is going away in three months or six months or whatever, and it's not going to exist anymore and you can't use it. What would you do?

Nicole Antoinette [00:16:55]:
And there's something really imaginative to me about that, because that was sort of the approach that I took to myself, particularly with book sales and book marketing, that if someone were to say to me, not just that I'm leaving Instagram, but Instagram is not going to exist anymore. Okay. Well then that puts me in this proactive creative thing of what would I do? Would I make more of an effort to transition if I had one to one clients like those clients to another plat? Like, what would you do if it was going away? There's something about the constraints that I think foster creativity. So I've been, I was trying and still try to think about it that way whenever I get really narrow and I tell myself it has to look this way, I have to use this platform or, you know, x y z bad thing are gonna happen. I try to turn that on its head and and use it as that imagination portal of, okay, well, what if? What if?

Amelia Hruby [00:17:36]:
That piece that you just said, this imagination portal that you're traveling through and these questions around your business, for me, I find that it just always takes me back into my relationships. Like, every time that I can't figure out a marketing problem or I feel like I need new clients, or I need a bigger audience, I'm just always reminded that I think my instinct, having been trained deeply by social media, is to go find some, like, shiny online 10 step plan that will fix it for me. What I actually need to do, what actually has worked every single time that I hit those moments is reconnecting with people or communities that I know and I'm a part of. And it's always gonna be either that, like, oh, that one person who reached out a while ago actually wants to book now if I just email them back. Or if I take this problem to my group chat, we can figure it out together. Or if I join this online community now that I've really loved the person who creates it, but I just haven't gotten myself in there yet. Like, those are the actions that actually take me forward. It's like stepping deeper into relationship and community and I think that's true in our businesses and our lives so much.

Nicole Antoinette [00:18:47]:
I think so completely. And something I hadn't realized, is like a connection I hadn't made until you just said that is for me. And obviously not everyone's business is the same, but because I am so much of my business, right? Like as a personal essay writer, as you know, I'm just a one person business. And I didn't realize how much leaving social media, which for me at that point was just Instagram, leaving Instagram, all of the ways that I mentioned before that it has fostered deeper personal relationships, right?

Nicole Antoinette [00:19:12]:
Having to reach out to friends and be like, look, our chicken laid eggs, you know, that silly stuff really does deepen those relationships. It almost has given me practice with those skills that I sort of lost when you're so conditioned to a one to many sharing style and that has carried over into my business that I think I was a little bit hesitant to think of it the same way, but I really have had good luck or success emailing someone in who's been in my quarter of the Internet for a while and saying, "Hey, I'm I have this new offer. I think you'd be a really good fit for it." Things that honestly I would not have done in the past because I sort of had this belief that social media was just this catchall.

Nicole Antoinette [00:19:48]:
And I guess in a lot of ways it is, it certainly is more easeful to make one post or one video that a lot of people see than it is to reach out one to one. Like there are certain things in which it doesn't make sense. I get that. I don't think you can sell books, you know, via text message, one person at a time. And also you don't know what could happen. So, yeah, I didn't realize how much the changes to almost those relational skills sharpening in a lovely way in my personal life, I think has also translated to my business.

Amelia Hruby [00:20:16]:
You know, when I was really active on social media, most of my relationships were parasocial, like, and that's where I was really spending my time. And by parasocial, for me, what I mean is, like, people that I have not actually perhaps met, people that I'm only communicating with via this app, and people whose perception of me is totally guided by what I'm sharing in this digital space. And so we're not having those engagements beyond, in some sense, my personal brand. Like, that's who they know me to be, and that's who I am for them. And so I really enjoyed this return to the personal, and it does bring with it more of that privacy that you were mentioning. So I've kind of personally now made this, like, shift again through the podcast where I'm back into a different sort of parasocial relationship with, at this point, I mean, hundreds and hundreds of people who listen to the show every week. Thank you, listeners. But it's been an interesting evolution.

Amelia Hruby [00:21:12]:
And I do think what I like about this iteration for myself that's so different than when I was on Instagram is that this podcast is not mediated by a platform in the same way. And I just think podcasting is such an intimate and thoughtful way to share that was different than what I was doing on Instagram, which was a lot of sharing many intimate things, but perhaps it was just really dictated by what I was seeing other people do. And in podcasting, I'm really hanging out here in my own lane, listening to what you and other listeners want and then just, like, serving that up for us.

Nicole Antoinette [00:21:48]:
I feel the same way about writing about Substack, right? That, I don't know that I will ever have a career that doesn't have parasocial relationship as part of it. And I don't think that that's a problem. I think that there can be outlier cases where people like really think a thing about you that's not true, or they expect something from you that's really unrealistic, but that has been, I mean, so negligible for me. I just I have such lovely readers in in podcasting in the past, like, such lovely listeners.

Nicole Antoinette [00:22:11]:
The difference that I see with podcasting, like especially the type of podcasting that you do and the type of writing that I do is that it's longer form. So sure. It's still parasocial, but there's so much more context. And I feel like people who, especially now that almost everything that I'm doing on Substack is behind a paywall, people have bought in to some degree. Right? And I could see what the open rates are. They're pretty high. If people are gonna be reading weekly essays and listening to a monthly podcast, they do have more context, may leave really thoughtful comments, and we can have discussions in the comments that it feels more relationship building.

Nicole Antoinette [00:22:44]:
And, you know, I also don't wanna put relationships on any sort of, you know, pedestal hierarchy that your your intimate, like, closest people in your life, like, that's the best kind of relationship to have. It's a type of relationship to have, but I love the relationships that I get to have, especially with longtime readers, right, that we wind up having inside jokes. And it's the same way that, you know, something that I didn't realize was deeply important to me until we were in early lockdown in the pandemic was just kind of like bullshitting with a barista. Right? Or like, like those those sort of micro interactions that aren't intimate. They're not deep. They're not personal, but they fill another sort of, like if you look at all of the different kind of puzzle pieces that make someone feel relationally fulfilled, they're going to be different for different people.

Nicole Antoinette [00:23:27]:
But I need that, like, conversation with readers. Otherwise, I would just write in a journal. Right? There's obviously something that I'm getting from this because I've been doing it since 2007. So there's something here that feels like really important to me. And it's just recognizing, like you said, what are the containers in which that feels nourishing and what are the containers in which it feels bad? And there are plenty of people who I think they genuinely feel good and fine on social media.

Nicole Antoinette [00:23:53]:
And that's excellent. Great. Have at it, you know, but in part of this journey for me has also been really giving myself permission to drop the story that there's something wrong with me because I can't hack it on social media. I'm too sensitive. I'm too, you know, if only I were, I don't know, whatever, tougher, more creative, better at making video, any of these things. Well, I should be able to do this and be like, it's actually fine that I don't want to write. Like, I don't like broccoli. Okay. That's fine. Lots of other people do. That's, you know, great. I don't have to eat something that has broccoli in it. Like that doesn't have to mean anything fundamentally broken about me that I don't want to eat broccoli. I don't want to use it. It doesn't have to like be a big thing. And also I don't have to do this weird linear story arc of like making my past self wrong for using it for so many years, because I got so much stuff from it. You know, it doesn't have to be this like, "and now I'm healed on the other side of Instagram" and like poor me who used to be so in the throes of this addictive app, it's similar to the story with sobriety.

Nicole Antoinette [00:24:56]:
Okay. I drank a lot. I did some questionable things. Right. And okay. Like you just have to get to a point where it's like, that was a phase of my life. And now I'm in a different phase where social media is not part of it. And that's fine too, because I feel like as soon as I start putting current me on a pedestal, then that eliminates the opportunity.

Nicole Antoinette [00:25:13]:
What if I want to go back to social media? What if a new social media comes around and I really think, "Hey, that might be fun. I want to try that." If I've created, I think of them as identity cages. If I create an identity cage for myself where I'm only allowed to do a certain thing or have this hobby or whatever. Then I'm not allowed to change. And I mean, obviously you are in my corner with the internet. You know, my core thing is experimentation and giving yourself permission to shape shift and change. So I don't know. It's like not putting too much meaning on anything. It's a tool that I'm currently choosing not to use, and that feels like a fucking great decision, and that's enough.

Amelia Hruby [00:25:47]:
I love that phrase, identity cages. It's reminding me that that's also something I've resisted with being someone who's off social media. Like, many people have kind of suggested to me that perhaps Off the Grid is like a movement creating this social identity of being a person off social media. And it's not that I'm against Off the Grid being a movement, but I'm just not really interested in that being my identity or anyone else's identity. I think you're totally right. It's a choice that we're making and actions that follow through on that, and it can always change. I love your emphasis on experimentation and change. And kind of going back a step in what you were sharing about relationships and shifting relationships and letting relationships change, I think what's most important in our communities is we can think of them as ecosystems, and ecosystems require diversity, and we need a lot of different types of relationships.

Amelia Hruby [00:26:41]:
So neither you nor I are here to say, like, oh, these intimate personal relationships are better than parasocial relationships, but more so that you need many types of relationships. And that's so true for your personal life and your business. Like, your business needs many types of relationships as well. It needs the people who have, like, "Just heard about you but haven't, like, really opted in yet." It needs the people who are you're, like, parasocial fans. It needs the people who are your, like, die hards, gonna tell everybody about your work and buy everything you do, and it needs the people who, like, are your peers, who aren't buying from you, but who are supporting you in other ways. And it's by cultivating these different types of relationships that our businesses can thrive.

Amelia Hruby [00:27:23]:
Because when we only have one type of relationship or when we only have one marketing method, which I think is what happens to a lot of people on social media. Right? It's the only place you're marketing. Therefore, you're really limiting your business to, like, one type of relationship. That's when we get in this, like, monoculture situation. We're, like, monocropping our business. And one algorithm change or one new superbug, if I'm using a crop metaphor, like, it wipes the whole thing out. And that that's the issue. It's like we have to be inviting in difference, inviting in change, inviting in evolution and flow on all fronts. Like, for our, I think, for ourselves to thrive and grow and for our businesses to be sustainable and successful, whatever that means to us.

Nicole Antoinette [00:28:08]:
Yeah. And to pay attention to how the relationships that you're in, the tools that you're using, how does it feel in your body? And for me, it had just gotten to the point where social media felt more bad than not. And so I could have stayed, but at what personal cost? And if I had stayed at personal cost for let's say professional benefit, I really believe that that also would have hit an expiration point because if you don't wanna be in a place or doing a certain thing, people can feel that it comes out. Right. You start to resent the work. So I think that that is always important to me too, of how do I feel doing this?

Nicole Antoinette [00:28:47]:
And I guess there are some things that, you know, people could categorize almost jokingly as like necessary evils. Right. Whether that's like taxes in your business or other things, maybe, I mean, obviously there are people that love working with the numbers and doing that kind of stuff. But I think everyone who's self employed has like at least a thing that maybe isn't their favorite thing to do, right? So how do we minimize that as much as possible? How do we not conflate the fact that there are some things that you don't wanna do with the fact that there are other things that you don't like to do and just don't have to do.

Amelia Hruby [00:29:17]:
Yes. Exactly.

Amelia Hruby [00:29:20]:
Hey there, lovely Off the Grid listener. We're taking a quick break from the episode because I want to make sure that you know that you can now become an Off the Grid sponsor and share your work during a mid-roll ad like this or in a pre-roll ad before every episode on our feed. In the past seasons of the show, I've shared some of my favorite affiliate partners. If you've heard the Flodesk ad, you know what that's all about. But starting in season three, I've decided to partner with listeners like you to showcase your work and the amazing inspiring things that you're creating and sharing with the world.

Amelia Hruby [00:29:57]:
There are so many fun ways to sponsor an episode or a week of the show and to share your work with our amazing community of small business owners and creatives all over the US and abroad. If you'd like to hear your work shared by me and featured in a spot like this, you can head to the show notes to learn more about our ad opportunities. Whether or not you decide to sponsor an episode, I'm so grateful that you listened to the show, and I hope that you'll check out some of our partners this season. They have amazing free and paid offerings for you and make sure you click through when you hear them. Okay. Enough about our sponsorship opportunities. Let's go ahead and dive back into this conversation.

Amelia Hruby [00:30:42]:
I want to talk a little bit about money, which is–

Nicole Antoinette [00:30:44]:
My favorite things to talk about.

Amelia Hruby [00:30:46]:
I also love talking about money, so I'm really pumped for this.

Nicole Antoinette [00:30:49]:
And when you when you did your was it at the beginning of the year episode about the, like, salary breakdown stuff? I I think immediately I emailed you, and I was like, this is amazing. Like, I yeah. So I've– anything you wanna talk about money, I'm here for it.

Amelia Hruby [00:31:00]:
Last year, you went through this big shift of shutting down your Patreon community, transitioning to Substack. And you shared very openly that I think that meant that you were basically taking like a $30,000 pay cut for the year. Now we're in a new year, you're months and months into that shift, and I'm just curious how you're reflecting on that change, and how are you thinking about money, you know, as we move into 2024?

Nicole Antoinette [00:31:23]:
Yeah. You're correct. It was an overnight $30,000 pay cut. So a couple of things. I think that perhaps sounds more dramatic than it was because that wasn't my only source of income. And the fact that I did that at the same time that I shifted my Substack to be paid only for a couple of months was huge because the paid subscribers doubled and that added income really helped. You know, I do maybe one essay a month for people who are free subscribers and everything else is for paid subscribers only. And so I think doing those things simultaneously, that there definitely was like, I made up some income right with that.

Nicole Antoinette [00:32:02]:
It also helped that I'd been in business for many years before making this change. So I had offerings that were proven to sell out. Like, you know, I, I ran a coworking group called the Get Shit Done Club, which this is its fourth year that I knew that I could host it in the fall of last year and fill it without social media and had nothing to do with Patreon. So I think that that also was helpful for me that I had this almost like back catalog of offerings that I could bring forward in different ways that I was pretty confident would sell out, and that proved to be correct. I think had I been a brand new business that it probably would have been more difficult. I also gave myself a really like a month, a multi-month timeline for getting my income back up to where it was before, which of course is the benefit of having savings to rely on as needed because the last thing that I wanted was to feel stressed about it.

Nicole Antoinette [00:32:55]:
I don't know that I've ever tried to articulate this before, so let's see if this makes sense. But for me, feeling panicked about money, as a self employed person, like in my type of self employment can quickly turn into thinking of other people as sources of money. And that feels gross somehow to me. I feel like it's kind of hard to explain, but what works better for me is to think of money as just– It's just there. It's just out there and our customers, our clients, our group members, they're just a conduit of delivery. There's something less transactional in that approach that really works for me because when I get into this scarcity panic place, it can almost, like, equate people with dollar signs. I don't know if any of this makes sense, but it it just it's not a good it's not a good mindset space for me to be in, and I was really conscious going into this that I didn't wanna get into that place. So it was giving myself a longer timeline, being willing to live off of savings, being willing, you know, to just have less, let's say disposable income. Right? And it was fine.

Nicole Antoinette [00:33:57]:
The other thing that I did really tangibly when my revenue went down overnight, right, was to cut my business expenses. So the thing with my Patreon community is that that first started as a funding source for my first podcast, Real Talk Radio. And it had grown into a lot of other things, but it supported my podcasting work more than anything else, and I stopped podcasting. And part of that was because creatively I wanted to focus on writing and as you and I have discussed off air, it's really difficult to be, you know, pouring yourself into a podcast and into, you know, an essay or book writing practice at the same time. At least for me, I can say that I don't have the creative bandwidth to do both at the level that I would want to do them. And I chose writing. Writing is my first love creatively, it's the thing, it would be the last thing to go for me. Right? It's the thing that I would do for free and did do for free for many years.

Nicole Antoinette [00:34:45]:
And so not podcasting because I had podcast support in terms of the editing and paying guests and all of that. It, it was a huge business expense for me. And so I cut that out, which helped. And I did a really detailed audit of what software services and subscriptions I was paying for my business that perhaps I didn't need or at least didn't need in this season of business. So while my revenue went down, my expenses also went down and that was useful for me to realize I'm shifting into sort of a different business model and a different series of offerings, and I don't need to pay for the same kind of support that I needed before. So I'm not earning as much now as I was, let's say, at this time last year, but it's not so drastically different that I feel worried about it.

Amelia Hruby [00:35:28]:
Yeah. I really appreciate you sharing this. It's reminding me of, like, revenue going down doesn't necessarily have to mean profit going down even if you are adjusting, you know, for your expenses and even for your offerings and, you know, changing perhaps what you're selling or what you're doing. And so I think everything you shared really helpfully reminded me of that, like, just because the same volume of money might not be flowing through your business doesn't actually have to mean there's a huge impact on what you're paying yourself or how profitable the business is percentage wise or dollar wise.

Nicole Antoinette [00:36:05]:
Yeah. And something else that's helpful for me is I, you know, do my business finances according to the book Profit First. And part of what makes me feel, I don't know if safe is the right word, but at least more stable is that I hold money from higher earning months to help pay my like, I like to get a consistent salary, even if it's a lower amount. I like to get a consistent salary paid from my business every month of the year. And, of course, that has gone up and down over time as I as the revenue has increased or taking pay cuts. But, I am not at the point where it's whatever I make this month pays for this month. And that helps me a lot because there are months where I make three times as much as I do during other months. And so I will hold onto that money to be able to keep paying myself that salary.

Nicole Antoinette [00:36:53]:
So while the business had a $30,000 revenue cut over the year, that's how much I was making for Patreon over the year, it's not like that was money that was taken away from me and there was still other money there. So I definitely still feel like I had and have enough money. And that idea of just like being in relationship with the truth of how much money is enough for you. I think the fact that I've been doing that work for such a long time also really helped because I was prepared to have this change. And that's certainly not the only really quick financial change.

Nicole Antoinette [00:37:27]:
The same thing happened to me in early 2019 when I got divorced and went from, you know, two income marriage with, you know, spouse who was a really high earner to just having my small tiny business that was not making full time money at all and moving into a 20 square foot van. And that also happened like overnight. So I think also, it helped me that I'm no stranger to these kinds of changes. And I have a lot of trust in myself that there's never been, I've never been through anything that I haven't been able to figure it out. So why would this time be any different?

Amelia Hruby [00:37:58]:
I think something we've talked about before that I've also talked about to other business owner friends is like at the end of the day, what's really important to me is employing myself, and I can flow and adapt through seasons of abundance and seasons of less, seasons of more than enough and seasons of just enough. And I think that through it all, what I'm hoping for and committed to is that I can maintain my own business in some way, and it may have to radically, drastically change either because of my own personal desires or circumstances, or because of the market and what's happening in the world, and it's just not working the way I had been doing it. And I think part of being in business sustainably and long term is being willing to ride the waves and to really surf with what's happening.

Nicole Antoinette [00:38:47]:
Yeah. I think that's incredibly well said. That is my commitment as well. Like, what I want is to make things that feel good to make with and for, you know, values aligned people at a pace that is sustainable and honors my own humanity and needs and to earn enough money that I feel like I'm thriving, but not putting growth for growth sake on a pedestal or more and more and more. And I think something else when you were just talking about, you know, seasons of more than enough seasons of just scraping by enough, perhaps even seasons of less than enough when you're relying on a credit card or somebody else or whatever, you know, that I think what's really been helpful for me is that this wasn't always true, but it's definitely been true for at least the last, let's say four or five years that my own definition of success is not this exponential growth chart. That if all of a sudden, you know, like in 2023, I earned less money than I did in 2022.

Nicole Antoinette [00:39:48]:
There are people that would categorize that as some kind of failure, right? That your income is only supposed to go up. Up. You're supposed to get promoted. You're supposed to continue growing at any step backwards. Right? Putting that in big air quotes, that that is a failure. And I absolutely do not agree with that. It was a huge success for me to be able to take time off during the summer to tend to my mental health and to get on antidepressants and to do the things that I had to do to take care of myself. And if that meant that there's less money saved for future me, that's fine. So I think part of it comes down to what is your own definition of success and how does money play into that? Because there's a difference between how much money is enough versus the story we tell ourselves about what it means to not be increasing our income or that there's just like a lot of nuance to this, I think.

Amelia Hruby [00:40:38]:
Yeah, I agree. And I think that for me, my experience has been like the first step to starting my own business was uncovering and releasing those stories because they put so much pressure on me. And I become this like, and I can't handle any change. And to me, like, part of a regulated nervous system is actually my ability to, like, respond to and move through change, and that's showing me that, like, I'm in a, quote, unquote, good place if I can ride the waves, if I can surf the shifts of money in my business.

Amelia Hruby [00:41:14]:
And that is a lot of unpacking. It's a lot of mindset work, but it's not only mindset work. It's lot of nervous system work, but it's not only nervous system work. Like, there's a lot that we all have to disentangle there in order to kind of take that pressure off. Because in my experience of working with a lot of business owners, if you're putting a ton of pressure on yourself and on your business, then every little thing is gonna feel like a disaster and a failure, and it can lead to, like, the total, like, combustion or implosion of your business. We have to find our own ways to take that pressure off.

Nicole Antoinette [00:41:52]:
Yeah. Completely. I have been working for a while at slowly putting together a three week workshop series called How Much Money is Enough and it's helped me. Anytime you think about presenting something to other people, right? It can help to clarify what your own methodology is around this because I get questions a lot about how do you figure out how much money is enough. And it's not that I have some magical system, but I do have some questions that have helped me to think about that. And what I have realized is that for me, there's really three parts of this kind of enoughness. One is emotional, some of the stuff that you were just talking about, those stories. One is social and cultural. And then one is the actual tangible, like math of it all. Right?

Nicole Antoinette [00:42:31]:
And I think that I used to believe that how much money is enough was only a math question. And that's where I kept getting stuck when actually like the emotional, even asking myself, what does enough feel like in my body? Not even just with monry, right? Enough food, enough sunshine, enough sex. In a more, more, more culture how do I know when I have enough of anything? Are there small places in my life where I could begin to practice satisfaction more regularly? Right. These kind of emotional pieces have been really foundational for me.

Nicole Antoinette [00:43:05]:
And then looking at that social cultural aspect of what are the ideas that I have absorbed about money from my close friends, from my family, from workplaces, from TV, magazines, other media? What seems to be the accepted definition of enoughness for someone my age or of my various intersecting identities? You know, where in my life have I had enough money? Have I not had enough money? Have I had too much money? Guilt, shame, all of that. Like the social cultural piece, I feel like is also really strong.

Nicole Antoinette [00:43:33]:
It's like, and then there's all of that. And then there's the math questions. Right? Like the math questions are actually, they might not be easy, but they are simple in my experience that this enoughness isn't a math problem. You know, it is if we're gonna talk about like systemic oppression and like wealth inequality that yes, there are actual math, but like the math doesn't work. Right? If you have to work two full time minimum wage job, right, the math doesn't work. But I'm I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about, you know, in the context that we are discussing, I think a lot of this isn't a math problem.

Amelia Hruby [00:44:06]:
And I think that's perhaps especially true for business owners where we're taking on this mantle now of providing for ourselves financially through our business and any emotional or social cultural story that was lingering in your psyche is going to come to the surface loud and clear the first time you try to pay yourself, especially the first time you're like, "I don't think I have enough money to pay myself right now." It's like those voices get so loud.

Amelia Hruby [00:44:31]:
So I'm curious if we could go a little deeper into this question of how much is enough and what is your enough number. This came up when I did your tiny business retreat at the start of the year. You asked us, what is your enough number? What is that, what are some of the pieces of that for you this year? Like, how what is your, like, sort of emotional piece, social piece, numbers piece that you're coming up with? And I'm happy to share my own kind of thoughts on that as well or numbers I actually have.

Nicole Antoinette [00:45:01]:
Would love to hear all of your thoughts on that. I mean, this probably goes without saying, but I just wanna name that I honestly view all of this as a continually ongoing experiment. Like I'm never looking to arrive at one perfect enough number that will be true every month for the rest of my life forever. And I'll tell you, I used to think that that was possible. Right? If I just, if I just spreadsheet hard enough, I can answer this question, but our lives change, our desires change, our circumstances change. You know, I mentioned getting divorced and moving into a 20 square foot van. How much money I needed then was vastly different. Now I live in a 174-year-old house with that has, like, tons of projects that it needs with a partner with two young dogs, right, who need to go to the vet and all kinds of other things.

Nicole Antoinette [00:45:40]:
And my enough number will change again if and when my elderly parents who don't have that much money need my support. Right? So it's I think a theme that is coming up in this conversation is sort of the ability to accordion. Things grow, they shrink, they ebb, they flow, they change. So holding the both end nuance of financial enoughness being super important, but also holding it loosely without perfectionism, I think is really important. So right now, my enough number is to be able to pay myself an after tax salary of between $4,000 and $4,500 per month. And I just wanna pause and encourage people. Sit with what comes up for you when you hear that. Right? Because I think that it's possible to hear that and think I don't make anywhere near that much money or to think that's what my mortgage costs. How could you possibly live on that?

Nicole Antoinette [00:46:28]:
Like I have a friend who's a father of three in like the LA area, like in the suburbs of LA whose mortgage is $4,000 a month and also has three kids. So let's just, right, like say that, that whatever comes up for you when you hear that, I think that's, you know, I said emotional, social, cultural, and financial. I think this is the comparison stuff goes in that social cultural bucket. That the only way to figure out enoughness is to figure out enoughness for you right now. Right. And so my situation. I don't pay rent or a mortgage. My partner and I live in a house that his family owns. Right? So my proximity to his generational wealth reduces my costs a lot. And then also he's not working right now. So I'm paying what you, what used to be joint expenses, all of our household expenses, utilities, groceries being the big ones. So that was a big jump up in, you know, what felt like enough for me.

Nicole Antoinette [00:47:17]:
I think of enoughness as sort of like a modular spending plan approach. Something else I haven't really tried to explain to someone else so we'll see if this lands for you but I really started doing this in 2019 after getting divorced and all of a sudden having fewer financial resources and trying to figure out what was enough for me at that time, as I was trying to grow my business, that I would almost think of it like modules or buckets. Right? That it's like, okay, if I have $1,000 what are the most important things to put that one? Like what's in the first bucket? What are the core life essentials? You know, $1,000 wouldn't cover those things, but, you know, I think about as shelter, food, transportation, my meds, health insurance, car insurance, home insurance, pet insurance.

Nicole Antoinette [00:47:55]:
Right. That's the kind of stuff right now that I think of as like, that's the bucket one. That's where money will go first. You know, then, okay. Let's say there's an extra $100 or whatever the numbers aren't as important in this, but it's what's in the next module for me, that's like everyday joys, books, coffee, shop dates, etcetera. The things that just bring me joy. To be able to spend money on buying gifts for people. Right? Being able to like send treats in the snail mail, that kind of stuff. Okay. So every day me is getting her like needs and desires met.

Nicole Antoinette [00:48:24]:
The next module is money for long distance hiking. My favorite activity to be able to go on a two week, three week, you know, maybe even four week hike? What would, what does that entail to be able to pay for that adventure and also cover my expenses at home? And that's another module savings for future me, whether that's emergency fund or, you know, self funded like IRA, HSA, that kind of thing. And so there's not one right flowchart of how these modules go together, but that is sort of how I have thought of it is I know that there's a lot of exercises in the personal finance space sort of around like, imagine your dreamiest life. And like, if you can't imagine it this big, you'll never get to earning this big. And that's fine if that works for you, that does not work for me. Like I'm not interested in how much money could I possibly spend and still enjoy it. Like I'm more in interested in what can we do without money outside of capitalism, right, and some of those other stuff while keeping in mind that, of course, we do need money.

Nicole Antoinette [00:49:17]:
So thinking about these different modules has been helpful for me. I don't know if that lands for you at all, but that is like a bigger picture way that I think about enoughness. And then it's I'm someone who's always been a really detailed budgeter, so I have access to this information, pretty easily. But if not, it would be, you know, print out the last three months of bank statements, credit card statements, that kind of thing, and just, like, start going through it curiously. I like to imagine sort of the alter ego of like, you're the intrepid explorer, right? You've like put on your explorer hat, and this isn't like a guilt or a shame thing. It's like, let's go through.

Nicole Antoinette [00:49:50]:
I remember years ago, I did Sarah Von Bargen's Bank Boost program where she recommended having different color highlighters. Right? Where it's like one color for something that you look at and you're like, "That gave me all the joy that I"– right, like Marie Kondo-ing your like past spending almost. Right? Like, you highlight it in this color if it's like, "Hell, yes, I would spend that money again." You highlight it in different color of, like, "Oh, I thought that that would make me feel good, but actually, it didn't." Just to sort of get some emotional clarity on spending. And, like, there's so many different ways to approach this, and I don't think that it all happens over a weekend, but that's sort of what I'm thinking about.

Amelia Hruby [00:50:21]:
Yeah. Yeah. No. I think this is really helpful. Your sort of modular spending reminded me of a framework that I used that I shared in, like, the very first season of the podcast, I mean, like episode four or something. And I then was relating it to kind of how I plan my time around whether tasks are necessary, nice, or ideal. Like, is this something I have to do? Is it something that would be nice to do? Or something that, like, in a world where I have all of the energy and nothing pops up this week, I would do it? And I think similarly about money. It's like, this is the money that is necessary for me to meet those basic needs. And not just the basic needs, but also, like, the basic needs and some of the comforts that I need to feel good about my day to day life.

Amelia Hruby [00:51:04]:
And then there's, like, the nice money that for me is gonna be, you know, for, like, trips or concert tickets or, like, extra bonus stuff that makes my life feel really good, but I can pare back and still maintain, like, a general level of satisfaction and joy. And then there's, like, ideal, which isn't that, like, dreamiest dream world. But for me, it actually ends up being some of the more, like, longer term things that I'm working on or, like, I wanna go on a trip to Thailand and, like, I need to save money for that. These things that, like, are dreams I have for my life, but are not gonna be happening, like, immediately or right now. Or sometimes it's like, well, it would be cool if I could afford this, this, and that. So I'll put that on my ideal list, but, like, maybe we'll get there. And that's been really helpful for me.

Amelia Hruby [00:51:47]:
So I really do like this sort of modular way of thinking. I definitely agree that I do not start my financial planning in that place of "if everything was amazing and you got everything you want, where would you go?" Because for me, those numbers just become this, like, punishing metric that I hold myself up to and then hate every single moment of enoughness that I have that feels like, quote, unquote, less than that.

Nicole Antoinette [00:52:11]:
Yeah. I go through phases of being really into like, I'm always into personal finance, but sometimes I really wanna go deep. And, you know, I read six books in a row from that space. And I recently reread some books that are in the not like manifesting space, but are very much, you know, "you can earn as much money as you whatever, want" type things. And I actually had to stop reading them. Not because I think it's bad, not because I think there aren't other people who might find it motivating or get something from it or it helps them with, you know, change some kind of money story. But for me, it makes me feel like what I want is not enough. And I feel this way in terms of kind of career and just like goals in general.

Nicole Antoinette [00:52:51]:
I don't want a really big life or what might be considered this like really big– I've never wanted the capital C career. Right? And it's like, I'm Oprah's book club pick and all this. That just, that's not what I'm building. Right? Like I think a lot about Carmen Spagnola's Small and Delicious life, that really resonates so much for me. And so when I read these things of like, you know, "Imagine that you've doubled your salary," and I'm like, "Okay. But also I have enough right now and that's enough." Right? That's I don't know. There's like something in that for me that isn't very motivating, and I have to not expose myself to it too much because it makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong.

Amelia Hruby [00:53:31]:
This feels very parallel to the sorts of conversations I've had on the show, and we've talked about around, like, the online business growth escalator and the sort of sense of if you're spending too much time immersed in these narratives of how your business should be scaling, you will end up, like, heading a direction that maybe actually makes you really unhappy and lands you in a business you don't love running. Because growth for the sake of growth, more income for the sake of more income is not connected at all to what actually brings us satisfaction and joy, or success even.

Amelia Hruby [00:54:06]:
I promised to share more about my numbers and thoughts, so I wanted to actually follow through on that. And it's really interesting. I think it will actually also be helpful to listeners because I think about my enough number in just a different way than you do. So for you, you shared like how much you want to be paying yourselves monthly. For me, when I calculate my enough number, it's actually not about how much I'm paying myself anymore. It's about how much revenue the business makes such that I end up taking home what I want to make.

Amelia Hruby [00:54:34]:
So my current enough number is $160,000 in revenue for Softer Sounds this year. I shared in my overcoming under earning that my goal is 200. I wanted to set a lofty goal because I have not been doing that financially. I've really been like, alright, let me set achievable goals and build self trust, and now I'm like, alright, let's just throw this out there and see what happens. But for me, my enough number kind of includes a couple different things. One is, like, how much money I do need to take home to feel good, which for me is, like, $40,000 a year. I'm partnered. My partner also makes approximately that much money a year. So, like, our combined household income would be, like, $80,000 if we do that, which living in Lincoln, Nebraska is pretty manageable.

Amelia Hruby [00:55:16]:
And then a big thing that we're doing this year is trying to save to buy our house. So I'm trying to save another, like, $40,000 on top of that, which is a lot of money. Like, basically, to have that much profit in the business, to be able to distribute it to myself is a big push, which is why my revenue goal numbers have gone up so much. So when I calculated my enough number, it was like those two numbers, plus business expenses, plus estimated taxes, and that's how I ended up there. But that's like a different way of looking at it than your way of like, how much do I need to take home each month? And, like, that's my enough number. I'm, like, adding all these other things into this equation, and it was a really interesting exercise.

Nicole Antoinette [00:55:54]:
Yeah. It's different ways of coming at the same thing. Because in order for that to be after tax income for me, then, okay, that means the revenue has to be this much without burning out. Right? Because I'm not interested in working more or harder than I already am. Like I am due at my capacity and my work output feels really good right now to me. And I'm also not of the mindset of like, well, just raise your rates forever. There's something that doesn't feel economic justice minded about that.

Nicole Antoinette [00:56:21]:
So I think that part of the conversation for me will be if I decide that I would like to be earning more money than I'm earning right now, either for, you know, these kind of business related tax reasons, or because there is something big that I wanna save for? What are the changes that I would make to my business model to make that possible? Because I'm not interested in hiring people. I'm not interested in having employees. I'm not interested in scaling in that way. And so I think it does just like bring up interesting questions.

Nicole Antoinette [00:56:45]:
Like if you take all of the stories that were told of what a successful business is, right? You start as like a tiny business solopreneur, and then you hire a virtual assistant or some kind of assistant, and then you scale this way. And then you have your one flagship offer. And that's where most of your money comes from. And then you can teach other people how to sell that offer, right, as you said, the business at the online growth business escalator.

Nicole Antoinette [00:57:04]:
And each level up that you go on that is better and better and better and better. And the goal being that, you know, you make money without really doing any of the work and you can move yourself from your business. I'm not interested in that at all. I'm a writer, I'm an artist, like I'm not looking to remove myself in the business. I love facilitating things on Zoom, right? I know that I could make more money if I didn't put a cap on the number of people that can come to my groups and like workshops and stuff. But then it wouldn't feel as intimate to me. And what I like is the I don't like when the chat moves so fast that I miss things. And that's just a personal preference.

Nicole Antoinette [00:57:32]:
If I'm spending a huge chunk of my waking hours working, I would like to enjoy that work otherwise, why am I self employed? And so some of those decisions mean earning less money. That's okay. You know? And so I think if I'm able to remove all of what I have been told that my business should be and what success should look like, then I'm more able to draw my own map or create that from scratch for myself. And if I say that, okay, if I can pay myself $4,000 a month, which after taxes, what is that? $48,000 a year, you know, something like that, then that's enough. It doesn't have to matter that, you know, I have peers my age that are earning like two or three times that much money. That's great. You know, and just really taking, taking the, emotional weight off, like hanging around your neck of this means whatever about me. It doesn't it doesn't mean anything.

Amelia Hruby [00:58:23]:
Yeah. I think even just starting with this foundational question of, like, do I want to make more money? As opposed to taking it as a given. It's just assumed that we always want to be making more money. And I think that, know, when you're just starting out in business, that's probably true. Like, for me, my first two years, I was like, I wanna be making more. I'm not hitting my enough number yet. Like, I really do need want and need to bring more money in. And then I found myself at this place last year where I was like, okay. I'm making a lot of money. It's just kind of piling up in the bank account. What do I wanna do with this? Like, I've I'm hitting my numbers. Where is this going? And it was a decision my partner and I made together of, okay, I have a lot of energy to work on this business right now, a lot of business is coming in. Like, I'm feeling an abundance of clients arriving, and I think we we decided we wanna save for this house, so now is a good time for me to focus on earning more money.

Amelia Hruby [00:59:20]:
That said, I really look forward to the time on my timeline where I've marked, like, two and a half years from now, where we've saved enough for the house, and I can then, like, kind of pump the brakes a bit and slow back down. It's not that it's a finish line, but it's just this really clear awareness for me that I've kind of opened the floodgates a bit, I'm letting it all come in, I'm doing a lot of work, I'm working a lot. But it's for this specific goal, this specific period of time. And I think for me, a piece of that decision was also is looking at my personal life and also looking at the business and seeing, like, alright, Softer Sound is in a period of abundance. And if I'm personally not ready for that, I can pump the brakes on that, I can ask us to, you know, close the doors a bit and we don't take that in. But I made the decision, like, I'm, like, alright, we're gonna roll with this.

Amelia Hruby [01:00:04]:
Because I also know in a few years, podcasting might not be as abundant. I might not have as many clients. Maybe when I'm ready for abundance, the business is like, "Sorry, it's not happening here right now." So I think part of the way I think of it is also in conversation with my business and being like, what's happening over here? What's happening in my personal life? Can I match them up? Can I kind of meet the business where it's at? Can it meet me where I'm at? It may feel a little esoteric, but it is looking at numbers. It's looking at so many different capacities to make decisions about seemingly, like, given question of, do I wanna make more money?

Nicole Antoinette [01:00:40]:
No. I think that's a brilliant question. Another question that I have been asking myself is, what is what is money for? Again, there's no right or wrong answer to that. Right. And also exploring, like wanting to do more research and what creative things are people doing solidarity economy wise? What, what exists outside of money? Right. And again, that imagination portal of not just believing that money is the only way to get needs and desires met, which isn't to say, I think the only people that would say like money doesn't matter are people that are so rich that they've never had to think about money. I'm absolutely not saying that. And yet I know I see even within myself that I can collapse some of those things together and, you know, capitalism wants me to think that money is the answer to everything. And I just don't believe that it is.

Nicole Antoinette [01:01:27]:
And so I love these questions that you're asking and what does the business want feels really real. Right? What are your clients want? What are your listeners want? What are your readers want? And part of that, for me, like a small example, I noticed for years and years in online business, that there would be a summer slow down. The email open rates would go down, fewer people would sign up for offerings and it was so frustrating for me until I just acknowledge this is a pattern that happens. I also want to be outside during the summer. I'm not on my computer as much. What if I could start to plan my business? And maybe this isn't true for other people's businesses, but for mine and for a lot of other, you know, kind of peers, colleagues that I've talked to, they also experience a summer slowdown. Let me plan for that.

Nicole Antoinette [01:02:10]:
I work so much more in Q1 and Q4 than I do in the middle of the year. And part of that is because I wanna prioritize the time wealth of long distance hiking that I wanna be able to go for three weeks and not check my email. It's never happened. I always do check it at least a little, you know, but I like that and not in a way of, you know, someone would say, "Well, that's why you wanna scale your business up where you have people that work for you. So you can just go." I'm like, no, no, no. I also believe that my readers wanna break. It's nice not to just get new content all of the time. Right?

Nicole Antoinette [01:02:39]:
And so looking at, if everyone else is also slow during the summer, you know, that's in my ecosystem, cool. Let me take a little bit of a pause. Let me write only for paid people. Let me keep it a little bit smaller. Let's be a little more experimental in what we write about. And there's just lots of different ways I think to experiment with all of this kind of stuff. And I think part of it's like the enough number thing, obviously we're talking about it through the context of business, but looking at it from a personal perspective and being more curious about the spending and where the joy is and where it's not the same way that, you know, taking a big pay cut. If you can also shrink your expenses, then maybe your revenue goes down, but your profit doesn't go down.

Nicole Antoinette [01:03:18]:
The same things happen in our personal life as well, that if I look at, I've been spending $200 a month on this thing that actually doesn't bring me that much joy. What if I just didn't experiment of not doing that for a month? I'm big into different kinds of experimentation. And, like, does that recalibrate my enough number? Like, there was a period of time where I was I had a monthly massage membership. I was getting a massage and, like, tipping a lot. Right? Doing, like, a 50% tip. And that was a not insignificant expense. And I had told myself, like, this is what I need in order to, like, be well, and this feels really good for me. And it does feel really good. And now I don't do it anymore and I'm fine.

Nicole Antoinette [01:03:52]:
And so that might not be true for someone else. Someone else might feel actually less happy and less well if they weren't getting a certain kind of body care, but we know those things by experimenting with them. And so even that for me, looking at like, where am I telling myself that I need to earn this bigger number? Because it allows these things, but like, do I actually want those things? And maybe the answer is yes, but maybe the answer is no. And that's what I mean about, I'm not looking for like a fixed number necessarily as much as just continually checking in with how does it feel to spend and earn in these ways.

Amelia Hruby [01:04:26]:
There's so much that we don't have control over in our businesses, in our lives, in our finances, but there is also a lot of choice, and we can be very empowered in our choices. And I think that, for instance, I was thinking of your summer example, it's like if you know that you never ever wanna work in Q1, you probably shouldn't become an accountant because that's the busiest time of year for all accountants, right? So you can't control when an accountant is busy, but you can choose to not become an accountant if you know that's gonna wreck your life. And so similarly, I think that we can and perhaps would really benefit from being more intentional about our business models.

Amelia Hruby [01:05:07]:
And this comes back to, you know, I'm not here to say that every single business can thrive without social media. But if you don't wanna be on social media, don't start a business that needs social media to survive or thrive. And I think that plays into our conversation about sort of seasonal scheduling and capacity and into our conversation about what is enough money because some businesses require way more cash flow, way more money to get started than other businesses. And if you don't wanna have to raise $6,000,000 to get started, like, don't start that type of business. It's why I stayed out of tech.

Nicole Antoinette [01:05:45]:
Completely. I love all of this. I feel like there's a lot– I'm feeling like very expansive from all of the things that you're saying. Like, I think about even the decision for me to be a self published author has a not insignificant amount to do with the fact that I don't want to be on social media. I know that it would be more challenging for me to get a book deal now that I'm not using social media and that by publisher numbers, I have a small email list. I have like 6,400 free subscribers, which like, okay, if I imagine 6,400 people in front of me and like a stadium or something, that's just so wild it breaks my brain, you know.

Nicole Antoinette [01:06:16]:
And then I have 640 something paid subscribers on Substack and that too. Right? If 640 people are standing in front of you, that's but if we're talking about the numbers that are impressive to a publisher, absolutely not. Nobody's interested in me at all. And great, am I willing to do the work that is required to get that thing? And for some people, the answer might be yes. And for me, the answer is absolutely not.

Nicole Antoinette [01:06:41]:
So, okay. If that's same way of the like Mark Zuckerberg comes and tells you that Instagram is going away. Okay. And of course it's not true that I could definitely not get a book deal. Right? That's not, that's not true, but let's pretend that it is right. Let's pretend that, you know, big publishing TM, right. Comes down and is like, "Nic Antoinette, you can never have a book deal because of these things." What else is possible? That doesn't mean that I can't write books. That doesn't mean that people won't buy the books. Right. And it doesn't mean that people won't love them. All it means is that there are other ways.

Nicole Antoinette [01:07:08]:
And so it's like, if you're not willing to do the work that is required, and also no shade if that's the case, like if you're not willing to do the work that is required, let the goal go. And so the freedom that I have now that I'm not trying to compete with like other literary peers whose goal is to get a six figure book deal. And that's incredible. I will cheer for them. I will help support their book. Like I will order their book on presale. Right? Whatever needs to happen for them to do that because they've decided they want their writerly career to go in that way.

Nicole Antoinette [01:07:37]:
Whereas I'm like, the next book I write, I might, like ship them out from my house in like a limited print. Who knows? There's so many different ways to do things, you know, and like, that excites me. Whereas like, on one hand, I think I used to find it limiting of, oh, no, there's only one path to do it. My entire life has shown me that there are so many ways to do everything. Right? And okay, That's cool. Like, if you put aside the like status and ego of what it means for Random House to pick you or not pick you, then what else is possible? I get nice emails from readers all the time. People are reading the book. The books will always be there. If I decide I want to go on a self funded book tour two summers from now, guess what? The books will still be there. That's fine. So I feel a lot of, like, freedom and creative possibility when I think about things that way.

Amelia Hruby [01:08:22]:
We can cultivate a sense of our own power, our energetic sovereignty, and believe in different possibilities for ourselves. And I think that is so much at the heart of both of our businesses and careers or work journeys, is really getting to know ourselves and what we want and need to find joy and satisfaction, and then coming up with creative solutions to bring that into our lives, while also, of course, acknowledging all of the context and even privilege that allows us to do that. And I just really appreciate you being here and sharing, again, more of your journey and your transparency and your openness. It like really fills me up, and I'm so grateful.

Nicole Antoinette [01:09:09]:
Mhmm. Thank you.

Amelia Hruby [01:09:10]:
We didn't actually talk at all about the thing that you emailed me about that we were gonna have this conversation about, but I'm feeling like this conversation is beautiful, and it's starting to feel complete for me. Is there anything else you wanted to share or say?

Nicole Antoinette [01:09:10]:
Yeah. But I think it is funny that we didn't talk about the thing that we were gonna talk about. But you know what? It's–

Amelia Hruby [01:09:29]:
I feel like you're just gonna be a once a season guest from now on. So as we wrap up, can you just tell people where they can find you on ye olde Internet?

Nicole Antoinette [01:09:38]:
My Substack, that is my only public place at this point. nicantoinette.substack.com or, you know, nicoleantoinette.com has links to all of the other things as well, books, etcetera. If you wanna come and hang out in my space, I got some lovely emails from your listeners last time, so my email's on there. Please feel free to send me an email. I love to talk to the people. Love to hear from folks.

Amelia Hruby [01:09:58]:
Well, thank you again. Thank you, listeners, for joining us, and we'll see you for part three next season.

Nicole Antoinette [01:10:05]:
Great.

Amelia Hruby [01:10:09]:
Thanks for listening to Off the Grid. Don't forget to grab your free Leaving Social Media Toolkit at offthegrid.fun/toolkit. This podcast is a Softer Sounds production. Our music is by Melissa Kaitlyn Carter of Making Audio Magic, and our logo is by n'Atelier Studio. I'm your host, Amelia Hruby, and until next time, I'll see you off the grid and on the Interweb.