Create Healthy Boundaries, Redefine Ambition with Baily Hancock
In this episode of Good Enough for Now, recovering overachiever and professional friend-maker Baily Hancock discusses her decision to step away from entrepreneurship, how community has been the cornerstone of her life, and how she’s redefining freedom in this new phase in her life.
After running her own business, Collaboration Consulting, for five years, Baily stepped away from entrepreneurship and went back in-house as Community Strategist at Mighty Networks. Tune in to hear Baily’s tips for acquiring a supportive community and about how she’s channeling her existential crisis into a new, “chill” endeavor, Ambition Recovery Club.
LISTEN NOW
Here are three reasons why you should listen to this episode:
Discover the key to growing supportive communities
Learn how to set healthy boundaries at every phase of your life
Redefine the relationships you have between your ambition, value, and freedom
Resources
Visit Ambition Recovery Club
Follow Baily on Instagram
Follow Ambition Recovery Club on Instagram
Read Yeah, No. Not Happening.: How I Found Happiness Swearing Off Self-Improvement and Saying F*ck It All―and How You Can Too by Karen Karbo
Read Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation by Anne Helen Petersen
Read Patriarchy Stress Disorder: The Invisible Inner Barrier to Women's Happiness and Fulfillment by Valerie Rein PhD
Highlights
We catch up with Baily in her home in Los Angeles, where she lives with her husband and two toddlers. She has recently stepped away from entrepreneurship and is back to working in-house as Community Strategist for Mighty Networks, building, launching, and running successful online businesses powered by community.
I was an overachieving, type-A perfectionist from the time I stepped out of the womb.
At 25, she divorced her first husband, packed up all of her belongings in her Honda Fit Plus, and decided to move to LA to pursue her dream of being a TV show host. After realizing that a career in media wasn’t in full alignment with her values, Baily relied upon her community to guide her toward entrepreneurship.
I don't think I truly recognized that, really, till like recently– how integral community and being part of various communities has been for me, not only for survival of the hard times, but self exploration, friendship and support opportunities. Community has been the cornerstone of everything.
At her core, Baily is a cross-pollinator. This personality trait, which she has been cultivating her whole life, led her to her career path.
I go from flower to flower group to group, bringing ideas and information and spreading those to other groups and then adding to it with what I'm gaining at each. And that ultimately became the pathway for me to end up in partnerships and collaborations.
Baily describes the keys to building sustainable communities of support as “containers”.
You know, you wouldn't plant seeds just haphazardly along the side of the road…You need a pot to plant those relationship seeds and then you can focus on watering them instead of worrying about where did I put that seed? You need containers for the relationship to grow.
The role Baily has now, which takes all of her strengths and passions and interests and combines them into one role, has resulted in a shift in Baily’s life and in her approach to her career.
As an entrepreneur, you're doing so many other things that are not the thing you're great at and it just wears on you after a while and throw in all the other variables that are beyond your control too…that was exciting when that was my primary focus and then you enter kids into the equation and it stopped being as exciting and it started feeling oppressive.
Stepping away from entrepreneurship and into a salaried position at Mighty Networks allowed Baily to redefine her understanding of freedom.
I used to joke that I was an outdoor cat, I couldn't go back indoors, you know, couldn't do it. I was used to my freedom and now I'm like, my freedom now comes from working for somebody else and not having to juggle all those other balls and it feels really good.
The source of that freedom is clear-cut boundaries.
I had zero work boundaries for those first 15 years and now I think I'm overcompensating a bit and I'm putting up lots of boundaries.
I'm still really good at my job and I don't let anything fall through the cracks. But my job is a supplement to my life right now and that's a really big 180 from where I was even two years ago.
Though she welcomed this freedom and a new phase in her life, it amounted to an identity crisis that she channeled into the Ambition Recovery Club.
As a very goal oriented, driven, ambitious person my entire life, that was really like the dumping the drawer out kind of thing. Like oh crap, okay, well everything I knew to be true is now no longer true for me. What the hell do I do?
Can a recovering overachiever change her ways? Can she do less?
At Ambition Recovery Club, community members share resources and support for one another as they navigate the shifts they’re making in their approach to their value, careers, and ambition.
It's people I know who are all in the same zone of rediscovering who they are without those external pressures and without those external beliefs that were given to us that were not our own.
At this point in her journey, Baily is rediscovering how she defines her agency, identity, and value.
Guess what? Nobody cares. Nobody thinks less of me. Nobody thinks I'm a crappy employee because I'm not volunteering first to do everything and go above and beyond.
What Good Enough For Now means to Baily:
I think it really summarizes everything I feel at the moment. You know, I think expectations are what ruin lives in a sense. And so good enough for now is like okay, when you look around in this exact moment–this is a dumb little trick I do if I'm spiraling––which happens regularly. I think, okay, if I were an alien and I dropped into this body and I had to assess the situation, you know I'm here all of a sudden I look around, I'm like okay…I'm better than okay, actually, objectively.
I think if more of us could focus on this exact moment and be happy with what we have, we would significantly be happier in the long run because we're not always wishing to be somewhere else.
ABOUT
Baily Hancock is a collaborator, connector, and catalyst for community engagement and growth. A self-described ‘Professional Friend-Maker”, Baily believes in finding the overlap between you and those around you, because it's in that overlap where communication, connection, and collaboration can happen.
After running her own business, Collaboration Consulting,for five years, Baily recently went back in-house as a Community Strategist at Mighty Networks where she's responsible for creating partnerships with Mighty Pro Hosts to support them in building, launching, and running successful online businesses powered by community.
She also recently founded the Ambition Recovery Club, a community for burned-out over-achievers looking to unlearn what’s been taught to us about productivity and worthiness and reprogram how we define success and achievement so that we can live lives filled with intention, ease, and joy without sacrificing our drive and ambition.
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Harper (03:34):
Bailey Hancock is a collaborator, connector and catalyst for community engagement and growth. A self-described professional friend maker after running her own collaboration consulting business for five years. Bailey recently went back in house as a community strategist at Mighty Networks where she's responsible for creating partnerships with Mighty Pro hosts to support them in building, launching and running successful online business powered by community. She also recently founded the Ambition Recovery Club, a community for burned out overachievers, looking to unlearn what we've been taught about productivity and worthiness and reprogram how we define success and achievement so that we can live lives filled with intention, ease, and joy without sacrificing or drive and ambition. Welcome Bailey Hancock. We're so happy to have you here.
Baily (04:28):
I'm excited to be here. Thanks guys.
Harper (04:30):
Absolutely. So tell us where you are in your life right now.
Baily (04:35):
Oh Lord, that's a second by second answer. <laugh>
(04:40):
In general, we'll go the macro perspective. I am about to turn 38. I have a one and a three year old, a wonderful husband. I live in Los Angeles and six months ago this week I went back in house to work as a community strategist at Mighty Networks after running my own business for the last five years and doing my own thing. Got totally burnt out and exhausted because of all of the things that I just mentioned plus pandemic life and all of that. And I'm actually in a really fantastic place in this moment in time, which is nice. I couldn't have said that like two days ago, but right here, right now feeling very good about everything. You know, there's always stuff to complain about, but on the whole my life is isn't a good spot.
Harper (05:28):
I love hearing that.
Baily (05:29):
Yeah,
Stephanie (05:30):
I think it comes down to that idea of for now,
Baily (05:33):
I think it comes down to that idea of for now, Right? Everything's temporary. One of the phrases that has gotten me through many hard years is nothing's for nothing and also nothing's forever good or bad. So while it's bad clinging to the good times, while it's good, appreciate them so you have something cling to during the bad times.
Harper (05:49):
Couldn't agree with you more on those. So you mentioned LA, which is not where you're originally from. Can you take us back to what led you to la?
Baily (05:59):
I was an overachieving type a perfectionist from the time I stepped out of the womb and my entire K through grad school existence was that it was me achieving and striving and checking boxes and doing the right things. And that led me to graduating undergrad, moving to Tampa, Florida. I went to University of Florida for undergrad Gors and married my high school sweetheart who I had been with at that 0.6 years. We got married, we bought a house in the summer. I dunno if you all recall what was going on in the summer of seven was good times such a great time to buy at home in Florida, <laugh> uh, the movie the Big Short, I just sat there laugh, crying the entire time cause like oh it was me, that was me. Cool, cool, cool. So did all the right things. And at 20 I found myself in a place where I looked around my life and didn't really like pretty much anything that I had achieved that I worked so hard to get from the marriage to the home.
(07:07):
I liked my job but I was feeling a little bit stuck and stagnant. I graduated college in 2007 and so I walked right into the great recession as my first entry into adulthood, which was a pretty rough transition. And although I loved my job, I was doing seminars for the accrediting body for college business schools, which does not sound sexy, but I got to travel the world for free and meet all kinds of interesting people. I loved it but there really wasn't advancement opportunities for me. They weren't even giving annual cost of living raises at that time because of the recession. So I felt a little stuck and everything kind of came to a head when I turned 25. I had a very quintessential quarter life crisis, looked around and was like, yeah, so this actually isn't what I thought it was gonna be. And the path in front of me felt so determined and defined and it was kids and more of this.
(08:02):
And I had this gut instinct that if I was gonna make changes it needed to be. Now of course, you know 13 years later I'm like okay, you can always make changes. You weren't old at 25 idiot, but when you're 25 you're like it's no or never, it's too late after this. So I split up from the ex-husband, we walked away from the home. I decided I was gonna pursue my dream of being a TV show host. So I up and moved my entire life. Everything I owned that would fit in my Honda Fit plus my two cats and a friend drove the 2,500 miles across the country to Los Angeles cause that's obviously where I needed to be to pursue this dream. I knew two people there so I was like I'm good. And got to LA and within I'd say the first six months realized a couple things.
(08:49):
One, oh, leaving the physical place where you were, where you didn't like your life isn't actually always gonna be the solution. You think it's gonna be two. I did not wanna be part of the entertainment industry in any capacity because yikes, yikes, yikes, yikes. I got out here, did like a TV show, hosting class and just was like, this is not my place. These are not my people. They wanted me to have like a personal brand and a shick. And at the time I was like I wanna do everything. I wanted a web series called Bailey's Big Adventure, which was me doing all of these fun cool like bucket list items. And I was like why can't somebody just make this And it, I didn't understand the process of auditioning and all of that stuff. And I was like, oh I don't wanna do that. I don't wanna read from a teleprompter that sounds terrible. And I wasn't good at it either. And so I scrapped the entire plan and thus began the great, what the hell am I doing with my life journey that I went on for pretty much the next two to three years.
Stephanie (09:51):
Wow. There's so many thoughts that popped into my head. One of which is I feel like so many people have a parallel story to this. You go down the checklist, check, check, check, everything looks amazing on the outside on paper and you wake up and say wait a minute, it doesn't feel good. You make changes but you're still faced with yourself, right?
Baily (10:17):
Yeah. You're still the same person.
Stephanie (10:19):
<laugh>, right. So when you got to that point and maybe determined hosting a show wasn't for you embarking on this new journey of entrepreneurship, how did you find community
Baily (10:32):
That was actually the key to surviving any of it? And it always has been for me and I don't think I truly recognize that really till like recently how integral community and being part of various communities has been for me, not only for survival of the hard times, but self exploration, friendship and support opportunities like community has been the cornerstone of everything. And I always used to joke growing up that I was an extracurricular flu cause I was involved in you know, dance and sports and student counsel and all of these things. I think my sophomore year of high school I was in eight different clubs simultaneously and had a part-time job and a boyfriend and friends. And I was in the international Balot program because of course I was and it all, you know, it added up to who I was. But I never really appreciated the fact that it was different how I approached community than my friends approached community.
(11:33):
Most of my friends had like three to four core friends and I was generally part of a lot of those three to four core friend groups. So at lunchtime in high school I would bounce from table to table throughout the whatever hour we had and I would be visiting all my different friend groups. And it didn't occur to me till really the last couple years that oh people don't do that. That was like something that I did. And I heard the term cross pollinator as a way to describe somebody that does that. And I was like, wait, yes, that's me. I'm a pollinator. I go from flower to flower group to group, bringing ideas and information and spreading those to other groups and then adding to it with what I'm gaining at each. And that ultimately became the pathway for me to end up in partnerships and collaborations.
(12:20):
And now this most recent job as a community strategist. So in retrospect it's all perfectly logical and it all makes sense but of course in the moment it never does. So when I got out to Los Angeles with those two friends, two of which actually lived in the valley and so when you live in LA you realize that if you are in Santa Monica or Culver City, the valley is another state. So I didn't see them very often but I kind GED on as much as I could to their friend groups out here. I ended up dating one of their roommates, which was a whole different conversation. We'll have another time. But that was a little derailing of the path and the journey. But I started working at a restaurant and that became my initial core group of people as it does cause you're with each other every day.
(13:05):
And then when I decided the TV show hosting route was not gonna be for me and had my little mini existential crisis I to wait on a group of Rotarians people that were in the rotary club and this woman said, You're young, you should be in the Santa Monica jcs, the junior Chamber of Commerce. And I'm like ok. So I went to a meeting and ended up finding a new core group of friends to add to the restaurant group of friends. It's where I met my now husband turns out. And a lot of the first initial opportunities I got beyond waiting tables with an MBA came from that community. And so it was my doorway into new opportunities that led to me working at General Assembly, which was continuing education company for tech business and design skills. And that led me into doing partnerships which led me into having my own collaboration consulting business. So community has always been the doorway for me to opportunities that I might not have ever thought of for myself or had access to prior to them. So couldn't be a bigger factor. It's the factor
Harper (14:09):
I feel really similar to you related to community of just always having people and realizing that that is not the norm. When I decided to move to Tel Aviv, I didn't really decide to do that, I just did it. But once I've been there people can't wrap their head around how did you acquire all of these friends? How did you get to this point where you can say you have best friends in another country that you didn't go to high school or college with? And I think there's something really rare about this experience that I think is one of the many reasons when you and I first spoke that I shook my head the entire conversation going Me too, me too, me too, me too. I could not relate to everything you're saying anymore. Aside from wanting to be a talk show host, but knowing that we are rare breeds, I'm curious what advice you would give to people, listeners today who may not have that hut spa to find new friends and find new community, whether work related or what, how to acquire community. If you don't have one or you don't have a good one,
Baily (15:13):
I think you have to start with the people that are most like you or have something in common with you because you need a common thread when you're gonna make connections with people, it's a connection. So you have to have a connection point of some kind for me. Of course work is always the easiest place to do that cuz you're inherently stuck with those people anyway. School makes it really easy when you're in school cause you're with those people consistently in organization. Like the Santa Monica Junior Chamber of Commerce was something because we had recurring meetings and events. So I think anything where you don't have to do the heavy lifting to hang out with those people is really helpful because it's built in. So that takes that pressure away because I'm just like anybody else, I love a good canceled plan. I love somebody calling last minute being like, I'm so sorry I can't make it.
(16:00):
Ugh, amazing. I just gained time back. But I always appreciate it when it doesn't get canceled. I always enjoy myself for the most part. So I think you have to get past that natural instinct of not wanting to venture beyond your home. Sometimes the pandemic is added a completely different layer to this because we all got really used to not leaving our homes and you know, I know there were a lot of people that were really bored and wanted out and there were a lot of people that became much more introverted like myself. I realized how much time I was not spending with myself in the pandemic and how much I enjoyed spending time with myself. I didn't know that I was such a good company because I never let myself only hang out with me. I always was out doing something, running around town, having lunches and coffees and meetings and da da da.
(16:48):
So I think if you were one of those people that feels like you really wanna expand your community, not only start with opportunities that have built in reasons and times to hang out, but what are you interested in? If it's not work in school, what are you passionate about? Maybe right now you're really amped up about politics and social justice. Cool. There are so many communities that are working towards advancing causes and foundations and things like that that you again have recurring reasons to check in with people and places and times to do that. Containers, you need containers for the relationship to grow. You know, you wouldn't plant seeds just haphazardly along the side of the road. You need a pot. You need a pot to plant those relationship seeds and then you can focus on watering them instead of worrying about where did I put that seed.
(17:38):
So even if you meet somebody that you have an instant connection with, it still takes a lot of time and effort to grow that relationship and nurture it. So containers are really important. Great plug for ID networks, the company I work at where the entire point of it is to give communities a virtual home for their memberships, their courses, their events, their content. The reason I love this job so very much is because it's my job to help these communities grow and thrive. So I get to just do my favorite part of community engagement on behalf of 30, 40 plus networks that I'm in charge of. So it's my favorite thing ever.
Speaker 6 (18:18):
It sounds like it's a great
Baily (18:19):
Fit. Bailey, oh my gosh, couldn't have been a better role for me. When my friend sent me the listing, which of course a friend sent me the listing, the job posting, she was like, this is a joke, this is, you just apply. And I'm like, well I can't not apply. It's literally every bullet point is exactly who I am and what I believe in. So sure why not. And you know, six months in now, it literally takes all of my skill sets and strengths and passions and interests and abilities and just puts it into one role. And I'm also at such an interesting point in my life where I am pausing again, you know, almost 13 years after the first big pause and looking around and saying, okay, this is where I am and what I have is this what I still want and what I want going forward.
(19:05):
And you know, obviously second husband and two kids in a home in, I'm not running away to another coast at this point, but I think I'm more interested now in minor tweaks and being able to say, okay, how do I feel when I start each day? Am I dreading it? Am I tired? Am I excited, Am I neutral? And it's different every day of course. But generally I feel really excited to close my office door, say goodbye to the kids for the morning, come in here and get to be me in my best light. And using all of the skill sets that I've acquired and honed through the years and I get to feel good at my job. Which when I was an entrepreneur I felt good at 30% of my job doing the thing that I started out doing it for, which was helping entrepreneurs, specifically women entrepreneurs, grow their businesses with partnerships and collaborations.
(19:59):
But as an entrepreneur, you're doing so many other things that are not the thing you're great at and it just wears on you after a while, throw in all the other variables that are beyond your control too. And it's just like, ugh, it will never end. The list of things you have to do never ends. And that was exciting when that was my primary focus and then you enter kids into the equation and it stopped being as exciting and it started feeling oppressive. And I used to think of working for somebody else's, the oppressive thing like, oh I can't ever go back. I used to joke that I was an outdoor cat, I couldn't go back indoors, you know, couldn't do it. I was used to my freedom and now I'm like, my freedom now comes from working for somebody else and not having to juggle all those other balls and it feels really good. I love how you just
Stephanie (20:46):
Described that because I myself after kids, my kids were the same age, your kids are one and three. And I was working on my own. I was a consultant taking on projects and the mindset for me, I always had to toggle between was that I have to and I get to, yeah, and doing it on your own, creating new client pipelines, driving your business. And yes you get the benefit of maybe some flexibility, maybe honing in on the things you love, but it is a lot to manage with this role of complexity that you now have as a parent. How do you make space for yourself given you have this broader role in your life as a parent?
Baily (21:36):
It doesn't happen outside of the nine to five time. And if it does, it's rare. And I've had to really come to terms with the fact that this is a phase. They will only be tiny for so long and they will only need me the way they need me for so long. And my career will always be there in the background. I mean careers are what, 40 plus years long. You have your kids little like this for what, 10 years maximum. And then they kind of change and really little like this for like the first five, six years. And so I fought that for the first probably two years of having my first son. Like it wasn't until I had my daughter last year that I came to terms with the fact that my career doesn't need to be number one right now. And as a very goal oriented, driven, ambitious person my entire life, that was really like the dumping the drawer out kinda thing.
(22:30):
Like oh crap, okay, well everything I knew to be true is now no longer true for me. What the hell do I do? It was another big existential crisis. It was so many things. It was if I'm not an entrepreneur anymore, what am I? Am I a quitter? Am I a failure if I'm not, you know, the collaboration person anymore, Was that all for nothing? Will people still know me as this? What if I wanna go back, Will they have all forgotten about me? Blah blah blah. And on top of that, coming to terms with the fact that my career was no longer top billing made me question whether it ever should have been and those first 15 years out of college, were they for nothing too? Should I have been having more fun? Should I have not been focusing so much on working for somebody else?
(23:16):
I had zero work boundaries for those first 15 years and now I think I'm overcompensating a bit and I'm putting up lots of boundaries and it's an everyday practice not responding to emails or slack messages after 5:00 PM or before 9:00 AM because that's not my life, that's not my priority. I'm still really good at my job and I don't let anything fall through the cracks. But my job is a supplement to my life right now and that's a really big 180 from where I was even two years ago. And so there's been a lot of excavation of priorities and values and alignment that I didn't see coming <laugh>. And that's where ambition, recovery side project, that project. Because by nature of what ambition recovery means to me, I'm not putting a lot of pressure on it and I don't have a lot of goals for it. It is sort of just a thing that exists in the world right now and it's an everyday practice to turn this very big cruise ship around, which is what it feels like. I'm in like a canal and I have this gigantic luxury liner that I'm trying to like do a 180 or at least shift a bit. And it's a lot harder than I think I thought it would be. But every day it's worth it because I feel the slow incremental changes taking place and they feel infinitely better than what was there before.
Harper (24:42):
It's so powerful to hear you say this all and to know the questions that were going on in your head. Cause I'm sure so many people can relate whether pivoting out of fulltime into entrepreneurship or entrepreneurship into fulltime. One of the things that I love about your story is that when you decided to leave your business behind and look for a job, you started having interviews and saying in interviews that you would do an excellent job. You would give your all but that your priority was your family. And you can feel free to rephrase that if I said it wrong.
Baily (25:15):
Yeah, it's the long and short of it.
Harper (25:17):
I remember you telling me this and going, wow, I love this, I love this confidence. I wish more people would say things like this, Where did that confidence come from where you went, I'm cool if people say that's not ok, this is not where I belong working, then
Baily (25:35):
I don't think I fully realized how much having a salary job was actually going to help my family and our finances until after I got it. So in retrospect, I look at that version of me in December of 21, just like you. Like where did you get off acting like that? Like oh my god, that's not how you're supposed to interview for a job. You're supposed to make them think that they should hire you and you're gonna be person for them. But when I was going through the process, I knew that in order to leave my business behind, it had to be for something worth it and it had to be an upgrade. It couldn't be more of the same stress and exhaustion and energy suck. It had to fit into my life otherwise it was gonna be a short-term thing too and I was gonna have to find another job later.
(26:22):
So I think in my mind I was like, all right, you know what? I'm taking this approach to interviewing as I would hopefully go into dating. You know, if I were single right now in my thirties, knowing what I know, like I'm not gonna try and fit myself into a caricature of what you, I'm gonna to up as who I am. And if cool and if not, no problem. Good luck finding the right person. And I'm so glad I had that temporary lapse in sanity to be able to do that cause it landed me a job that's ideal for me. And I came into this job under no false pretenses. I wasn't hiding the fact that I had tiny children, in fact, in my interviews, because that had been mostly what was going on in the six months prior, I started this job on my daughter's seven month birthday.
(27:11):
And so the last seven months leading up to this role, I was in the thick of newborn life. And then before that, the thick of having a one and a half year old and trying to survive in entrepreneurship during a pandemic when my business just went to hell, despite me doing everything right. And so I was just tired, I think I didn't have the energy to be a persona anymore. I had the energy just to be like, look, this is what I can do. I literally meet every qualification you're looking for. This is not going to be a growth position for me, which is not what I was looking for. I didn't wanna grow, I didn't wanna grow professionally, I didn't wanna stretch, I didn't wanna, you know, meet the expectations I wanted to up good to go so that it didn't have to be a drain on me and my family and time.
(27:59):
And luckily my and the woman who hired has three kids. They're, you know, about 10 plus years older than mine. So she's been there and experienced it. That was also the first time that I've been interviewed as a mother. I had never interviewed for a job before while having kids. So the whole thing was completely different than the last time I had applied for a job in 2015, right? Six years earlier I was a very different person. So this new version of me showed up and just decided to say, Screw it. Let's just be blatantly honest and transparent about my needs. And you pretty much nailed it Harper. Like what I said was, you know, I'm looking for a position that I can be excellent out without trying very hard and I need you to know that I don't need a work family. I have a real family and I'm here to do a great job and be a contributing member of this team. But this is not gonna be my everything anymore. And if that's OK with you, I would love to have this job. And it worked out
Stephanie (28:56):
Well. I think what you did is show up as yourself and you talked about the persona, right? Not being this persona in an interview for the first time. How much of owning your own business and being an entrepreneur do you think contributed to your awareness of what was important to you and what you were capable of?
Baily (29:21):
All of it. All of it came from my time running my own business. You can't pretend to yourself to be somebody different when you're running your own business because it doesn't do anything. I know so many entrepreneurs that speak in, you know, the we when they're talking about their business, like, oh yes, we do this, we do that. And it's one person own it, man. Own the fact that you're doing all of the things. Don't make up fake email addresses that you're checking all of them. Like I get the idea of faking it till you make it and putting on an appearance of having an agency when it's one person. But I think that makes it seem so much less achievable for other people. So my perspective has always been just be really honest with people about the resources I have. Like having a husband who has a good job, who can support me during the down months.
(30:12):
I couldn't have been an entrepreneur if I was single. I just couldn't have been. I would've had to have a couple jobs going on and it just wouldn't have been the same business. So I need that to be very clear. And I always have been very clear with people that like I had financial support. So that enabled me to run this business probably a lot longer than I could have had I been on my own. I had a little bit more runway than most people have. And I also had the emotional support. He backed me. And this is another very important piece of the hiring process for me. My husband never once made me feel like I had to get a job. He never made me feel like I needed to shut down my business because it just wasn't bringing in the revenue that it used to.
(30:49):
He was always like, when you decide to do it, go for it. Now once I got the job, he was like, Thank God we really needed that. I'm like, wait, what didn't know and het tell wanted your idea? And I'm like, Oh my god, that's the most generous thing anybody's ever done for me. Cause I would've gotten in my head, I would've taken a job just to take it. I would've been the persona, I would've been the girl that they wanted to hire. I would've been that perfect person and that just would not have worked out as well. So those privileges that I had and primarily coming from my partner were the permission and it gave me the ability to do all of this the way that I did it. But when you're an entrepreneur, you learn so much so quickly you figure things out.
(31:31):
I say that being an entrepreneur helped me become a parent. It was the best training for parenthood that I could have ever had because it's so similar in that you really don't know what you're doing. You're asking everybody for advice constantly. You're Googling all hours of the day. You're hoping that the tiny day to day things you're doing will add up to something bigger and grander in the long term, but you don't know till it's over. And so I feel like entrepreneurship was the greatest gift that I could have ever given myself. It was also the most stressful gift I could have ever given myself. But what great gift isn't at some point. And so being able to have gone through the five years of working for myself changed me fundamentally as a human being and gave me so much confidence to know that, oh, if I only have to do this one role, that's it.
(32:18):
I just have to do the one thing. Uh, okay, I can do that. And I get eight hours a day to do it. OK, <laugh>, it feels like a joke some days. It really does in the best, most amazing joke ever because I do, I get to just show up and do what I'm great at and then close my laptop at 5:00 PM when my three year old knocks on my door and says, Shut it down down mommy. Which is what happens every day at five on the dock, Shut it down time. I'm like, well I guess it's time to close the laptop till tomorrow at 9:00 AM So really you have more than one boss, it sounds like. I have so many bosses, one can't even speak yet and she commands me with just a vibe. Yeah, she's gonna be trouble in the best way. Watch out
Harper (33:00):
<laugh>, there's so many things to cover here and I wanna just keep going and going and going. But you mentioned the Ambition Recovery Club, which was the number one thing when we spoke that I went, oh my god, I put it on a post-it, it is on my wall in my office. Love it so much. Can you talk a little bit more about what it is, who it's for and what your goal is with it?
Baily (33:22):
Ambition Recovery Club grew out of the fact that for the last roughly year and a half, two years, I have been in this excavation of priorities and values and all of that good stuff mode. And when I start to wanna know more about something, I go all in. I go down many, many rabbit holes, I read all the books, I listen to all the podcasts, I do all the things. And I had been reading so many amazing books that I just felt like, okay, does everybody know about this? You know, one of the books I read at the beginning of 2021 was called, Yeah, No Not Happening. And I literally highlighted the entire book. It was like one of those where I was like, well I should have just not highlighted anything cuz I just highlighted the whole book. And then that led me to reading Can't even the Burnout Generation Patriarchy Stress Disorder, like all of these books that I just started devouring and coming to realizations around the fact that I am part of this patriarchal, capitalistic society that has trained me to believe that productivity is the end all be-all.
(34:28):
And if I'm not producing then I'm not valuable. And so I was doing all this discovery and unlearning and untangling myself worth from my output. And I kind of was like, I need people to talk to about this. Does everybody else know this too? And when I would put stuff on social media, I would have lots of people chime in being like, Yes, me too. What is going on? And it felt like early forties, late thirties, women all having the same kind of conclusion of, oh shit, we were definitely tricked into being these little machines. And we don't wanna be tricked anymore. We don't wanna have to constantly be self improving. We don't wanna have to constantly be producing and being part of this machine. We wanna just lay in a hammock and read and eat stone fruit, you know, <laugh> and like just exist.
(35:18):
And obviously there's a middle point between those two extremes, but I'm still very much oscillating between those two. And so the Ambition Recovery Club, I don't remember why Ambition Recovery as a term came to me, but it did as most things have in my life. Like suddenly there's just a term for it in my head and I'll Google it and nobody's ever used those words together. And I'm like, oh, ok, I guess that's mine. And so Ambition Recovery Club is just a community that I've built on Mighty Networks, the company I work for. And right now there's 10 of us and it's people I know who are all in the same zone of rediscovering who they are without those external pressures and without those external beliefs that were given to us that we're not our own. And we're all in different phases of this recovery process.
(36:03):
But ultimately right now it's a place where we can share books that we're reading, we can share articles, we can share podcasts. We're starting to just sort of share small wins of our own ambition recovery. So for example, one woman in there posted when she went out of town and actually put up an OUTTA office for the first time in her life, she runs her own photography business. And we were all like, Yes, go job. I posted there how my husband, which meant I'd have all my evenings to myself. And my initial thought was great can finish all these online courses I've started, never completed. I could read all these books, I could work out and then I stopped and said, or I could do nothing, Huh, that sounds better. And so we go in there and we're like, Guys, listen what happened? This thing, Yay.
(36:49):
And we're like, Yes, you did it. And you know, there's of course like with any sort of recovery, there's two steps forwards, one step back and we all have our, our slides back into our old ways of existing. But ultimately it's a place where we can cheer each other on and share resources right now. And by nature of the ambition recovery, I'm trying to be very chill about it, which is also a new thing for me to be chill about. Anything that I'm excited about. So I'm trying to take it slow. And this year I started my job with my new networks on February 1st of 22. And this year for me, I'm my number one case study in, can a recovering overachiever change her ways? Can she do less? I had on my whiteboard for the first couple months in my office working at this job, do Less.
(37:37):
And it's a quote my friend Amanda told me, she was like, Anytime you go to overachieve or raise your hand before anybody else or volunteer for something, just pause, see if you can do less. And I'm like, Oh God. Oh God, I don't know if I can do less. I don't know if I have that setting. And turns out I do. And guess what? Nobody cares. Nobody thinks less of me. Nobody thinks I'm a crappy employee because I'm not volunteering first to do everything and go above and beyond. They think I'm doing a good job, which is really validating and I'm like, huh. So this was an option all along, huh? So for Ambition Recovery Club, I think as I continuously go through the process, I love teaching, I love to help people achieve something I've achieved, but I feel like I need to be about five steps ahead of them at least in order to do that.
(38:23):
So I feel like right now I may be two to three steps ahead of people in this ambition recovery. So I assume that in the coming year as I really get my footing under me and working for somebody else and get the rhythm of that down, feel really confident doing it, my kids start to need me a little bit less in different ways. I think the Ambition Recovery Club will take a bigger portion of my time, but right now it's just a place on the internet, Ambition recovery club.com. You can go find people that are like you that are just as equally lost and confused and just looking for a better way to exist that doesn't involve letting their ambition become toxic to them. And we're just figuring this out together. So down the road, I know there will be a podcast, there will probably be a book, there will probably be courses and trainings and speaking gigs, but today it's just a little place that you can go to feel seen and heard by people that get you.
Stephanie (39:21):
And that's nothing little,
Baily (39:23):
It's not
Stephanie (39:24):
Being seen and heard is the most important key I think from whenever I've had to go through a recovery <laugh> of my own right of changing your mindset to go from what you expected and wasn't working for you to finding out what does. Yeah, I'm so excited for you. I, I may have to join
Baily (39:47):
Please. Yeah, it's 10 bucks a month right now. Like it's kind of just a little mini commitment to each other that we'll be in there and we won't just ghost for months on end, you know. But it's funny because the woman who sent me the Mighty Network's job, her name's Molly and she's amazing. She's also how I got our nanny and so many other opportunities. She's just the best shout out to you Molly. She recently sent me a LinkedIn post or article or something that was talking about the rise and lack of ambition among specifically like millennials post pandemic. Not that we're post pandemic, but you know. And I was like, Ugh, this is great. It feels like I'm right on time for something finally in terms of you know, momentum. And the beautiful irony of it is I don't care and I don't wanna do anything about it. Like I was like I should go on LinkedIn and I should post out Ambition Recovery Club attached to this article and share it. And I'm like, nah, I'll just feel good that I'm like not alone in this phase.
Harper (40:47):
You mentioned should, which I think is a really common thing, especially for entrepreneurs. And I love this tactic of thinking these things through, this is the old version of me, I'm gonna brainstorm, I'm gonna be helpful and do all of this. And then go, oh wait, that's old version Bailey new version. Bailey has boundaries and does not take all of this stuff on. And I think it's so cool to sort of watch how your brain functions of I don't need to do this, I don't need to be that person. I can be who I wanna be and don't need to show off for anybody. And I think that just says so much about where you are at in your life and where you said from the beginning that you're in a really good place right now and I hope that continues for you. There's always bumps in the road, but it's so cool to see that you went like, okay, these are the things that I need to do for me and my family and this is what's most important.
Baily (41:39):
Yeah, checking in with your priorities and your values is a pretty crucial thing that most of us don't do on the regular. And like I said when you asked early Stephanie, like when does that self-reflection happen or when do I have time? It really is a lot of times in the in between during the day when I am in my office alone, which I'm so grateful to have that space. I'm in a place in my career and my family life and personally where I take the little bits of time that I do have and try and do something with them without compromising that need for just rest and reflection too. It's tricky cause even the reflection is work and there is a lot of pressure on us constantly to be improving ourselves. And I'm a self-help book addict have been since I was like 15.
(42:28):
But now I'm looking at it from the perspective of, okay, what of that information do I wanna take with me and integrate and what is just good information that I can not worry about right now? And I think being a non-personal anymore, like when I was an entrepreneur, my company was Bailey Hancock hq, it was me, I was the product, I was everything. And social media for me was a business channel and now it just gets to be social media. So I've unfollowed so many accounts that were like entrepreneur focused in nature or even self-improvement focused in nature. And I don't have to worry about the algorithm. I'm not making a real ever so get over Instagram
(43:12):
Not doing it. And so I get to just post whenever I want and whatever I want and not have to worry about being Bailey Hancock, the persona. I'm just a person now and there's so much freedom in that that I didn't know I was missing. And I just wish that for everybody, even the people who are a persona, like having a piece of this life of yours that is just yours where you don't have to perform, it reminds you who you are independent of all of that, which is everything you've got. It's the only thing you've got. And so it feels nice to be in this zone.
Stephanie (43:49):
It reminds me, I think it might be a Yoko Owno quote, whether you like Yoko owner or not is decide the point. But isn't it something like you can change the world just by being yourself?
Baily (43:59):
Yeah, yeah. I mean there's so much faking it till you make it in this world and on social media. And I think that's kind of tragic. It's kind of tragic because who knows what all of the original gyms are in this world of people that we'll never see because they're trying really hard to be the template of what they think they should be. And it's just kind of a bummer, like it's almost like the Pinterest version of everybody is what we get to see. See and it's the most uninteresting parts of most people. And I don't think I'm this, you know, unique special person, but I'm my own version of weird and different. And I think I'm more willing now to show up as that, or not show up as that. Like just be over here and not have to show up anywhere. And I'm okay with that and it really is this gigantic relief. So I, I wish that for everybody.
Stephanie (44:59):
So given the title of our show, good enough for now, what does that mean to you?
Baily (45:08):
It really summarizes everything I feel at the moment. I think expectations are what ruin lives. <laugh> in the sense having high expectations that are based upon external factors, not necessarily your own hope for your life. That can really dampen even the most beautiful moment in the present because you're always thinking about what's next. You're always thinking about the home you eventually wanna live in or the job you eventually wanna have or the bank account size you eventually wanna have. And you're completely neglecting the one you do have, which is probably what some past version of you really, really wanted. And it's funny because my undergrad degree was an event management, so I spent the first five or so years doing events and I remember thinking even then how weird of a job it was because you're never living in the present. You're always like six months ahead.
(46:05):
And I never knew what month we were in because my brain was always six months ahead. So I was like, Oh yeah, July, you know, whatever. And they're like, No, we're in October right now. I was like, Oh God, yeah, you're right. And so that was a turning point for me cause I was like, wait God, this is kinda a bummer of a job. You're never here, you're never there. You're always somewhere ahead of time and then you never get to where you're going. And so good enough for now is like, okay, when you look around in this exact moment, this is a dumb little trick I do if I'm spiraling, which happens regularly, I think, okay, if I were an alien and I dropped into this body and I had to assess the situation, you know I'm here. All of a sudden I look around, I'm like, okay, I'm not cold, I'm not hungry, I'm not crying, I'm not in pain.
(46:50):
This room is pretty nice. It smells good. I feel good regardless of all the other shit going on around you in this exact moment. I'm okay and I'm better than okay actually objectively. And so I'm trying to do that more and more with my entire life where I think would I like to live in a different place? Yeah, probably. But is this place great for the moment? Yeah, it's, it really is. And you know, would I like to have a more organized house? Would I like there to be less kids toys fucking everywhere? Yes I would. But is it ok? Yeah, it means I have cute little happy children running around that are healthy and safe and happy and that's pretty damn good too. Could my marriage be stronger? Of course. Who's couldn't when you have tiny children, but we love each other and we're great partners and we're wonderful team and we still like each other, so that's pretty damn good. So you kinda run this self evaluation and it's like, does it meet the bare minimum or maybe a couple notches above? Yeah. All right then carry on. So I think, I love the title of your podcast and I think it's more of us could focus on this exact moment and being happy with what we have. We would significantly be happier in the long run because we're not always wishing to be somewhere else.
Harper (48:09):
Couldn't love it more. Yep. Thank you for that. Can you tell our listeners where they can find you?
Baily (48:17):
Ambition, recovery com's probably your best bet. Cause it's gonna get you right to my website, which has all the links to all the things. I'm at Bailey Hancock everywhere on the internet. There's no EAN Bailey. So I've got excellent SEO and you can find me if you wanna find me. I call myself a professional friend maker, which I think is a title I gave myself when my seven year old nephew asked what I did for a living. And I said, Well, Friends for Living Play Nice together. And the, And I've had that ever since. And in retrospect I'm like, Oh yeah, I guess that's who I've always been. So it fits. So yeah, please come be friends with me online. I love making new friends. I think it, I enriches your life in ways you can never imagine.
Harper (49:02):
Thank you so much.
