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Confession: I have a relatively low capacity for people-ing.

I love people. And, depending on the situation, I can be pretty good at it. Buuut it takes a lot outta me.

It’s why my family would find me hiding in the closet at parties when I was a kid.
It’s why my phone is always on silent.
It’s why it takes a good two hours after waking up before I’m willing to have a conversation.
It’s why I experience JOMO (joy of missing out) a lot more frequently than FOMO.
It’s why I’ve done mayyybe five Zoom coffee chats with strangers in five years.

There was a time when I tried to pretend to be an extrovert because I thought that I had to in order to succeed in business. For two years, I went to weekly in-person networking events of 100+ people. *shudder*​
I joined alll the online communities.
I filled my calendar with calls.
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And I burnt out.

These days I design my business to protect my solo-recharging needs as much as possible.

Here are 8 systems and boundaries that save me:

1) Using Loom recordings instead of meetings whenever I can.

2) Getting to know and staying in touch with people asynchronously. Mostly in the LinkedIn DMs via voicenotes.

3) Activating the “mute all” feature for attendees on my live calls. I was initially nervous about this one but people have been loving the option to quietly connect in the chat instead of on the mic. I call this “quiet community”.

4) Not forcing myself to respond to every single comment, DM, email (I do read every single one though).

5) Having clear messaging on my sales pages and the option to answer questions asynchronously to minimize sales calls. Highly recommend.

6) Designing my online communities in a way that don’t require ongoing daily interactions from me. Sometimes that looks like communities that are mostly for peer-to-peer to connection. Sometimes it’s a pop-up community that I’m very present in but only for a limited time.

7) Going deep, not wide, with my networking. For in-person events that means I usually get to know just one or two people well instead of working the room (which I have zero desire to ever attempt). For online communities that usually means: a) getting to know just one person per month on a 1:1 basis; b) keeping my online community memberships to a minimum.

8) Setting my Calendly default to max 2 meetings per day. In fact, it’s rare for me to have more than 2 meetings in a week.

The way I see it, all of the above is about protecting my ability to show up and serve at my best.

For me, that means protecting my quiet space and being very intentional about the ways I connect.
For someone else, it might mean responding to all the comments, belonging to every community, and having lots of calls on the calendar.

Whatever your flavour, you deserve to build a business that honours your needs.

What does that look like for you? Hit ‘reply’. I’d love to hear about it.
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Introvertedly yours,
Natalia
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