Building a Neuroinclusive Freelance Business with Alice Rowan(Transcript)
Victoria
Welcome to the show.
Alice
Hello, thank you for having me.
Victoria
You're welcome. I'm super excited because we have been working together in various capacities over the last few months. I'm really, really happy to be able to talk to you about neurodiversity and your experience in your career as well, because that's not something that we've dug into a lot in our conversation so far. Question number one is, can you share a little bit about your personal experiences with neurodiversity?
Alice
I didn't find out that I was neurodivergent until my late 20s, which, as we know, is an incredibly common experience for neurodivergent women. I can only really explain my experience over the last three years or so, because before then, I was just very socially awkward slash socially inept, excitable, unorganised, uncoordinated, and had no idea why I thought it was just... I just thought I was broken. But realising that I'm neurodivergent and putting accommodations in place for myself has been life-changing. I have been so much less depressed. I have been more productive. Not that life's purpose is to be productive, but to capitalism, well, capitalism. I can't believe we're two minutes in, and I'm already talking about capitalism. I'm so sorry.
Victoria
It's all right. If it makes you feel any better, I've usually spoken about periods by this point anyway.
Alice
Everyone has their special interest, right?. But yes, so my particular combination is ADHD, autism, and I'm like 99 % sure I'm dyspraxic as well. But it's a bit muddy in terms of whether that one is there or not, because it could also be explained by a combination of ADHD and my hypermobility. I'm uncoordinated, basically. So, yeah, it's caused a lot of stress and also a lot of joy in my life. I will say that, so being autistic in particular, I think is for me, a lot of it is about experiencing things in the extremes. What do you mean? So everything from sensory overload is like a really big issue for me. It's a huge part of the reason I don't work in an office anymore. I can't cope with it. But, autistic joy is one of the most beautiful experiences you can have in life. All of my emotions are turned up to 11, right? And that goes both ways. And sometimes it means I go from zero to ten, zero to eleven very quickly when I'm frustrated. And then I'll start crying and then I'll get angry and then I'll just be like, my life is over for small inconveniences, right?
Alice
Or what a lot of other people would see as small inconveniences, and then we go into meltdown territory. But then there's also the sheer level of joy that I am able to experience when I am engaging in a special interest or I'm really into a hyper fixation or I experience a piece of media. It's quite often what does it for me is when I experience a piece of media that I feel is utterly life-changing, and I feel like I experience it with my whole being. I just get so excited and overjoyed in a way that to an extent that non-autistic people just don't experience. It's hard living life without a grey area, but now I understand it, I wouldn't change it for the world.
Victoria
Interesting. Now you understand it, you wouldn't change it for the world. How did you feel about all of this growing up?
Alice
Like I was fundamentally broken and fundamentally unlikable. I'm going to try not to get too sad talking about this because it was real bad for a really long time.
Victoria
Please, no, you don't need to answer if it's going to make you sad.
Alice
No, it's all good. I think it's important to talk about all the way through school and in the early years of my career, the only thing that I was good at was being book smart. I'm one of the lucky few in that the school, the academic system, the way that it functions is built perfectly for my brain. We can go into that perhaps another time about how fundamentally broken the school system is. I benefited from it purely from an academic perspective. Socially, absolutely not. That was really hard. The dealing with the emotional side of things, social hierarchies, all of that. Like, for me, my first office job felt like I was back in high school. In what way? I mean, it was a very chaotic place anyway, that I have since found out has an incredibly bad reputation. Oh, for the way that it treats its employees. But it was very cliquey and there was a lot of weird social hierarchy going on. And a big thing for me, which I think is a classic autistic experience, is hierarchies don't make sense to me because they're not real. I don't know how else to explain it.
Alice
It's a concept, it's not real. I don't care if you're my boss. If you ask me for feedback, I'm going to give you honest feedback because I've taken you at your word and that's what you've asked me for. This was a really common one. If you are the creative director who has a very strong personality, lots of opinions, rightly so, is incredibly good at their job. If I see a hole in the plan that you are making, I will tell you, even though I'm just a lowly little intern, because I'm looking at the bigger picture and I don't want you to struggle down the line. But it's seen as insubordination, right? It took me so long to realise that is what was happening, because no one ever sat down and told me, these are the unspoken rules that you need to conform to. And so it was just like I spent my entire life being very smart, very intelligent, always told you have a lot of potential, but you're not going to live up to it if you don't do X, Y, Z.
Victoria
Oh, really? And what would you have to do to achieve, to live up to your potential? What did they want you to do?
Alice
Be more organised. So the ADHD comes in. Be more organised, focus more, apply myself, develop my people skills, and learn to monitor my emotions.
Victoria
How did you respond when you were given that air quotes feedback?
Alice
Not very well.
Victoria
Mmmm.
Alice
Not very well, if anything, proving their point that I needed to monitor my emotions because people would say shit like that to me and I'd be like, but I'm so good at my job. With a lot of conviction. Or at school, but I'm getting good grades, what's the problem? I am succeeding at school. I am succeeding at work. I am doing the thing well. And the thing that just blew my mind was that being good at the thing that you're doing isn't enough. And like no one told me that. I just felt like it's such a cliché. So many people say this about the particularly the autistic experience, but I just felt like there was a rulebook that everyone had that I was never given and I was constantly penalised because I didn't follow the rules that I'd never been told.
Victoria
I'm not diminishing any of that, but it's a little bit like when you have a kid and there's stuff that, it's not the same, but to give a random example. I took Freya to a birthday party when she was a baby. She was wearing a dress and she had a nappy on. And the amount of people, and there was a bouncing castle. The amount of people who came up to me and was like, Why isn't she wearing matching pants over her nappy? And I was like, Is that a thing? Does she need that? I didn't know that there was that unwritten rule that when you put a kid in a dress and there is a chance that you might see the nappy, the nappy is shameful and therefore you should cover it up. There's so many of those unsaid things that other people know about parenthood that you haven't got a fucking... Sorry, this is now a swearing episode, just so that you're free.
Alice
Oh, thanks. Now I've got something. Oh, thanks. Good to know. Excellent.
Victoria
Sorry about that. So you've had this shitty experience in your work experience. How did that translate to you running your own business?
Alice
Ok, so there's about four years between my agency days and me then leaving corporate life to start running a business.
Victoria
And what's the main catalyst or trigger for that?
Alice
It was a death-by-a-thousand-cuts scenario. Every time I left a job, I tinkered with the idea of going freelance. Like, every time I burnt out of the job or I was let go from a job, as happened over the pandemic, I really, really thought about it. And then it was just I always psyched myself out of it because in the knowledge that I'm very good at what I do and I'm very bad at people, that had been drilled into me my entire life that I have no people skills. And I knew that that was a core part of successfully running a business. I psyched myself out of it. I was like, well, I couldn't possibly do this, not to mention doing your own taxes and all of the admin that's involved. I just want to write. I just want to be creative. I just want to do the thing. And so it was a case of for about five years, I desperately wanted to be my own boss and to stop working for other people. I just always talked myself out of it until I had a really, really, really shitty job that I lasted a grand total of three months in.
Alice
After two weeks of being there, I knew I'd made a mistake leaving my previous job. I was already in talks with my previous boss about coming back and they'd just filled my position. So it was like, wait a few months and we'll see. I couldn't wait. I couldn't make it that long. I just... Yeah, that last job that I had was an absolute shit show from start to finish.
Victoria
And were there any examples in particular? Because you said death by a thousand cuts. What did that look like?
Alice
I mean, I'd say like a good seven hundred of those cuts were in those last three months with that really shitty employer. It was so bad. My personal favourite example was I got in there and the website didn't match up. I was the only marketing person. The website just did not match up with what they were trying to do. They repositioned the company and I was like, ok, we need to do a new website. I'll write some website copy for you. What CMS are you on? Found out it was hardcoded. The CEO was the only person who had access to change anything on that website. And I was like, great red flag, number one. And so, what I can.
Victoria
What I love as well, Alice, is that you're still talking about that common problem in business even now about if you haven't got full control over your website, then you've got a problem.
Alice
Yes, yes. It's a never-ending issue, and I'm amazed that people still do it. I will be preaching the importance of a CMS. Or you can even, with some things, you can basically attach a CMS on top of a custom build. This is a whole other conversation that we're going off on tangents into this isn't a website or a marketing podcast, but there are things you can do that makes your website less shit. And I just wish people would do it. Anyway, so it was a custom built site. The CEO is the only person who had any access to do anything in there. And I was like, absolutely not. This has got to change. If you want me to scale the business and you want to scale the marketing team, we need to move onto a different CMS. I narrowed it down. I've worked over the years on, I think, seven different CMSs and I narrowed it down to two. WordPress being one, Storyblok being another because he was really into headless CMSs, and I looked through all of them in terms of the functionality, who they're good for, what we need to do. I did all of the research.
Alice
I know websites back to front. That's my jam. I presented this to him with all of my research and all of my reasoning. He was like, ok, I'll think about it. Ignores me for the next two, three weeks, and then comes back and goes, I found us a CMS to use. It's a CMS called Webflow, which is the perfect CMS if you have a designer or a developer running your website. We had neither of those in-house. We had a content person running our marketing, so we needed a content-led CMS and he wouldn't listen to me. Red flag number two. I then create the site map after bedrudgingly being like, ok, fine, we'll use whichever CMS you want because I don't want to fight this battle. I then create the site map. Same thing happens. He ignores me for two weeks and then he comes back and he's completely redone the site map. Cut number three. It just keeps going. And then I start writing the website copy. I handed my notice and then... Oh, no, the last thing that happened before I handed my notice, we originally agreed a deadline of March to get version one and version two of the web copy done.
Alice
Out of nowhere, I don't know if he was just having a bad day or whatever, he was like, I need this in the next two weeks. I brought the deadline forward. I need it in the next two weeks. The whole website has to be built and ready and live by February. And then this is the first week back in January and I was like, ok, I'm handing in my notice now. I'm done with this bullshit. I finished writing the website copy out of courtesy.
Victoria
Yeah.
Alice
The second it's finished, I'm put on garden leave. Then I realised it's time for me to go. Well, I rage quit the job without a plan. Then it was about three weeks into it. I was like, ok, now is the time. Now or never. You're going freelance. But the final thing that happened, the final nail in the coffin there was that website didn't go live until June. Why, you ask? Because he rewrote the entire website himself. I'm just like, fuck, man. What are you...? Just scale back down and just run a one person business because you do not want anyone else to do their job. And I can't deal with... Any level of micro-management is bad, that sheer level of disrespect.
Victoria
Yeah.
Alice
Or, no, I can't deal with it.
Victoria
So we're gonna go off-piste with the questions then. But how has that experience shaped you working for yourself and also maybe your onboarding experience for your clients as well?
Alice
Yeah, so I tell you what, the biggest skillset I have developed in the last 18 months that I've been freelance is setting and holding really fucking strong boundaries. Boundaries in the workplace is something that I've always struggled with because I've always been told that I do the workplace wrong. It stuck with me for such a long time, but now I'm like, ok, I don't have a line manager who can fight my battles for me. I don't have an older man who people will listen to to be like, hey, can you step in? Because this customer is not listening. I don't have that. It's just me. Now that I have let go of the stress and the demands and the micromanaging from any team or management or CEO, I've now welcomed that from my clients. My boundaries have to be rock solid. Let me tell you, they were not. When I first started, they were not. Every shitty client is a new clause in my contract. It's a very important part of how I run my business. My contract is longer now than it was when I first started.
Victoria
Are there a couple that you would be comfortable sharing, just in terms of loose wording?
Alice
One of the clauses, for example, is that if someone needs me to do extensive rewrites on a project that are equal to either 50% of the word count or 1,000 words, whichever comes first, they have to pay for that time. We basically operate it as we're starting again from scratch.
Victoria
Yes. I take it that's only happened once and then the clause came in?
Alice
Yes, and then someone else tried to do it and I reminded them about the clause in the contract and they backed off.
Victoria
Good. Nice.
Alice
So, that's what it's there for. I've had, even just this week, I've had a few, as per the contract, conversations with people. My contracts are rock solid.
Victoria
Mmmm.
Alice
I will adapt them per client as well, because sometimes you have like spidey senses for when someone's going to be a bit difficult. And when that happens, I am extremely specific in the wording of... Because I have an assignment detail section. And I'm like, this contract includes this, this, this, this, this, and this. And then important note, this contract does not cover this, this, this, this, and this. And I was worried about doing that and having boundaries at all in my life for a really long time because I thought people would think I'm difficult. Some people do think I'm difficult, but the clients who view me as difficult are not people that I want to work with because they are people who are not used to respecting other people's boundaries. I wrote about this in a LinkedIn post recently. I think you may have actually mentioned it last time we spoke. My ideal customer isn't like a particular sector or a certain size business or even a certain budget. My ideal customer is a personality type and like a series of qualities. One of the most important qualities for me is they see me as a person, not as a resource.
Alice
Because being in the hiring conversations as well, when people refer to employees that they want to bring in as resource or assets. Oh, it's so icky. I hate it so much. Like, my clients are people. I am a person. Other freelancers I work with are people. No one is an asset. No one is a resource. That was such a big tangent to the actual question that you asked me.
Victoria
Oh, no, I think that's great.
Alice
My onboarding process and contracts have changed a lot, is what I'm saying.
Victoria
And I love that one line that you put in that post because I think I quoted it back to you, didn't I, saying that's how I want to be as well. I want to work with people where I feel like we have some common ground and we create some connection. And the reason I like that line so much, like you see me as a human, not a resource, is because I felt like a resource before. I felt like a cog in the machine and I felt like the value in me wasn't seen and wasn't appreciated. I don't like feeling like that. So I really love that post that you did. So you've implemented boundaries, your contracts are rock solid. You sound a little bit like me and you have to go through these bad experiences to learn from them.
Alice
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Victoria
So which bits of your work do you love the most or which feel like you're doing your best work, being your best self?
Alice
So, I don't want to be really wanky about this, but I love everything that I do. I have three core components to my business, and I love all three of them for completely different reasons. And that's why all three of them are core parts of my business, because they all bring me joy in different ways. So we have websites, my bread and butter. The thing I've been doing for ten years. It's...a website.... Website copy is like a huge puzzle to me. And I love that so much. I do everything from creating site maps for people, doing keyword research, right the way through to helping develop brand and tone, messaging, writing the copy, editing the copy, helping with content design, doing backend SEO stuff before the website goes live. I'm really involved. I don't have to be. I have the option where I just write your copy, but that's not as fun for me and you won't get the best out of me doing that. I love the combination of the big picture and the little details. Marketing has literally been a lifelong special interest for me. I've been fascinated by it from a very young age, and websites is how all of that culminates.
Alice
I get to be creative. I get to do problem solving. I get to do a lot of one to one work and really get to know. It's all of the things that I really love, as you could probably tell by the way that I'm talking about it. And then we have SEO, which is super logical, really research based. It's like hardcore problem solving fixes. It's also quite admin heavy. And there's a part of my brain that really likes the admin work. Love a spreadsheet. Love a spreadsheet. That was basically my catchphrase at one of my old jobs. And I love organising data, and I love doing research. And I like the opportunity to step back from the more creative stuff and just sit there and be like, my job for today is implementing meta descriptions on every page of this website, or my job for today is to figure out where the broken links are on this website. It's stuff like that. It allows me to switch off the creative brain and switch on the logic brain. Sometimes it's nice for one side to have a rest.
Alice
The third core element of my business is my consultancy side of things. I'm not a big people person. I can't deal with big groups of people. I don't like working in offices. I would never work in a cowork space, but one to one work with people. It just makes me so happy. I love it. I love being able to spend a good amount of time with someone. And basically, not going to lie here, I get paid to info dump about marketing, which, as I mentioned, lifelong special interest, literally living the dream. It's fucking great. Because people are like, I have this marketing problem, how do I solve it? I'm like, ok, here is a slew of semi-organised information. I will send you all organised notes afterwards. And here's all of the things and all of the puzzle pieces. And also, I'm going to ask you a lot of questions so you can figure some things out for yourself along the way.
Victoria
Yeah. And you do ask excellent questions. And the thing that I was really impressed with when we had our call was that you had, so this is when I was working with you on my website copy, you had almost answered the questions and the problems that I didn't know I had before I knew I needed them. So you were like, so I'm just doing a new site map now as we're talking. I was like, ok, ok great, thanks. Didn't even know that was... needed to be on my radar. So you take it to this extra level. And I think this is where, and we've talked about it before, your brain can do all of the big picture stuff and the bird's eye stuff. But it's also really good at honing in on the granular and the nitty gritty detail. And I love that you just said, you love a spreadsheet and you do a lot of organisation, right? Even though back earlier in your career, one of the pieces of feedback was that you needed to be more organised.
Alice
At school I needed to be more organised. I turned that up to an eleven when I got to work and I was like, I really overcompensated. I burnt myself out so often by being overly organised and really stringent. Not to mention, when I was agency side we had to time track by 15-minute blocks and I took that quite literally. I was like, but I only spent five minutes on this thing, so do I now need to spend an extra? I got really stressed out. So I created my own organisational system to stop my brain from getting too chaotic.
Victoria
Gotcha. So you almost created your own boundaries to make it work and fit to the office. So you said all about the stuff that you love, what you're really good at and what works well with your brain. What do you find slightly more challenging?
Alice
This is going to sound so contradictory, spending so much time with people. I adore those calls and I love the Write Your Own Fucking Content program, which is what we've worked together on. I've worked with a few other people. It launches properly literally next week, and I'm so excited.
Victoria
But it will already be out, friends, by the time this episode is out. So I'll add a link to the show notes.
Alice
Yes, it launches at the end of August, and I love it so much, but conserving my energy levels around that is hard because these aren't ephemeral conversations. Over the course of an hour, we cover so much. And while I'm really excited because I get to info dump about stuff that I love and I get to teach people and work with people, there is a lot of carefully thought out, very intentional social interaction that comes with that as well, where I have to monitor the way that I speak, the questions that I ask, the pace I'm talking at. I have to be so intentional with how I present myself to not overwhelm the other person. So there is an element of, once I've done that, I can't context switch. I have two modes of creating. I have verbal processing and talking, and then I have written stuff. And my day is split into three chunks. So we have the morning, anything before midday, the afternoon is one until six, and then the evening is usually seven o'clock onwards. And any given day, I will work in two out of those three pockets. It changes, just depends on whatever works.
Alice
But if I have a call in one of those pockets, I then can't transition into written work until the next pocket of time starts. And that's a challenge in terms of time management and making sure that I only allow those calls to be booked in on certain days. So I still have lots of time free for written client work. And it's juggling that side of things and also not overcommitting. I'm a terrible over-committer. I can set boundaries with other people. I'm not always amazing at setting boundaries with myself. So I've had to be with this program, for example, I am taking on two people in September because I'm speaking at Brighton SEO. For the first two weeks of September, that's going to take up all of my brain space and mental energy. I can't have... And then October and November, I'm going to be taking on three or four clients on that program because I have the extra brain space for it. So that's the biggest challenge for me, is just managing the different types of work that I do, because I can't just jump off a call and then go straight into writing a website.
Alice
I wish I could, but my brain doesn't work like that.
Victoria
Yeah, and it sounds like you accept that and therefore you've created your business to support that way of thinking.
Alice
Yes.
Victoria
I think you might have alluded to some calendar booking system where you've maybe blocked off chunks of time or you're adding time to appointments. But are there any particular tools or tech that you rely on regularly to support your brain and support your business?
Alice
I mean, Calendly is my lifeline when it comes to booking calls, because I have so many different types of calls that people can book in. And I need to make sure that I have different things available on different days. And I have some days where I just don't people. I have people-free Fridays.
Victoria
Yeah. I do as well.
Alice
I will never have a call. I will never do any of that on a Friday ever. Because I just can't, simply cannot. Yeah, Calendly is amazing and it allows me to set those boundaries through technology. So during the trial run of Write Your Own Fucking Content. I've had three days a week available for booking the calls. September onwards I shrunk that down to two. Because I can happily do back to back calls with different clients on the program, but I just can't have them spread out across so many days. I also always have an hour between calls, so there's always an hour buffer. So if someone books a call two till three, the next person can't book a call until four o'clock. And that's really important to allow me to decompress and then prepare for the next meeting. So when I say back to back, that's what I mean. It's back to back, but with an hours gap in between, I don't know how people jump from, I've just had a conversation about this, to I've just had a conversation about that. It is something that is very different. As a freelancer or someone running their own business is that I don't get to...
Alice
If I'm on a call, I am either leading the call or I am very actively involved. I don't get the option to mentally switch off during meetings because I'm literally either running a consultancy session or I am explaining to a retainer client, for example, or a website project client, I'm like, these are the next steps for our project, and it's like a project management call. So, yeah, very long winded way of saying I like Calendly.
Victoria
It's good. I love an online booking system because it can give you that. Well, I use a Book Like A Boss, but I know Calendly is similar where you can even say I only want one of these types of appointments per day, or I want to have that hour cushion before and after each and every call. So, yeah, big fan of that. I also do people free Fridays. Apart from I do one coworking session with one other woman who's a content writer. But we tend to spend the first 15 minutes talking shit. You know, what's been happening with the kids, what's been happening with the family. But then we do have 45 minutes of actual writing time as well, which is really lovely. But apart from that, I prefer to sneak off a little bit early on a Friday, to be honest, and just chill out and not have to stress. So, I have two more questions. I know you've got this Sunday afternoon ritual. Can you tell me and the listeners about it and how it sets you up for the week ahead?
Alice
Ok, so every week I have my Sunday reset. And it's something that I started doing, I think, two, maybe three months ago, maybe even longer, I'm not sure. And I tell you what, it has changed the game for me. I don't want to be dramatic, but it is like a fucking game changer. Now, as a person with ADHD, it will probably not surprise you to hear that I am very messy. And my office is also the spare room. It is my space in the house, which means in order to respect my partner and my partner's space, all of my garbage ends up in here during the week and it just gets really chaotic. I keep pointing in a particular direction because the bed is over there and there is an absolutely heinous pile of clothes and toiletries and an ibuprofen pack for some reason. I don't know. All sorts of stuff over there.
Victoria
It's off camera. I can't even see it. So it's all good. It looks very tidy from where I am anyway.
Alice
I have a specific angle that I do my calls from, so you can't see the chaos. Behind me you see fairy lights, you see plants and currently the box from my new computer monitor. But yes, it's chaos in here by the end of the week. I was getting to a point where I was struggling to focus because even though I'm not a tidy person, I need order for my brain to be able to function properly, which is just a horrible contradiction. Every Sunday, I go to the gym on a Sunday morning, and I come back. What happens is very simple. I put on a face mask that has to be washed off after 25 minutes. I put on a face mask, I set a timer, I put some very loud music on, and I have 25 minutes to turn my office from pit of chaos to organised, clean and tidy for the next week. I have a very specific order in which I do that. And sometimes I also get the opportunity to clean extra spaces in the house. And it's basically just I turn my space from gremlin cave to professional adult office. And don't get me wrong, by Tuesday, by Wednesday, it's really messy again.
Alice
But the fact that I do it every week means that it never builds up to an unmanageable level. Every week without fail, it builds up to the point where it has to be tidied again. But before I did that, it would just get worse and worse and worse in here, until the point where I wouldn't work in here. I would work on my laptop on the sofa in the living room because I just couldn't cope with being in this space. It sounds simple, and to someone who it doesn't struggle with executive dysfunction or ADHD or the autism, I'd say the ADHD is probably more responsible for the mess. But for someone who doesn't struggle with those things that may sound like, yeah, obviously everyone tidies their space. Everyone cleans the house. Everyone does this. I'm like, until you are in my brain and you have dealt with my level of executive dysfunction that cannot be cured. It's just there. You don't understand what a game changer this is. This is me accommodating my own brain and meeting myself where I'm at instead of punishing myself for not being tidy enough, not being organised enough.
Alice
I've just developed a routine, a ritual. It's so sacred to me. If someone's like, Oh, hey, do you want to go do something this afternoon? If I haven't seen that person, it literally doesn't matter. If I've not seen that person for months, I do not socialise on a Sunday afternoon because this has to be done.
Victoria
Yeah. And how does that impact you on a Monday morning? How does that make you feel, knowing that you've got this fresh start every week?
Alice
It literally feels like I've wiped the slate clean, but even though the mess that builds up in here has nothing to do with work. It's just life stuff. It feels like I'm able to start fresh each week and not carry the baggage and the stress from the previous week into the new week of work, which, I just like... It's really been a game changer for me. I don't know how else to explain it.
Victoria
Good. I'm glad that you found something that works for you. And it's nice that you've turned it into a ritual, where there's a bit of self care going on as well with the old face mask. But also you've created another boundary with a twenty five minute timer or whatever. So it's not like it's going to turn into 90 minutes. It's very time bound. And then you can move on with the rest of your day.
Alice
I'm terrible for sitting there being like, oh, I've got so many things to do, and then I get paralysed, because I can't figure out what to do first. And all I can think about is, but I have to do this, but to do that, I have to do this, but to do that, I have to do this. And it's just this vicious cycle where I end up with a to do list of like a hundred things. Whereas this forces me to be realistic with what I can manage. There are people online who do these weekly reset videos where they deep clean their entire house every week. That is not attainable for me. And that's ok. That's all right. The house is clean. It's not spotless and it's not deep cleaned every week, but it's clean enough and it's tidy enough. And that is enough. That is fine.
Victoria
Yeah, I have no show home vibes going on over here, so do not worry. So I lied, there is one more question, actually. What's next for you in terms of goals, aspirations, business, life?
Alice
Crikey. Well, business-wise, I have a very busy few weeks coming up. My new website is going live soon. The Write Your Own Fucking Content programme that I've been mentioning is officially launching very, very soon. I am speaking at Brighton SEO in September on the main stage, which is terrifying, all about website copy. I don't know when this is going out, but if this goes out before Brighton SEO, which is somewhere around the 14th of September, and you want to hear someone who speaks like me.
Victoria
Who is you.
Alice
Talk at a very fast pace for 20 minutes about website copy, come along. Also, Brighton is fucking amazing. Highly recommend to visit whether you go there for the conference or not. I have so many things that are launching or relaunching or happening soon, and that's literally all I can think about. Then after that, I get to just calm down. And hopefully all of the places on the Write Your Own Fucking Content programme for September to November will be booked, and I can just calm down on the admin for a bit. And you know have like a cheeky long weekend off work. That'd be nice.
Alice
So everything's been very hectic recently, and I'm not approaching burnout, which is honestly a miracle. It's like, but I need to make sure that I don't. So it's get all of the crazy work stuff done, and then the dream, the goal, the plan is to rest. Because that's what I need.
Victoria
Yeah, Alice, thank you so, so much for joining me today on the show. It's been lovely talking to you. So, yeah, thank you for your time.
Alice
It's been so good. Thank you for having me.