Lean Out, But Stay Valuable
In this deeply personal episode, Jaime shares how she navigates the tension between showing up fully and protecting her mental health—in a world craving purpose and authenticity. She reveals why the traditional 9-to-5 grind, built on patriarchal systems, no longer serves us and how leaning into your core values can transform your work life and well-being.
You’ll discover why so many of us sacrifice health for profits—and how to break that cycle while keeping your integrity intact. Jaime unpacks the truth about today's jobs, the importance of emotional health in the workplace, and practical ways to lean out without losing your value or impact. She discusses how to find purpose in even the most “unsoulful” roles, and why human-to-human connection is the ultimate game-changer in solving work-related problems.
This episode is a masterclass for small business owners, corporate employees, and leaders feeling the weight of modern work—who want to create stability, meaning, and impact without sacrificing themselves. If you’re tired of content machine fatigue, AI dependency, and superficial advice, Jaime’s grounded, human-centered approach offers hope and real strategies.
Perfect for anyone yearning to redefine what work means—and eager to stay resilient, aligned, and impactful amidst chaos. Tune in for honest insights, actionable grounding, and a push towards a more compassionate way of working—and living.Join Jaime on her mission to help 100 people stay in their jobs with purpose and passion, leveraging human connection over algorithms. Because meaningful work starts with you—by making small shifts that add up to a big impact.
If this episode resonates with you, contact Jaime for a consult call: http://practica.consulting/contact
Episode Transcript:
Jaime:
Okay, so I have taken a break from...
So I've taken a break from the podcast. And the reason was because I couldn't figure out how to talk about things going on at work, things going on in people's businesses, and not be tone deaf to what is happening in the world. And also like understanding where our work fits into this. Like how do we just keep showing up at work and
pretending like we care when there's so much going on in the world. And I just couldn't figure out how to reconcile those two things and want to come across, I don't know, not salesy or trying to, I don't know, make it about marketing. I want to make it about helping people, right? That's kind of always been my ambition is how do I help people?
But then I started thinking, well, what's the best way to help and who are the people I'm really trying to support at the end of the day? And when I launched my business during COVID, the ecosystem was so different. Everybody, well, not everybody, but there was kind of this new reframe about work and how we show up at work and what else is important to us and how important our family time and our
sort of purpose was to us. And there was the great resignation and people were looking for more purpose-led work. And I was helping people navigate that territory from being in a consistent work space to potentially starting their own business or just moving into a company that better aligned with them and their values. But things have changed.
Jaime (02:12.881)
so much. And if you know me, you know that I also support small businesses with consulting. So I help small business owners with some mindset, with some of the roadblocks to get in their way with some of the burnout stuff, but I also just help them grow and scale their businesses, but always from this grounded purpose first, profit second, please.
So that's always been a part of my business and I've never really advertised it or talked about it. But I do love that work because it integrates the stuff that I've done, like coming from agencies, advertising, marketing, and startups, being consistently working with startups. It felt like a good place for me to focus my energy and help people both with kind of that coaching aspect and burnout and growing their businesses.
So I'm not abandoning that part of the business, but I think I made a mistake and I sort of like pivoted everything towards that. And obviously if you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you know that I generally am trying to support people who have small businesses or are looking for more alignment in their work. And I'm not changing that, but what I feel like the thing that I just finally landed on after all this time, after the last six years of
constantly trying to reinvent myself and figure out how to keep doing this work sustainably, like in a way that still supports my family. Still staying connected to being an entrepreneur and helping people and wanting to make impact in the world. I just feel like I've been disconnected from how to talk to people in a way that's not just a bunch of AI generated bullshit. So hence this more kind of off the cuff.
podcast episode. So anyway, where I landed was what is my purpose? What is the reason why when business slows down, I stay in it and I stay committed and I stay determined to make this work and to keep it a sustainable business where I can support my family. Like what keeps me in it when it's really hard. And the truth is my mantra has always been at the end of the day,
Jaime (04:39.753)
I want to remove the pain that people have at work. Why? And I started asking myself this question. And I think the reason I want to talk about this is because I think a lot of us are struggling with this right now. How do we make it matter? How do we make what we're doing matter? So you can go through this exercise like, why are you doing what you're doing? Like, what are the various layers beneath it? And even if you feel like your job at the end of the day is not
Like your day-to-day tasks are not making an impact. Where can you make an impact in the other part of the work that you do? So I was kind of asking myself, like, what's underneath that? Like, why do I feel like I want to remove pain? And it's a couple of things. I think a lot of the jobs out there in the world right now are jobs that at some point are going to put money in a billionaire's pocket. And that is like
the machine, right? Like that's the man. And I think that when we sacrifice our health and our well-being and our mental health for that end game, which is basically profits that basically ultimately are going to do something to degrade the earth, like that's usually like the end game. At some level, there's going to be some like deterioration.
of the earth's resources with all these corporations, right? So how do you reconcile, make impact despite of what that company might be doing? But at the end of the day, when I'm like, I want to remove the pain people have at work, it's like, if you work at one of these corporations, that's kind of generally like not doing great things in the world. Why are you sacrificing your wellbeing?
The thing is you need that job. You need to support your family. I think I've gone from the position of leave the job, leave the toxic environment, find something more aligned, start a business. I've moved away from that because the reality is the world's on fire. There's a lot of instability. If your job creates stability, don't let go of it. It's creating money, survival.
Jaime (07:07.454)
you it's helping you support your family. So don't let go of it. But I want to make it feel better. I want to keep you there because it's safe, but I want to help you lean out. And that doesn't mean doing subpar work. It doesn't mean not showing up. It doesn't losing any integrity in the way that you work, but it means stopping the sacrifice, stopping working on weekends.
stopping working on your vacation, checking email. Why are we doing that? Why are we still working like that? So what's underneath it all for me is that I fundamentally want to change the way that we work. Why? Because this whole thing was set up the way we work this nine to five grind, be a cog in the machine, take a salary.
don't get any equity in the business. I mean, some people do. I know there's a lot of people who work for corporations, you get stock and that side of things, but you're always a cog in the machine. You're always taking a salary. Jeff Bezos doesn't take a high salary. He takes like 83,000 a year and he just takes loans against the stocks, right? So he doesn't have to pay taxes. We're all...
You know, we're all the ones paying the taxes on our like low salaries in comparison to how much money these people are making at the top of these corporations, right? So you can lean out in a way that like still maintains your integrity, but also maintains your personal health and well-being. I want to fundamentally change this whole patriarchal system. And I think we can do it by finding our own core values.
holding true to those values, but leaning out when we don't need to be putting in 150%. We can put in 75%, we're still a really viable, valuable employee. And I would say, and I know your brain is gonna try to talk you out of this, but when you lean out, you actually become a better employee. And I know that you have coworkers and you also see people younger than you leaning out and you're like, F those people.
Jaime (09:32.691)
They don't do any work and it's super frustrating and also I'm like in all of them. But the truth is like you need to learn this balance for yourself where you're still proud about what you're doing. You know the impact that you can make. You know that you make impact beyond just your day-to-day tasks. You stay valuable in the market by bringing human value to the table. So if you're doing a lot of data entry and like paperwork, you're gonna get
axed out of a job. If you're leaning out and being strategic in the way that you think about work, in the way that you think about your approach, if you're spending extra time on those things, that's the value add. Where can you bring your own creative approach to solving a problem? And that's at all levels of the food chain. If you're approaching your work in a way that's like creative and nuanced and unique and very bespoke and specific to what you do.
you're going to have more value. And that's what I want to try to do with this. I mean, I don't even want to call it a pivot, but just with this like, sort of integrated way of coming forward, I don't want to be creating all these like ridiculous offers that people don't want. And because I feel like sometimes I'm just like, what do I think people need? Okay, here's an offer. Here's an offer. Here's an offer. And I'm like stuck in this cycle of I need to sell.
I need to sell, need to sell. And what I'm forgetting is like, I need to remove people's pain. That's what this is about. I do need to make a living also, but I don't want to do it from the old way or the patriarchal way that we tend to do this, which is like, I'm going to drive like a bunch of people into some group coaching program or into some online course. Like that all feels like total bullshit to me right now.
I feel like what people need is very nuanced human to human support. They need someone who's going to help them break patterns, who's going to help see body language and work with them long enough that they know where those patterns are coming from. Continue to remind them to break those patterns. It takes time. If you're in an environment where you're so sure that it's the environment that's creating some kind of negative emotion or reaction.
Jaime (11:55.93)
If you can't make the connection that there's something about the way you're thinking about it, the way you're approaching it, there may be something that you can empower yourself to control and change. But we just have so many old patterns and so many ways of approaching work that we've been trained into that you can still be super highly valued and really good at what you do without grinding and trying to do it the old way.
So if you're feeling stuck, if you're like, okay, I hate my job, but I have to stay, or I'm running a business and it's stagnated, I just would invite you to consider why are you still doing it? Why are you still there? And not to find some kind of negative reason. But if the reason you're there is to create financial stability for your family, that's a great reason.
So then go one layer below that, right? Like how is staying making an impact? How is it making an impact on your team? How is it making an impact on your family? Right? So don't dismiss the reason that you're there or the reason that you're staying. Just keep digging a little deeper. Like, okay, my business has stagnated. What is the reason why I still want to do this? And then just double down on that reason.
I want to double down on removing people's pain at work. And I haven't solved all the problems of like, how do I do that? How do I get in front of people? But I don't want to think about that part. That's the part that fatigues me. I don't want to worry about marketing. Just want to worry about how can I do this better? Like when I'm talking to a client, how can I meet them in a place where they're going to see the pattern?
they're going to start recognizing the pattern, they're going to start changing the pattern because they're having a human connection with me. It's not just putting some prompt in Chat Sheet BT and then getting some kind of like fluffy response. There's a feedback element when you're a manager or you're a coach or you're working with people on performance enhancement, right? There's this part where like feedback is critical and that means
Jaime (14:16.676)
constructive feedback, pointing out what they're good at and also recognizing the places where they need to tweak or challenge themselves or push themselves in a different direction. Sometimes people will come to me and they'll banter off a bunch of stories and I'll just stop them and say that sounds like a story. An AI bot is not going to do that. The AI bot is going to take all your prompts and all your information. It's not going to learn that much about you and it's just going to generate like very generic
information back that's not nuanced or human. I think what we need to do in this new paradigm shift of work is keep connecting to the human side. When we're struggling at work, it's rarely because of computer level issues, right? Like there's process stuff, but usually the struggle at work is a human problem.
Right? It's usually like a management issue or if it's hard to give feedback to someone or you're having trouble getting someone motivated or you're having conflict with someone who is intimidated by you or I mean, the problems that work, especially in big corporations tend to be human problems. So, you know, I'm not only trying to say that like, I'm trying to differentiate myself from AI, but it is like,
I want to solve human problems with humans. And hence, you know, years ago, I started my podcast, it's called business for humans for a reason, right? I think if we're trying to make impact, and we're trying to solve problems with our businesses, we have to find that human to human connection, because usually we're trying to sell something to humans in our business. That's what we're doing. So to get computers to solve human problems,
I'm not against AI. I definitely think it's a great process tool. It's good for simplifying really easy tasks or getting like, what's the word, repetitive tasks taken care of, getting it to sort through information quickly. I think there are great uses for it. I think when you're trying to solve human problems, it's not the right tool.
Jaime (16:38.807)
And I just don't want to keep using AI to like create content for me. I think it's like real bullshit and it gets easy to just rely on it because it takes less time and there's this whole fricking content machine that's constantly on and constantly running and it's fatiguing all of us and I don't want to just keep contributing like bullshit content to that machine. Like I really struggle.
with social media and I struggle with making this kind of content. But I don't struggle with this kind of content. I struggle with like, I need to the quote unquote, like I need to or should be making more content. I should be showing up a certain way. I should be like emulating people that do it a certain way or the people who have the most followers or whatever. And I'm just like, I haven't been showing up because I've been so fatigued by all of that. Like that hamster wheel.
that there's no exit. Like there's no, you're not gonna win the race of social media or content creation. I don't wanna be in the race. I just wanna make sure that I'm getting this idea across and people who resonate with it can find me. I mean, that's ultimately what marketing is, but I don't wanna be like part of the marketing machine. I just wanna be like, hey, if you feel like you have pain at work.
If you are struggling with feeling like you need to provide for your family, but you also are really feeling like you're in like a soulless job and you feel stuck. Let me help you stay, but make it better. Let me help you lean out, but stay a valued employee. Let me help you like beat the AI, you know, layoff scenario and really increase your value add as an employee.
not because you want to make those people more money, but because you need to create stability in your life. You want to be, you want to maintain integrity. You want to stay really good at what you do, but overthinking and not sleeping and stressing out about work is not making you better. And it's not making you a better parent. And it's not making you a better partner. You're losing your, your, you know, all that self-care stuff is going out the window. So this isn't a bunch of like,
Jaime (18:58.175)
woo woo bullshit stuff. Like I know how to manage people. I know how to solve internal company or problems. I come from an operations background. I've worked in startups. I know the game of like who you need to talk to and how you advocate, how you move the pieces around. But I also know it's really important to know what's driving you, to know what impact you're making.
to find your own personal measurements for that impact. When I worked in advertising, my goal was to elevate the people on my team, hands down. If there's anything I cared about at that job, it was meeting one-on-one with every person on my team. I met with them for an hour. I had a lot of other work to do. I never put that work on the back burner because I wanted to...
make sure that the people on my team that were working under me felt valued, felt seen, felt like someone was removing the obstacles in their way, felt like they were, you know, somebody was looking for where their potential was and helping push them in that direction of maximizing their potential and just, yeah, like helping them find confidence and all of that. That was the impact. And I think anyone who has worked with me at that level would say like,
Maybe I didn't do it 100 % effectively all the time, but it was definitely my mission. And it was definitely, people could see that that's what I cared about, that that's what my passion was. Ultimately, at the end of the day, that's what, when I felt like I was doing a good job, it was when I could see that my team was elevating and growing and stepping into places that were outside their comfort zone and then nailing it. Like that was where I got all of my...
like job satisfaction from it wasn't like the marketing thing or meeting with big clients or going on campus of big brands that never really filled my cup. But being able to support my team was where I felt like I was making impact. So there's always a place where you can make impact. You need to know what's driving you. You need to feel connected to that. You need to find that purpose inside of the situation that you're in.
Jaime (21:21.956)
And so I am just going back. And again, I don't want this to feel salesy at all, but just to like be transparent about where I'm at in my business. I'm just going back to 100 % one-on-one coaching. I'm happy to work one off, one session to do like a program. This work takes time. Like if you have patterns of overthinking or over worrying about work or just over giving.
those things take time to unwind. I'm going to be honest, it's not a quick fix. I'm not going to like give you some empty promise. I create transformation with people, but it takes time. So if you're ready to kind of get out of old patterns and find more freedom and time, then we're going to be a great fit. And I'm not going to make up a bunch of bullshit offers anymore and try to sell them to
a group of people who have already worked with me. I am really hoping that I can make bigger change. I set a goal for myself, 100 people staying in their jobs this year. I want to help 100 people stay in their job and find more freedom, more impact, more connectivity and alignment with their role and job despite
people they might not get along with despite the environment that they're in, I want people to feel the safety and security of being in their work, but also find the freedom and empowerment of being able to unlock the roadblocks that are in their mind that are keeping them from taking care of themselves first. So if you're into that, we're gonna be great together. And if you know anybody who's feeling a lot of pain at work, like I always keep my
calendar open for consult calls with people, but I'm just going to like clean the slate and go back to my core of what's really important to me. And if it doesn't work, I'll go back and get a job and then I'll make impact however I can inside that job. But I am, I've been doing this for six years. I'm really dedicated to this mission and I'm going to change it up. You might notice maybe, maybe it won't seem any different to you from the outside if you've been following.
Jaime (23:45.638)
podcast for a while. It might not seem any different but it feels different to me. I feel really committed to just doubling down on the human bit. Again the podcast has always been called This is for Humans. It's funny I'm just like finally aligning to how important that feels in this moment. So that's it. That's my soapbox for the day. I hope there are some little nuggets that you might be able to apply if you're feeling stuck in any way right now.
I just want to acknowledge that it's kind of a weird time and it feels it feels a bit unstable and I think we just need to support each other in the best ways that we can not be in competition with each other not feel like I don't know that sense of like I need to be I need to
always be the devil's advocate. Like I think if we all resonate with these types of messages, we need to just find ways to work together and connect and like make this easier on all of us. It shouldn't be so hard, right? So anyway, I'm going to leave it at that and I will talk to you next week.
