Part 2 of my Conversation with Heather Thomason of Primal Supply Meats

On the surprising relief of letting (a very big) something go...

Hello! Going to keep this one very short.

I’ve really appreciated all the notes from y’all on the first part of my conversation with Heather Thomason of Primal Supply Meats. I know there are a lot of you that have recently experienced similar turmoil or have either made, or are grappling with, similar decisions around exiting; thank you for listening. (And, as I said to one person, I am also sorry if this resonates!)

You’ll probably want to listen to Part 1 before Part 2. We left off with Heather finally coming to terms with her need to exit.

Part 2 is about how that decision actually turned out, which—unsurprisingly—wasn’t a simple or straightforward process.

We also talk about the weird double identity issues involved in orchestrating a graceful wind down (aka, lying to people!), and complicated answers to the questions “what happened, you were so successful?!?” and “what’s next?” 

Buster Keaton illustrating a key image and concept from Heather + my conversation.

I did want to pull out Heather’s answer to my last question for her, which was whether she had any advice to the business owner’s out there still in it, because it’s something we probably all need to hear:

I would say if I had one piece of advice, it is to prioritize yourself.

I never [did], it's a personal thing that I've never been good at. I really was way too comfortable putting myself last all the time. And I know that it's not always realistic, but I just do think it's really important to fight for. I got better at it in the last year and it was just kind of too late. But I think if I had done it sooner, I wouldn't have allowed myself to burn out to the point that I did and I wouldn't have gotten into that point where I didn't enjoy my work or my life.

Every day I was able to let something be more urgent or more of a priority than me. And whatever that means for you: whether that's like your sleep or your paycheck or your day off or making time for exercise or like whatever you need. And we're never going to be able to do all of it, but there was a lot of times where I accepted doing none of it, and that wasn't okay. It just wasn't.

Thanks for reading/listening.

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