Meet Linda Biggs | People Ops Manager @Float and co-founder @joni

We had the good fortune of connecting with Linda Biggs and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Linda, how has your work-life balance changed over time?
The concept of ‘work-life balance’ really came into my life full force after I had my first daughter mostly because it brought beautiful chaos into our lives. Before then – as someone in my mid-twenties at the time – the concept wasn’t something I thought about often. I’m not sure why. Looking back, I think I was just moving along with the status quo without questioning any of the “shoulds” in life – graduate, get a job, do well at the job, get promoted, get a raise, rinse and repeat.

After my first child and especially after the birth of my second daughter, I started feeling like I was living someone else’s version of success when it came to the life I wanted to live. I just kept thinking “is this really how I want to spend the next 30+ years of my life?”. Feeling like I’m rushing from one thing to the next? Feeling guilty about not working when I was with my kids and then feeling guilty about not being with my kids when I was working. It was an exhausting mental tug-of-war. This nagging feeling pushed me to leave a job when they rescinded their offer of 4 day/ week gradual re-entry after the birth of my second daughter. I moved to a 32-hour / week role with a new company so that I could have an extra day to do, well, life stuff. This was my first experience with defining what success looked like for me and it made me realize how often we live our lives around the “shoulds” and not what really makes us happy, fulfilled or satisfied.

Time is a resource we don’t get back. I’ve learned over the last 15 years of my career that a key value of mine is flexibility and freedom with how, who, and where I spend my time. I can choose to do 60-hour workweeks when needed and set aside other areas of my life to get projects done. I love my work and often times I need to put in these hours to “balance” it all but I know that this is not sustainable and will cost me in other ways if I’m not setting boundaries around it. The balance here is that it’s a mindful hustle vs the mindless hours we can put into work for years without realizing the sacrifices we’re making.

Professionally, I wear two hats (which accounts for some of the 60 hour weeks!). I’m the People Ops Manager at Float and work with a pretty amazing fully remote team from all over the world. I love learning about a great dinner a co-worker who lives in Portugal had over the weekend or the amazing surf one of our Australian team members had that morning. It reminds me that life is about doing great work but also about building a great life outside of work. It shouldn’t be an either / or. The other hat I wear is as co-founder of a FemTech startup called joni. My co-founder and I are building a 21st century period care company that is good for our bodies, our communities and our planet. So often the only entrepreneurial and startup narratives we hear about just focuses on the hustle (and there’s no shortage of that in every startup!). Yet, it’s important to recognize that there is also the other side of the journey that is important to talk about – the rest and the reflection. We’re not machines. All work and no play without boundaries makes someone a dull and likely unhappy person.

There are hard days too and ‘balance’ doesn’t mean easy. It means creating a different set of rules for your success and redefining what you need and want outside of what we have been conditioned to believe we need and want. What makes me most excited is that more and more people are seeing the proverbial hamster wheel for what it is and choosing to step off. That in itself is an act of resistant that can impact government and organizational policies (e.g. redefining full time hours. If you want to go down a rabbit hole, research the origins of the 40 hour works week). Now, more than ever, people are choosing what really matters to them and their families and it’s the companies that understand this and scale with that in mind that will be the ones to thrive in the new knowledge economy.

These days, my balance is more like an ebb and flow vs a scale that needs to be balanced on both sides. The ebb and flow allows me creativity time, family time, health time, soul time, adventure time, growth time, reflection time and all the other aspect that make up a fulfilling life for me.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I like to say I took the long and scenic route through my career.

Like most people, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do so, with the input from a university guidance counsellor, I decided to jump into a Computer Science program. The idea was that it was a growing industry and I could make a good living right out of University. Note that at this time, I didn’t even have an email address and had no clue what “computer science” involved. On the first day of class, our hardware teacher said we were going to build a computer and I remember thinking “what the hell have I gotten myself into!”. Turns out, although I didn’t do that well in the program, it was the best decision I ever made. I learned that I learn best by doing. My database teacher only passed me when I promised never to design databases for a living. The funny thing was that the first job I got out of school I ended up developing the back-end database for the company. In fact, I worked on a technical solution that stumped the agency that we were working who was building out the front-end. Not that I was in any way a gifted programmer – I was far from that. It was that I learned better by doing and I learned that I could figure things out when I needed to and had a practical application for it vs just a theoretical problem.

Ove time I realized that I wasn’t going to thrive as a developer so I moved into roles where I focused on the business of technology and worked as a Govnernance and Business Analyst to help translate tech to non-tech folks. From there I moved into project management and then headed an agency in the eCommerce space and got my first experience in the startup world. That was a wild ride that taught me a lot about my leadership and what I was passionate about.

I was let go from that agency – one of the toughest but best moments of my life. Up until then, my work defined my worth. When that all came crumbling down, I had time to reflect and ask myself what I really wanted. I realized that I needed to surround myself with other ambitious women because up until that time, I was mostly surrounded by men in leadership. I never felt like I fit in. Especially at board meetings where the male directors would term bad opportunities as “half pregnant” or good opportunities as “the hottest girl in the room”. Cringe.

That experience led me to host a few panels and a movie called Dream, Girl in my city where I met dozens of other female founders and leaders. It was like all of a sudden, they came out of the woodwork and into my life. Since I had a generalist background I started consulting female founders to help them grow their business by setting the operational foundations they needed. Through this I started working for a company as their COO for a few years before we parted ways and I launched my own dream.

I’m now working to grown my dream. It’s important to note that entrepreneurship looks different for everyone. The conventional narrative we hear about – raise money, launch, grow, sell – is just 1% of the story. The other 99% take different paths to get to where they want to go. Not everyone has access to capital. Not everyone can afford not to earn living for the many years it takes to grow a company. More of us than not, need to find a way to balance growing their dream while living in the realities of life – raising kids, paying bills, putting food (not just ramen) on the table. For me, that means working part-time as People Ops Manager at an incredible organization headed up by two founders who understand how growing dreams can take time and money and want to support other entrepreneurs. I’m so grateful for the team I get to work with and the exciting work I get to do to help them grow while also moving my dream forward. The either or narrative that employers “own” their employees is just so old school.

The more I learn, the more I realize how the narratives we’ve been conditioned to believe are not an accurate reflection of the life I want to lead nor is it a realistic way for most of us to thrive. As Scott Galloway says in No Mercy / No Mallice “A step back from the wrong path is a step in the right direction”. I’m trying to look at my career and the business I’m building with a new lens.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Vancouver Island is a pretty amazing place so I would say start with the trip with a couple of nights at the Oak Bay Beach Hotel and enjoy lots of time oceanside in the mineral pools. We would enjoy lunch at various spots in town like Nourish in James Bay, Little Jumbo downtown and The Village for breakfast. We would make our way up Island and head to Tofino for several days staying oceanside at Pacific Sands Resort. Lots of food options in Tofino like Tacofino and Wolf in the Fog. Lots of beach walks and being outdoors then lounging in our hot tub with wine in the evenings. Long drive back to Victoria for our final day at Parkside hotel and tour the Parliament buildings and more walks at Clover Point and the petting zoo at Beacon Hill Park. That’s a full week!

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Definitely want to credit the founders of Float, Lars and Glenn, for building a company that supports the Knowledge Economy and creating a company that supports work-life balance in all the different ways it can show up for people (read Best Work Life Blog). They really are putting their money where their mouth is and hiring entrepreneurial folks like me who are also working to build their own dreams. That takes a level of leadership that is rarely seen in the industry.

My mother and abuelita, Isis and Carmen, who created a life in Canada as immigrants from Mexico. They always said “smile, then people will wonder what you’ve been up to”. It’s because of their sacrifices that I had these opportunities.

I also respectfully acknowledge that I am working as a settler from Southern Vancouver Island, which is located within the ancestral and unceded territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən (Lekwungen) (Esquimalt and Songhees), Malahat, Pacheedaht, Scia’new, T’Sou-ke and W̱SÁNEĆ (Pauquachin, Tsartlip, Tsawout, Tseycum) peoples.⁠

Website: https://lindacbiggs.weebly.com/

Instagram: makeher.co

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lbiggs/

Image Credits
TeganMcMartin