How a New Business Venture Led to Burnout
Jennifer Dawn: Hey everybody. Jennifer Dawn here. Welcome to the Happy Productive Podcast. I have to tell you, I am testing a new platform today, and I think we might be live streaming now out to, uh, YouTube. And also to Facebook. I think, I don’t know, we’ll check after we’re done, but we’ve switched to a new recording platform. So if I mess the whole thing up, apologies. But this is how progress happens, right? We just have to get out there and test some stuff. So, um, today’s episode is a solo episode, no guests today, because this is a topic that’s been in my heart for some time that I really wanted to share with you guys today, and it’s just been in my head and in my heart. It’s completely unscripted. Maybe I should have taken some time to sit down and write out a script, but I really just wanted to speak from the heart today. And what I wanna talk about is exhaustion, exhaustion, and also burnout. A few months ago, I don’t even know exactly how many, but a few months ago, I’d actually gone through. A bit of burnout. Burnout. And I sent out an email to our list and I was really shocked at the response of people who were very grateful that I had shared the words that I had shared about this episode of burnout that I have, um, gone through. I’m feeling very, very good now, but I certainly wasn’t several months ago.
And what happened was that. Um, we, I decided that I was gonna start a marketing agency and honestly, it really just came from in my business as a business coach, seeing so many of my clients struggle with their marketing. And even personally, I was struggling with our marketing for our company in that, you know, you hire, I hired this branding agency and they, um, represented themselves as an agency who had helped several larger name coaches in my field, people I’d heard of. And, you know, they, they sought me out. I didn’t seek them out and they, you know, proposed this great branding package and it was many thousands of dollars. I signed up for it and it was a complete flop. They did a terrible job, an absolutely terrible, terrible job. Um, I did fight them and got half of my money back, you guys. So that is possible if you get taken by one of these companies that you can fight it and hopefully get some of your money back as well. This is not the first agency that I have tested and tried and found them to be very, very lacking. They sometimes will charge a lot of money, but they don’t deliver a lot of service. And this is part of what caused me seeing myself go through it and seeing my clients go through it. It caused me to be like, “okay, I’ve had enough of this” and “I’m gonna solve this problem.” And so we launched a marketing agency for our business coaching clients, and we now do all online marketing. So when I say launched a marketing. Agency that sounds kind of like, “oh, okay, that sounds cute.” Um, but there’s a lot of moving parts there when you start developing websites, doing SEO, um, email marketing, building email funnels, social media, paid traffic. Like this is one of the things, as a business coach, I know where the gaps are. And so if we’re gonna do marketing, we’re gonna do marketing and we’re do it a hundred percent and we’re not gonna have gaps, and we’re not gonna pay to have funnels built and then not know how to drive paid traffic to those funnels. So they just sit there. I bought a Ferrari, but it doesn’t have any gas. And so knowing what those holes are, I knew that if we were gonna create an agency, we had to do it the right way. And so I was so motivated to do this, and I just dove into it, and I started working, you know, 10, 12 hour days very, very consistently for probably six to eight months. And even one of my team members, um, on the team, she was like, “you know, Jennifer, you created a marketing agency in like six months.” I’m like, “oh, you know, we did,” I didn’t even realize. I was just like problem solving and really focused and I just put my head down and I went to work and I’m one of those people, you guys work ethic is just sort of in my bones and I don’t have to like, make myself sit down and work. I have to make myself get up because um, I love to just put my head down and go. The problem was I put my head down and I went, went, went. And I went for, I don’t know, six to eight months, somewhere around in that timeframe. And then when I looked up, because my plan had been, you know, work through winter, so we started this in October, November of last year, work through winter so that when, when it gets warmer and you know, spring hits and you wanna be outside, you’re gonna be able to go out and do that. But I was so buried and just like working, working, working. I literally created the habit of. And so when I finally did put my head up, I realized, um, “holy crap, I’m really exhausted.” And I literally, you guys had to google burnout to Google it because I’m like, “why do I feel like I don’t wanna go to work? Why do I feel like I wanna cry? Why do I just feel like, oh my gosh, I can’t handle it anymore. Like, why am I having all this emotion?” For me not wanting to work. That felt very foreign and so I Googled it and sure enough, one of the things around burnout is working, you know, a a lot over an extended period of time. And I was like, “holy cow, I think this is actually what’s happening, what’s going on with me?” And so once I realized I, I really and truly took immediate action because I knew I had to do something. And everything that we had built was so wonderful and it was going in such a great direction. But it’s not, it wasn’t done. And. You know, when you have a business, nothing’s ever completely done. You’re always improving. And I realized, you know, this is a very critical time of getting this going, that I can’t just now, you know, decide to, “I gotta go take six months off.” Like it’s, it’s not a possibility. But I knew that I had to get that burnout under control.
The Uncomfortable Mindset Shift to Working Less
Jennifer Dawn: And so. My husband, thankfully, really supported me through this and he, um, was like, “Hey, go take a few days.” And I did. I took a four day weekend at the beach and I had to work a little from down there, but I basically really took those four days to look at my schedule. Look at my time. Um, figure out where I’m gonna back off, where I’m gonna say no. What am I gonna do here to actually start changing the way I work? I did a coaching session with one of my coaches and he knew on my goals, one of my overall goals was to work fewer hours. And in our coaching session he’d said something to me that was so powerful and it really stuck with me. And he basically called me out on my crap and he said, “Jennifer, I know on your goals that you have a goal to work fewer hours every week. However, you are not in the mindset of a person who works less,” and that was so hard to hear you guys that I wasn’t in the right mindset because I do so much to be in the right mindset and when I’m not, I’m, I’m gotten fairly good at recognizing it and always doing something to course correct to be in that right mindset, and it’s something I coach on every day. So when he told me, “you’re not in the mindset of a person who works less,” it hurt you guys. It hurt to hear that. He was absolutely right. And so when I went on that time for, for the beach, when I went away for those four days, I really spent time thinking, “well, if I was in the mindset of a person who worked less, what would that look like?” And I gotta tell you, it was hard work to really start to think about that, to step outside my comfort zone. My comfort zone is working hard. I’ve done it my whole life, so of course it feels comfortable to step outside that comfort zone and not be working so many hours. It was really uncomfortable, and I share this because if you’re at a place right now where you’re feeling like “I need to work fewer hours,” “I’m feeling overwhelmed.” “I’m stressed out all the time.” “I’m stretched too thin.” “I’m really feeling burnout.” “Maybe I’ve been feeling burnout.” “I don’t wanna live my life this way,” I’m gonna tell you right now, it starts with a decision that you’ve gotta make, that, “Hey, I’m gonna change this.” And you’re gonna have to be willing to be uncomfortable to go through the change. Because while I’m moving my schedule around and we’re consolidating meetings and I’m saying no to some things, and we’re streamlining our business model and we’re doing all these things so that I can work fewer hours, hiring more people, right, delegating all of these things that were required. Uncomfortable because I had to change how I think I had to change how I act. I had to change who I’m and have always been, and it’s really uncomfortable. But I committed to that change and I really committed to it a hundred percent. And I didn’t wanna be in a state of burnout and feeling like that. I wanna be in a state of joy every day. When I show up at my office, I show up to serve my clients. I show up to do this work that I do. And so joy was more important and the discomfort of those changes that I had to make. But I want you to know it’s gonna get a little worse and then it’s gonna get better. And the worst part mostly is moving past our own fears. Moving outside of our comfort zone and creating the new comfort zone where we think and we act differently. And it’s not gonna be perfect. You just do the best you can. And so I just wanna share this with you because, um, there was such a big response to the email when I wrote and said, you know, “I was going through some burnout,” and thank you to all of you who responded to that email. I really appreciate the support. And I think that sometimes we feel like we’re going through it and we’re all on our own, um, that we can’t talk about it. That we’re gonna somehow be viewed as we’re weak or, um, you know, we’re weak and people will think bad of us if we say, “oh, I’m going through this period of burnout.” But I really wanna encourage you to honor that. Do something about it. If you can take a few days for yourself, just go away. And that really was very helpful as a first step to just take a few days completely, entirely to myself. Yes, I left my husband, I left my kids, I left my clients, I left our animals, I left my horse. I left everything behind and took three or four days, I think it was four. Um. Down at the beach, which is a place that I love to be at the ocean so that I could sit, be on the beach, be at the water. And I did have to work a little, but I, when I was done with that, I was done. And the rest of the time was a hundred percent for myself to really just think about what I wanted and how I wanted to move forward. So if you’re able to take some time completely to yourself, please, I would encourage you to do so. It’s easy to come up with all these reasons and excuses why we can’t, and it’s a lot of baloney. And so if you catch yourself being in that victim mindset, victim mindset is when we feel powerless, it’s outside of control or blaming everybody else. Like, “oh no, I can’t take time for myself ’cause my husband or my partner. My kids. My kids, you know, because of them. I can’t do this for myself.” It’s bullshit. Okay? It’s bullshit. And when you find yourself saying these things or blaming it on other people, it’s, that is victim mindset. And the sooner that you can recognize that and shift it. The better off you’re gonna be because you do have the power you can make it happen. Think back in your life when maybe there was an emergency or something happened and you had to make something happen, or you went on a vacation and because you really wanted that vacation, you changed your schedule, you moved people around. You said, no, right? You, you’ve done this and you could do it again. Your own mental health, your own soul, your own sanity is the most I. Take some time for yourself, take it seriously. Um, as part of the burnout, I had to stop my exercise schedule, as you guys may know. Um, last year I did 12 Spartan races and I had had a goal this year to do 15 that has gone out the window. And I gotta tell you, that one hurt, that one really, really hurt to back off my exercise schedule, to not do as many Spartans. But with the burnout, the over the exercise was almost like over exercising, and it was making things even more stressful. This is a key part of **overcoming entrepreneurial burnout**.
From Overwhelm to Action: Taking Control of Your Journey
Jennifer Dawn: And so taking a few months to just, you know what, calm down on the exercise. Uh, I’m just walking, doing some light yoga, but I’m feeling so much better. And I know that I’m gonna be able to step it back up again once this is fully and completely under control. Um, I also did some blood work, um, to test my cortisol levels, um, my hormone levels like these things because. That burnout will mess with your physical, your, your physical self. It will mess with these things. And so this was a time that I took for myself and I’m actually really, really grateful because it really made me reassess my nutrition, um, the things that I’m eating, which are all pretty good and just, but like taking it to a different level. Um, reassessing the exercise. I know that I’ll be back there again, but having to lower that bar and slow down a little bit right now is, is the right thing. It’s the hard thing. But it’s the right thing to do. Looking at my work schedule, delegating, saying no, all of these things are all actions because I’m taking this burnout seriously. And I gotta tell you, I’m feeling so great you guys. I’m feeling so, so great. But the reason why I’m feeling so, so great is I didn’t put it off. I didn’t stay in victim mindset. I took action, and that’s what it comes down to. It wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t pretty, some of it was hard, but I took action. And I really, really wanna encourage you guys to do the same. Be willing to make the change, get some help to support you through it. I had time with my coaches, time with my nutritionist, right time with my husband to just be like, ah, this is how I’m feeling. This is what I’m going through. And it’s been fairly short lived. It’s been a few months and I’m feeling really, really great and I’m going into the future. Feeling really great and more empowered, more information, and I know it’s only gonna keep getting better from here, but I just really wanted to share this experience because if you’re struggling with exhaustion and burnout, it’s just not worth it. So get some help. Don’t be stuck in that victim mindset. You can absolutely change this. Get outta that comfort zone, right? Of just pushing, pushing, grinding, grinding. Get outta that comfort zone and start to work in a new way. And even just start to ask yourself, “what mindset do I need to be in?” “Do I need to be in the mindset of a person who. Takes control, takes who stays in their power?” “Do I need to be in the mindset of a person who’s willing to get uncomfortable?” “Do I need to be in the mindset of a person who works fewer hours?” So whatever that is for you, just, um, you know, wherever you’re at, own, wherever you’re at on this journey. And if you’re feeling really exhausted and like you can’t take on anymore, I totally get it. I’ve totally been there. You know, get everything off your plate that you absolutely can do the essentials and then work on yourself. If you make it a priority, make yourself a priority. You’ll absolutely get out of this and, you know, give it however much time it needs. When I first started feeling the burnout, I had somebody say, I saw a video on TikTok that says, to heal from burnout takes three to five years. And my immediately, my brain was like, there’s no way in hell I’m giving this three to five years. I’m like, it can have three to five days. That was where I started. Then I’m like, all right, give it three to five weeks, and now I’m in the three to five months. And you know what? That’s it. That’s it. There’s no way I’m giving this years of my life, but I will give it a few months. And, and same thing for you. Just own the pace, own the time. That you need, depending on the severity of wherever you might be with burnout or exhaustion. Alright, guys, that’s my 2 cents for the show today. I hope it resonated with some of you. If you’re feeling like this, I promise that you can get out of it. I promise that you can feel better, but it is gonna require you taking some steps to make yourself a priority. And, um, and you deserve, you deserve to be a priority. You deserve to feel good. You deserve to show up every day with energy and joy and love and happiness. It’s all out there, but you’re not gonna get it if you’re sitting around going, “oh, poor me.” All right? None of that nonsense. Let that go. You’ve got this. You can do it. Alright, love and.
