361: Why Burnout Happens—and How to Build a Business That Won’t Break You

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Thrive Podcast, where we believe creators deserve more, more money, more freedom, and even more love for what they do. I'm Bree p, your coach for content creators. And I know the struggle, the long hours, the endless ideas, the feeling that success is just out of reach. But here's the truth.

[00:00:24] You've got what it takes. And this podcast, it's your shortcut to getting there from strategies that actually work to behind the scenes insights. We are unlocking your potential one episode at a time. So if you're ready to turn your creative hustle into a thriving business, let's get started.

[00:00:45] Hello. Hi. This episode is brought to you. Buy a headache that lasted for over seven days.

[00:00:59] I, I wanted to record this podcast and as I was coming out of the fog of this long tension headache that was taking over every aspect of my life, I knew. I needed to talk about this on the podcast that I needed to share this because there was something very, very important in. The chaos of this headache.

[00:01:28] So let me back up a little bit and tell you first off how I got here. So, for the past, I would say I'm at about 11 months now. I have drastically changed my life. I have hired a health coach. I have been working out consistently. A couple times a week for almost a year now, I have lost weight. I am more energized, I have more strength and energy and all of the things, and I am so proud of myself for starting a year ago, and that's how I got myself to start, is that I kept telling myself, you know.

[00:02:15] If I start right now, then one year from now, it's going to come regardless. And this all plays into business. Just gimme a second. But a year is going to go by no matter what. And if I change some of my habits now and if I focus on my health. Now, then in one year from now, I am going to be feeling so much better and that's how I convinced myself to start.

[00:02:43] So along this way with working out and everything, I have been focusing on building muscle on strength and. I have not been spending enough time on stretching, on slowing down, and on really making sure that my muscles are not just binding up. So fast forward to about a month ago. I was definitely noticing a lot of tension in my traps, in my shoulders, my traps, like they were just so tight and were starting to just really bother me.

[00:03:22] I was starting to even notice them in the gym where I'm like, Ooh, I'm bet you, I'm like, really like overusing my shoulders. I'm going too heavy with the weights and I'm. Probably causing some more issues. So I went to a massage therapist and she worked some magic on my shoulders with cups. Have you guys ever done cupping?

[00:03:41] It is the coolest thing ever, and I have never had my muscles and knots released in a massage better than when I did that. So I had like a little fix, right? I'm like, okay, cool. I'm good. I am great to keep on going. And then work got a bit crazy and things in life got a little crazy and there was a lot of stress both physically and mentally.

[00:04:12] And then I. My schedule was busy and I had a quick trip at the beginning of June to go to a podcasting retreat in Tennessee, and while I was there, it was just two nights really quick. I did not sleep great at all and was running the entire two days I was there three days I was there and had a very, very terrible travel day on the way home.

[00:04:42] To where it started. My downhill journey downhill spiral in the Uber on the way to the airport to start my journey home. I got so nauseous. It was out of the blue. I had no idea what had caused it. I was very, very confused. Picture me in the airport. Slouched in this chair, reclining with my head all the way back on the chair reading my Kindle, because that was the only thing that was making me not want to throw up.

[00:05:15] Scrolling on my phone. Absolutely not. Sat there at the airport for a while through a delayed flight by about 40 minutes, and I'm like, I just gotta get onto the plane. I'm gonna get some Advil. I'm gonna get some carbs and some water, and I'm gonna feel better. Get onto the plane, make that happen. I'm starting to feel better.

[00:05:36] We land in Chicago where I have a layover and the pilot comes on to tell us, well, even before the pilot came on, we are pulling up on the runway and we pull up and I'm looking out the window. I have a window seat, and I'm looking out and I see basically like a stoplight system for airplanes, and there's two airplanes parked there.

[00:05:58] I'm like, Hmm. That's, that's interesting. And then we park there next to them and I'm like, ah huh. Okay. Then a couple minutes go by and the pilot comes on and he's like, Hey folks. Do all air, do all pilots seem to say, Hey folks, or floats from the fright deck, or something like that. Maybe it's just something I imagine in my head and that's how I remember them all.

[00:06:24] But he comes on to tell us that there is a plane at our gate and so we cannot get to our gate for at least 20 to 25 minutes. And if you'll remember, we were already delayed in getting to Chicago. Now I had a really good cushion to get to my next plane. I had, uh, over an hour. I, I feel like it was probably like an hour and 20 hour and a half, right.

[00:06:50] And I was like, oh, I'm totally fine. He says that, and I'm like, huh, let me look at these times again, because I remember I was feeling very sick. I knew we were delayed, but I knew I had a cushion. We were fine. But then he said that, and I'm like, hold on now. I, I don't, I let me look at my flight times. Yeah, it was not great.

[00:07:13] It was not, it was not looking good. It was not looking good. My friend was also on the plane. She was behind me and we're texting back and forth and she's checking my flight and she's like, oh, your flight is delayed. My flight is the last one out of Chicago for this airline to get to Minneapolis. And it was delayed.

[00:07:32] And we were also hopeful that, alright, there's me, and come to find out, there was actually, um, three or four of us on this flight that needed to get on the Minnesota flight on the flight to Minneapolis. And so I'm like, all right, hopefully they'll hold the plane for us. They kept getting delayed, which was great.

[00:07:51] I'm like, please, just delay it, delay it, delay it. I asked the flight attendant, I'm like, can you call the gate and tell them I am going to be running? She said, no. Um, I, I won't fly this airlines again. I'm not gonna bash them on the podcast, but if you really wanna know, I'm not gonna fly that airline again.

[00:08:08] So I'm like, okay, cool. That's that. That didn't work. So. Alright, let me, I am the first one. I. Out the door of the airplane and I had looked up prior to us finally getting to the gate. I'm like, all right, how, where's the gate that I need to get to and how long is it going to take me to get there? It is an 18 minute walk.

[00:08:34] So in my whole workout journey, I have been prioritizing walking. I'm very good at walking and I have been prioritizing strength training, lifting weights, cardio beyond that is not something at this moment I have been prioritizing. I want to get back into running, but postpartum I need to do pelvic floor therapy, and that's a whole other story.

[00:09:00] So we're not quite there yet. So when I tell you I got off this plane. I take off running through this airport. I am proud to say that I did not die. I had to stop and walk, and I was very upset about that, but then I kept on chucking, kept on running. I got to the escalators and I am climbing those stairs with the backpack on, and I am hauling my suitcase up the stairs, like a stair climbing beast.

[00:09:29] I am going to get to this plane. I arrive at the gate and I am huffing and I am puffing. He's talking to somebody else at the front. The door is closed, but I see the plane is still there, and I go straight up to the front breathing heavily. The man ignores me and I'm like, I am not gonna pretend like I did not just run through the airport.

[00:09:53] I am going to heavy breathe. I'm going to catch my breath and I'm probably going to cry. He finally. It was probably only like 30 seconds, but it felt like a minute and a half where he finally looks over and he's like, sorry folks, you missed it. 'cause somebody else came running up after me, missed the plane.

[00:10:15] I go and I sit in front of the gate and put my head in my hands and I cry. I cried. I lost it, and then I pulled myself together and I look up and like that damn plane is still there. I am not going to leave. Long story short, he still would not let us on. They were entirely unhelpful. And I finally got onto a connecting flight at 10 30 that night and landed in Minneapolis at midnight.

[00:10:44] Why am I telling you all of this? This was a very long, elaborate story and hopefully you were entertained by it. I made it home. But remember the whole like brie was nauseous thing and where all that came to play. Yeah, so that hit me like a ton of bricks the next day and for the next seven days in a row, I had a tension, headache and nausea, and could not hardly do anything.

[00:11:15] Staring at a screen to do any work made everything so much worse. I could not scroll on Instagram. I could not. Uh, make dinner like it, it was terrible. And the thing is, this did not just come from one event, right? This did not just happen because I had a really crappy travel day. If you remember, I told you about how I had been starting this workout journey and how I was noticing tension over a month prior.

[00:11:48] Did a quick little fix, thought it was better, ignored it. Right, ignored it. Let's be real. And then kept going and kept going and kept going. And I am telling you this, and why I knew I wanted to record a podcast about this with a long story is that the thing you have to remember here is your business, this business of social media, of content creation, of blogging, this business will run you into the ground if you let it.

[00:12:19] It does not care about you. What we have to do is safeguard ourselves. We have to put up those guardrails to protect ourselves and this from this business because while we love our jobs and we are so passionate and we are creative, and we are ambitious and talented and can build empires from nothing.

[00:12:47] If we are not careful, if we keep ignoring those warning signs of the tension of, hmm, that's probably just a quick fix and we shouldn't just ignore that and keep going. If we don't heed those warning signs in our business, it will run us into the ground. 'cause it doesn't care. So how do we safeguard ourselves?

[00:13:11] How do we put up those railings? How do we make sure that we are doing everything we can to ensure that we can keep running this race for as long as we want to? So here's where some notes can come into play. Okay? The first is that you have to have a long term plan. With my health journey that I have been on, I knew it was not going to be an overnight fix.

[00:13:39] I knew this was something where I'm like, okay, I just wanna feel better one year from now. And I know that that is going to get, I'm going to get to that place from a series of small changes, a series of small events that are going to build and add and compound over time. That is the same type of mindset we have to have going into business.

[00:14:01] So whether you are at the beginning of your journey, or whether you are eight years in, I'm talking to you because wherever you are, if you're listening to this podcast, you have to create a long-term plan. Where do you wanna be in five, 10 years? What is the goal? What is our plan to reach it? Because when we don't do that.

[00:14:25] We often think, oh, I can just keep going at doing what I'm doing and I can just keep hustling and I can just keep pushing. And you know what? Like, yeah, I need to stop and I need to plan, but I just gotta get through this week. I gotta just get through this day through this obstacle, through this tension in my neck through this one knot that I've got.

[00:14:45] I've just gotta like handle that really quick and then I can keep going. When in reality that tension is going to keep compiling your to-do list is never going to end. There are things in life that are going to keep derailing you. So if we don't set up this long-term plan, we are not going to have success in the way that we want to have it.

[00:15:10] You may have success. You may be incredibly successful and have a business that is bringing you in the money, but then on the other side, maybe your body is starting to feel the results. Maybe you are developing a eye twitch from stress. Maybe things in life are just not as happy and peaceful as you want them to be.

[00:15:34] That is why you have to stop and make a long-term plan, and then from that long-term plan, you need a 90 day plan. What are you focusing on over the next 90 days? How are we compiling small efforts to get to that long-term goal? Even if you're thinking in terms of like a one year goal, right? Like I did with my Health Journey, I'm like, all right, I just wanna feel a certain way a year from now.

[00:16:01] How are you going to look at those KPIs, those key performance indicators? How are you gonna look at those milestones? How are you gonna track them and make sure that you're doing small movements in your business that are going to compound over the year. You break those into 90 day plans, you break that into a 30 day plan, and then you know, okay, what I am doing this week is not just checking things off because they have to get done.

[00:16:30] I have to post this many times, or I have to do this, I have to send out this many emails to where you just keep running yourself into the ground and you're not pausing to look at the roadmap. You're not pausing to be like, hold on. I am just gonna run myself into the ground and need a long break or to quit because I can't keep going at this pace.

[00:16:55] And then you take a break and then you jump right back into where you were and keep doing the same thing. How do I know this? Because I have done it myself, and I am constantly coaching people that are doing the exact same thing. And so we create these roadmaps, but even if I create a custom roadmap for you, even if you join bold flu shift and we figure this out to make a plan, if you don't pay attention to it.

[00:17:20] You don't follow it, and you just keep doing what you're doing and try to incorporate what's on the roadmap. We've just driven a burnout city and eventually you're gonna quit along with plans. You need to have processes to help you. Tools that I use for this are like Asana, an Airtable. I use Canva templates.

[00:17:47] I have structure set up for my emails. You have to have things that are going to support you in this journey. So yes, you need a roadmap that's going to support you. You need a community that is going to support you. Maybe you need a coach to support you, but you also have to have tools in place that you're using consistently that are actually helping make a difference in how you are working.

[00:18:12] And then you have to make sure you have enough time to work. Now, I know firsthand that there are deadlines to be met, and that sometimes those are self-inflicted deadlines, and sometimes there are deadlines set on us from others or from brands, but a lot of times we have control over. What is done when, and as creatives, what we often do is we don't give ourselves enough time to do things fully and we try to cram things in in really short periods of time.

[00:18:49] So my suggestion here is if you feel like I never have enough time to do things, the my to do list is never ending, and I just can't seem to find a second to breathe, let alone come up with something new and fun and creative. You need to look at creating a long-term plan, then creating a 90 day plan, and you need to look at time blocking, and you need to make sure that you're not just giving yourself 20, 30 minutes to do something, but that you're giving yourself adequate time to allow for creativity.

[00:19:22] We are creatives. It doesn't matter what your platform of choice is, at the end of the day, you are creative. Whether your niche is home improvement or cooking, or motherhood or writing, whatever it may be, we are creatives. And if we don't allow time for your creativity, that candle is going to dim and eventually burn out.

[00:19:50] So. I told you this insanely long story just because I needed to hear again myself, and there's so many girls that I'm going to send this to that I coach because I want you to listen to this. If we've made a roadmap and you're not following it, if you've made a roadmap and you still feel like I'm treading water, I am in over my head, I'm not seeing things make a difference.

[00:20:18] Then I need you to pause and revisit the roadmap, and that roadmap may need to be reworked. Maybe that roadmap was missing some vital information, right? Maybe it didn't see the construction sign up ahead, okay. Or the warning or the flood zone. It's normal for us to have to pivot and us to have to revise and revamp things.

[00:20:43] But what's not normal is for us to just constantly be running until the point of exhaustion to where your body forces you to stop. So if any of this resonated with you and you want to help with creating that roadmap with knowing where to focus with having a 90 day plan and you need something that you can follow, that you know is going to give you success, whether you are a beginner or whether you've been doing this for years.

[00:21:16] I wanna encourage you to go to Thrive Together Blog slash coaching. We have two memberships there based on wherever you're at that can really help with this. I have been reworking inside bold fluence so much and have created specific maps for audience growth and monetary growth, and. Everything I'm talking about today, this, this is my passion, and if you wanna know my passion, this episode is it.

[00:21:45] My passion is helping you make more money, find the success you want without burning yourself into the ground, without the overwhelm, without the never ending to-do list. So there's two different ways that you can come hang out with me and work together and have an amazing, supportive community. And I would love for you to go check it out.

[00:22:06] There's so many fun things coming up on the podcast for the rest of the summer, things that are gonna be starting in July and August that I can't wait to tell you about. So make sure you've got yourself subscribed to this podcast. Share it with a friend. And I'll see you guys back here soon.

[00:22:31] If this episode helped you, help us grow, leave a review, share it with a friend, and tag us on social media. We can't wait to cheer you on.