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Welcome to Shiny New Clients, the marketing podcast that helps you attract shiny new clients to your business. We'll talk about social media, what makes people buy, how to go viral, and marketing psychology all in 20 minutes or less. Whether you're a coach, a stylist, or a wedding planner, if you've got a service based business to sell, this is the show you need to fill your calendar. I'm Jenna Warner, your new marketing coach and this is Shiny New New clients. In my 20s, I put myself in hospital because I was working so hard and burning the candle at both ends. And before you say, did she mean to say in the hospital? No, I don't because I speak the queen's English, because I'm Canadian and in hospital is actually accurate. But it did feel weird coming out of my mouth. I put myself in the hospital because I was working a bunch of bartending and serving jobs, burning myself out because I had a goal and in mind. If you are a business owner and you are wearing all the hats and you are feeling burnt out or you feel like that burnout is approaching, maybe you're at the point right now where you're starting to get a little overwhelmed, you're working into the evenings, you're overworking, you're tired, you're starting to feel resentful of your clients. Let's talk about it. I'll tell you this story about the hospital thing and a few things that you can start integrating into your life because we're not going to probably change this overnight, but a few things we can start integrating into your business and your life to help avoid you pushing things as far as I pushed them. What's funny about this hospital story is I have always told it as a badge of honor. Like, ahaha, look how hard I worked. Ha ha ha. I'm, I'm so dedicated to my goals. And that is, I think, social conditioning. Right? We're conditioned to work hard, we're conditioned to. Where busyness is a badge of honor, they say. And that's exactly. I still sometimes, to be honest, tell this story as like a funny story, but really it isn't and it could have gone much worse. I'm gonna be honest with you. Something I have going for me as an entrepreneur is I am a generally energetic person and I get that from my mom. We, we go fast, we have lots of energy. I don't deal with chronic illnesses like maybe you do. I don't have children. So yeah, like my, my experience might be very different from your experience. And I, I just want to Acknowledge that before I give you some advice. So this isn't a clinical conversation about burnout, it's an anecdotal one. And I'm just trying to help. And I'm trying to help in a light hearted way. Firstly, if you're listening to this podcast while cleaning the house because you're trying to consume as much business knowledge as you can because you're so dedicated to your job, except you also want to be doing something else. And maybe you're even scrolling on Instagram looking up content ideas while you're listening and cleaning the house. Been there too. What a sign that you might be overworking yourself if you saw someone book a sales call on your calendar and you thought, man, I'm glad that that lead came in, but I'm scared to get on that call and I'm too busy to get on that call. And can I really take on more work right now? Yeah, that's another indicator as well. So the first thing we're going to do is think about how you would prefer to feel. Do you like the chaos of doing three things at once? If not, how would you like your afternoon to feel? Some of us thrive on problem solving, some of us thrive on client delivery. Like, what would you like your time to be spent predominantly doing? And even if it's going to take us a little while to get there, it is so important to set your sights on something. When you're inside this, like, level of busyness, it's so easy to focus on either what you're doing right now or what you don't want to be doing. But in order to create the life you want, we do need to picture it. How much spaciousness do you want? How much client work do you want? What do you want to spend most of your day doing? How much do you want to work? At least set your sights on it. And even if it's still a year away, set your sights on it and slowly and surely you're going to be making choices that get you closer to that. What a lot of people will tell you is that you can't just choose an end date and go, when this happens, I'll change in the future things, things will be different and you need to start making changes now. Now I'm going to push back on that a little because speaking as a generally energetic person, I think it's okay. And a healthy person, you know, with a healthy body, I think it's okay to have a season of push. The way I see it, there's three seasons you can have a season of push, a season of sustain, or a season of Ride. And I think it's okay to choose to be in any one of those seasons. So a season of push might look like you have a live launch coming up and you're going to work after dinner some nights and you're going to, you know, burn the candle a little. You might skip lunch, you might work through it because you're excited about this season of Push. And you know that it's like a. It's project defined. We're not going to be here for a year, we're going to be here for a couple weeks or maybe a couple of months. And if your body can handle it and you're excited about what you're doing, let yourself be in a season of push. If you're in a season of push right now and you don't like it, then you're going to want to aim for a season of sustain. After your season of push, we have a season of sustain. When you're in sustain, you are working, you're doing your job and you are quietly building machines and systematizing it so that you can work your 9 to 5 or however many hours a day you wanna work and, and then tap out. Sustain is about quietly building while delivering. And then we have your season of ride. That's when you ride it out. You do as little as possible. For me and my business, this means summer break. We do kind of the bare minimum or things that excite us, but let ourselves just ride through the summer on the systems we have built during sustain and on the sales we have made during push. So if that's a helpful way to look at it, then we've immediately eliminated the guilt of being in push. Right? Because when you're feeling burnt out, I think another big problem with that is you start feeling guilt for pushing too hard and for opening your phone and seeing all these people talking about slow business and prioritizing, you know, family and all these things that then make you feel bad for caring about your business and working hard at it. I think it's okay as long as we have seasons and as long as you're keeping your body. Well, when I was in my 20s and I was trying to be an actor and I was also bartending and serving and really taking kind of any money that I could get my hands on. Like I would work for whatever that I could do. And I at the same time, I've never told you about this, but I was also co running a YouTube channel where we did flash mobs. And it was actually like a really viral YouTube channel that I ran with a friend. And we would organize these, like, citywide events that hundreds of people would come out to and whatever. That's a different story for a different day. Actually, let me know because I would love to have the guy that originated this company that I worked with, Cole, I'd love to have him on the show. So if you want to hear about that organization and how we went viral before going viral was a thing, please comment, let me know DM me and then I'll pressure him to come on in and chat with you. I'm doing the acting thing, I'm doing the bartending thing. And all the while at the back of my head I thought, well, I'll move to LA one day, I'll move to la, because that's where you make it in this industry, right? There's not a huge film and TV industry in Canada, so most people end up moving to LA if they're really going to be big. So I had it in my head that, like, that's what I would do. And then I thought to myself, hey, I don't even know if I like la. I've never even been to la. Why am I working so hard to get to this place? I don't even know if that's actually what I should be doing. So I'll go. So I figured if I could, if I could save $10,000, then that would be enough to go for a couple months and I could take some, like, classes, some improv classes and watch shows and meet people and pretend to live there for a little bit to see what I actually thought. Spoiler Al. I actually hated it there. I had a really fun time, but after going, I thought, oh, wow, this is not what I want at all. And then shortly after, I fell into social media and that took off. So here we are. So at the time, it was a season of push, and it was a season of push that, admittedly I took too far. But I had this end date in mind and I thought, if I can just make this money, I can go do this thing. So I started taking pretty much any money bartending shift that I could pick up. I started serving brunch at this brunch restaurant. And I don't know if you kind of pictured that as I said it, but bartending night, brunch morning, and it all happens on the weekend. So I would regularly basically shut down the bar, working all night, sleep for a couple hours, get up and walk to Where I served brunch, unlock the door, serve brunch, sometimes walk out, go unlock the bar, serve the bar. And then you're surviving on the food that these places serve, which is like nachos and eggs, which I later realized I'm allergic to. So, you know, it was just a big mess. And I had this patch of eczema on my ankle, and it was. This sounds so small, right? This little patch of eczema on my ankle. And I would scratch it. Things like that. Like skin conditions like that. One of the things that they thrive on is when you are not sleeping and stressed and not fueling your body. So I would. It would get itchy, and I would scratch it. And I remember I was serving brunch, and I'm in, like, leather boots, and we had a patio, so we were constantly running in and out, in and out, in and out into the summer heat. And I. My ankle was just so itchy. I was. Oh, my gosh, it was like, driving me mental. And so I just reached down into my boot and I just, like, ripped at it. Like, just, like, scratched this. And I was. I remember the relief I felt to finally scratch this literal itch. The day goes on. I. I leave brunch and I walk right to the bar, which was just down the street, to then start bartending. And I told my friend who struggled with eczema. I was like, this eczema on my ankle is, like, driving me crazy. And she goes, what you need to do is cover it in Vaseline and then wrap it in Saran Wrap. Like, okay, great idea. So I go ahead and I do that. And it's still itchy. It's still itchy. And then it was starting to ache. And near, you know, 11 o' clock at night, I was like, hey, like, friend, my ankle's aching. Is that weird? And she's like, well, let me see. And we went into the kitchen and switched on fluorescent lights, and I put my foot up on a step stool. I was looking at my ankle, and I peeled the Saran Wrap back, and she went quiet. But we were both looking at my ankle. And then I looked up at her, and she was quiet from being, like, stunned at what she was seeing. And she was like, oh, no, this is not good. This is an infected situation. And I was supposed to close the bar. So I didn't want to go home because the person who closed made the most money. So I lived nearby. I scooted home, changed my pants, and put on sneakers because I could barely even, like, get my skinny Jeans off at this point over my ankle, put on sneakers, ran back, closed the bar, went home that night. And then I remember the next morning. Oh, I popped a couple Advil, too, or whatever. The next morning, I swung my legs over the side of my bed to stand up, and I couldn't stand up. But it does not stop there. Why would it stop there? I was in go mode, and I was not caring about my body, and I was not even thinking. I didn't even know the word burnout. I just knew I have a goal, and I'm working toward it. And that's why I say push season is okay as long as you actually keep your body healthy and mind as well. So the next morning, I was supposed to meet my friend Cole because we had a meeting about our YouTube channel. And I was like, oh, man, I can't walk. But there's a different brunch place down the street from me, so if he could meet me there instead, I could probably hop there. Hop there. And I did. I said, cole, can you meet me at Piston? Instead was the name of the place. And I literally hopped on one foot to get to this meeting after not sleeping for, like, multiple nights now and serving, serving, serving. And listen, I wasn't doing drugs. You might be listening to this and thinking, I'm, like, coded for. Like, I was on drugs. I was not. This is just my personality. I hop there, and I'm having this meeting with him, and I put my foot up on a bench next to me because I thought I should elevate it because it hurt. And I was just, like, going on with my conversation. And there was this woman at the table next to me, and I'm betting she was a mom. If not, she was an angel or just had high maternal instincts. And she leaned over and, like, very gently said to me, hey, I think you should go to the hospital. And I'm so glad she did, you know, like, talk to strangers. Talk to strangers, because it was. It was so bad. And I did go to the hospital, and I thought that she was kind of overreacting a bit. Bit at the time, obviously, but I went because she told me to. I took a Uber there, and there were people all around me who were very unwell. And I won't, like, give you the details of what I was witnessing in that emergency room, but it was pretty scary. And they saw me very fast. And if you know anything about triage, you know that they only see you. And I was looking around at these people that needed help, and I'm Looking, thinking, whoa, you guys need help? I'm just here for this silly ankle thing. And they saw me so fast. And that's when I started cluing in. Oh, wait, maybe I am not taking care of myself. And then I sat there with the doctor, and they just seemed really disappointed in me. And he said, well, the good news is the infection hasn't reached your joint yet. It was a Sunday at this point, so it was hard for me to even find a place to go and get antibiotics. And I did. I found a place. And then I was using, like, a office chair to wheel myself around my apartment that I lived in with a hundred other people. And then that night, there was a play I wanted to go to, and I pretty much hopped there as well. I hopped there. I wrapped a Tensor bandage around my ankle, not because they needed it, but because it was so ugly at that point. And, like, I don't think I could probably wear a shoe or I don't know what kind of shoe I managed to get on. But you. Once you're in that burnout phase and that becomes your new normal, it doesn't just end like, it's beyond a season of push at that point, because it's just how you're living. And you're not going to be able to just turn your brain off and be like, oh, great, now I sustain, Right? No, you got to choose. Like, if you're in a season of push, it's like, it's a couple weeks, it's a month. That's how long you can push for. And maybe your body's going to say, you got to stop. But if you just start living in this place of burning the candle at both ends and wearing all the hats and push, push, and, like, force, force, force yourself. Go without food, go without sleep, keep yourself at max stress. It's hard to just escape from that and turn it off. Right? You need to kind of come down from that over months because it's become who you are and it's become how you handle things. Things. Let's bring this to business, because in those scenarios I explained to you bartending, you're physically running around. You don't just have, like, a kitchen. You don't just have a cozy couch you can plop on with your laptop. When it's physically demanding like that, I think things are going to go south faster. But then with business burnout, especially when you work from home, a lot of it is more mental. You're probably listening and you're going, well, yeah, if I had a body part that was infected and I was risking getting a limb amputated, I'd probably slow down. But in business, we don't get to see that physical representation of what you've been doing to your body as much, because we're at home and the stress is mostly existing in our heads, and we do still have a bed to crash on at night, and we do still have a fridge full of food, hopefully sitting there so we can, like, eat while we sit at our desks, you know, and when you're pushing yourself too hard in business, it's manifesting in things like resenting your clients, yelling at your spouse, questioning yourself, questioning if you're caught out for this, questioning if you made the wrong decision, having a hard time finding joy, stuff like that. So let me give you three simple things that are tweaks that you can make to climb out of it or to prevent yourself from getting to that point. In general, one is super tactical. It's client communications. If you are letting your clients text you at all hours, if you are responding to your clients whenever they reach out, if you don't have boundaries around the communication that they're allowed to have with you. For me, like, that can be a fast track to burnout. And it probably comes from you caring about your clients and caring about how they perceive you and caring about the results that they get. But that was a really big one for me. And I just talked to another entrepreneur just a couple weeks ago, and one of the things that she has in her offer is you're allowed to, like, voxer her at any given moment. So that's fine. You can allow people to voxer you at any given moment. But when do you respond? And can you put structure around when you respond and when you check in? And can you make it so that you can see that there's a notification there and you're not going to keep thinking about it and you're just going to let it go until it is your scheduled time to respond. When I was running my social media management agency, there were times when we had clients whose written communication to us always sounded kind of abrasive. And I later found out that my team was becoming afraid to open Slack because they were afraid of getting triggered by what clients were saying to them. And that sucks. That sucks so much. And it sometimes that means we need to, like, part ways with the client or we need to address it. One of the best pieces of advice I was ever given was written communication should be positive or neutral, but anything negative should happen on A call. And you can't necessarily demand a client do that to you or like, ask them to be nicer. I don't know. I don't. I don't know. But if that is something like you're scared to open your inbox, you're scared to open Slack, then we need to address that because, like, we don't need that cortisol spike. And that cortisol spike isn't going to just immediately go away after it happens. Now you have these stress hormone triggers happening all throughout the day and just like raising up your running level of stress. So streamlining client communications, knowing what is acceptable for you in all the different ways that you are going to be interacting with other people's energy, we need to have a plan around it. Another really positive change that I made was I found myself always waking up worried that I had a call right away or worried that I was about to be late for a call, like, pretty much every morning I woke up. So I decided to only take calls on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And at first that was really scary because I thought that I was going to be really inconveniencing other people. But let me tell you, my running level of stress went down so much because I knew that I wasn't just gonna open my calendar and be like, oh, somebody booked with me. I'm supposed to be there in 20 minutes. Or, oh, somebody booked last minute. Or I was gonna do this, but I didn't have it in my calendar and now somebody booked for that slot. Like, that wasn't happening. It was, people can book with me on Tuesdays or Thursdays, and then you can always say, like, if somebody reaches out and they can only talk to you on a Wednesday, you can make that exception for them. You can choose if you want to in that moment. But yeah, so changing that communication was very helpful as well. My best one comes last, so keep listening. The second tip, though, is to make time to be around people who inspire you. Worst case scenario, you're only around people who drain you. Best case scenario, you are repeatedly throughout the week around people who inspire you. Maybe that means you have a accountability buddy that you meet with. Maybe that means you have a mentor. Maybe that means you're part of a networking group of people that are like, very high vibe and have happy, a little bit of inspiration for the future you're building and how possible it is and how other people are doing it. Oh, that goes a long way. And the last one is tactical. Again, I'm launching a new program this Year called Booked Out Offers. You have to be a client in my program Magic Marketing machine for access to it. But it's going to be all about helping you hit capacity in your service based business. So I'm really excited for that. And this is one of the things that we're going to address at the beginning is knowing how many clients clients you need to hit your revenue goals and do you actually have enough time in your calendar to do that. I was just doing a one on one with someone last week and she told me her revenue goal for the year was 100k. But when we looked at her offer suite and how many hours she worked in a week, there was literally no way of getting there. There was no way of getting there. Things needed to change. Things needed to change in the structure of her work, in her client capacity and her onboarding. Like all of these things need to shift in order for her to actually have enough hours in the year to hit that goal. And I think a lot of times we skip that big picture planning. That's when you might end up working at 11 o' clock at night because it's the only way to hit your revenue goal. Because six months ago you didn't lay out your plan on how you were going to get there in a feasible way. When I was doing exclusively services and a service based business before I taught and consulted and stuff, I would often think about my client capacity in terms of how much delivery I could churn out. Not realizing we have to onboard these people, we have to correspond with our clients, we have to have sales calls, we have to provide edits, we have to make time to manage our own business and market our own business. And so there's all these other things that are eating away at the time. And here I'm sitting there with 10 projects on the go and I barely have enough time in the day to do the deliverables and then everything else gets left behind. So no, you didn't have the capacity you thought you had. And that makes a huge change as well. Let me know in the comments if you want. If you're in a season of push, sustain or ride, ride it out season of ease, as my coach would say. I hope you found this episode helpful. I hope you don't think less of me for that whole ankle thing. I definitely learned a lot from that experience so I can't take it back. And I hope if you turned this on because you're feeling a bit burnt out that I offered you something that helps and that you do prioritize your health and prioritize your well being and take the actions that you need to take to climb out of it.