EP365: How to Recover From Burnout and Get Back Into the Swing of Things

11:51PM Sep 2, 2022

Speakers:

Tracy Matthews

Keywords:

burnout

business

people

flourish

hiring

support

excited

jewelry

thrive

accelerators

company

podcast

person

create

showing

programs

brand

book

experiencing

plan

When you have something exciting to look forward and something new on the horizon that you're excited about, it takes away a lot of the negative emotion and feeling and shame and fear that you have about what's next. Welcome to thrive by design, the podcast for ambitious independent jewelry brands, looking to profit from their products, get ready to make more and sell more doing what you love, without spending every single waking minute doing it. Hey, and if you're a creative fashion or product based business, I want to welcome you to the show. I'll be dropping big tips on launching, growing and scaling your business. So you could spend more of your precious time using your creativity to make money. You ready? All right, let's do this. Welcome to the thrive by design podcast episode 365. Hey there, it's Tracy Matthews, chief visionary officer, Flourish & Thrive Academy and the host of the show today. And I'm really excited to be here to talk about something that is very personal to me, burnout. And there's a really specific reason why I want to talk about this today, I've been going through an intense stage of burnout for the past three years. And it's literally put me so far through the wringer that I thought many people maybe listening to the show or podcast might benefit from learning like how I'm kind of coming out of a cycle, a three year cycle of burnout, to feel excited and invigorated about my businesses again. So I'm going to give you a backstory momentarily, but I've been getting a lot of messages from you on Instagram. And Someone recently asked about this topic and another topic like how do you know when you should close your business? When is the time and I know that a lot of people really struggle with this because you started something that you've been very excited about. And it's been your passion for a long time. But for some reason, the business you've built is starting to burn you to the ground, and it feels exhausting. And there's a reason why I created The Desired Brand Effect methodology and wrote a book about it is because I can only speak to things that I've experienced in my own life. And it is natural for a visionary and a creative, to go through cycles of business and have to deal with different things. And that's why it's always important to really be leaning into how to improve your process or to make things better, because the best businesses that continually grow, have it you leader at the helm, who is excited about what's happening. And if you're always in a state of overwhelm, and you feel stressed out by your business, and you're frazzled, and you're doing all the things and it's too much, well, then you're not going to be showing up in a way that allows your business to expand. In fact, you're gonna start to contract. And so I'm going to talk a lot about that today on this episode. And we're going to kind of dive deep into some of the things that I've been doing over the past year to help get me back to speed. And they finally feel good talking about it. Because it was something that was so close to me that I didn't want to talk to people about or even share with the community because I didn't want people to worry like what's going to happen to flourish and thrive in this podcast and all the things that I've created. And I think the funniest part is that I was like really deep and burnout when I actually released the book. This just allowed me the space to really like reflect, once again, like, what are we doing over here? How can we make this podcast as community and everything that we do at Flourish & Thrive Academy, better,

you know, for our followers, for our listeners, for our students, for the members of our community. So the good news is, is that this massive stage of burnout that I've been in for the last three years has come into a great evolution of some awesome things that are coming out of it. And I'm excited because we're developing some new accelerators and products. And it's really made us take a hard look at our programs and how we can improve them and make them more sustainable for our students and our members. So I'm just I'm just excited about all of it. It's all good. And so I wanted to walk you through some of that, and I will in just a moment. But first I wanted to talk a little bit about what's coming in the pipeline. You may have noticed, I haven't recorded a few podcasts for the last month or so. And that's partially because I was in the state of burnout. We were in the process of hiring a new integrator. an integrator is kind of like a CEO or CEO of the company. And I had hired someone, and she accepted the offer and then it fell through in the 11th hour. And she was supposed to start on August 1. And it just put me in a little bit of a tailspin because it started triggering a bunch of my old stories and beliefs about myself. And I've just like I just need to put some things on pause right now. And it's not unusual for me to take a break from recording the podcast in the summer. I do it probably every year this year. I hadn't planned on doing it, but it was a natural result. The good news is that on the other side We have an amazing new integrator that's coming in. And starting this week, actually officially. And it's exciting because she's been working with us for about three weeks, just part time kind of on a test trial basis. And I'm thrilled about this, because she is such a better fit than the original person that I was going to hire. So that to me, tells me that the universe has got my back. And it's created a lot of opportunities for me to step up and be the leader that I need to be for this company, because it's, it's removing me from a lot of the stuff that's been burning me out, which is exciting. The second thing is, is that once that kind of opened up and happened, all these opportunities started happening. So first, I'm having a book launch party in New York. And the details aren't completely planned on the date that I'm recording this podcast. But if you would like to come and you live in the New York City area, and you're available early October, then shoot me a direct message on Instagram at flourish, underscore thrive or at Tracy Matthews and why. And I will send you the link to join me for this book party. I am so excited because since I launched the book during the pandemic, and I wasn't living in New York. And there are a variety of other reasons, I wasn't able to properly launch the book with a celebration, which is something that I love. And as an extrovert, I love being around people. So we did a virtual book party instead of an in person one. And now we're bringing this in person. So I'll share more details with you about that. And if you want to know more, you can shoot us an email or find us over on Instagram at flourish, underscore thrive and find out more information about the book launch party in early October. Also, I am hosting a masterclass at the end of September that I would love to invite you to it's one of our best and most popular master classes, especially for brands who are in the kind of more startup or early phases of their business. And when I say early phases, meaning that they haven't really crossed six figures in revenue, or they're struggling to get consistent, predictable sales, and they've been at it for a while. So if you're someone who really wants to stand out in a saturated market with a timeless jewelry brand, I'm going to walk you through my core process for attracting the right audience, and getting those people to buy from you every season. And most importantly attracting the kinds of people to your brand who never question you on your pricing. Who are those raving fans who are repeat customers, and then help you optimize that all of that for success. So if you want to learn more about that, and you're interested in really building something that becomes a legacy and or a lifestyle business or something that supports your goals and your vision of success. Then here's your invitation, you can just head on over to flourish thrive academy.com forward slash timeless brand. That's flourish, thrive academy.com forward slash timeless brand, and save your seat. The masterclass will be on September 20, at 10am Pacific 1pm. Eastern, I promise to make it worth your while. It's going to be amazing. And we might even give away a scholarship to our Laying The Foundation program. So if you've been looking at that program and thinking about it for a while, then the only way that you're going to win a scholarship is to save a seat for that masterclass.

So let's talk about what's been going on with me. So I've been in this extreme state of burnout. And last year I begged, begged beg, beg beg, Jason and my partner to come in and help me restructure my business, I get a little bit emotional about it, because it's been a journey for us, too. Anyway, he agreed a little bit unwillingly, because he knows that when people in a relationship work together, sometimes it affects the relationship, which I'm not gonna lie, how it affected our relationship, we're back to a really good place now. And it was nerve wracking for both of us. But he knew that he could help he knew I needed the help. And he decided to come on. And within the first couple of weeks, we decided to start hiring a team, more people on the team, many people from the Philippines. And with that, we started creating some new standards for team members. And within the first almost two weeks of him starting, we fired a key player on our team who was doing all of our technology work, we needed to do it. And I'm not going to get into the weeds about why we did it. But we found out just basically that this person was over billing us for time. And there's a whole story in it. And I don't want to throw anyone under the bus. But we found out because of they didn't want to track their time in in a way that we could actually monitor their progress. And so we had to let that person go which put it in if anyone who's running a business, and they lose a key player who's dealing with the technological part of their marketing, you realize that that can put you in a tizzy because I can't pick up that role as the visionary. It's not my skill set at all. And we didn't have anyone to step into it for a while. And so Jason was doing it and he hates doing that. And then we found some other people too. There are people that didn't work out. And it's a long story. But it's been a journey. And let's just say, throughout this process, we are hiring more team members to help offer more support and ended up making things a lot more chaotic. And the reason for that is because I am a visionary. And I was already in like a pretty decent stage of burnout. And here I am trying to be a manager again, and that is just not something that I'm good at. And so it affected me tremendously. And it was super stressful, from the standpoint that it didn't allow me to be operating out of by, I guess, my zone of genius, or my zone of excellence, or what are actually my zone of genius, where I'm really showing up as the visionary of the company. And so with that, I realized I needed this integrator. And it was devastating when the integrator that I was originally going to hire fell through, I just felt really desperate, like literally, like at a rock bottom, and I didn't know what was gonna happen. And so, this last year, there came a point when Jason and I were not getting along very well at all, where he's just like, you need to go somewhere by yourself. Because whatever you're doing, you're not having fun, and you're not, you're not showing up as your best self, you're actually like, the attitude you have showing up to meetings, and everything is actually bringing the team down. And he was right. And it was really hard to hear that because when a visionary is in extreme burnout, or the leader of a company who's highly creative, and their skill set is not being fully utilized. And they're being pulled into a skill set. That is not natural to them, but they're forced to do. It's can wreak havoc on a business and make things worse. And he was right. And so we went through this process of like, okay, Jason needs to leave the company, how do we do this transition and what needs to change inside the business in order to make it all work again. And so we came up with a plan, part of it was getting the integrator on board. But a lot of it was really about me, and how I was showing up. And so if you are someone who's like me, and you're experiencing burnout right now, and you're in an existential crisis, so to speak, like, should I keep my company going? Should I not?

How do I handle this? Like, what's the next step? Well, then I hope that this episode really helps you, because I'm going to just kind of get really raw and share with you some of the things I did to get to that next step. So if you have a friend who might really benefit from this, then I would highly recommend that you share this episode with them, even if they're not in the jewelry industry, because I think it will be really helpful. So the first things first is like really to identify the cause of burnout. This was hard luck. But it like really, you have to take a look. And like, honestly take ownership for your part in this, like, what is bringing it up? How are you showing up in your business that is not supporting you, what's happening in your life that is causing you exhaustion, and to be super tired. And so for me, I realized that I was not operating in my zone of genius, I was pulled back in a managerial role, I was on so many meetings that I didn't have time to do the work that I needed to do. I'm not a fan of meetings, unless they're things where we're actually getting work done. And it was hard. And then I was also forced to lead the meetings, which made it even worse. And different people from you know, talking to my ear, were saying like, you should be doing this. And I'm like, But I shouldn't be doing this. And I knew I shouldn't be doing this. But they're telling me that I need to be doing this. And that's what leaders do. And I'm like, that's not my skill set. And I should have trusted myself. And that was really the key is that I needed to be in a spot where I was trusting myself. So that was important. And with that, it became very clear that I needed additional support in my business, if I was going to get to the next level. The thing about burnout though, is that when the founder or the leader of the company is burned out, it drastically impacts your revenue. And so we've been struggling, because of all the changes that we've been making financially, with increased costs and ad spend and our return on adspend going down, and then me not being able to show up in my highest best self and not being able to create the content and stuff that I need to get the community engaged. It has a significant impact on your output and your revenue. And so if you are experiencing like a revenue dip or anything like that, and I know that we're in an interesting state of the economy right now, because we're in a recession, and a lot of people are freaking out. People are still buying jewelry, so I wouldn't worry about that. But I take a look about how you're showing up because if your energy is frenetic and scared and operating out of fear, that might be part of the problem too. I noticed a massive shift in one week when my energy shifted around how it was showing up. So with that burnout identity Five, do you need additional support. And if you do, hire those people, even if it's an investment upfront that scares you, because, first of all, you can always let them go if you you're not in a place to pay for them at a certain point. The other part of this is that if you don't get that additional support, whether it's from a community or taking like hiring a coach, or hiring a someone, actually to work on your team, then you're gonna be putting yourself at a huge disadvantage for the long haul. And I know people who have sub six figure businesses, they're like, there's no way that I can do this. And that's pretty much true. I think, with your business's sub six figures, you're probably not going to be able to hire like a full time person or anything like that. But at the end of the day, there are ways to get additional support, to vent to get coached and stuff like that that is affordable that you can lean into. The third thing that I think that everyone who is suffering burnout at any phase should do is to take time selfishly for yourself. Even if you can't afford to travel somewhere, can you do a staycation? Can you check out of your business for a couple of days outside of the weekend, can you do something nice for yourself, like do some self care, get a massage, get a facial, get your hands and feet down, like whatever it is, I know that sounds kind of dumb, but that selfish time and empty space is going to do so much to recharge your batteries. Maybe for you it's to go on a long hike, maybe it's to go camping, maybe it's to check into a five star hotel, I don't know, whatever it is, do something that's going to light you up, I still am planning on doing this, I just haven't been able to fit it because I have so many family weddings this month, but I am planning at some point to do like a little resort type of vacation for myself where I can go somewhere and just check into a resort and get some massages and do nothing for like three to five days. And it's on my radar. And I plan to do this because for me, I need it to recharge my batteries.

Now, stage four, and this, for me in particular was to reconnect with like minded individuals, this was really, really important for me, because when I get into burnout, or I feel chaotic, I have a tendency even as an extreme extrovert to isolate. And the reason why I isolate is because I have a lot of shame about being in a bad place. And isolation for someone like me, is the detriment of the business. And I noticed that I like hadn't been talking to like my best friend very much for like a couple of years, literally, we don't live in the same city anymore. So I don't see him. But it was like, my friendship with him has completely changed because of that, because we just kind of lost touch. But it was I have to take responsibility was kind of because of me. I feel felt really disconnected from my friend network. And I was experiencing extreme impostor syndrome. And something that really checked me out of this is that I got an email one day, asking to be on the board of advisors or to join a board of advisory retreat to basically audition me for the board of advisors for this business group that I'm in. I was like, did they mean to send this email to me? Like my business is so small compared to these 100 million dollar companies in this group? And I responded back, I'm like, Did you mean to send this to me? And they're like, yes, of course, you've been on our list for a while. And I was like, Oh, my gosh, I'm like, let me just figure out a few things. Of course, I want to go. And being in that group. I mean, it's one of my favorite groups to be in. And being in that group has literally, like been so great. It's different than a mastermind and stuff like that. Because we meet in small groups, sometimes we meet with 100 people. But there's always time to connect with these like minded entrepreneurs. And that's exactly why I started flourish and thrive. So I'm really excited because I'm going to be doing more live events and in person things where we can connect, and have masterminds and all the things and so that in person time, like completely recharged me, I just take a week off and went to Michigan to spend time with them. And I came out the other side and felt completely transformed. So if you're a jewelry designer or maker or you have a jewelry brand and you're feeling isolated, a tear rolling down my cheek right now, come to one of our things, you know, join one of our sales accelerators or business accelerators, come to one of my in person retreats, come to my book, launch party. These are all ways that you can connect with people and create these long lasting friendships with people who are there to support you because it goes way after the event or the accelerator or whatever it is. real relationships are formed in these things. And that's why we have coaching programs and all the things so get yourself support around with like minded entrepreneurs. Now the fifth step to this was to incorporate creative time or thinking time. Now one of the problems with being in burnout is that you're in reactionary mode all the time. And so I had a very strict plan of having Wednesdays and most of Fridays as creative and thinking time, this was my time to catch up, to sit with my thoughts to strategize and to to grow my business. But because I was in the weeds doing so much in the business and out of my element and natural zone, I was scrambling all the time and I started to blow off my creative days, I started filling them up with meetings, and work like production work that needed to happen. And I've decided that I'm no longer going to do that. I once we're out of this cycle, and Danny, my new integrator is on boarded, and fully functional taking over my responsibilities that I've been doing integration are the responsibilities that I was doing in an integration standpoint, I'm going back to this because it is integral for the success of your business, even if it's just a couple hours a week, you need time to think about high level strategies that will grow your business. And when you don't have that, you are going to feel depleted, you need it, trust me on that. Number six, take care of yourself, it's times like these, that we have a tendency to eat junk food, go for the burger and fries, drink the alcohol to relax, not get enough sleep, you know, put our ads in front of the TV, sometimes I do that at night, because it helps me wind down. But like all the things that are like literally escapism both, especially like the personal care, like, you really need to be working out, you need to be taking care of your body, you need to be moving, and doing the things that are gonna help you feel good, because it's already hard enough, when you're shaming yourself and feeling bad about yourself and who you are, and you're overwhelmed. If you're not taking care of this vessel, and helping it regenerate and feel strong and healthy, then you're gonna have an even harder time of getting out of this mode.

So take care of yourself, this is really important in the sleep is probably the most important part of that. Now, the second step for me was really reconnecting with my why. Because there were times I'm not going to lie when I thought about just shutting Flourish, & Thrive Academy down. And that's hard to even admit publicly here. And the reason that I wanted to shut it down because I couldn't see a way out. But I lost my entire reasoning and the purpose about why I was doing this business. And I came to this realization that I had built this business out of one of the biggest traumas of my life. And it was the failure of my first jewelry company, I'd done things right for a long time. And then the 2008 market crash just took it out overnight. And I had still felt a lot of shame around that. And I really wanted to protect people from ever having that happen to them. And I was reliving trauma every single day, and I hadn't realized it. And so I had to get back to the real reason, the reason why I was doing this. And it wasn't necessarily to prevent people from failing in business, even though that's a result of everything that we do over here. It was really because of my desire to support people in business. And that little shift changed everything. And what I decided through that process is that we are going to simplify the things that we were doing that which is leading me into number eight, reduce the complexity in your business, simplify our offerings. In fact, we just completed a bundle retirement sale, we decided to get rid of all of our low cost bundles and products, because we realized that it was just dead weight that was weighing on the company. And it didn't take very much for us to promote it. But we weren't selling that many because we only have a limited number in our sales cycle to actually promote them. And the way people get the best result working with us is really through our programs. And we know that. And so when we develop these loan products during the pandemic, when people were freaking out, we realized that they had served their time and the time now is to retire them. So we are doing everything that we can do to reduce complexity in the business, so that we can focus on simplifying and streamlining our offers, and keeping things focused in a way that we can support people where they are. And it's scary to do sometimes, because you're like, gosh, I've made this product has supported this business in so many ways. And it's generated so much revenue, like if we retire it what's next, like what happens? And it's scary, but it's like we have to do, it's the best thing to do. And a couple years ago, we retired the majority of our programs outside of Laying The Foundation, our momentum program and our T YC accelerator. And that was really scary for a while. It did affect our sales for a minute, but we realized that in order to really scale what we're doing well that we needed to let go of the dead weight. So for you, this might looking like cutting out in person events if they're not performing for you So this might mean, reducing your collection size. This might mean figuring out like, how do you get the most with the least amount of time out of your business. So there's a lot of things that you might want to be looking through that filter. And it really takes a moment of reflection, to cut out all that complexity.

And then number nine, is to get excited about something. So when I started doing all of these things, and most of this has just happened within the last month, when I started doing all these things, even though this has been a three year process of us trying to do it, everything's kind of coming together. Now. A lot of things started to open up, I was asked to speak at the jewelry summit event in New York City on October 9, which opened up an opportunity for me to finally have this book launch party that I've been wanting to do, which opened up an opportunity for me to partner with other jewelry organizations and get back to New York to see my friends and to feel alive again. And so, so much has happened in like the last 24 hours even before I recorded this podcast, so more will be revealed. And I had to get this in so that my producer can edit it in time for the episode to go live. But I wanted to mention that because when you have something exciting to look forward and something new on the horizon that you're excited about, it takes away a lot of the negative emotion and feeling and shame and fear that you have about what's next. So I am pumped for this. And I'm super excited to continue supporting you guys throughout the holiday season. So I'm gonna wrap this up and I would love to know what really resonated with you. I'm gonna walk you through these nine things really first, first is to identify the cause of burnout. The second is identify in your business where you need support. So this might look like hiring on a team member, a freelancer, a virtual assistant. Number three, take time selfishly for yourself. Number four, reconnect with like minded entrepreneurs. Number five, incorporate creative or thinking time into your business and your week. Number six, take care of yourself, get the sleep, do all the workouts eat healthy, those things are important. Number seven, reconnect with your why. And number eight, reduce the complexity in your business and your life. And number nine create an event or an experience to look forward to. So I really truly hope this was helpful for you today. And I want you to save this episode for the next time that you are looking in something that could take you to the next level with your business or the next time you're feeling overwhelmed or struggling with your business because this is what is going to help you really thrive and overcome those feelings of burnout. And on a final note, I just want to mention that if you would like to learn more about how to stand out in a saturated market with a timeless jewelry brand, then please sign up for my free masterclass on September 20. And you can head on over to flourish thrive academy.com forward slash timeless brand to sign up. Ciao for now. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll see you later