Welcome back to another Ask Me Anything, a weekly series where we talk to our friends, our viewers, and our community about all of their pressing needs, questions, wants, and desires.
Let’s take a look at the mailbag to see which questions are burning this week:
I’m totally burned out and I don’t know what to do. I can’t keep going at the speed I’m accustomed to going at, but I’m not sure I have another choice. WWGD?
Adapt Your Business Life to Your Priorities
We are closing in on the end of the year and we’re almost two years into the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s been really rough for lots and lots of people. Many people are taking stock in their lives and trying to figure out what to do and what’s next. And asking themselves if they are doing the things that they’re meant to do.
They’re asking themselves if they are working for the right companies. Do they have the right bosses? Do they have the right clients?
Everybody’s taking stock. I have had numerous conversations with friends and colleagues and clients in the last six weeks about how to scale back, how to do things differently, and how to really take stock and do the things that are important to them and not all of the minutia stuff.
If we’ve been taught anything in the last 20 months, it’s that what’s important is important and all the other stuff can go by the by.
Americans are especially like this, but I think it’s global as well. We all get on this hamster wheel and we run as fast as we can, but we don’t go anywhere. Everybody’s trying to figure out if they continue to want to continue doing that and, if the answer is no, what they can do about it.
As I have these conversations, there seem to be some common themes:
- I don’t enjoy the work that I’m doing.
- I don’t want to continue writing news releases.
- Please don’t make me write another tweet.
- I don’t want to be checking social media, 24/7.
- I want to be focused on the things that I do best.
Designing Your Business Life
Here is what I’ve told everyone: truly figure out what’s important to you and figure out how to design that business life. You may not be able to do it tomorrow. It may take you a year or 18 months, but if you start now, by this time next year, you’ll be in a much different place.
If that means that you have to go find a new job, so be it.
If it means that you have a job and you’re going to go out on your own, great.
If it means you have an agency and employees and you don’t want to do anymore, fine.
Figure out and be really honest with yourself about what it is that you want to do. Take stock in the things that are important to you and design your business life around that. Design your career around that. Design your business around that.
If you do that, you’re going to be in a much different, better spot next year at this time than you are right now.
It’s not easy. It’s not going to be easy.
Even after you make the decision, you’re going to have to make hard choices. You’re going to have to say no. When it’s not comfortable to say no, you’re going to have to do things that you don’t want to do, but you’re doing because it’s getting you to that end goal.
Figure out what it is that you want to do, design the plan, and go get it.
Every single one of us deserves to be happy. Every single one of us has been through an incredible crisis and chaos in the last 20 months. And we all deserve all of us deserve to take a break.
There is my therapy lesson for the day.
I hope that if you’re not happy in your life or your career or your business that you take stock and you try to figure that out.
And if you are happy, great, don’t listen to me. Keep things as they are!
Have a Question?
Make sure you watch the video so you can see what trouble Cookie the Elf has herself into (I LOVE THIS TIME OF YEAR!).
And, if there is a topic you’d like us to cover, industry trends you’ve heard about but don’t understand, or a question you are embarrassed to ask but know we will be happy to answer let us know!
You can drop it in the comments below, DM us on social or in the Spin Sucks Community, or send an email.
You can also stop by my house with a bottle of wine, but we can’t sit out on the porch and drink. It’s too cold. You’ll have to wait until spring.
