Behind The Scenes of My Burnout

Wondering how you can really take the year by the reins and use it for what it’s worth?

For me, that required some serious shifting in how I run my business. Something that if you’ve done, you know is never easy.

⏰ But big change can happen just by making better use of your time and choosing HOW you work and WHO you bring in to help with your business.

I get deep in this latest episode of Empathy Rising, sharing with you things that make me nervous, mistakes that happened along the way, and how battling back from burnout has completely changed how I’m now scheduling my days and months.

I hope by sharing my current struggles, you’ll be able to make shifts in your own online business and really maximize what a side hustle can offer you. Take a listen here

CLICK BELOW TO LISTEN!

Full Show Notes (Transcript)…

Hey risers. Welcome to Empathy Rising. 

It's gonna be more of a personal episode, a behind the scenes episode of Look at me and my business and my life. Not a lot of necessary technique and teaching going on here. But I think that it's valuable for you guys to hear this kind of stuff too. So we're gonna be staying in this personal realm , and then of course we'll get back to the more tasky type things that you can take notes on.

I actually went through one of my own programs, which I think is fascinating and I'm gonna explain more about that in this episode. But I actually sat down, brought out my own workbook, brought out a pen and a paper, and went through one of my, the things that I teach to other people, and I did it for myself, and I paired that program.

So just being real open and honest. The end of last year sucked. Like it was terrible. I had a really terrible time. I'm, I'm not like claiming to be the only one who had a shitty year, and it wasn't the whole year, it was q4, it was the end of the year. I thought I rolled with it pretty well. 

I've always had this. Adaptability, this flexibility. It's the reason I built an online business in the first place, because when I was practicing clinically and having to move and reciprocate and start from the ground up again, it was really hard.

So with this online business, it just goes with me. I've done literally, I've done sales calls while I was moving across the country. I just put my AirPods in and I was driving and working at the same time. That's the reason I built this business in the first place. So I was. Ashamed of myself that I wasn't as resilient as I thought I was supposed to be.

I made it through, shut down. I made it through the summer, made it through back to school and trying to figure out virtual versus in person and blah, blah, blah. I made it through all that and then came October, November, like I wasn't okay. I was, I just was not handling things. It just, I was stressed to the max and a lot of it has to do with business stuff, and that's what we're gonna get into.

But had I been undertaking what I had planned for, I all, this was already planned for this business, this growing, this scaling, this shifting that I'm gonna explain. It was all planned. I put it in motion . So it was just, The fruits of the labor. I guess it was the, I planted seeds in intentionally, and it was growing the way it was supposed to .

 The fall time is usually my most creative time of the year. It's usually the energy of like, summer is burning off, it's starting to down here in Alabama.

It's not really getting cooler out, but definitely have that energy shift of like summertime, longer days. Being outside all the time. And then fall, you start to hunker down a little bit. You start to re return to the inside retreat to the inside, and that's, I really love it. I really love that shift of energy and it wants me, it makes me want to make things, makes me want to create things.

So that's when I got really excited. To launch this new round of side hustle that started in, that just started, because launching is a creative process. You need to create a lot of assets from writing new copy as well as creating new graphics. But also youre out there, right? You have to put things out there into the world.

You make them and you release them. And so I was really looking forward to that. But. That's when things like quickly got outta hand because I realized I had too many plates in the air. I was trying to keep them spinning, trying to keep them spinning, and I wouldn't say that like it crashed to the ground.

I had, I maintained control, so to speak, a little bit like they were spinning and wobbling, and then I was able to put it down without it like crashing, but it still took. All of my effort. And I would say I did have like a mini crash in December when the last round of side hustle finished from December to mid-January.

I like was in a, like a turtle in its shell. I didn't wanna think about my business, I didn't wanna talk about it. I couldn't get any creative spark about it. And so I would say I did have that kind of crash, but I held out until after. My programs were over, like after I didn't have to hold the space for people.

And I'm sure a lot of you get it, like you're holding space for how many clients a week and you're just waiting for that weekend when you don't have sessions. And that's how I felt. I was like, I just waiting for this program to end so that I can go crash. 

I made the decision to start scaling my business. There really are three distinct phases of, of business. There's building the business, there's growing the business, and then there's scaling the business. And for me, the difference between growing and scaling was obvious, right? Building. It feels is like the experimental phase.

And for me it feels very like nerve wracking as somebody who's a little bit more anxious. Is this gonna work? Is this gonna work? And then when you're in the growing phase, you're like, okay, this is working. This is working. It's proven. People want it, people are paying for it, people are getting results from it, which is the most important part.

It's working. And so that was the growing phase is when I really settled into. Okay. I know what I do. I know what my programs are. And so from going from growing to scaling, it's basically putting lighter fluid on what's working. It's, this is awesome. Now let's do more of it. So I had to put some things in place in order to be able to scale that.

I knew I wanted to build out my ascension model, your ascension model is basically the progression of your offers. How does somebody start working with you and how do you keep them continuing to work with you?

Because it's cheaper and easier to retain a customer than it is to go out and get a new customer. Every single time . It was just open to side hustle grads who wanted to continue working on. Growing and scaling what they had built inside Hustle. So I had three programs and that's a really good amount for an Ascension model. So once it was up and running and proven, It was time to automate it, and it was time to scale out of it or scale it as if this is sounding familiar.

This is a k a like passive income. I felt I was ready. My offers were proven. People were getting results, people were enjoying them. People were readily paying for them. I thought it was time to move toward more passive income, and so this really became the goal. How do I automate this? How do I scale it, ramp it up, and how do I step back from it a little bit more? Okay, so in order to do this, I had to do a few different things. I had to get systems and processes in place, and this was a big adjustment, which is crazy because you're like the systems girl, but I had to get systems and processes in place.

What I had been doing previously, I had an amazing podcast editor named Brandy. You guys have heard me talk about her on the show before. And what was cool about Brandy is she would get my episodes ready for Monday. I could record for Brandy sometimes on a Saturday. If I had a busy week with the girls, if something went wrong, if one of them got sick or whatever, I'd be like, Hey Brandy, the episode's coming on Saturday and she's, you can get it to me on Sunday if you want.

It was, there was a lot more flexibility in it, but you can't scale that. It's not systematized. It's not. Um, measurable. And so I decided to make a change and I hired, um, a marketing agency. This woman named Hailey, who I had followed for years. We started in the online business space at the same time, five, six years ago, and I've, I've known her, I've used her free resources for years, and she's been incredible.

And so when I was ready to bring on a person in this role or an agency in this role, I. I knew hands down who I was going to wanna work with, and Haley's been fantastic. However, I needed to switch to her system and her process, which makes complete sense, right? Her agency has deadlines, her agency has timelines.

She has contractors and subcontractors doing jobs for her. But it was hard. It was really hard for me to go from being able to do what I needed to do when I needed to do it, and if it needed to be a Saturday night or whatever it could be to go from having to tighten that up to tighten that ship. It was difficult now, even this week, right?

It was an adjustment and I felt like I had already been adjusting all year. And so it was like just one thing. The next thing that I had to do, um, was hire people. I've never hired anybody before. I've never fired anybody before, which I had to do, and so this was stressful from the firing was stressful from an emotional standpoint, the hiring. The hiring was easy and I think that I took it too lightly, which ended up why I had to fire people.

So the first person I had to let go was Brandy, like that podcast editor who had, I guess I technically had hired her before, but we just were like chatting in a Facebook group and I was like, Hey, do you wanna do my podcast? She's sure. So it was really informal and it ended up being a really great relationship. So I feel like I got lucky with that and I went into the other hiring processes, like hiring other people with that same approach and it didn't work. Letting go of brandy sucked because she didn't do anything wrong. Like at all. My podcasts were edited. They were edited on time, they were put where they were supposed to be.

They got to you guys. And I had that flexibility of, hey, sorry I'm running late. And she was like, no problem. So to say I'm going in a different direction. Sucked. Like it sucked. There was, there was no, if she had screwed up, it would've been different. I would've been like, Hey, this isn't working. Sorry, bye.

But just to say, I'm, I'm going in a different direction. That's better for my business. It was hard, right? So I had to get rid of her. Move into the agency model with Hailey. It's been fabulous. Hailey takes things off of my plate that I used to do, or that Brandy used to do, but she's added a lot to my plate that I don't have to do. So it's great. It was the right decision, but it was a huge change. The other team members that I decided to bring on were just support me in side hustle. So speaking of scaling, the first round of side hustle, I had nine students. The second I had 13, the third I had 21 and 21 was like, Okay.

This is a lot because inside of Side Hustle, all of the copy that you write, your entire sales page, all of the emails, everything that gets professionally reviewed and it with 21 people, it was reviewed by me and all of the graphics and the design and the sales pages you design and the landing pages you designed, the opt-ins you design were professionally reviewed by me. So with 21 people, I was like, there's no way I can keep doing this. I just can't. I was not getting them high quality reviews back that I wanted to. It was not the quality that I wanted to give them. And it also took an enormous amount of time. So when the June, 2020 round ha started and there were 28 people, I was like, I, there's no way, like with 21 was hard, 28.

No way. So I quickly brought on a designer and a, um, copywriter for the program, and it, I say quickly because I had no idea. That I was gonna have that many people inside hustle. This was just covid happened, quarantine shutdown happened in March in April, and this was June. I had no idea that it was gonna be my highest selling round ever.

So when I started seeing the numbers and started seeing people come in, I was like, Uh, I gotta respond to this. And so I brought on a, a designer named Shayna, and she was the perfect fit. I brought her on in the same way that I brought on Brandy. I was like, I talked, I started with my coach and I said, Hey, I need these two roles. Do you know anybody? And she's, yeah, let's try this person. Her name is Erin. Let's try her for the design role. Reached out to Erin and said, Hey, I want this on Squarespace, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. She said, I left Squarespace for Shopify. I'm now a Shopify expert, but I have the perfect person for you. Her name is Shayna.

Hopped on Zoom with Shayna, and we were just like, BFFs. We, it was just, it was perfect fit and so she became the designer for the program. What Shayna did for this round was she did all those critiques and those reviews. Now for the nine month round, Shayna has a a way bigger role. She's designed an entire website for us.

She's designed multiple branding kits. She's designed all of the graphics and templates and everything that's now included in the new program. So Shayna got a much bigger role. I also brought on a copywriter. This copywriter is someone that I had been in masterminds with before we got along. We had very similar ideologies and things like that, and so I thought it was gonna be a fit.

I didn't, I had never worked with her before, but we knew each other. We'd been in programs before. We'd learned together, we'd interacted with each other and it wasn't a fit. Again, I brought her on quickly and said, Hey, I need somebody to do this role. Would you do this? She actually did the role in other programs.

As a support person in other people's programs. So I was like, okay, she knows what she's doing. Personality wise, it ended up not being a fit. The quality of work she was giving back the time, the turnaround time, it, it wasn't a fit. And behind the scenes, I was having multiple conversations with her and being like, Hey, I'm trying to figure out what's going on. This doesn't seem to be working. But what I learned from those experiences. I don't know if I'm like, I know I'm not a great manager, like I don't like this hiring, firing stuff. I don't like it at all. So I know I'm not a great manager, but I wasn't really being a great leader either because at first I was trying really hard. For the students not to notice that the copywriter was failing and it didn't work. The students noticed the copywriter was failing, and that was so the copywriter not working out was another straw. The students noticing, I would say, was like the straw that broke the camel's back because I was so ashamed.

I felt like I had failed them. I felt like I had screwed everything up and there were a few students who were quite angry at me and. Made it very clear that they were angry at me. And that I think is what kind of started me, my burnout, the emotional reaction to the fact that I had let people down, that I had like really screwed up.

I, I had to let the copywriter go, but at this point there was like a month left in the program and. I reached out to Shayna and I said, Hey, Shayna, we work really well together. Our personalities seem to be a fit. Do you know somebody who is a copywriter and might feel might fit this team well? And she's, you know what I do?

I know a really great person. This person's name is Kristen. I hired a lot more slowly, I was a lot more, a lot more hesitant to bring her on. And so with the current students, I, I interviewed her. On Zoom. Zoom. And then I had her do a tryout. I had her do some critiques and some reviews of the students' assets that had been left and abandoned by this other copywriter.

And I, and I asked those students to give me honest feedback, was this better than the other person? Did you enjoy this? Did this, was this helpful? Is this what you were expecting? What you want? Kind of thing. And they all gave me positive feedback about Kristen. And then I interviewed her again. So, And then I decided to bring her on and she is the copywriter inside the nine month round of side hustle.

And she seems to be a great fit so far. Sometimes you just don't get it right the first time. And when I think about the leadership, my, uh, what I would've done differently immediately was when I noticed that an the. Copywriter wasn't working. I should have gone directly to the students instead of trying to make it work.

I should have gone directly to the students if I, I was contracted with this copywriter, which is what made it diff difficult. So it's another thing I wouldn't do. I would not sign a, like a term-based, a time-based contract where I'm paying monthly for a certain amount of. Time cuz I still had to pay this person even though they weren't doing their job.

And so I was trying to make it work from a profit standpoint. I didn't wanna be out this money, but from a leadership standpoint, I should have not tried to make it work. I should have just come to the students directly when there was a problem. So, Huge learning curve and just, I felt like a lot of emotional weight, uh, a lot of emotional weight from that decision and from the fallout of that decision.

So that is really, what kind of what set me into a burnout place and ashamed and a disappointed in myself place.

Hey risers. We are all here listening today because we're craving that lighter lifestyle that's possible when we repurpose and repackage our clinical skills into an online income stream. But none of us is alone when we realize we have 25 plus ideas floating around in our head and zero clue how to take the first step.

The truth is there are a lot of different types of programs we can offer online. And each one will help us scale beyond one-on-one clients so we can start claiming a bit more time and financial freedom. And every online income stream has subtle nuances that makes it different than other revenue sources.

Each income stream requires something a little bit different from you and it's wise to take a look at things like your work style, your values, and your business goals before you decide which type of program you want to offer. So whether you're thinking about adding, coaching, a digital course, or even a retreat, gaining some insight into which type of program is best for you will make it so much easier to get started.

And that's why I made a really fun quiz. In 10 pinpoint questions, you'll take a look at things like the work that lights you up outside of the therapy room and how comfortable you are with marketing and visibility. And at the end you'll see which type of online income stream is right for you, so you can move forward with the clarity and confidence to make it happen.

Just head on over to marissa lawton.com/quiz to take the first step in building the business and the lifestyle that you crave.

So I mentioned that like, My crash, like I waited to crash. I held on as long as I could until the program was over, and then after that, there were two to three weeks, like I said, like where I was like a turtle in a shell. I didn't, I couldn't, it wasn't that I didn't want to, it's like literally I couldn't, anytime I tried to access a creative spot in my brain or even an uplifting spot in my brain thinking about my business, it, it didn't happen.

It like I, my brain was like, Nope. We're not thinking about that. We're not going there. So I literally couldn't think about that. We did TR decide to travel for the holidays. We were very, I. Careful and took as many precautions as we could, but I knew for my mental health I needed to go home. So we ended up going home for two weeks in December.

It was great to have grandparents that could watch my kids for the first time all year. For the first time all year. I was not like a. Full-time parent. So in those two weeks I finally was able to relax. Like I finally was able to let to, to unwind and to let some things melt off of me and I think that really helped.

So after those two weeks, it was really maybe 10 days in, I had a few, we had a few days left in Arizona where I was able to access. My business again, to start thinking about what's gonna happen, what do I want, what's next year gonna look like? All of this stuff. And the first thing that I had to become really clear on was my goals

 My business has grown revenue wise. The amount of money I've made has grown substantially since it started, so, I started in August of 2017, and if anybody, if any of you listening, have been with me that long, I started by writing websites and by writing blogs for other therapists. Other therapists would be like, I need a website, but I don't know how to do it.

And I was like, well, I can't design it for you, but I can write the whole thing for you. And in that, I did that in 2017 and 2018. In that year and four months, I wrote over 10,000 words, so I wrote two books. In that time, in 2017, I made 12 grand, but that is also the year that I hosted holiday, happy Hour, because even four months into this, I was like, I know I can't do writing for other people, like creating it for other people.

I know I couldn't do that long term. It was a great foot in the door, but it wasn't what I was gonna do long term. So I had holiday happy hour at the end of 2017, and in 2018 I launched my first program, which was Cathartic Marketing. And so in 2018, and then at the end of 2018, in, in December of 2018, I launched the first round of side hustle.

So in a year and four months, I pivoted three times. This is why when you guys hear me talk about, just start. Just start. Take your first idea to market and let's go. Let's get something to market. Let's get your side hustle running, and then we can change it. I changed three time in a year, three times in a year and four months, but in 2018 I made $68,000, which, have never seen that amount of money in my life. It's more than my mom ever made in her life when she was working. It's more than I was raised on, and I know we're all talking about six figures, and we're all talking about la, la, la, la, la. But $68,000 was life changing for me. It was life changing for my family, so life changing for me, and it opened my mind to what was possible.

I thought before that, I thought if you made 40 grand a year like you were doing all right. So to make $68,000, I was like, holy crap. Like I was blown away and I was also like, let's do it. If this is possible, what else is possible? I was like, a 400% growth or something like that, like 12,000 to 68,000. I don't know.

I could do the math from 2018 to 2019, or sorry, in 2019, I ran two rounds of side hustle. I round ran one round of cathartic marketing. I completely dropped any one on one in 2019. And then by the second launch of Side Hustle, I had dropped Cathartic Marketing Side Hustle became the only thing I did. And in 2019, I made $125,000.

It was 84% growth, 84% growth. In 2020, I grew another 84%. So I am officially in the multi six figures with this business now. So when I was looking at 2021 and thinking back to when I made 68,000 and how life-changing that was, I was like, do I need to make any more money this year? Do I need to have another 84% growth?

And I looked at myself honestly and I was like, I don't, I could even make a little bit less money this year and be great, be great on what our financial goals are for our family, which I've, I've mentioned before is we have four and a half years left in the Army and I want to have the cash to build our house when Josh retires so that we have no mortgage after Army retirement.

So that's our financial goals. And so I could make a little bit less in 2021 and still hit the number that I need to get, be on track for that big goal in four and a half years. This was crazy for an Enneagram three for me to say, I don't need to achieve something. In fact, I can go backwards if I want to, and that's what it would be like in my mind.

Now what's really cool is with Hailey on my team and with these systems in place, I can scale, I am completely built and set up to scale. So I'm cool. I'm cool with just hanging out where I'm at right now, which feels very different and very new. So this is gonna feel like a little bit of a tangent, but I promise it's going to make sense.

There's an unbelievable amount of parallel processing or par parallel process that happens when you move into an online business. I think I'm gonna actually do a whole episode about this cause I think it's fascinating, but. I notice it in my students all the time, and I ex it like it was extreme for me during this burnout.

When you step into online business, your niche, and this is true in therapy too, but because of the boundaries of therapy, it's not always the same, but your niche is usually five years ago, 10 years ago, or whatever. So you're already talking to a version of yourself. So that opens up for this parallel process.

But in an online business, you're often also building a personal brand. So you're often sharing stories of yourself or sharing bits of your life or behind the scenes of your family, or doing episodes like this where you're sharing things about yourself. So you've removed all of the red tape and all of the regulations from the therapy industry, and you can really bring yourself fully into your business.

And it happens over and over again at each level that you reach because your first niche might be you five years ago, and then two years from now, it's your niche still only five years behind you. So your niche has moved up and it's like this staggered thing. But as you progress, your niche tends to progress as well.

And so it's all, you're always, every time you up level or every time you get to a new stage, you're still parallel processing. And this is absolutely. What happened to me and it's actually this that brought me out of the burnout, and this is what I think is really cool and really fascinating because I've always known, like my programs work.

It's always really nice to hear that external validation. And as an Enneagram three, I crave some external validation for sure, but this was an instance where I. Got some really cool internal validation. It came from me and it was pretty, pretty cool. So in the fall I had created a challenge called the Side Hustle Schedule Challenge, and many of you might have participated in that.

And the idea was to find time for your side hustle. Everybody comes to me and says, I don't have time. Like I, I want to start side hustle. I wanna shrink my caseload, I wanna move beyond the therapy room, but I don't have the time to even get started. And so I was like, I can help with that. And I think it's pretty profound what happened inside of the challenge.

The funny thing is that I needed the challenge at the exact time I was teaching it mid-October is when I needed the challenge. I didn't really necessarily need to find the time. I have a lot of time to give to my business, but I needed to reconnect with my values and I needed to utilize my time better because that's what the side hustle schedule challenge.

Did was it helped us, like day one was identify your values. Day two was turn your values into non-negotiables. Day three was like put the non-negotiables on your calendar, right? So it's a values-based schedule that shows you how much time you have left for your side hustle. Of course, I didn't recognize that I needed this in October I was just so deep in everything like spinning out of control that I didn't realize I needed to sit down and do. Look at my values and look at my time and look at the way I was living, and it probably would've helped, right? Early intervention. We all know the power of early intervention. What if I had intervened earlier, but hindsight?

But I did sit down and go through this exact curriculum in January when after we got home from Arizona. I started being able to think about business again and thinking about goals. I went through this exact curriculum and this exact workbook. I brought out the workbook. I had my planner right next to each other, and I was literally doing it.

And by going through my own process and looking back at the lessons that I've been talking about so far, there's some things that I'm drastically changing. So the first thing that I'm changing, Is that I cut out the Mastermind, if you remember, a few minutes ago, I said there's always been a, a Mastermind on the back end of side hustle for the graduates.

It broke my heart to stop this mastermind. It broke my heart. Because it was probably my favorite program. I had already worked with these people for six months and seen their ideas come to life, and then I really got to see them flourish in the Mastermind. And it was just, it was beautiful and, I feel like the relationships built in, there are relationships that I'm going to have for life.

Like I really connected with some of the people that were in the Mastermind. I still believe that there's an offer there. I still believe that there's something that can come after side hustle. 

The next thing that I'm doing is I'm embracing this batching schedule, which is pretty radical for me. I really am much more of a fan of time blocking than I am of batching, but I think what I realized was I was not getting far enough ahead. With my batch schedule, I was trying to batch last minute, and that's why I was so reluctant and it was so difficult for me. So I'm embracing this batching and I'm starting earlier, and I think that makes a big difference because I have.

Enough time to rearrange things around, creating an entire batch of podcast episodes, an entire batch of newsletter, emails, an entire batch of social media stuff. I'm not doing that Hailey doing that, but I have to edit them in a batch. So, I had to fit into Hailey process. It was really hard for me, but I had to figure out a way to be able to do it because it was the best for the business.

And so I needed to reframe this. I needed to figure out how I could embrace this. And starting earlier is number one thing. Now, what's awesome about finally embracing the batching is that I only work one week a month. I only work on marketing, let me rephrase that. I only work on marketing one week a month.

So on Monday I outline the four podcast episodes. On Tuesday, I record them, and then on Thursday I write the four emails for my list. So I'm like 80% done for the month. The only other things I have all month are that space holder call, the side hustle calls, but when side hustle is not in session. Like in November, December, and January of this year, when side hustle is not in session, I'll have nothing.

I'll have a space holder call and that's it. And so that's gonna feel really freaking great. The other thing that I needed to do to be able to embrace batching is I needed to sync it with my cycle. One of the reasons that batching hasn't worked for me at all in the past, and it was a rough adjustment for me during the fall was because it was completely out of alignment with my monthly cycle.

Now I've been studying cycles sinking for about a year after I did fertility treatment with my daughter to get pregnant with Sawyer, my oldest. It became really clear to me that I had no idea how to live according to my cycle. So it's been something that's important to me for a while, but I've, I've been studying how to do this for a year now.

And what I really know is that I have a terrible luteal phase. So this is the phase after you ovulate like typical PMs. But I don't have typical PMs, bitchiness or whatever. I have zero energy. I have zero focus. It's every day feels like more of a slog. And so I'm changing what I eat during this phase and I'm changing how I exercise during this phase, and I'm doing some things to balance this out, but it is not the time for me to be, I.

Creating and doing things repetitively over and over again that I have to focus on and I have to show up for. So what Haley and I decided we worked together to figure this out is I moved my batch week to the first part of my cycle, the, the estrogen phase of my cycle, and it has made an enormous difference.

It's made an enormous difference. Now I can sit down, I can focus, I can show up, I can have the energy to be engaging or whatever, and I can knock it out. That's something that I recommend everybody look into, and if you're a dude and you're listening to this, whether you bend straight or not, not, it's important to know this because these patterns, these rhythms, These cycles, they're real.

And if they don't affect you, they affect someone that you love and someone that you care for. So being in sync with your cycle, or even your partner's cycle, I promise it will make a huge difference. I, it's been life changing for me and, and it's starting to be business changing for me. So it's something that I am really happy to talk more about if you wanna reach out and, and ask me questions about it.

But it's made a big difference for me. I've actually, the other thing that I've changed is I've embraced hiring now that things are working with Hailey, now that things and things have always worked with Shayna, but now that things are working with Kristen, I'm like, wow, employees are cool. This is neat. To delegate and to outsource, like, I'm digging this, I was really turned off by the experience after, with a copywriter and side hustle it, it feels like it almost broke my business.

Now I've talked to other side Hustle students and they've been like, it wasn't that big of a deal, but for me it was the biggest deal. It was the biggest deal. It was like egg on my face times 25. It was a big deal for me, but I just kept remembering like Shayna and what it was like to have the right fit and to feel that relief and even some comradery with somebody on my team.

So I needed, again to reframe this so I re, I had to reframe batching. I also had to reframe. Hiring, right? How much time I was getting back by having these people in these roles, huge. How much energy I was getting back. Huge. Especially during that luteal phase where I'm already naturally more or less energetic, like how much of that was I getting back and also how much more money.

I can make right with these kind of menial, but they're not. They're not menial. They're huge. They're my entire business, but tasks that I don't need to do, that's a better way to say it, with these tasks that I don't need to be the person doing taken care of by experts in their field and people who do it way better than me.

By those being taken care of, I can show up and pour into the things that I do much better. The last thing that I'm doing is I'm embracing this lull, right? Like I said, if in April I wanna hit the gas, or in June or September or whatever, if I want to hit the gas, I can't. And my business is now set up to do that with the right team members in place and with the right systems in place.

And it's really cool, but I don't want to right now. So embracing this lull, getting some energy back, getting some confidence. Back, quite frankly, some confidence in myself and in my business. Getting that back, I know that when I am ready, I will and can skyrocket, I can hit that gas anytime I want when I'm ready.

So it's nice to have let go of some of the pressure to have let go of some of the need to achieve and to just, to just trust that it will, it'll be there when I'm ready for it. It's pretty cool. Okay. This was a lot. It's a lot to share. It's a lot to go back and talk through a lot of stuff that I just didn't wanna look at cuz it was embarrassing or scare me or sucky.

But I think it was important. I think the. Biggest thing that I needed was this values-based wake up call. I needed to admit that what I was doing was really the direct antithesis to what I wanted to be doing. I still was only working the 16 hours a week, and I still had this time freedom and these things that I talk about, but.

It didn't feel the way I wanted to feel, so I needed to tune into what I did want and I needed to build my business around that, and I needed to make some changes. And like I said, it's still new, it's still changing. I could be back in a few months with an update of, okay, here's what I'm doing now. But I think sharing this, I think sharing the missteps and sharing.

Where I felt ashamed or sharing where I felt embarrassed, mistakes I made, I think it's valuable for you guys. So my, my biggest lesson for this and what I wanna pass on is make sure that your values are the center, that your non-negotiables are the center of everything you're doing. That should be the core and everything else should come after that.

This is really why I decided to turn that challenge that I ran in the fall into a program. So Side Hustle Schedule is now going to be a program that's available for everybody. It's a mini course designed to help you find the time and the space to pursue your side hustle. But oh my gosh, it's so much more than that.

It's so much more than that. It's the exact curriculum that I taught in the fall. And it's the exact process that I use to start thinking about this restructuring that I'm bringing to my business. And what's cool is now you can grab it and you can use it any time that you need it. When you get this mini course, you're gonna start exploring what is non-negotiable to you and in your life, and what you want to build your business around, not what you want to build around your business.

That's the biggest thing here. Let's figure out what you wanna build your business around. Not what you want to build around your business. What's cool too is you come up with an actual calendar, you're, it's gonna show you where you have white space to put something new. You do have time to build a side hustle.

I guarantee it. Mathematically you have time, but it's about where is that time and how do you wanna utilize it, and are you already accounting for the things that matter more? And then building the side hustle and then building the business. If you feel called to get it, if you feel like you need it, you can grab it at marissalawton.com/schedule.

All right guys. I think I'm gonna have a vulnerability hangover today, so I'm gonna go nurse that. But I will see you soon and talk with you soon. And until then, keep on rising. 

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