How are you supposed to show up when you’re feeling overwhelmed? I can tell you from experience, if you’re in the exhaustion zone, you’re not going to be creative with your content, and you’re not going to be able to show up in a way that’s valuable for your audience.
In today’s episode, I talk about the overwhelm that can happen when you’re building a health coaching business and, more specifically, how to notice when it’s coming so you can take action and prevent burnout from ever happening. I also explain where overwhelm usually comes from, how to create a content plan that works while you rest, why creating balance in your life is key to reducing overwhelm, and what hitting pause can look like for each of us.
Hey there, guys, it is Rachel Feldman. Today I want to talk about overwhelm and stress when you are building this business. This past year, I went through some burnout, which is something that I know really well because I’ve suffered from Adrenal Fatigue before.
With this climate in this time that we’re going through, I’ve not only seen myself, but I’ve seen so many entrepreneurs talk about content burnout, business burnout, health, burnout, emotional burnout. I think that it’s safe to say that we all need to figure out how to work and not feel overwhelmed.
This is also a great topic for anyone starting their business or when you’re growing your business and that is that we have a tendency to feel overwhelmed when we’re being pushed out of our comfort zone. So in today’s episode, I want to talk about how being productive is a learned skill.
I will also tell you, my super pug Olive is here, because she’s actually in my office today, she was barking up a storm. So if you hear Olive snowing, it’s just that kind of day. I will say also, I had to push through some fear. I went to plug in my Yeti podcast speaker, and it’s not working. So I just had to say, You know what? Fuck it. And it’s something that I believe I’m saying a lot, because we can get to that point where we’re like, Oh, my God, it has to be so freakin perfect.
You know what I’m talking about that perfection where we feel like, well, if it’s not perfect, I’m just not going to do it. But the thing is that we don’t learn how to be productive. Unless we do. Now that balance of the overwhelm.
Where Our Overwhelm Comes From
Let’s just talk about where overwhelm comes from. We need to have a plan, we need to have a system in place and a plan in place. And for coaches, that is a list-building plan. We need a social media plan, we need a plan for how we’re bringing awareness to our business. So it can get overwhelming.
So let’s even talk about just bringing people and having them get to know us. I always say have that plan in place for what list builders or workshops that you’re going to use, keep it really simple. The overwhelm comes when the fear stops. That’s when we step into that perfectionism imposter syndrome, comparison syndrome, all those syndromes.
What I want you to say is the Fuckit syndrome, where you actually say, I’m going to just do it, and I’m going to do it without this perfection.
How To Make Your List Builder Work For You & How You Want To Show Up
I’m going to get this list builder up, I’m going to do a video on this list builder. So I can actually share about what are the benefits of my potential client downloading this list builder and actually joining my list.
You can also promote your list builder and just say, here DM me. Get somebody into that conversation whether on or pm me on Facebook. I have so many more conversations truthfully on Facebook, it’s also where I have my Facebook group for health coaches. I love Instagram, but I haven’t exactly figured out how to hack those algorithms. I find that having those conversations on Facebook, where I originally built my business, has been extremely, not only lucrative, but it’s something I’m definitely comfortable with.
Make sure that when you do that workshop, you might be saying, well, should it be a workshop? Should be a masterclass? Should it be free? Should it be paid? In the beginning, I am definitely for free workshops. It’s not to say that you can’t have a list builder leading to a low-cost paid masterclass. A masterclass is usually about 45 minutes to 60 minutes of very high-value information.
Why You Need To Consider Your Audience
I encourage you to do screen sharing and people are very visual, even though we’re doing a podcast right now. But I would say when you’re trying to educate, inform and convert that client to a paid option, it’s going to be much more advantageous to have a masterclass form.
But guys take a workshop. Say what are some titles that I can do that my ideal client is looking for? What are those problems? Do a search on YouTube, and that just takes typing in a few words. YouTube will actually give you the name and the title of that workshop that is most looked for.
What I always did is I took blogs, those were great workshops, great lives. I’m wonderful when it comes to screen sharing a PowerPoint, but I’m not as great just doing audio on a PowerPoint. So for me, I love doing visual. I didn’t do it today. I felt like it was just one of those days that it wasn’t a video day and that’s about doing it without perfection.
So there needs to be this balance. We talked about having the system and plans. We don’t want to get into what is list building today, what platform is best for social media marketing, I would just say this, at the end of the day, look to where your ideal client is looking to get their problem solved and where they do their research.
I do love Instagram, I love Facebook. I’m not a big Tik Tokker. But I’ve seen coaches have success on every different platform. So you have to find the one that really speaks to you. But most importantly, where your ideal client hangs out.
What It Looks Like To Step Back, Press Pause, & Find That Balance
I want today to be about this balance between your personal and your business needs. Sometimes you’ve got to hit that pause button. I hope not during a launch. But sometimes we get really overwhelmed and you just kind of sometimes step back.
Now you might say that’s complete BS Rach. How am I supposed to show up when I’m feeling overwhelmed and take and hit a pause? Sometimes we have to actually step back and create that boundary, to have that peace, to have actually that quiet time to get reengaged to not be burnout. It’s something that I did this year.
I actually stepped back from social media, made sure that I repurposed videos into seven pieces of content, made sure that I was even going into content that I’d written years ago and repurposing that. And staying up with my social media, but I wasn’t on one of those ongoing, need to be in every story, I made sure.
That’s where having a plan in place, that I have list builders and that I have no workshops that I can repurpose, but I kept going all year with my list building strategy. And that really worked out to be a great strategy. There were even times that I had to take pause on social media, because I just felt exhausted. In the exhaustion zone, we’re not going to be creative.
So sometimes you gotta hit that you hit that tipping point and having a plan in place for recovery and rest so that you don’t end up with even more stress. Make sure you’re taking your sink, make sure you’re taking your B vitamins, make sure you’re taking in adrenal support. I personally love the ancestral supplements, grass-fed beef liver. This has been a really great game changer for me when I’ve been exhausted.
We all know ashwagandha is an adrenal supplement to keep your body strong while you’re going through some of these stressful times. But that’s while having a plan in place. Know how to avoid that stress and burnout, what personal day you need to take on the weekend, what you need to do to fill back up that bucket so that you don’t get into that burnout. You want to stay productive and staying productive also really helps when you have a plan.
How To Lead Up To A Launch Without Overwhelm
I just sent a personal message to a coach yesterday. She was like I want to launch. I said, Well, let’s decide first, do you want to launch a group? Are you launching for your one on one business? Secondly, what are the dates you’re launching? If you’re launching still to get Discovery sessions, you still have to have your list-building strategy in place to be able to attract your ideal client for your discovery session.
I said then go into the program that you bought from us, which was the new weight loss program and pick out some of the problems and the solutions that are talked about in that program. And then start talking about that for two weeks.
As you bleed into what are the solutions and go into a solution a day while you’re promoting. It’s much easier to do that and start showing up. Show the behind the scenes, show the program. Show yourself eating the recipes. The screw you diet mentality. Show your family eating it so you show a family-friendly because her ideal client is a mom and talk about some of those mom lows.
Don’t Be Afraid To Hit Pause & Reset, Whatever That Looks Like
I know for myself, my husband wasn’t feeling great. He’s a stay-at-home dad. And the other day I had all the responsibilities on myself and doing a business and I think moms by nature just put themselves last. So I was feeling drained after that day and what I did is I took an Epsom salt bath, I put in some essential oils. I also did an essential oil rub down with some of my favorite oils like patchouli and frankincense and wild orange and put some deep blue which is one of the oils that I use from doTERRA.
I just needed to hit that pause I also watch my favorite reality TV show, which can be like New Amsterdam. This is us I’m in love with Yellowjackets and Station 11. So sometimes I just need to sit there and veg out in front of reality TV or some great episodes like I just mentioned.
Burnout when caught early is less damaging to us mentally and financially. But what do we need to do to show up and not feel overwhelmed, we need to create a highly productive plan, a process for our business. We need to be realistic with ourselves that we can accomplish that, especially as we’re going into goal setting for 2022.
So I want to ask you right now, do you think that it would be easy to take a workshop to a pre-recorded video, upload that to YouTube and in the description, use some of the verbiage from the workshop with a call to action to download a freebie? The answer is yes, that would be pretty simple.
Don’t underestimate how you can show up without feeling that overwhelmed. When you have a plan. Make sure that you’re not just doing things to stay busy.
How To Repurpose Content So You Show Up Without The Overwhelm
I hear a lot of coaches will say to me on Discovery calls. Well, I just spent a lot of time learning this one platform. I say, what if you spent more time learning the content, writing down the 10 problems your ideal client has, and then thinking about what transformation solution, that workshop that freebie or that social media post has?
So make sure that you’re actually sitting there and really reverse engineering from what you’re showing up with, so that you don’t feel overwhelmed and anxious. Most importantly, if you’re looking to find clients, look offline, there are tons of places. Even in this climate where we have the cove will just say that the vid that there are so many places that are looking for entrepreneurs, wellness entrepreneurs, like yourself to show up and talk about different topics.
Everyone’s dealing with stress and self-care and self-confidence and sleep issues and weight gain or weight loss, autoimmune or mono imbalances. There are so many places that you can find that you can actually do a workshop, or even do a blog for them and lead them at the end of the blog is a call to action to sign up for your list builder. Hint Hint, see how I keep saying that we want to build your list, we want to make sure that it’s super easy to get people on your list. But you’ve got to give them high-value content to attract them.
You can also ask somebody if you can do a newsletter takeover, take a blog post or buy our newsletter package and actually do a newsletter for another, for an office or chiropractors, a spa, a health food store, a doctor’s office. So many of these places are looking for coaches just like you.
How Do We Show Up When We’re Feeling Overwhelmed?
We have to make priorities a key. I really encourage you to make a calendar, think about showing up for an hour and a half each morning, and dedicating an hour and a half each day.
Then maybe taking a Saturday and doing your editing for your program, work for your list builders. But really taking that time. An hour and a half each morning. Or if you’re a night person. I’m definitely not a night person. I am asleep by 930, snd that is dead asleep. I’m an early morning person, I have no problem waking up at 530 if I need to these days, though, to recover from Adrenal Fatigue, I have been sleeping in late. And that’s really been a game changer.
Make sure that you work in breaks into the schedule and recovery time. If you’re sitting there and that sneaky overwhelm and burnout comes up and you’re feeling overwhelmed. Ask yourself, you know what? Am I giving myself enough breaks? I like to do a one hour work period 20 minute break so that you know that you’re going to get your work accomplished. Make sure it’s not just busywork, make sure it’s work that you actually need to get accomplished for one of your processes and your strategies.
Find Out Where The Stress & Overwhelm Are Coming From
But most importantly, when you’re feeling overwhelmed, ask yourself where does this fear come from? This might be a fear that has been plaguing you for your whole life. It’s might be a fear, or overwhelm or a way of reacting to your to-do list or your vision board or the things that you need to get accomplished.
Maybe that stress is a learned behavior. I want you to really ask yourself, Where does this come from? Is the stress and the overwhelm real? Are you dealing with just some of the imposter syndrome feelings that come up like I’m not going to be good enough, maybe this isn’t going to be perfect. Maybe I’m not going to be able to sound smart.
These are fears that are going to show up when we’re playing outside of our comfort zone. So make sure that you are balancing that work in that life. And thinking about that one hour to an hour and a half power hour in the morning.
How To Create Balance To Reduce Overwhelm
Create that balance. Different tasks have different mental loads and take more energy, physical and mental. In other words, not all tasks are created equal. Learn when you have your high energy and low energy tasks and pairing them appropriately with the recovery time will help to reduce overblown overwhelm.
For example, if you know that you need to shoot videos, maybe you want to shoot those videos on a Saturday, if you have kids, or if you’re working nine to five, you need to have this high energy. What times in the day do you have that higher energy, then you might have tasks that take low energy, like following up with people on emails following up with people who attended a workshop or monitoring your Facebook group.
I talked to a coach the other day, she put all that overwhelm to the side to create a Facebook group has 55 people already in it and is decided the masterclass that she’s going to launch in there and lead them to her low-cost offer. To me that sounds like a plan.
What You Tell Yourself Matters
So ask yourself, What plan do you have in place so that you can get those 2022 goals accomplished? Plus, you’re not doing it with overwhelm, and burnout, and you’re making sure that you start to schedule your week.
It all starts when you wake up, I think this is the big thing, when we wake up, be conscious of that self-talk that you’re telling yourself. Be conscious of the habits that you have in the morning. It’s been proven that a person has attributed their success to that strong morning routines. Our brains are fresh in the morning. And this is when you can do that hour that I talked about, to really get some things accomplished, such as posting on social media, putting a blog together, putting a newsletter together, working on program edits, doing videos on the days that you feel really high energy, doing Discovery calls in your high energy day, and making sure that you have your plan in place.
The first step is to create a plan that will help you build balance efficiently instability in your life. And your business is organizing your time, make sure that you’re organizing your time for your business, but you’re also time blocking your time for your downtimes.
Overcoming The Overwhelm So You Can Show Up On Social Media
I talked to a coach the other day, and she just said I don’t know what to sound the video and I said, Well, what if you even start with just an introduction video? Think about it. Are you saying enough things? Or are you? Are you feeling like it needs to be perfect to show up that you’re not actually doing this great introduction, video, or even introducing yourself and your social media?
Make sure that people get to know you. I think so often we hide because we feel that fear. We think Well, I’m not going to get hired. But what if you do? I have a coach in my membership. We did a month on social media. And we were talking about just showing up with imperfect action because she was overwhelmed. She felt like she was halted in her business.
So as we talked about showing up and just taking the content that she has, and if you have content from us, this can be applicable to any of that content, and doing a video on that content. Showing the recipe that she was making, showing the ingredients for the recipe, and then creating a recipe that speaks to her ideal client.
She did a small story where she said hormone balancing salad for women with Endo. And right away she got a discovery session. Ask yourself how many times in the day are you stopping yourself from just posting because you feel that overwhelm? If you have that plan in action, if you have your systems in place, what is your list-building strategy? Where are you list building? What is the social media that you need to show up?
Also, as I mentioned, knowing when you need to pause. The great thing about having a social media strategy is that once you get your content done, repurposing that content, if you need to, such as the time that I needed to put a little pause, will give you and will allow you to refresh.
Sometimes we only need to pause for a little while. I got myself into a shitload of burnout, and was really whacked my adrenals and really needed to just step back. But I also felt like I was in a growth period where I had forgotten my why. I had forgotten that so much of why I started Rachel’s Wellness was because I was angry at the system.
In this last two years, I just got overloaded and burned out and I was overworking at the beginning of the pandemic, which really just screwed my adrenals 12 to 14 hour days of just analyzing your business and I was reinventing a way that I was working in it. It just had pulled me in too many directions.
The Importance Of Taking A Step Back & What It Can Look Like
Sometimes it’s really important to like step back and really say why am I doing this? What’s my purpose? And remember, don’t let your perfection destroy your dreams. When you start to feel that burnout sit back and say, am I giving myself enough downtime? Am I giving myself enough community? On the weekends? If you’re a person that really likes to be around people? Am I too tired to even do those kinds of things?
When it’s that, sometimes it’s really good to just take a step back and go do some journaling, getting an Epsom salt bath, put some on some essential oils, ask a loved one for a massage, treat yourself to a massage, things like that. You don’t have to go out for yoga, not that yoga isn’t relaxing, but maybe you just need something that’s a little more soul-nourishing. And remember, sometimes it’s really okay to just go into bed, check out your favorite movie, or check out your favorite TV shows reality TV show and hit the pause button.
If you’re feeling that overwhelmed, I think at the end of the day, the biggest takeaway I want you to hear is usually that’s coming from a false reality, or it’s coming from a place where it’s a learned behavior, if it’s just fear, get that courage to just go for it. Get that courage to say, you know what, I’m going to shoot this video. I’m going to just take a chance and I’m going to step outside of my comfort zone. Because I promise you on the other side of your comfort zone is a delicious gift that you’re gonna give yourself.
Alright guys, it’s been a pleasure to be with you. I hope that you have a kick-ass day and I will talk to you soon. Peace out homies.
