Have you ever felt exhausted in your business? To the point that you had nothing left to give?
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This is a truth talk about times when something has to give. I’m talking about a time recently when something just had to change in my business. You can also look at this episode as our mid-year update.
A Little Background
We usually prep for the coming year in October and November, and once we create that plan, we stick to it.
Sticking to the plan is something I take a lot of pride in. This entire process is incredibly important to me and to our business. It is the guiding light of what we do.
For The Ops Authority, the process begins with our launch plan. It is the guiding factor for our revenue. It determines our financial forecast and we build our budget off of it.
When we set our launch plan we always review our metrics from the previous year, look at the timing of our launches the previous year, we look at our volumes from different times of the year, and we review trends so we can build upon that for the upcoming year.
For 2023 we had a plan to do what we had done in 2022 which was to facilitate five launches within the calendar year.
Five launches is less than we have done in the past, but it was really good for us, so we kept all of the dates the same. We all felt really good about this plan.
When we create the timing of these launches, we look at the cycles of our students and when they are actively in learning mode. We want to offer a cohort to start when people are engaged.
We also look at our team’s schedule and my schedule since I produce and deliver the launch content.
I work about 5-10 hours per week in June and July. So for 8-9 weeks out of the year I work minimally because I want to be present for my kids.
“I am working 5-10 hours because I am truly trying to live my values and be my next best self, which means showing up for my family…”
Realizing Something had to Give
What I didn’t know when we were making these plans was that I was going to be exhausted after our event. We had our first ever conference in April called Growth Getters Live, and I produced massive amounts of content for it.
I do launches, presentations, record this podcast, and am a guest on podcasts all of the time, but I didn’t realize how absolutely exhausted I would be after this event.
Because of that I had the hardest time finding motivation to create new content. I had just created essentially 9 masterclasses which took lots of deep thought.
“I had a really hard time finding motivation to create something new because I was exhausted… I felt lost and I honestly wanted to hide.”
After a few weeks of not being able to shake this, I mustered up the courage to have a conversation with my Ops Manager Alex, and I delivered the shocking news. I told her we had to change our plans and that I couldn’t do the launch that was set to begin in six weeks.
“I don’t do anything halfway and at that point I didn’t even know if I could meet halfway.”
I knew this would be a shock to her, and because I was changing things, I knew that there would be a ripple effect within the company.
I pride myself on being really solid, sturdy and transparent. To my surprise Alex looked about as relieved as I did.
During those two weeks I was sitting in limbo before I told Alex, I was actually so miserable. I told myself so many lies; that I was a failure if I didn’t stick to the plan, that my team would think that I was weak, that we would go broke, that I should just quit the whole darn thing. You can see that my mind was down in the dumps.
But I was mentored by so many friends during this time, and they gave me a different perspective.
I had to have a break. The cycles that we had defined in 2022 didn’t know the “me” of April 2023. It didn’t know how hard the event was going to be on me and the team.
Content is draining and I needed a better plan to create it.
I wanted to truly be able to relish the time with my son on the baseball field as he enters his senior year. I envision myself being in these stadiums without having to worry about everything that goes with a launch.
New and Better Plans
Once I came to grips with the decision to do four launches this year rather than five, I did what I do best… I created more plans along with Alex.
I reviewed our financials from a different angle. We cut unnecessary expenses. I evaluated things that we were doing from a metrics perspective vs. an emotional perspective. We have saved about $2000 per month just by looking at the business from a metric perspective, and this helped ease my mind about our financial position.
The greatest thing that I did was to create contingency plans for the business.
“Creating a contingency plan for me was the thing that gave me the biggest breath of air.”
I brainstormed the worst case scenarios, and put it in a real life perspective. What would happen if that thing actually took place? I wrote down what I would do if those things happened, and I prioritized them.
All of this eased my mental load. These worst case scenarios could be dealt with, and some of them had phases. When I put it down like that I realized the sky wasn’t going to fall.
“I started looking at the business from a different angle… some of these things that I was writing down were things that I should have been preparing for and I had not given myself the space…”
Creating the contingency plans gave me the peace of mind that it wasn’t going to go from green to red in a moment’s notice. It gave me a lot of confidence and mental strength to move out of that place of fear and scarcity.
How It’s Been Going
I’m happy to tell you that a month in, our finances are solid. I’ve been way more productive with tasks that I’ve had on the backburner that I’ve been longing to get to, and if we had gone ahead and launched I wouldn’t have gotten to them.
We’ve cut expenses and I have a new lens on lead generation activities that we were missing out on because of bandwidth.
“By taking a step and not launching, not only did I get some time to be with my family this summer, so did my team!”
I wanted to give some ease to my team that works so hard alongside me every day, so I let my full time team members have a four-day work week. At the same time we are all focused on 1-4 projects over these two months and I can’t imagine how much we are going to get done.
We would have never been able to do that if I did not get over the fear and make that hard decision to change up the initial plan of five launches.
As of today we are looking pretty solid, and I am enjoying every single second!
Something had to give… I literally could not continue, and I wanted to share a different side of me. One of my values is transparency, so I wanted to share this with you and give you permission.
You are not a failure, you’re exhausted.
You sometimes need to see the plan as a guide and not be so rigid. And if I would have continued down the path I would have missed out on a wonderful adventure this summer!
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What has had to give for you to be the next best version of yourself? Make sure to share it with us in the Facebook group!
Previous Episodes Mentioned
Episode 203: Contingency Planning
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