Host 0:03
Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here’s your host, Jillian Leslie.

Jillian Leslie 0:10
Hello everyone, welcome back to The Blogger Genius. Today, I’ve got Paula Rollo back on the show, and we are talking how to deal with entrepreneur burnout.

If you are an entrepreneur, I promise you have felt it. If you haven’t felt it, you will feel it. It’s kind of par for the course.

So we’re going to delve in and share our own experiences and, hopefully, you’ll get some ideas of how to think about it, or if you’re feeling it, how not to feel so alone.

Okay, before we get to the episode, I have to say I finally started my personal Instagram account. This is a big deal for me because remember, I’m the person who doesn’t like to put myself out there, doesn’t like to really share, makes me uncomfortable.

And so please, support me in this by following me. My account is @jilliantohberleslie. That’s J-I-L-L-I-A-N, Tohber, T-O-H-B-E-R, Leslie. I’m going to share what it’s like, what my life is like as an entrepreneur, what I’m working on, what new things we’re thinking about at MiloTree.

I’m even going to share David, my elusive partner and husband. And I’ll be sharing what it’s like living here in Austin and cool places that we’re, you know, we just moved here, so it’s cool stuff we’re discovering.

So please, follow me. And that way also, you can reach out to me, you can DM me. I’d love to hear from you. So please go do that.

Even if you have to pause the episode right now. Follow me, @JillianTohberLeslie.

Okay. Now, without further ado, I bring you my discussion on something I think is really important: How to deal with burnout. Paula, welcome back to the show.

Paula Rollo 2:04
Thank you for having me back.

How to Deal with Entrepreneur Burnout | MiloTree.com

Jillian Leslie 2:05
I love this. And so before I press record, we decided that we were going to talk about burnout.

Paula Rollo 2:14
Yes.

Jillian Leslie 2:15
Because I don’t know anybody who, if you are in this long enough, you will experience burnout at least once, if not many times.

How to Deal with Entrepreneur Burnout

Paula Rollo 2:24
At least once a week. Is that what you say?

Jillian Leslie 2:28
Definitely. And what we thought we would do is really pull the curtain back, share about our own experiences with burnout, strategies that we use to help get us out of it, but also, how to think about burnout, how to use it as a guide.

Paula Rollo 2:46
Yes. Because it does seem like, I feel like talking to people outside the industry, there’s like this romantic view of what we do. Like, “Oh my gosh, yeah, you’re one of those people who just loves 100% of your job.”

I had to correct somebody about this at the dinner table the other day. I was just like, “No, no, no, no. I may like 10% of my job more than you like your job.” But like, the reality is we have to do a lot of stuff we don’t like and then that burnout happens.

Jillian Leslie 3:14
Yeah. So let’s talk about what we think the causes of burnout are.

Paula Rollo 3:21
Yes.

Jillian Leslie 3:22
So first thing that I would say, for me, is I get burnout when I work really hard on something, and then I don’t see the results that I want.

Paula Rollo 3:34
It’s just so frustrating and discouraging.

Jillian Leslie 3:38
And it throws everything up in the air, you know. And it’s funny because I have said on this podcast many times, at-bats. You know, you need at-bats. You need to try stuff. You need to even invest money in stuff.

And you know, you don’t want to invest a lot of money, but you need to be putting yourself out there. And then I say, 95% of them will fail.

And so here I am, you know, that’s really wise, and yet, when my experiments, my things that I’m trying fail, it is very demoralizing.

Paula Rollo 4:13
Do you feel like it puts you into this headspace of like, is everything going fail now? Or is it just the individual isolated failure that gets to you?

Jillian Leslie 4:23
Oh, I think it is, that it is “Oh my god, everything I tried fails. There’s nothing that’s going to work.” I think it definitely puts me into a negative headspace of “Who am I to think that I can make a business?”

Paula Rollo 4:36
It’s like an irrational tailspin that you end up in.

Jillian Leslie 4:38
Totally. Like, “I don’t have good ideas. Look, my ideas keep failing.”

Paula Rollo 4:43
Right. Because they only see everybody else’s successes.

Jillian Leslie 4:47
Oh, absolutely. In this world of Instagram and all of these social media platforms, like you can’t help but feel bad about yourself because you don’t know their journey. You know, you don’t know what they’re struggling with.

And it’s so easy to have these curated beautiful views of yourself, of other people, you know, to present this perfect view, that it’s really hard when you’re living your own life, and you see all the imperfections in your own life to not compare and feel bad, especially when it comes to your business.

Paula Rollo 5:23
Yeah. Even when other people aren’t bragging. It’s just like, we only see the books that get published. We don’t see the books that don’t.

Jillian Leslie 5:31
Absolutely.

Paula Rollo 5:32
It’s not because of bragging. You just don’t walk into Barnes and Noble and see shelves full of unpublished books. That doesn’t happen. So we aren’t aware of those things. And then it can feel like we don’t measure up when really, we do.

Jillian Leslie 5:45
Totally. There’s something called survivor bias. Which means, okay, so for every Uber that’s going to go public for billions and billions of dollars, how many other startups fail.

But we remember the Uber’s, you know, if that’s a Wego, or Amazon or whatever we go, “Oh, my God, see, you just build this internet company and then it’s like, Amazon. Then it’s like no, no, no, you know.

Paula Rollo 6:09
But you know what’s funny, is we don’t remember our own Uber’s.

Jillian Leslie 6:13
We don’t remember our own…

Paula Rollo 6:15
Our own successes.

Jillian Leslie 6:16
I know.

Paula Rollo 6:17
Like those don’t even count.

Jillian Leslie 6:19
I know, I know.

Paula Rollo 6:19
We everybody else’s, but not ours.

Jillian Leslie 6:21
Well, especially becaues we’re always focused on where we see ourselves going, and we forget how far we’ve come.

Paula Rollo 6:30
Yes.

Jillian Leslie 6:31
You know, we forget that you started a blog with zero people coming to your blog.

And to have to go… I say this to my daughter all the time, which is, you have to look at how far you’ve come because if you’ve just focused on where you want to go, you’re never there. You’re always falling short.

Paula Rollo 6:53
Yes.

Jillian Leslie 6:54
And that is also, I think, a mindset of always falling short that I struggle with.

Paula Rollo 7:01
Right.

Jillian Leslie 7:03
There’s always more I can be doing. We should be growing faster, we should be growing cheaper — all of this stuff.

Paula Rollo 7:13
Yeah. Especially in our industry because it’s just limitless.

Jillian Leslie 7:16
There was one morning I woke up and I didn’t want to get out of bed. And what I realized when I started to think about it, was I didn’t want to get out of bed because I had already failed for that day in my mind.

Paula Rollo 7:29
Wow.

Jillian Leslie 7:31
I didn’t do as much already, you know, at at 7:30 in the morning, I knew today, I had already fallen short. And that was, you know, one of those ways where I thought, “Oh, I think I’m feeling some burnout here. I think something’s not quite right.”

Paula Rollo 7:50
So how did you get out of bed?

Jillian Leslie 7:53
Well, I have a child, so there was no choice about getting out of bed. And then what I try to do, and we were talking about this before we started recording, is I try to do a variety of things when I’m feeling burnout.

One, I try to remind myself that this is temporary, even though at the moment it feels like it has always existed like this, and it always will. But I know I’ve been through this many times, and that eventually, I will come out of it.

But I don’t necessarily believe that. I know it and I also don’t believe it, if that makes it right.

Paula Rollo 8:29
Yeah, knowing and believing in the moment are two very different things.

Jillian Leslie 8:33
I try to get curious. We talked about this too. I try to get curious about it, meaning I go “Hmm,” why am I feeling this way? Is there something let’s say in our businesses that isn’t working, that’s really bumming me out?

Is there some goal I had said “we’re not reaching it”? Like what specifically? Is there something I can point to that is causing it.

And then I try to go, well, is this true or is there something I can do to fix this? Or is this just something I need to let go of? Or, you know, so I try to get curious about it.

And by getting curious, it enables me to have the littlest bit of distance around it, so that I can have a little bit of objectivity. But that doesn’t make it go away. It’s not worth it.

Paula Rollo 9:22
But then it did.

Yeah. Because I think it is important to diagnose it because everybody experiences burnout. You know, it’s the first thing that you said, but we experience burnout for different reasons at different times and we can’t treat it all the same. Sometimes it’s a good sign, sometimes it’s a bad sign. And we need to figure that out.

Jillian Leslie 9:23
I know. Like it doesn’t solve it. But it does create a little bit of the ability to kind of step out of it and see it.

And we might not even know that we’re experiencing burnout.

Paula Rollo 9:56
Oh, it’s so true.

Jillian Leslie 9:58
Right? Or I don’t realize it and then I’m like, “Oh, I know why I’m bummed out.” Like, Oh, I’m feeling like I just don’t have any more to give.

Paula Rollo 10:09
Right. So can you tell me what are some of the other reasons somebody might experience burnout. I think probably, if anybody clicked on this podcast, they’re feeling it or they have recently. So. how can we lean in and kind of diagnose what we’re feeling and why, so that then we can tackle it objectively,

Jillian Leslie 10:27
I think what you were saying, which is our world can look glamorous on the outside and on the inside, there’s a lot of work that we have to do that we don’t necessarily want to do that isn’t fun.

You know, you’re working, let’s say, on a sponsored post with a brand. And that’s cool. But then all of a sudden, the brand comes to you and goes “yeah, we really don’t like those photos,” or really, we want to change this, that and the other. It’s just devastating.

But on the outside, “Oh, my God, I’m working with this awesome brand that’s so cool.’ But the inner workings of that are not always as fun.

Paula Rollo 11:07
True.

Jillian Leslie 11:08
I also think that sometimes, again, like let’s say our traffic has stalled or it’s even gone down. And we’re at the whims of all of these companies like Google, or Facebook, or Instagram, and it’s really hard to separate you from your numbers.

Paula Rollo 11:30
Right. Somehow personally,

Jillian Leslie 11:34
Yeah. We get validation from the number of followers we have. And I don’t care. Even if you say followers don’t matter, on some weird evolutionary tribal way, they do.

Paula Rollo 11:45
Right. Emotionally, they matter.

Jillian Leslie 11:48
They matter. And then the other thing, do you have other reasons why people might experience burnout that I haven’t touched on?

Paula Rollo 11:58
I think we’ve talked about this one before in other podcasts, but I think also doing too much. Burning the candle at both ends, it’s not sustainable.

Jillian Leslie 12:07
Yes.

Paula Rollo 12:08
And so that’s one of the good signs. I think that if you’re experiencing burnout, and you can kind of diagnose it and go, “Oh, I’m doing this because I slept for 10 minutes last night.” And I’m doing the work of 10 people, yes.

And so it’s not good that you’re experiencing that burnout. But if it’s a good sign to you that you need to bring on help, no matter what it takes, then that can be of great value to you, to highlight that in your life.

Jillian Leslie 12:36
I would also say that doing what we do takes a lot of courage.

There are a lot. We have our own internal voices that say “No, you know, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

But also, let’s say you’ve got a spouse that might not be as supportive or family members that might not be as supportive, and it takes a lot of energy and a lot of fortitude to stand up and say, “Nope, this is what I’m doing.”

So if you’re not getting the support from your own personal life, that can cause a lot of stress and strain.

Paula Rollo 13:10
That’s true. I think sometimes too, you and I have talked about this, that it can be a matter of there’s some people you need to unfollow. If you see somebody and they are always irritating you because of their success, or because they are copying you, or because of any reason at all, just unfollow them.

It’s not hard. If there’s anyone in you social media networks or your feeds that if you’re scrolling along and it makes you feel bad about yourself, just unfollow. And you’ll be amazed that your burnout can go away even with simple things like that.

Jillian Leslie 13:46
Absolutely, absolutely. I think that that has happened for me where there are people that somehow bother me or make me feel bad about myself, and I unfollow them, and then I forget that I’ve unfollowed them, but somehow they don’t trigger me because I’m not seeing their posts. And it does really work.

So definitely, definitely do that. Now, here’s something that I have found, which is there are ways I have found to kind of trick myself back into recovering from burnout. So I do believe that when you’re feeling a lot of burnout, it might mean you just need to take a break.

You need to step away and you need to recognize that people are not going to die if you step away. You know, we feel that like “oh my god, but I need to be posting on Instagram.”

And like, no, you know what, it’s really like, people don’t focus on you like you think they do. And your business is not going to die. And you’re not putting your children’s lives in jeopardy. So you can step away, and it might be taking an afternoon off, it might be going to a yoga class, it might be taking a couple days off to recharge.

Paula Rollo 14:52
Yeah, pulling it back to bare minimum, which is helpful too to figure out, do I need to do all this?

There are times especially when… and I blogged about this and so it’s not secretive, but especially when I was in a really, really dark depression. If I got into a depressive mode, obviously, that would make me feel burnout.

But I would always scale back and just do the bare minimum. And it helped me always to see how much time I was spending on non essential things, right.

Jillian Leslie 15:20
In fact, I want to do a podcast in the future with you about that, which is this idea of we can stay so busy as entrepreneurs, but to really recognize, well, what’s moving the needle? Like, what do I really need to be doing? And what busy stuff am I doing that somehow makes me feel like I’m moving the needle, but it’s not?

Paula Rollo 15:41
Yeah, because there are things that we have to do that we aren’t one to like. But also there are things that we feel like we have to do that we really don’t have to do. And those categories are different for every blogger. So it’s not like I could say like, “Oh, you really don’t have to focus on X social media platforms.” Some of you do, but I don’t have to focus on all of them.

That was really freeing for me to realize when I was in these dark places and it was all I could do to turn out a post for a sponsor, so that my kids could eat that night.

But it’s something to be watching out for. It’s something to be looking for of “Let me just drop Facebook for a week,” or, “Let me just drop Instagram for a week,” or whatever you have available to you that you can drop, drop it that week and see what happens. Give yourself a little more space to breathe.

Jillian Leslie 16:28
Are you a blogger or entrepreneur who loves their business, but is also a little overwhelmed with all that you have to do in a day?

So I want to share a tool that will increase your social media followers, grow your email list, build your traffic all without you having to do anything. It’s called MiloTree.

So MiloTree is a pop-up app that my husband David built for our first site, Catch My Party. In the four years that we’ve been using the MiloTree app on Catch My Party, our Pinterest account has grown exponentially to over a million followers, and our Instagram has grown to over 160,000 followers. And both of these sites drive millions of page views to Catch My Party every single month.

MiloTree works to grow followers on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. It will grow your sales for your Shopify or Etsy stores. And it will even grow your email list.

MiloTree — it’s easy to use, it can be installed on your site in under three minutes. It won’t slow your site down, and it’s even Google-friendly.

The MiloTree app is also customizable. You can focus on growing one platform at a time, or switch between several. We also provide analytics.

Right now, you can get your first 30 days for free. Just go to MiloTree.com to sign up for your free trial today. There’s really no risk.

If you aren’t converting readers into followers, subscribers and customers, you need to change your strategy. Because if you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep having the same results.

Well, MiloTree will get you the results you need. But it can’t help you unless you add it to your site now.

So take the first step. Head over to MiloTree.com and start your free 30 day trial right now. There are no contracts, you can cancel anytime.

And as a bonus, once you sign up, I’ll send you valuable business tips each week to help you continue to grow your business.

Look, you can’t be everywhere all the time, so let MiloTree work for you. It’s fast, it’s easy, and it gets results.

So what are you waiting for? Get your free trial today. Go to MiloTree.com.

I am a big believer in doing B+ work, not doing A+ work. And I feel like when I’m recovering from burnout, I give myself permission to do B- work.

Paula Rollo 19:06
Nice. It’s true though.

Jillian Leslie 19:10
And, you know, again, I never say go for A+ work. In fact, I think that is like that’s the path to pain and suffering. Always strive for B+ work.

Paula Rollo 19:21
And because you know what’s funny, is that what you call your B+ is probably equivalent of somebody else’s A.

Jillian Leslie 19:31
Maybe.

Paula Rollo 19:31
It’s going to be the same because we judge ourselves so hard.

Jillian Leslie 19:34
Exactly. That, I would totally agree with.

Paula Rollo 19:37
it’s not just saying don’t do your best. It’s acknowledging that this is really, really good. And you’re really, really good.

Jillian Leslie 19:44
Right. And then you can move on.

Paula Rollo 19:45
And in your mind that’s a B+.

Jillian Leslie 19:46
Yes.

Paula Rollo 19:48
It’s still probably an A.

Jillian Leslie 19:50
And then you can like let it go at that level, like you do not have to obsess about making sure that there is not one typo in your blog post. And so in giving yourself a break.

So one thing, will you share about what you had talked about earlier of when you were at that time dealing with burnout and so you didn’t want to write another parenting post and what you ended up doing instead.

Paula Rollo 20:04
So yeah, I originally was a parenting blogger forever, for like 10 years. I’m so sick of it now, so I’m not really doing that anymore.

But at the time, it was a dark headspace I was in like I have written a lot about my struggle with depression. But this particular time, I think I couldn’t reach this creative space in my brain because I felt so dark, I was so burnout, I did not want to write about toddlers anymore.

And so I sat down and I wrote a post about burnout. I wrote a post about writer’s block actually is what it was. It was like called something like I can’t write any more words.

And I wrote 500 words about how I couldn’t write any more words. Which is ridiculous, but it’s true because I’m a writer at heart.

And so I sat down and I wrote this post and I knew it wasn’t going to go anywhere, like it wasn’t going to go viral, no brand was going to hire me because I had written this post. It was just purely a creative outlet.

And I ended up publishing it because I just publish pretty much everything on my site and pretty open. But I realized in doing that ,actually one of my friends pointed out to me just the fact that I could spend 500 words writing about not wanting to write, said a lot about who I was, and my talent and the creative process that I go through.

And so just because I wasn’t able to be creative in the box that I put myself in, in this parenting space, didn’t mean that my creativity was gone. It felt like I was the least creative person in the world in that moment and that I would never be able to write another parenting post.

But the reality was, I just had to touch my creativity from another angle.

Jillian Leslie 21:57
Exactly, exactly.

I had to find it in myself. Like they say, if you’re feeling poor, give money away.

Paula Rollo 22:04
Right, yeah.

Jillian Leslie 22:05
You know, if you’re feeling like you’re not creative, go create in a way that talks about how not creative you are.

Paula Rollo 22:11
Right, exactly. And it’s a good exercise too, I think a lot of the time entrepreneurs reach a burnout point because they don’t have a hobby anymore.

Because I think even just listening to Blogger Genius and you talk to all of these creatives, and it’s like, how did you start? Ninety percent of the time, it was like, “Oh, well, it was just a hobby. I really like taking pictures of food or I really like writing. I wanted to connect.”

And so we all started from this place of doing something we love, and having this hobby of writing or photography or whatever on the side. And then when we hit this point where it’s a business, and I have to do this every day, suddenly you have no more hobbies in your life, except Netflix — and Netflix is not a good hobby.

And so find one. I used to cross-stitch and I hate cross-stitching now. But that was my hobby for a while, was cross-stitching like an old woman. Go for bike rides. Like literally find a hobby that you cannot monetize and embrace it. And that will help you with your burnout.

Because it will be a creative space that you can get into and something that you love and something that you enjoy that you don’t feel like this has to be scalable, I have to make money off of this, this has to be growing. It’s just, I enjoy doing this. I like making little X’s on papers with with embroidery stitch or whatever.

Jillian Leslie 23:38
Right. Well, I was a writer in Hollywood and I got into it because I love movies. And then at a certain point, I remember that I would go to the movies and all I would do is analyze the story and be like, oh, here’s how they did, you know, okay, now we’re in the second act.

And I’m just curious to see how the writer fixed this problem or whatever, “oh, I wouldn’t do it that way.” And I realized that it was impacting my love of movies because it became a job.

Paula Rollo 24:02
That’s so funny.

Jillian Leslie 24:03
So anything that starts as a passion but then all of a sudden becomes a job can become a job, and that can be a struggle.

Okay. So there are certain ways that I deal with the kind of the nuts and bolts of burnout, where I try to… I’m going to use the word ‘trick’, but I don’t exactly trick myself, but it’s a way to get myself back in the game.

There are two strategies that come to mind. One is, I love The Pomodor Technique. Which is, if you Google ‘tomato-timer.com’, it is a little timer that will show up. And what it does is it sets the timer for, I think, it’s for 20 or 25 minutes.

And then what you do, what I do, I use this genuinely in my life a lot where I don’t want to work, I don’t want to work. So I go ‘alright, time for my tomato timer.’ And I set the timer, and I work for 25 minutes, and then you get a five minute break. And then you can go back to 25 minutes, because somehow I can force myself to work for 25 minutes.

And maybe what I tell myself is, I’m just going to do one of these 25-minutes sessions, and then I’m going to tell myself, ‘I’m a success and I don’t have to work,’ you know. And sometimes then what happens is I can do two of them and just somehow I can focus for 25 minutes, it’s not going to kill me.

Because there are too many days where when I’m feeling burnout, I can sit at my computer almost like I’m chained to it and get no work done. So that’s one strategy I have found to be very successful.

If you try this or use it, email me, because I’d love to hear how you find it. So that is definitely one way that I can get myself even to do a little bit of work.

Another thing that I can do is set myself a goal, like I’m going to just do this one email for the day. And then tomorrow, I’m going to do this one blog post or I’m going to do… who knows what it is. And I will hold myself accountable to do just that one thing.

And then I can start to feel proud of myself. And usually what happens is, once I get started in it, it’s easier than the act of starting.

Paula Rollo 26:36
Yeah, it feels good. It feels good to get things done. Because you’ve been telling yourself you couldn’t do it and then you did it.

Jillian Leslie 26:41
So I find those to be just ways where, like, I write on a Post-it ‘today, you’re going to…” I don’t know, finish this blog post or reply to these emails or whatever, get this podcast episode ready. And that’s all I have to do.

And I tell myself, this is it and then you’re a good girl, you know, “good girl, Jill,” like you got it. And that has been helpful.

Paula Rollo 27:05
So good.

Jillian Leslie 27:06
Now, if we were to talk about though, the fact that at some point, if you are experiencing a lot of burnout, you might want to listen to that.

Paula Rollo 27:13
Mm-hmm.

Jillian Leslie 27:13
That could be information from the universe or from wherever that might be telling you, you’re going in the wrong direction.

Paula Rollo 27:25
Right. And what might have been the right direction at one time may not be the right direction anymore.

Jillian Leslie 27:31
How would you think about that?

Paula Rollo 27:34
You know, I just did this, but it’s still hard to think about or to talk about to figure out the method. But I think if you’ve tried everything else, if you’ve tried getting in touch with your creativity, you’ve tried making a side creativity hustle, you’ve tried all of these things, and it’s just really, you wake up and you don’t want to work at all, you don’t want to do the things that sounded fun.

Then you need to find something new. You need to either pivot your business or pivot your direction in your business. Something needs to happen, something has to give because I think you said it earlier, the reason we started this are our ‘why’ for doing it. If that no longer exists, then we have to be on the wrong path.

If you started this, if you have a good reason why you started your business, of course, you know, we started as hobbies, but you pivoted into something big because you had a big ‘why I want to help people in blank way.’

And if that doesn’t motivate you anymore, if touching into your ‘why’ doesn’t make you want to get out of bed and go to work for weeks on end, of course, we’ll all have that day where it’s like, you know what, people can find their own recipe.

Jillian Leslie 28:49
Right, yes.

Paula Rollo 28:50
But if for weeks on end, which is a position I found myself in last year, for weeks and weeks, two years ago now, it was for a year, I felt like if I write another parenting article, I’m just gonna go jump off a cliff, it’s terrible, I hate it. What am I going to do? Because my whole business is parenting articles.

That’s a big sign that maybe you should go in a different direction and take the tools and the pieces that you still love and run in another way.

Jillian Leslie 29:18
Right, right. And that it is natural to evolve. You know, your kids have grown. I mean, they’re still kids, but they’re not toddlers anymore.

Paula Rollo 29:28
Mm-hmm. I don’t want to write about them anymore.

Jillian Leslie 29:33
Right, right. And I have found this too. I don’t know about you, but when my daughter was younger, I was totally fine writing about her and talking about her. But as she’s gotten older, that shifted, where she doesn’t want to be having her photo on Catch My Party anymore.

Paula Rollo 29:50
Right. My kids still love being in photos, but their stories, I can’t tell in a compelling way anymore because they’re not general. A general post about toddler tantrums is different than a general post about arguing with an 8-year-old. It can’t be done anymore by me.

Other people are doing it and they’re doing it brilliantly, and I have no judgment on them for doing it. But the way that I like to write and I like to tell stories, is not possible anymore with keeping my kid’s privacy.

Jillian Leslie 30:22
Exactly, exactly. So recognize that we are all on a journey and it continues to evolve and change. You know, I always have this…

I read this some point, I don’t know, in some sort of Buddhist text, but the idea is, I think I might have said this on the podcast, you want to get your straw aligned with the wind so that the wind blows through your straw, and it’s not just hitting your straw and causing it to kind of pivot or move. And the idea is like to move your straw so that the wind can flow through your straw.

And so if in fact, you’re feeling like “I have my straw!” like, you might want to think about figuring out something else that can feed your soul.

So burnout is normal. It could happen, as you know, often. It usually means take a break, it usually means step back. It usually means that something isn’t aligned. It could be, as you were talking about, you need to hire somebody or you need to figure out, do I really need to do this for my business?

Paula Rollo 31:34
Right.

Jillian Leslie 31:35
But it could also be a larger that, you know, it could be that you need to surround yourself with a supportive group of friends or colleagues, or people who are doing what you’re doing and understand your life. That’s something I’ve talked about on the podcast, which is it’s kind of weird, I do this really weird thing.

And like the moms at my daughter’s school have no idea what I do. So that’s why, Paula, you and I are so close because we might see each other just a couple times a year but you totally get what I do.

And there’s something very comforting about surrounding myself with people like you who understand my weird life.

Paula Rollo 32:14
Yes. And getting to say I’m feeling burnout and the response would not be “Why? Your job is so cool.”

Jillian Leslie 32:20
Right. You just sit around in your pajamas all day. You know, and go to some conferences.

So anyway, I hope that this has been helpful and if you are experiencing burnout, please email me because I want you to know that this is something we all do and it’s kind of normal.

And it’s really about finding your way out of it slowly, with a lot of heart, a lot of self-compassion and just knowing that everything, it will change.

Paula Rollo 32:57
Yes, it will. It can’t last forever,

Jillian Leslie 33:00
It can’t. Exactly.

Paula Rollo 33:02
You’ll change something and find your path again. If it’s realizing that you got off of your path, initially, like you were on a good path with a good direction in a good way, and you steered off because other people were doing other things. Or if it’s finding a new path, you’ll find your way back.

Jillian Leslie 33:18
Absolutely. And again, I always say this, like my daughter will be really upset about something and I say it will change. And she said when and I said I don’t know. I said but in some point, you’re going have to go the bathroom. You know, you’re going to have a different feeling or you’re going to get hungry or who knows what, so pay attention to the little ways in which life changes.

Paula Rollo 33:38
Yes.

Jillian Leslie 33:39
Awesome. All right. Well, Paula, thank you so much for being on the show.

Paula Rollo 33:43
Thank you for having me.

Jillian Leslie 33:45
And you will be back and wWe’ll be talking about more stuff. Awesome.

Paula Rollo 33:48
All right, sounds good.

Jillian Leslie 33:49
Would you like to get a short email from me that gives you the top four takeaways from this episode and every episode going forward? If so, head to BloggerGenius.com, sign up for my list, and I’ll send it to you.

Are you serious about growing your online business (advanced beginner and above)? Have you got some traffic but you know you need more?

Let your MiloTree pop-ups help you get to that next level by converting your visitors into email subscribers and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and YouTube. Sign up today!

Install your MiloTree pop-ups on your site in under two minutes.

Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!

Sign up for the MiloTree popup