Feeling Burnt Out or Unproductive in Your Business? Get Organized & Reinspired with Michelle Pellizzon

If you’re an ADHD-brained multi-passionate creative like me, no doubt you’ve experienced the pretzel that happens in your brain, life and business when you attempt to MANAGE all of your exciting projects.

I’ve historically been both very disorganized and an overly ambitious planner and I’ve had to work at building tangible skills to help me realize my varied ideas across my business, podcast, creative writing, music and performance projects. 

If you’re ready for some insights to make business planning feel easier and sustainable, you’ll love what Michelle Pellizzon @holisticism has to say about it. 

As a dancer, turned tech start up witch, turned CEO of multiple companies, Michelle melds solid business systems and strategy with magic and mysticism in a truly unique and wildly supportive way for us creative ‘squiggly-brains’ as she calls us! 

If you’ve been feeling burnt out, overwhelmed, disorganized or downright unproductive – you’ll find comfort, inspiration and motivation in this super interesting conversation on the Creative Magic Club podcast today! 

In a 90-minute private coaching intensive together, we’ll focus on the most important changes you can start making in your messaging to attract more paying clients into your offers. During our time together we’ll make sure your offer is actually targeted at the kinds of clients you REALLY want to be working with, we’ll tighten up your messaging (or write it from scratch if we need to), and we’ll map out a feel-good launch plan to start filling it up with amazing clients. 
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Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:12

What's up, this is Sarah Mack, and welcome to Creative Magic Club. Together, we'll discover inspirational stories of creative entrepreneurs living out their dreams, doing the work they are most passionate about, and building wealth in magical and fun ways, while building a six-figure income as a writer and coach, helping other women to launch their dream businesses. I've connected with so many incredible people and seen it proven again and again that you can thrive financially doing whatever it is you are passionate about. I am here to share life strategies for mindset, making money and reaching more people with your work in a business and life filled with creativity, freedom and fun. Hi, everyone, welcome. I'm so excited to introduce my guest. Today. We have with us Michelle Pellison, who is the founder of Holisticism and the host of the 12th House podcast, which is my favorite podcast. So I'm really excited, michelle, that you're here. Thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 1: 1:16

Thanks for having me and what an honor to be a fellow podcaster's. Favorite podcast, Truly, it's like. It's like your musicians, your favorite musicians, favorite band that's like a big deal. So thank you and thanks for listening and thanks for having me.

Speaker 2: 1:28

Yeah, I recommend your podcast to anybody. So everyone who likes this podcast, you will definitely love her podcast. Go and check it out. I recently joined Michelle's membership, which is called the North node, and I'm going to tell you like more about why I love everything that she's doing. But before we dive into that good stuff, Michelle, tell us your story. Like how did you end up running this company and doing this work?

Speaker 1: 1:51

It's a good question. I sometimes ask myself the same question. I did not want to be an entrepreneur personally, but I am now and I can't imagine my life being any different. You know, I am now and I can't imagine my life being any different. You know now that I am sort of, like you know, in charge of my own time, but I have a really sort of like weird circuitous path.

Speaker 1: 2:14

I was a professional dancer and trained to do that from a really young age, started having these crazy seizures when I was 17. I got really sick, started having grand mal seizures and petite mal seizures and I turns out I'd been having them for a long time. I just really sick, started having grand mal seizures and petite mal seizures and I turns out I'd been having them for a long time. I just they weren't really diagnosed and was put on a medication that really, like you know, really impacted me. It impacted my memory and my mood and my personality and I was told I'd be on it for the rest of my life and that I'd probably like die in my sleep of a seizure. And that was just how the cookie crumbled. And I was 17 and I was like what Wait, that's kind of fucked up. So I ended up moving to New York to study dance at NYU at Tisch and kind of falling into a lot of alternative medicine practices, from somatic practices like Feldenkrais and Alexander technique to energy work practices like Reiki. Um, eventually someone introduced me to a shaman who did a whole ceremony on me and told me you're never going to have another seizure again. That was not what everyone thought it was and I hadn't did not have a seizure after that, so I was able to go off with my medication and I was like this is nuts, this is crazy. So that really got me into the alternative and holistic medicine space.

Speaker 1: 3:31

And then I lived and worked in New York for a long time as a dancer and as a celebrity trainer and nutritionist. That got me out to LA. And once I landed in LA I was like you know, I don't really like my life, I don't really like this anymore. And I took a big career pivot and started to work in tech, got my first nine to five day job. Um, got really lucky that I was, you know, on the ground floor of a bunch of companies that grew really big really fast. So I really was trial by fire for a lot of the things that I teach and talk about, and I got to experiment on someone else's dime which was amazing and work with really incredible mentors.

Speaker 1: 4:09

And a couple years after working in tech, I just had this idea to start this newsletter about wellness, about wellness and intuition, but also about, you know, being a thoughtful person in the world, sort of navigating the world from a more holistic perspective, considering everything and how it affects us, and so I came up with the name holisticism to describe sort of my worldview, what I believe in. I believe in holisticism and um yeah, and that was seven years ago. So eventually, holisticism turned into a tech product that I built for practitioners to run the back end of their business from like start to finish um appointments. And then that changed into something different, which is now what we do, which is basically teaching wellness practitioners, intuitives, creative entrepreneurs, how to run their businesses in a way that feels healthy and exciting and generative and sustainable for them. So that was the really long story. Sorry, I rambled on and on.

Speaker 2: 5:11

No, that was. You did an excellent job of summarizing a lot of many different, diverse chapters. Yeah, I know it's a big question, okay, so I knew some of that. Some of that is new information to me, but it's starting to make.

Speaker 1: 5:28

I'm starting to put the puzzle.

Speaker 2: 5:31

So, because something that interest, interested me, like something that drew me to you and your work which is different from a lot of other mentors that I've worked with is your background in tech, and I understood that you did like fundraising for your company, and you know, everyone else that I've worked with has had a background similar to mine, where we were like just called to this mission and this work and like started figuring out how to get clients and like figuring out the whole entrepreneurship thing, with like pretty much zero background in business, yeah, and so that was really interesting to me. So it sounds like you is that right. You so you raised capital, but initially it was a tech company, yeah.

Speaker 1: 6:15

So good question. So I have a degree in dance right BFA in dance and I never thought I'd like work in business or be an entrepreneur. It just wasn't that interesting to me. It's like that sounds like the worst way to spend your life. And then when I started working in tech, I was honestly like really burnt out from what I was doing before, which I had basically helped start a wellness business in New York that had brick and mortar studios that worked with wealthy individuals. So some of my clients were like Dorit from the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and the Bush twins and Naomi Watts and Hannah Bronfman. And that was really interesting because, similarly to you, I really got to see from like being in it what it's like to grow a business and kind of be like well, how do I get a celebrity client? Let me just like email them, and that's how it happened.

Speaker 1: 7:09

But I was exhausted of basically having to generate my own income all the time and come up with ideas and I felt out of my depth, like I had no experience or practice or mentors teaching me what to do. I just felt like I was constantly throwing things at the wall and it was working. But it was like exhausting, and I figured you know like I want to help people, right, but I don't have the skillset to expand my reach. So I can either go to business school and learn how to do that or I can just like learn how to do it by being on the ground floor of a business and basically getting paid to learn. And so it made a lot of sense to me at the time even though I had no experience and really no desire to work in tech to just go start at a company that had not that many employees, that I didn't have to have a degree from Harvard Business School in order to get hired at and to have a lot of responsibility. And I think that's one of the best things about working at a startup is, if you wanna do something, you kind of just like get to go do it, and especially an early stage startup, and it can be hard to learn sometimes because you have to find people who are more advanced than you, but you also have a budget to play with and you have a product to play with and you have a little less skin in the game. So yeah that I learned a lot doing that.

Speaker 1: 8:22

I really feel like I got my, my MBA, from working in tech, and when I started this newsletter, it was honestly because, like everyone kept annoying me and asking me for my, my recommendations and not annoying me. I say that like jokingly, but like so many people would ask me for my recommendations around, like, do you know an astrologer? Or what's going on with like tarot? Can you tell me more about that? I would almost like get cornered in the, you know in the kitchen, at the office, and someone would be like I have a crystal in my bra, do you know about crystals? I'm like, yeah, but aren't we supposed to be like in a marketing meeting right now? Like what are you talking about? This is great, but I felt like there is this like almost cloak and dagger, with so many of the women that I was working with who were like really intuitive but afraid to talk about it because they were also really smart, and it felt at you know, in 2016, 2017, when I started holisticism, it felt like you had to choose one or the other. You either had to be like a Venice the shaman wide brimmed hat, no bra, just wearing a gauze tunic, or you had to be a girl boss, and I didn't feel like I fit into either of those places and I figured there are probably people who are like me. And something I guess I should also say is that since I was really young, I've always believed in spiritual stuff and I've also been pretty academic. Like I started seeing auras around people when I was like in fifth grade. I remember seeing an aura around my math teacher and thinking that was normal, same thing with my seizures, assuming those things were normal. Hearing things, seeing ghosts just assuming that that happened to everyone, and I was curious about that myself and exploring that. So anyways, long story short, holisticism was also kind of like an accident where I wasn't looking to start a business.

Speaker 1: 10:02

I honestly was just looking to solve this pain point for a bunch of people who kept asking me about my recommendations and I figured well, you know, I'll just start a little newsletter and I started with 100 people and then it eventually grew and it grew really fast and because I'd worked in tech, I saw what this concept of traction was, where something basically takes flight. Either it goes viral or people start flocking to it. It just begins to grow and almost like get up to a speed that you're not in control of and I was like, okay, there's something here. I don't know what it is really, I just know that there's something here and I need to run with it because it feels very special and it feels like it's something that needs to be born. And I don't really know what it is, but I guess I'll figure it out. I don't know if this is a business or a community or just a vanity project, and I kind of assumed that holisticism would like cease to exist after six months, but it hasn't. It's continued going on.

Speaker 1: 10:55

And so after I started that initial newsletter and it, you know, it gained I don't know 10,000 subscribers in the first couple of months. I started talking to people about what I should do and I was surrounded by tech people who were like you should build a technical product, so who's your customer? And I started thinking about who I could help and what I wanted to do. And I realized that I had a large marketplace of people who were customers of alternative medicine practitioners and psychics and healers and coaches and a lot of psychics and healers and coaches who were looking for help with their business and looking for those types of to be connected to those types of people. So I built this double sided marketplace where you could search for healers and practitioners that were vetted by us and then on the back end those practitioners did their sessions virtually. So it was really like before. Zoom was the you know ubiquitous thing that it is now, and it was really hard.

Speaker 1: 11:53

And then I went through a fundraise. So I did a couple of accelerator programs, which are basically like programs that you get selected to be in, where you incubate your idea and then you pitch them to investors. You basically work on your idea and I raised money and by the end of my fundraise I realized that what I had been telling people for the last six months year that I was trying to build was not something that I wanted to build. I didn't really want to build a technical product and I didn't really want to take people's money whom I didn't really like. So I did a really scary thing and basically committed career suicide and gave the money back to those investors and said I want to build something that I'm excited about. And so I just set a timer for like three months and I said if I can figure out how to make money off this thing, then I'm going to keep going, and if I can't, then I'm just going to like go get a regular job and it'll be okay.

Speaker 1: 12:48

And in the process of building the technical product, you know, it's took like a year and a half, right, I kept seeing that so many practitioners even though I could bring them clients, they didn't have the infrastructure or the business know how to keep those clients or even to book them. So I could be like here's an email for a client who wants to work with you, and they would have no process for like even setting up the appointment or taking payment. And so they were. It was like pouring water into a bucket with a hole in it, right. So I realized like oh, there's, there's a huge opportunity for me to help people with these business fundamentals and maybe, like you know, take the teeth out of them or like take the scary parts out of it and and really like help them and maybe speak their language too, because we speak the same language.

Speaker 1: 13:31

So, yeah, that was kind of what happened with holisticism and the raising money pathway, and there are so many different ways to run a business, um, to fund a business, uh, and to think about, like you know, the like economics of how a business works. It was definitely like destabilizing to have a P and L, a profit and loss sheet and a business plan that assumed I was going to raise a million dollars to have runway for the next 18 months to spend on developers and my salary and all this stuff, and then to go to basically having no money or having my savings and trying to figure out like okay, how do I just like make enough to keep the website running in the next three months. But it was a really good challenge and I think it puts me in a good position to like understand a lot of different types of businesses and what business owners are going through.

Speaker 2: 16:23

Yeah, that's so interesting. Thank you for sharing all of that and that's what I love about you is that you bring all of that you know like big business knowledge and systems and processes that you know obviously are needed when you're really scaling and growing a business. Do want to grow really big businesses, but I think a lot of healers and you know coaches and people who work in more of like the intuitive arts, you know, I think a lot of us just do it because for the love and because we want to make an impact and we don't necessarily want to do, like you know, scale things or like outsource things. So I'm curious like what your perspective is.

Speaker 2: 17:03

Obviously you've worked with a lot of healers and, um, like intuitive service providers and I know in one of the trainings inside your membership you talk about the idea that like everyone's replaceable and I know that's like you know a lot of people who are in tech. They aim to build a business where they can sell it, um, so I'm curious like what your perspective is and kind of like the range that you see with people who you know are really like working intuitively and like doing our soul work and like following our mission and letting that unfold, one breadcrumb at a time, and where that meets with that concept of also being able to build things and sell them. And then like move on, and you know how big you want to grow things and that whole conversation, them.

Speaker 1: 17:47

And then like move on and you know how big you want to grow things and that whole conversation. Yeah, I think maybe that that comment came from one of our systems, class classes, where we're talking about like SOPs, right, and the concept behind an SOP is just like it's a recipe to do something right, it's a process for doing something and it is, I think, like a very humbling but great thought exercise to be like oh yeah, I'm totally replaceable, like I'm replaceable within holisticism. Now, would holisticism be as successful without me? Maybe, maybe not Maybe even more successful, who knows? But I am replaceable. Um, at least a lot of what I do is extremely replaceable. You wouldn't be able to get my aura or my energy or my unique insights, but you could probably, like I don't know, find someone who can, find a couple people, find a team who could basically create that or do that.

Speaker 1: 18:36

I think that I often like push up against the idea that someone's soul work is like answering emails, because I don't think that is my soul work and I don't. I haven't met anyone who's like, yes, customer service is my soul. So I think that there's a lot in our businesses and in our work that takes up a cognitive load for us right, takes up like mental space and I'm really cognitive load for us right Takes up like mental space and I'm really really of the mind that we have a limited capacity in our you know, in our crown chakra, and when we're distracted, anxious, superficially busy, it crowds out intuition. I don't know about you, but like every time that I've been deeply connected to my intuition, it's because I've taken other things off of my plate or I've come. You know, I'm not grasping or wrestling with an anxiety anymore. I'm able to move past it and sometimes that's just like that's in a somatic body work class where I'm not worrying about whatever my to-do list. I'm just like fully present and focused. So I think that you know something that's like not so sexy as systems, but they're actually like so witchy and so intuitive, because a spell is a system and, in order to be the most like dynamic, intuitive, visionary versions of ourselves, we can't be stuck in like the day-to-day, like mundanities of answering emails and scheduling Instagram posts and procrastinating on sending a weekly newsletter, because that just like doesn't create that much spaciousness for the magic that we have accessible to us at all times.

Speaker 1: 20:19

So, anyway, I don't think that everyone needs to scale their business super big, and I think that most of us would be benefited by streamlining the way that we do our work. That can mean just like being more efficient, you know, using AI, or, honestly, just creating an SOP for yourself. For some people, that means outsourcing. You know, some of the stuff that you really hate doing to someone else, and, you know, not only does that create more mental space for you, but it also probably creates some more time for you to do what you're really good at, which means that you can make more money. And and ultimately, when we're hiring out like that's, that's one of the metrics of success that a hire is a good hire is that your, your business, makes more money after you hire that person, not less money. So did that answer your question?

Speaker 2: 21:03

Yeah, yeah, I think it's such a great conversation because I'm just reflecting on my own kind of journey with this conversation and because I started my business so intuitively and a lot of my mentors were, you know, like intuition was the primary skill that I kind of that got me a lot of success initially in my business. Considering my background, I, you know, I pretty much built a six-figure coaching business off the skill of content and money, mindset, work, yeah, and like really going deep on those two skills, and I also kind of fell into the trap of like I, I only want to, you know, I want to be in business. Well, I've always been in this trap of I only want to do things that are fun for me, having a real aversion to do relate.

Speaker 1: 21:50

I very much relate to that.

Speaker 2: 21:53

So I, you know, and that did lead to just, I mean, obviously there was a lack of skill like a lack of skill around financial management and back end organization systems, organizations like I have, you know, an ADHD brain, so that definitely, you know, it shows how much those things like they don't matter, but they do. You know, like you can create impact, you can create results, you can meet your goals without putting a lot of time and energy into the back end things. But I feel like they caught up with me eventually, you know, and I was like this is stress, like you said, that I don't want to have to deal with. And so, in order for me to not have to deal with the stress of this disorganization of like when something really doesn't work because there isn't a system or, you know, life throws you a curveball and then you're playing and you don't have the bandwidth to like maneuver it and yeah way that you want to be able to, you know that was when I had to learn to put on my big girl business pants and like learn some of those skills, and I wanted to because I could see how that was gonna ultimately make me better at what I do, make my day to day life consistently a little smoother, yeah, and I've also, you know, seen mentors go through the process of like, oh, I want to scale and make way more money and impact way more people.

Speaker 2: 23:14

So that means I have to hire all these support coaches and, you know, grow my program, grow my program. So I'm less hands on, and then you kind of turn your day to day tasks turn more into team management than actually like being, you know, doing the one on one, coaching and supporting people, which is, you know, what we love the most and why we do the work. So I think it's obviously it's such a personal thing and there's no right way or wrong way. But yeah, there's definitely, and I know a lot of other people relate, especially when you have ADHD. I know there's a lot of people who you know neurodivergent community and sometimes those aspects are really difficult. So it kind of forces us into more simplistic business models, in a way.

Speaker 1: 24:01

Yeah, and I think that there's always a more creative way to do things right. So, like, certainly, if we want to make money, like we want to make more money right. Like, yeah, if you're a coach, you can take on an agency model and hire more coaches, but like there are so many other levers that you can pull to make more money. And I feel like something that I really, in the past couple of years, have been trying to lean into more and talk about more is just, you know, not all of my income has to come from one business. I have like multiple projects, multiple businesses, and they feed me in different ways and it's almost like I wouldn't expect. It's almost like it's almost like a person, like a relationships, like I don't expect my best friend to be like romantic with me, right, but I do expect that with, like, my partner, sometimes not all the time, not like he's wiping our baby's butt or like cleaning up barf, but like you know, when we're alone together, I expect some romance and vice versa.

Speaker 1: 25:02

It's almost like I think that people expect so much of their businesses. They expect them to be everything and do everything and be, you know, like infinitely scalable and match them instantly when they change their mind, and I don't think that that's unfair. But I just wonder if, like if that's the only way to think about it. If what I'm looking for is like more easy passive income, then like maybe there's another business that I can start that I care less about and so it's easier to delegate some things to other people, because I just like I'm not in it for the love of the game, I'm in it to make some money and like that's kind of totally fine. In fact, I think that's a little refreshing to be realistic about what your expectations are. Does that make sense? Yeah, I love that. What's your human design? I'm a projector. I'm a I mean four, six projector.

Speaker 2: 25:56

Yeah, what are you? I'm a manifesting generator Love an.

Speaker 2: 26:00

MG. Yeah, we, I always work with projector mentors sometimes. But, um, yeah, I kind of flip-flop between needing to keep things really simple and focused and because I always want to do all the things right. As an mg, I'm like I'm always trying to work on 50 projects at the same time. Yeah, I'm getting better at prioritizing so that things actually get done, yeah, and so, yeah, I'm always fighting that battle between wanting to do all the things and trying to keep things simple.

Speaker 2: 26:34

But on the flip side, there's this kind of paradigm that happens when I say yes to all the things. It like expands me. You know, it can either go one way or another. If I'm saying yes to all the things that are in alignment to me, it expands me and I'm capable of so much more. When I'm actually saying yes to more, and sometimes it contracts me where, like, nothing ends up getting done, yeah. So yeah, the idea of having multiple businesses is a little scary to me, but I can also see how it could lead to expansion in that way. And I'm curious how you, how you manage you know, prioritization and organ. I mean you are clearly a a very well organized person.

Speaker 1: 27:15

Well, I'm not naturally well organized and I have to be like, totally honest. I love human design and I've learned a lot from it and I have this like confusion about you know my design because I'm also a pro. I love having multiple projects and I, even honestly, more think of my life in terms of projects as opposed to businesses, because it helps me organize my expectations a little bit more clearly, because not everything has to be revenue generating in order for it to be generative to me and or to like, ultimately revenue generate revenue for me, because sometimes what a project does is it it establishes me as an authority or an expert and that will get me a job down the road or whatever. But, like I on, if you looked at my project board right now, dude, it is like there's so much stuff on there and I'm a projector, like apparently I have limited energy and I don't work a ton of hours every day, but I don't know. I also feel really satisfied and sated when I have my finger, you know, when I can kind of flip from pot to pot, flit from pot to pot.

Speaker 1: 28:25

I guess I usually have like one main project that like my whole brain is working on and then I almost treat my other projects as like rewards, like oh, this is fun, I get to do this and and they, so they don't feel stressful and I think maybe that's also because I'm able to like kind of get my mind right or manage my expectations about finances for them. Like all right, this is my budget for this project, this is how much money I want it to make in this amount of time, and like, as long as I do that, I'm I'm good. Um, but yeah, I don't know. I also live with two MGs. My son and my husband are manifesting generators, so maybe I'm just drafting off of MG energy. I don't know.

Speaker 2: 29:00

Maybe. Yeah, that's possible. Do you have? Do you have other brands and companies than outside of yeah?

Speaker 1: 29:07

Yeah, we, we launched species like uh, as just a sub stack a year ago. And then we actually I don't know if you can see behind me it's not a very good example, but it's this giant notepad that I was just like, honestly, I was like eight months pregnant and hormonal rage queen. That I was just like, honestly, I was like eight months pregnant and hormonal rage queen, and I was just like I need a giant piece of paper to write all my ideas down. And I couldn't find anything on the internet that was like big enough for me. And so I was like I can just, I'll just make this. I'll just make it for myself. I've done that before. Like if there are clothes that I want or furniture that I really like, I'll just get it custom made, right. And so I was like I'll just make this. And then I was talking to friends about it and they were like I want that. It's like, oh, okay, cool. And so it kind of like you know, it snowballed into a bigger thing. And now we're like on version two of the product and I don't know, we've got like 5,000 people on the email list and we've sold through our first set of inventory. So it's not like um, it's not a main revenue driver and product-based businesses, physical products, you know they're, they're, they're capital intensive, so um things, and they move a little bit more slowly, but it's really fun. Um, yeah, it's a really fun like experiment and process to go through.

Speaker 1: 30:18

What is it? A giant notepad. It's a giant 30 page notepad. That's half.

Speaker 1: 30:22

It's like part Oracle card, part or almost like brain organizing space, because a lot of people who are neurodivergent have something called spatial synesthesia, which means that we see and experience time and space differently. So we almost like, like I'm, I love notion, right, like bless, bless God that we have notion. But sometimes I just need to write out what I'm thinking. When I'm brainstorming something, I need to like physically see it on the page, to almost exercise it from my mind and my body and my brain works differently when I'm writing versus when I'm typing or using something on the computer.

Speaker 1: 30:58

So I wanted to make something that could capture all my ideas and kind of help me stay organized in my day to day and also help me, like when I was feeling really stuck, because I was noticing that I felt almost like the blinders were put on when I was on my computer and when I expanded my vision, I would start to have these little bubbles of ideas, almost like intuitive hits. So, yeah, that's basically what the space use pad is. I would hold it up, but it's underneath my computer right now. So it has these little like winks from the universe on it, a secret portal that you can scan and get a QR code and a link to, and then kind of like a little light organization on it. But it's really like a DIY custom brain space pad.

Speaker 2: 31:39

Okay, I need that. I'll leave a link link for it and we can put it in the show notes yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll send it to you, um, yeah, so, yeah, I've got lots of.

Speaker 1: 31:48

We've got a house in the desert that is an out or not retreat spot, so it's where we like send artists and, um, that we rent out. It's in the middle of nowhere in Wonder Valley. We've yeah, I'm always working on something, something in addition to holisticism, and I think that that that am I talking too much, sorry, no, no, please. That's what you're here for. When I, when I have, when I work one-on-one with a lot of clients and one of the biggest problems that I see is that they have interests that are outside of what their business is and they want to somehow figure out how to justify those interests and like going deep on them, especially people with ADHD, because we love an accountability moment. So we're like I'm going to learn how to cross stitch, I'm going to have a cross stitch business, like two days later, right, because we need something to keep us focused on it and that accountability to other people is a great, is a great way to keep us on. And they're like, okay, how can I be a psychic who does cross stitch and how can I add that into my offers? And I'm like, okay, valid, that's kind of interesting, let's see what we could do there.

Speaker 1: 32:50

But what if we didn't? What if we kept your business as your business and I know it might be a little boring right now but we let you do this other thing and, like we didn't have to try and smash it and, you know, cut it down to size so it kind of fit a little bit weirdly into your business, but we just let it be its big expansive thing. It'd be so much more satisfying to you to like let it cook in its own way, as opposed to trying to reverse engineer it into the work that you do. And I think that that often I've totally run down this path to can really distract us and ultimately waste a lot of time and money for us in our business because we're we're bored or we're excited by something new and we want to figure out how to share that in a vehicle that we already have access to.

Speaker 2: 33:42

You know what I mean share that in a vehicle that we already have access to. You know what I mean. Yeah, that's some real ADHD and business wisdom right there. So what is your advice for when business feels boring and you just need to persist and you have?

Speaker 1: 33:56

ADHD. Okay, when business feels boring, first and foremost, is it boredom or is it burnout? That's the first and most important question. Is it boredom or is it burnout? That's the first and most important question. Is it boredom or is it burnout? Do you really want to unplug your business? You really want to shut it down? Do you really want to fire all your clients? Are you like not getting your needs met? Because that's effectively what burnout is. Right. It's when we have an amount of work that we're putting in and we're not seeing returns on that work. Work or what we feel like are an equivalent set of returns. So that could be like I'm not making enough money for the amount of work that I'm doing. Or I'm doing a lot of work, but no one is praising me and acknowledging me. Or I'm doing a lot of work, but like I'm not happy about this work. I'm managing a lot of people. It goes on and on and on, right. So I think that's the first question is just like, let's be real, let's be honest. What are we working with here? Because totally different protocol.

Speaker 1: 34:43

If you're burnt out, like, don't do anything. If you're burnt out, it's kind of like how they say don't make any rash decisions after someone dies, like don't move, don't cut your hair, or even like that's dramatic. When you go through breakup, it's like just chill for a little bit. But same thing with burnout, because you really are in like a place. Your brain is not firing and your decision making is not on par with your usual decision making and you speaking from a personal experience you just become very extreme where you're like I can't just like put a pause on the business. I need to burn the business down to the ground, destroy it, delete the email list. You know like I need to fire all my employees. It's just, it's so intense because you're really in a lot of pain when you're burnt out.

Speaker 1: 35:29

So is it burnout or is it boredom? If it is boredom, then like hmm, are you afraid of stability? Is that what's going on? Again, let's be real. Yeah, stability is boring, like that's why we get into healthy relationship. When we're like should I break up with them? Like no, you know, maybe not, maybe I don't know, what do you want? And then I don't know. My mom always said only boring people get bored.

Speaker 1: 36:00

So is there a way to make it more interesting for you, like how can you make this more fun?

Speaker 1: 36:04

How can you make this more sexy? How can you make this more interesting? And maybe that means that you change up small things first, like you change up your social social media strategy, or you rebrand, or you honestly stop doing the things that are dragging you down, that you don't like doing, and just for like two months. What would happen if you just didn't do those things? If your business burns down to the ground and obviously need to start them up again, but most of the time you don't like we we have so many shoulds in our mind of like I should do this. This is what a good business owner does and they're not really moving the needle in a in a in a generative way, in an important way. So if we just stop doing them for a little bit not forever and we really test, is this necessary in my business? I think that usually creates more space for us to do things that are more interesting, and generally, things that are more interesting to us are needle moving activities, because people feel that energy behind what we're making and creating.

Speaker 2: 37:04

you know what I mean, yeah, yeah, I love this conversation. I'm reflecting on how that has played out for me, because I've I love creating new things and I've that's something I've learned about myself is I would like, you know, I would rather create something new than go through the process of, like editing and refining something that I created Also relatable, extremely. Yes, yeah, but that can also, you know. Then I'm like, oh well, now I don't have any spare time to like work on my book or my creative project because I just gave myself this extra work that maybe wasn't completely necessary. So I like what you said about, yes, like being good, but like reframing that and kind of like focusing on what's gonna make us better. You know it's like focusing a challenge in a way that makes sense and doesn't always just create loads of work because, like you know my resistance to doing the hard things or like the admin things or the refining things or the like having to look in my google drive for past things that I've created that I haven't organized, you know it's like, yeah, that can feel hard, but sometimes, when we move through the initial discomfort of the thing that feels boring, it can lead to like more creativity or more freedom or more expansiveness. And yeah, like setting the challenge to be how can I be more effective in my business or deliver this to my clients better in a way or a way, in a way that's better for me and in a way that helps more without needing to change it all, or just like launch a brand new thing. I think that's the shift that I'm in, is really locking in the offers that I'm focused on and like refining them, not by editing what's already done, but just like constantly tweaking and just getting better and better, which was kind of a gift that came out of I had long COVID and yeah, I was really fatigued for like 15 months, so it kind of forced me to really simplify in my business and actually that was such a gift.

Speaker 2: 39:05

I let go of so many. I was all about group programs. I let go of all of my group programs, all of my launches, and just scaled back to only high ticket, even though I was, you know, like preaching the opposite business model before. Right, I'm just working really in depth with clients, clients.

Speaker 2: 39:19

I got rid of one-on-one calls and have just been coaching clients through Voxer and yeah, and I was like, oh, it just turned out to be such an amazing thing for me, like I can go really. Actually, I feel like my clients get more time with me because I'm talking to them in Voxer, you know, and they're getting really great results. We don't need to have calls on the calendar. It's given me way more flexibility and I'm like, oh, okay, like the new Sarah is just focused on refining my work and it was kind of coming back to that one-on-one work, which I think is, you know, you get the most. Well, I find you get the most feedback from that because you have somebody to you know reply to the thing that you know be in the conversation with you. So that's been really fun for me.

Speaker 1: 40:02

Yeah, that's. That's so interesting because after I had my son, I you know, when I worked in tech and then, as I was scaling holisticism, I was a consultant, so I did a lot of client work and it was like I never want to have clients ever again, like I don't, this is not for me, um, as a consultant. And so I really, like you know, moved away from that and after I had my son, all I wanted to do I was so shocked because you have a baby and you're like I know this is going to change my life, but how, like, what is going to? Can we like be a little more specific about how it's going to change? Um, so you really don't know how you're going to feel after you pop them out.

Speaker 1: 40:47

And, uh, I just had this like deep desire to to spend more time with fewer people and I love my students.

Speaker 1: 40:57

I love, you know, like my North noters, I love teaching live group classes to people who have, who are neurodivergent, who have what we call swiggly brains, like I love all that stuff and I was just craving these like deeper connections where I really got to sit with someone and hear about their problem or like the specifics of what they were going through.

Speaker 1: 41:17

And so after I had Rhodes, I was like I feel like I want to just add a couple more of that of those onto my calendar and that means some other things are going to have to, you know, make their way off the calendar and it really is like so much information for you as a practitioner but also about who your ideal client is and like the specifics of what they're going through, and I feel like I just have like a wellspring of you know topics and conversations to you know to dive deeper into after doing this for like the last year and a half, because just have like all that specific info, those like here's what it's like in real life and here's the word for word what someone told me yesterday that they're scared about, so like let's address it and talk it through it's, it's very generative.

Speaker 2: 42:04

I could talk to you for hours, but this has been such a valuable and fruitful conversation. Thank you so much for coming and sharing everything with us, and please tell people what have you got going on? Where can they find you if they want to learn more about your work?

Speaker 1: 42:23

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I'm just letting me like wax poetic about some very nerdy topics. I really appreciate it. Yeah, you can find me at Holisticism and the 12th House podcast, and then I have, you know, like I said, lots of other projects. I have a project based, I guess, like body of work. So spaces is another thing that I'm always working on the outer net retreat house. Come, come, stay and work on a creative project and artistic project. If you're lucky, you'll see ghosts out there. If you're really lucky, you'll see. You'll see wolves and aliens Not, hopefully, at the same time, and I've always got little tricks up my sleeve. I'm a really big fan of time based projects that run for a short period of time, so I have a couple of things coming in the fall that I'm excited to announce that will be limited time only projects. So, yeah, just follow me on Instagram that's the best way to see what I'm up to or threads I'm actually way more active on threads. You're on threads, right, sarah?

Speaker 2: 43:15

Yeah, I am.

Speaker 1: 43:23

I haven't been super active lately, but occasionally I dip over there.

Speaker 2: 43:24

Yeah, it feels like a safe corner of the internet for now, but we'll see Amazing. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you so much for being here. Thank you, everybody for listening and watching. Please share this episode with anyone who you know would benefit and we'll see you next week. Bye, for more inspirational content, head over to my website withsarahmackcom, and please support the show by liking commenting.