Sponsored by
| ISSUE №175 · VIBES VISION VALUES | PLAY |
Are You Having ANY Fun?
Being an entrepreneur isn't always fun. It’s full of stress and pressures and trying to do more with less… It’s not for the faint-hearted, that’s for sure.
A chronic issue for entrepreneurs of all types is burnout…and if you've never experienced burnout, thank your lucky stars. Burnout doesn't hit you like "I need a long weekend." Burnout is often closer to "Holy shit. I don't have enough executive function capacity, energy, or ability to do my fucking laundry."
Often, it's that sense of burnout that is driving a decision to want to sell your agency or wanting to fire your team or wanting to run away and join the circus…
So, WTF Is Burnout?
I've experienced true, devastating burnout in my entrepreneurial journey. Way back in the early 2000s, I was running my first agency and honestly had no idea what I was doing.
I could sell. I could find clients. And I was good at finding people who could execute the crazy ideas that I had. What I wasn't good at could be measured in metric fuck-tons…
I didn't really know how to delegate. I didn't really know how to manage my own stress, my own ADHD, nor did I really understand how to deal with the roller coaster nature of entrepreneurship. Everything in the business just piled up higher and higher and higher.
I didn’t know how to get the emotional, management & admin help that I needed. And I just got further and further behind - I was sending out invoices three or four, or sometimes five, months late. (Pro Tip: if you send out invoices five months late, clients don't often pay them. Do with that gorgeous nugget of info what you will.)
Then it hit me - it was as if my brain and body just ghosted. I didn't have the emotional capacity to lead my team. I didn’t have the financial capacity to pay my team. I didn't have the capacity to do all of the things that I had put myself in the middle of…
Everything came crashing down because I just stopped.
I was broke. I had to get a job, and I didn't have the wherewithal to do any of the things that I needed to do in order to fix those problems.
That burnout was over 20 years ago. The whole point of today’s newsletter is to help you avoid your own burnout. The high-impact crash of burnout isn’t driven by too much work - it’s driven by work that isn’t right for you. It’s driven by work that isn’t right for your business.
The AI Agent You Can Trust
The best assistants don't multitask their attention across a hundred tools. Neither does Catch. It's an AI agent that focuses on one thing — the admin work you'd rather not touch — and does it exceptionally well.
Scheduling, flights, restaurants, follow-ups, vendors, clients. You hand it over; Catch handles the back-and-forth and comes back with it done.
No context-switching. No dropped balls. Just your admin, quietly cleared — so your focus stays on the work only you can do.
Meet the agent built for admin, and it'll be ready to work before your next meeting.
Get started at catchagent.ai — and give your attention back to what matters.
Wait - If You Haven’t Had Burnout In 20 Years, Why Are You Writing About It Now?
Earlier this week, an “internet only” acquaintance of mine, Caroline McCarthy posted something pretty profound on Instagram.
Hold on - I’m gonna embed it below - but before we get to it, you need to understand that Caroline is “holy shit” kind of impressive.
She’s been a writer at CNet, a reporter for CBS Interactive & on the Forbes 30 Under 30 Media List. She’s a Xoogler, a TED talker, and a former columnist for The Spectator. She’s been senior marketing at true(X), & Infillion. Recently she’s become a freelance brilliant brain for hire and is the fractional Head of Growth at InPress, (a cool social news app that is based on facts and veracity & isn’t driven by monetizing algorithmic ragebait). Somehow, she still has time to become an authority on “Preppy Burning Man” (the Princeton Reunion) & graces the pages of Town & Country magazine.
But earlier this week, she posted this chunk of emotional brilliance on Instagram:
She Brings Us On Her Walk Through The Forest…
Then shares with us her ADHD-driven adventure from hiking to a foraging class to serendipitous mushrooms to a glorious risotto. Through this kinetic wandering, she stumbles on the truth that her natural way of being lends itself to exploring - not to reach some goal, but rather for the joy of exploring.
“I had been handed a little experiment in how I could approach my life and work in a way that is better adapted to how my brain works…how do I apply the principles of foraging to my work?”
Thanks For The Trip Down Mycelium Lane, Tim, But WTF… Have You Been Ingesting Weird Mushrooms?
No, dear reader, I haven’t (should I?) But Caroline's mushroom journey really is a parallel to how I have structured my relationship to my businesses over time - and I thought that you might benefit from some insight on how to get your business and your brain to be friends (and keep the burnout away).
Here are some guidelines that I keep in place to keep my kinetic thinking & golden-retriever optimism from burning me out (and driving other people crazy):
It’s Just Marketing: There might be tons of pressure on you. Your clients might be up your ass, or the bill collectors down your throat. But at the end of the day, it's just marketing. I don’t mean that you shouldn't take it seriously, but nobody is going to die because you don't execute a campaign well or hit particular KPIs. That realization is a magical relief valve.
There Is No Work Life Balance: Work-life balance sounds like a really great idea. I've never been able to effectively “balance” my work and my life, because I bring all of myself to both. There isn’t a Work Tim and a Life Tim. It’s just Tim. I follow what important and react to what’s urgent. And that changes all the time. Last week was a lot of hours at the keyboard. This week has been a lot of time with teen & twenties kids. I am lucky because I am an entrepreneur and I allow myself to fluctuate between work and life easily because they are all part of my singular experience.
There’s No Right Way To Build A Business - There’s Just A Right Way For You: So many of my clients come to me wanting certainty. They want to know that if they take steps X, Y & Z, they will get results 1, 2 & 3. Sadly, nothing works like that.
But the brilliant flipside to a lack of certainty is that you constantly provide yourself with real-time feedback about what’s working and what isn’t. Caroline has taken the steps to understand her foraging brain, and I suspect that she is getting feedback about her happiness and success as she tries on different entrepreneurial modalities.
You should, too… The business or career you build is your own & it must serve you as well as you serve it.Fucking Up Is Part of the Job: Life is just one giant A/B test. Years ago when I was running a CRO group, I discovered that tons of tests we defined as winners were only demonstrably better than the control in the short run. Something like 80% of our CRO tests reverted to statistically average performance given a long enough window. So what we thought were successes were just fuckups with a delayed reveal. You are gonna screw shit up in a big way. It’s OK. It’s just an A/B test.
You Need To Chill: I am naturally gregarious. I have ADHD, so my mind loves to run with ideas in a pretty fanciful and delightful way. So, when I am engaging with people and thinking, almost inevitably, my brain starts to jump to places where whatever I am doing is the most amazing thing that I have ever done. The dopamine or endorphins or whatever the little chemical treats my brain delivers to me when I am thinking this way will make me feel elated. Then, when it gets too hard, or the beauty of whatever captured my fancy evaporates, I crash.
That's a rollercoaster - I can go from the high of an amazing discovery call to the depths of "Why won't this fucking deal close?!?!” really fast. The amplitude of those swings is exhausting. I've learned that if I focus on chilling the fuck out and exercising patience and persistence, it isn't so exhausting.Know That I Love You: This isn't some weird parasocial declaration of affection, but rather an offer of unwaivering support. I've been doing this shit for a really long time. I know how hard it is. I know how difficult the choices that you have to make are. I love that you have taken this path. You’ve taken this path because it's probably the right one for you. But if you have doubts or concerns or think that you don't have the stuff to continue walking down this path, just remember I'm in your corner. I love you with all the big dad energy I can muster.
Turn podcast appearances into mentions, backlinks, citations, and AI-visible authority. PodPitch finds the right shows and handles outreach automatically. Only 20 demo spots are available this month. Appear on 3,853,234 Podcasts
Next Week, We Will Get Back On Track And Talk About Something Practical…
Until then, keep your wits about you and keep on walking.
Also, we lost an amazing spirit this week - Glen Hansard. He said that his singing was never truly art until he put all of himself into it, and when he did that, the audience gave him back everything tenfold…
When you invest yourself into your business, into your clients, into your team, and into your own well-being. The world will pay you back. It may not be tenfold, but it might be a hundredfold or a thousandfold. It will pay you back.
In his Oscar acceptance speech, Hansard said at the end “…make art. Make art…” Your life & your business are art. Make them beautiful.
Stop guessing on external traffic. Levanta's free playbook breaks down 7 proven strategies driving millions in off-Amazon revenue. Grab the FREE playbook.
