How are you doing? Good, I hope.

But honestly… how are you? A bit tired? A bit fed up? Feel like you’re not really progressing? That’s ok -- I get it.

Today, I want to talk to you about burn-out.

If you don’t know the ~story~ already, I suffered a serious burn-out episode a few years back and I’ll always regard it as the turning point in my life and business.

In 2016, I had been in business with LH design for a couple of years. I was working lonely 14 hour days from my living room; not leaving the house for anything apart from to take orders to the post office and to annoy the local barista with my wanky coffee order -- never allowing myself to y’know, breathe, because I thought that’s what 'proper' business owners did.

I made sweet F-A when it came to money. I was being told by those marketing gurus you see pop up on social media that I didn’t have a chance of being successful if I didn’t hustle every day. That if I had spare time, it meant I was a failure. And because I genuinely didn’t know any better (and I was desperate), I believed them. I worked myself to the ground to prove I was a worthy business owner.

After a few weeks where I was working long days whilst spreading myself too thin and traveling up and down the country, it all came to a head when I collapsed in my parent's bathroom, fracturing my skull and breaking my nose on the way down. I was ill with a horrible throat infection (which I’m very prone to) but had just been pushing it down and carrying on as I didn’t want to let anyone, or myself, down. The infection had wiped me out and because of the extra stress of traveling, my body just gave up.
It was a weird time. I obviously knew what had happened was pretty damn serious, and that I was incredibly lucky that it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been, but I still couldn’t shake that feeling that I needed to be working.

I was still checking my emails in my hospital bed. I was asking my family to send out orders for me. I just couldn’t handle that all-too-familiar guilt of being off work.

Even when I got out after 3 or 4 days, I went back to work straight away -- which wasn’t the best idea as I couldn’t concentrate for longer than 30 seconds and was sending some unintentionally hilarious emails to clients in a drugged-up stupor. It wasn’t until the Head Nurse rang me and said ‘if you had a normal 9-5 job, you wouldn’t be at work -- you’d be signed off’ that I realised I was being incredibly stupid and prolonging my recovery.

Before my burn-out, I believed all of the shouty posts and articles that said you had to 'hustle every day' to be worthy. I thought that if I admitted I was tired I would be admitting defeat. That I shouldn't be a creative business owner or a coach if I couldn't work all hours, or give up time with my friends, or not answer my emails within 5 minutes of receiving them. It took fracturing my freakin' skull to realise that it was all a complete lie.

After realising that busy doesn’t equal success and that rest and balance are more important than running myself into the ground, I soon changed my life and my business around. I set boundaries, came up with systems and processes that changed my routine and scheduling for the better and grew to trust myself and my intuition. I started doing business my way -- not the way I was being told I should do by all of the noise, all of the ‘watch this webinar and have quadruple figure month’s forEVER’s or ‘get 10,000 newsletter subscribers by buying my e-course that won’t actually tell you anything apart from to buy my OTHER e-course’.

Burn-out is a huge issue within the entrepreneurial world (and the whole world, while we're at it). As entrepreneurs, we’re told by ‘gurus’ and ‘experts’ that if we have spare time, we’re not serious about our businesses. We’re told we’re not worthy of being a business owner if we’re not ‘hustling every damn day’, sacrificing time with family and friends and missing out on birthdays, weddings, baby showers.

We answer those who ask how business is going with an exhaustive ‘oh it’s SO busy’. We humble-brag on social media about how many meetings we have that day. We’ve somehow equated that busy means we’re successful. We run ourselves into the ground to prove our worth and then we wonder why we’re always sniffling, feeling knackered and like death warmed up (or in my case, how we ended up in a hospital bed with a fractured skull).

All of this has to stop. We need to stop the glorification of ‘busy’ and how we wear burn-out like a badge of honour. It is not the only way to do business. We don’t need to work long days and nights to get closer to success -- because, if anything, it’s pushing us further away. Yes, we do have to work at our dreams. We can’t expect things to just happen for us, we have to make it happen. But that doesn’t mean we have to kill ourselves in the process. Overwhelm and stress is not ‘part and parcel’ of the job- it’s a result of decades and decades of myths and perceptions that working hard and long equals success. You don’t need to listen to all of the noise out there anymore. What we need to do is work in a way that is intentional and purposeful- on our own terms. It’s time to listen to you.

And that brings me to our next point of business -- the Busy Doesn’t Equal Success e-course. This is what I’ve been working on for the past couple of months and I’m so excited to finally get it out there and give you all the tips, tricks, resources, insights and lessons I’ve learned in my journey of creating a sustainable and consistent business whilst looking after myself.

Over 5 modules, you’ll learn how to manage your time, get shit done and reach your version of success without burning out. We’re going to get clear on what you truly want from this journey of entrepreneurship; what you want your working week to look like; what you want to achieve and how you can start prioritising yourself and your worth over ‘busy-ness’. The overriding theme of this course is intuition. There is no wrong or right answer- it’s about what truly works for you.

I wanted to create this course as I know so many of us struggle with the elusive work/life balance, burn-out and time management, and I want to give you as much support as possible in this zig-zaggy journey of self-employment. It’s the exact sort of thing I teach my coaching clients but for a fraction of the price. This isn't just another course to add to your pile of unused courses. This is one you’re going to want to do. Not just for the success of your business, your customers/clients, and your goals but also for you; for your wellbeing, mental health and balance. I’d be one to argue that they were the most important.

It launches next Monday 11th and I’ll be talking a lot about it on all of our platforms over the next few days (plus I’ll be doing a Facebook Live in our group on Monday to celebrate the launch and talk a bit more about it) but in the meantime, you can sign up to the Launch List which is where you’ll get first dibs on Monday at 9am. There are only going to be 20 slots available which will be priced at a presale rate (£45 rather £95) as it’s our first course and we want to make sure everything works without a hitch.


You can find out more about the course, and sign up to the List below.

You’re worthy of prioritising yourself. You’re worthy of investing in yourself. You’re worthy of reaching your version of success without breaking your back. I hope you know that.

Remember that I’m always cheering you on.

Lola