Ep 58 Transcript: When Success Feels Like a Trap (And What to Do About It)

This transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors in spelling or inaccuracies in the spoken words.

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon, and thank you so much for joining me today. I have a very fun conversation for us today. And fun might not be the first thing you think of based on what I'm going to start off with here. But the reason why I say this is fun is because this is going to change your business today. So if you ever thought that maybe your business looks successful on paper, but feel a little bit like it's crushing you.

Because I hear this from entrepreneurs all the time. And in fact, I would say that in my initial coaching assessment calls that I do with clients, this is one of the biggest things that I hear from them is that they're saying, you know, everything just feels heavy. Everything feels hard. I'm overwhelmed. I'm overworked. You so let's say you're hitting your revenue goals. Clients are absolutely loving your work. I think that's one of the biggest things. They're like, listen, like, I know I'm good at what I do because the client's absolutely

like are singing your praises about it. Everything looks amazing from the outside looking in. When you run into family, friends, colleagues or whatnot, they say to you, my gosh, it looks like you're doing amazing. Everything looks great. How's business? And of course, you you say, yeah, business is wonderful. And it's not that it's not OK. It's just that you are exhausted. You're overwhelmed. You might even be questioning like, did I do the right thing by starting this business? Is this actually

what I really want to do. And here's the thing. You're not alone. Let me just be really, really clear about this. You're not alone. This is something that is incredibly common. But the reason why you don't necessarily know that it's as common as it is, is because no one's talking about it because they're all putting on that brave face that you're putting on every time you leave the house where you feel like if everything just looks good on the outside, no one needs to know that I feel like I'm completely falling apart.

on the inside. So you are experiencing what I call the success trap. And today we're going to unpack why your business feels harder than it should and more importantly, what you can do to actually fix it. So I'm going to share a quick story with you about a past client of mine, Rachel. Rachel was a wedding photographer. She seemed to be doing everything right, but every few months she would see what I like to call shiny object syndrome. She would see this opportunity to make money

by doing something else. So she would find a new revenue stream of some sort. you know, it started with say, family portraits, people that she had taken these wedding photos for, they're growing their family, they come back to her they're like, my gosh, we'd love it if you could do a shoot for our family. You did so great when you did our wedding photos. You know, and then some friends of hers were getting into their own businesses. They wanted some headshots done for their business.

So she's like, okay, yeah, I'll do that. And then a couple of those headshots were for some real estate agents and those real estate agents were like, oh my gosh, you should totally get into real estate photography. So you see what's happening here, right? So all of a sudden she's got all these different revenue streams and on paper, technically each one of these services makes sense. Yes, she can make money at each one of these, but behind the scenes she's spreading herself too thin. she's...

She's rushing from the wedding consultations to the portrait shoots, trying to jam pack all portrait shoots in just a couple of days. And then the real estate photography, well, that's super time sensitive. So she's constantly rearranging and juggling her schedule to try to make those things work. And so with all of this, now her messaging that she's putting out there on her social media, she's sharing all these different photos, it's all confusing, right? Because people are looking at all these different things that she's doing.

Her invoicing was always behind. She was never on top of that. She found herself working seven days a week just to keep up. And so she's basically suffering from like an opportunity overload. Like just because you can do all the things doesn't mean you necessarily should. And so, you while each opportunity looks great potentially, or at least good, guess, you know, collectively they're pulling her away from her true North, from...

her real passion from the reason why she got started in the first place. It's sort of like playing Jenga. Have you ever played the game Jenga? was playing this with my nieces actually just last year. We had an absolute blast playing this. It was so much fun. If you're not familiar with the game of Jenga, it's essentially this tower of wooden blocks. And the objective is to pull out a piece of like one of these wooden blocks from the bottom or from anywhere on the tower essentially, and then stack it on the top.

So as you build this tower higher and higher and higher, you're actually pulling pieces out from the structure, from the lower part of the structure, which of course is weakening its foundation. And eventually it's all just going to topple over. Right? Does that actually, does that make sense? So think of your business as a big wild game of Jenga. And I'll be honest, there are a lot of days where it feels like this for most entrepreneurs, but it doesn't have to be that way. So.

For myself, back in 2017, I learned this lesson the hard way. So I had been burning the candle at both ends. My business was thriving. We had so much business, we didn't even know what to do with it. It was all, it all felt really good. I felt like I was finally doing what I was really meant to be doing. I had this team of stagers working with me. We're thriving, we're like winning all these awards. Like everything was phenomenal. And then all of a sudden my body was like, ah,

Let's check yourself for a moment, shall we? Because you are working too hard. And so I cannot stress this enough. And I know I've talked about this on other episodes, but I never want to miss an opportunity to give you this reminder. If you do not take care of your body, your body will force you to do it. Okay. If you are not paying attention to your health and your wellbeing, your body will force you to pay attention. And most likely at the worst,

possible time, right? It's always that way. So I ended up getting shingles. This is what ended up happening. I got shingles. And I want to say to you, I was 39 years old. Like I was young to have shingles. They were shocked that I had shingles at such a young age. So was I for that matter. But it took over and it was quite excruciatingly painful.

It was very difficult for me to work while I was recovering from this, but I managed to, of course, because that's what we do as entrepreneurs, isn't it? And I was so fortunate that I did have a fabulous team behind me to support me. So I was overseeing more things. I didn't necessarily have to be out on all the projects, which was great. But nonetheless, I was responsible for running the business. I was the CEO of the business and I had taken on this role and it was a full-time job for me. And so now I've got shingles.

and I'm struggling to recover. Took about a month or so I would say for that. But the worst part was that I ended up with adrenal fatigue that was caused by the shingles and it actually took me three years to recover from it. So my body checked me. When I wasn't paying attention, it absolutely put me in my place. And now that I'm on the other side of it, I can absolutely see why it happened, how it happened. It's so clear. But at the time,

everything felt like I was just doing what I'm supposed to do because I just had come to understand that this chaos, this stress, this overworking, this hustle culture was just to be expected with entrepreneurship, right? So here's the best part about this though. I like to take my lessons from everything. Anyone who knows me knows that I take any negative situation or any challenging situation and I like to turn it into...

a positive or an opportunity or a lesson to be learned. And so I got a huge lesson from this one, which actually has played to my favor to this day. The because I was dealing with this adrenal fatigue, I had very little energy. My energy reserves were easily depleted. And so I knew each day that I had a very limited amount of what I would consider productive time. So I needed to be

super intentional and super strategic about how I spend every single minute of that time. And so that allowed me to put some systems in place to ensure that I was focusing on the highest priority things. A lot of people, a lot of entrepreneurs especially, but I would say people in general and especially women get caught up in what I call the productivity paradox. You know, where you're busy, busy, all day, like you're running all day. Do you ever just end up at the end of the day, you sit down, you're like,

I was so busy today, but then when you take a look at what you accomplished, doesn't feel like you really did anything. That's the productivity paradox. That's where you're spending so much time doing things, but not necessarily the things that really matter, not necessarily the things that are going to make you the most productive, not the things that are going to contribute towards your growth. So being busy does not mean you're being productive. So don't mistake busy for being productive. So I you to ask yourself right now,

are you experiencing a little bit of productivity paradox these days? Because I'd be willing to bet there's a really good chance this is resonating with you. And the reason that I say that women especially suffer from this productivity paradox is because we do have a tendency to say yes to everything that comes our way. If your kid's friend's mom asked you if you could carpool that morning, sure, why not?

You know, maybe your mom asked you to pick up some groceries for her. Yep, of course, honey, I'd love to, no problem. And maybe your spouse has asked you if you can take the dog out for the walk that they were supposed to take the dog out for or whatever it is. could be all these small things that seem relatively insignificant throughout the day or it could be bigger things where someone's saying, hey, listen, do you mind if you could like, can you bake like a couple of dozen cupcakes for my kid's birthday this weekend? Because you're so good at it, right?

So there's all these different things that we end up saying yes to, especially as a parent, but you don't need to be a mom, I think, to appreciate this as a woman. You just have this desire to help others. And so that nurturing part of us just immediately takes over on things. And sometimes we find ourselves spending more time than we probably should trying to fix a problem. Maybe that's not even our problem to fix or trying to help someone in a difficult situation. So what is the solution to all of this?

because it's certainly not doing more. I don't want you to do more things. I want you to do less things. So I'm to give you a few actionable steps that you can take today or in the next couple of days. But I don't really recommend procrastinating on this one because I think you're really going to like that like this. So the first thing is I want you to do a brain dump of all of these shiny object ideas that you have for your business.

Big or small, they could be like a big thing like, my gosh, I'd really love to open up a storefront someday or they could be super small. Maybe it's a new service you're thinking about introducing or maybe you're just like, I need to review my pricing or I need to because I want to raise my price. I want to position myself somewhere, somewhere different or I want to tap into a new market, you whatever all these ideas are that you have for your business. I want you to dump them all out. It doesn't matter at this stage in the game as to whether or not

Any of those ideas are feasible, realistic, none of that matters. Just dump out all the ideas, get them out of your head, and then I want you to organize them into three distinct phases. As in like, what are the more immediate things that really need your attention? What are some things that maybe would be a build upon that first phase? So that second phase is things that you can't really get to those things until you've hit some milestones in that first phase, or perhaps they're just more on a...

bit more of a, I don't want to say wishlist, because you still want to get to them in the next year or two, but you're you're not quite ready to spend a ton of time on them. And then same thing with the third phase. Those are things that are a little bit further out. I generally try to say that in terms of timelines for each of these phases, I don't want more than a total of three years, but the first phase could be a few months. It could be a year. It could be whatever makes the most sense to you based on the things that you're working on. But once you get those three phases figured out, you're going to notice something kind of fun here.

And that is that your first phase seems ridiculously heavy because somehow you do think you're superwoman and you think you can get all of these things done. So now I want you to be a little bit more realistic with those phases and move some things from the first to the second phase and maybe from the second to the third. And then start being really ruthless with this list as well and started thinking about like, let's be a little bit more discerning of what actually makes sense for me. What do I actually want to do?

And here's what I want you to do. I want you to ignore all of the you shoulds. All those things that you've heard people say, like, I know I should be should be doing this and I should be doing that. I should be on more social media platforms. I should be attending more networking events. I should be offering different services. I should be should be should be whatever. I don't care. Ignore all of those unless you actually think it might be a good idea and then go ahead and write it down. But.

as you're organizing these things into phases, you're gonna notice that some things maybe just don't really align. They kind of fall off a little bit. The part of the goal of this exercise is I want you to really pay attention to the things that are gonna get you going, like get you excited. Do you actually wanna be doing these things? Because we find ourselves sometimes heading into a bit of a path that's so far from where we started and so far from where we thought we would be. I know a lot of entrepreneurs that have taken these detours and run with them and they're like, that was the

best thing that I ever did. But when they're saying that, in my experience, they put a real strategy behind it. They didn't just run in head first without really evaluating whether or not that made sense for them and their business. So it's not uncommon to have something that wasn't even on your radar now be your biggest priority. But I just want you to take a look at those things and be really honest with yourself about whether or not they align with your true vision. What is it that you are building here?

What do want people to think of when they think of you and your company? What's the legacy and impact that you want to leave? So now that you've got your vision somewhat clarified and you know, this it's a first step, but this is going to really help you just to get all those ideas out. I will also say this. You know you don't want to necessarily do this all in one sitting. You're probably going to come back to your vision several times over the course of I usually say about three weeks seems to be kind of the sweet spot for most of my clients that.

They kind of keep refining things. So you you dump everything out the first few days. It's kind of this mad fury of just dumping things out before you even start organizing them. And then after a few days, you start kind of organizing these things. And then after a little bit more time, you start adding a few more things and taking a few more things out. And you start seeing this picture becoming a lot more clear. And it's incredible what comes along with that clarity. And it gives you a bit of a framework now.

for being able to evaluate all those opportunities and all those you shoulds that come your way. Okay, so now that we've got that part done, what's gonna happen to a great side effect of this is you free up a lot of brain space. Your brain's gonna now be working a little bit more over time in creating these ideas and evaluating them and kind of mulling them over a little bit, rolling them around in your head to try to try it on and see how they feel.

because you've got them on paper, you have the space now to allow those ideas to really percolate a little bit in your brain. So the next thing I wanna do though, of course, is I want to alleviate some of the tasks that are on your to-do list. And I do this using what I call the task triage method. I have a whole lot of productivity hacks, let me tell you. But at the end of the day, you don't necessarily need another productivity hack.

If you have the clarity of your vision and the right foundations in place in your business. Nonetheless, we all need the task triage method every once in a while, no matter how well organized we are, no matter how well our business is running. The task triage method comes in handy because sometimes things happen and you just have no idea how you're going to get through all the items on your to do list because your day just blew up on you. And I actually I had this happen to me a little over a year ago now.

was probably my greatest example of really utilizing this trick. My car was vandalized overnight one night. And so the next morning when I discovered it, now all of a sudden my entire day that I had planned has been blown up. I'm on the phone with the police, with the insurance company, taking it to the auto body shop and then taking it to another auto body shop. And again, back with insurance, back with the police. And I would say over the first three days of this,

probably spent a good 12 hours just addressing the things that I needed to for the car. And that's 12 hours I didn't have. I don't know about you, but do you have 12 hours to spare this week? Like just, you know, you're not doing anything else. Just 12 hours, just hanging out doing nothing. Because I didn't. So now all of a sudden everything's changed in terms of my plans for the day, my plans for that week. I've got two speaking engagements coming up the next week. Actually, it might have been three speaking engagements.

Anyway, I digress. had at least a couple of speaking engagements coming up the next week. I think I was running a promo offer at the time. Like I had so many things on the to do list and I managed to actually have not only my most productive week, but one of my highest revenue producing weeks I had had in months. And the reason is that I used this task triage method. I was so discerning with my task list. So here's what this looks like.

Think of an emergency room. This is where the word triage comes from, right? As it's often used in medical spaces. Not everyone in an emergency room can be a priority, even though it's called an emergency room. You're thinking everything is an emergency, but there's different levels of emergencies. So if you look at your to-do list and you ask yourself, know, if I only had two hours to work today, what would absolutely need to get done? If you only had two hours, that those are your priorities. And so

Those are the items that you are going to prioritize and focus on before anything else gets your attention. Because if you only have two hours to get work done, you want to make sure you're focusing on the top level tasks. So everything else, that's where those tend to fall into the productivity paradox. It's not to say they're not important and that some of them are not urgent either. mean, like you're constantly putting out fires, right? But when you use the task triage method, it helps you to really get that clarity as to what

really merits your best attention and everything else can either be delegated, eliminated, automated, or perhaps just pushed out to another day. And I mean, there's obviously a little bit of a challenge and downfall to kicking something down the road, but the ideas obviously don't do that unless it's actually feasible for you to navigate that at a different time. But the task triage method gives you

the tool to be able to eliminate some of that busy work and really focus on the areas that are going to contribute best towards your growth. There's a little bit more to this, of course, that I get into further in my Real Women Real Business Mastery program, where we get into all the efficiencies and productivity stuff. But this will give you a really good starting point, at least on your day.

So then the third point, remember I I got three action points for you today, right? So the first one is gonna be that brain dump about all those great ideas that you have and get some clarity on your vision. The second one is you're gonna use the task triage method for your to-do list currently, but you're also gonna keep this in your toolbox the next time you have a day where you're just overwhelmed by all the things, you're gonna use this task triage method. And then the final one is my favorite, and that is rest reaps rewards. Okay, let me say that again, rest.

Reaps rewards. I got a whole podcast episode all about rest and how valuable it is for you. But as much as it might sound counterintuitive, it's absolutely crucial to your success and to your ability to follow through on the things that you actually need to do to give your best self to your business and to be able to grow it. So building strategic rest periods into your schedule is going to help you in ways you can't even begin to imagine. And let me be clear here.

Because I want to make sure that we all understand that when I talk about resting, I'm not talking about sleeping. That doesn't count. Don't get me wrong. You need sleep. You need solid sleep. But I'm talking about awake and resting. That is time that you are allowing your brain to turn off and not really think about anything specific. You're not working on anything that's overly difficult. Think about when do you have some of your best ideas? Is it in the shower?

Is it when you're driving somewhere that you've been like a thousand times and you're on autopilot? Is it when you're out for a run? When your mind is at rest, you can have some of your biggest breakthroughs, but your mind needs the space to kind of distance itself from a challenge in order to be able to come up with that solution. So when your brain is in a relaxed state, this is what scientists call the default mode network. And that's where your creativity and your innovation really tend to flourish. But

Most people are not allowing themselves rest throughout the day. So rest can be taking 10 minutes to have a cup of tea, go for a walk. It does not mean screen time. It does not mean watching TV. Like I'm talking real rest here. Give yourself that opportunity to rest. Ideally, you're also not doing chores, but I will admit I actually find my brain is very much at rest when I am doing chores. So I will allow that as a part of your rest.

provided it's not overly exerting yourself because you do need to give your body some time to recharge as well. So remember Rachel that I mentioned earlier, the wedding photographer, when she finally was able to step back from her business, get that clarity of her vision, that's when she was able to really realize where her true passion was and that was actually in luxury wedding experiences. She didn't want to just be the average wedding photographer. She wanted to have that whole package. She wanted to be selling

that elevated experience of those perfect shots, those destinations, those different locations, those really cool, innovative things that no one else was really doing at that time. And so this clarity changed everything. So when people wanted the family portraits, she referred them to someone who specialized in family portraits. And same thing with the corporate headshots. She phased all of those out. The real estate photography, she gave it up. She was able to...

really hone in on luxury wedding experiences and become the go-to photographer for exactly that. People called her from all over. Like she was servicing people nationally, internationally. It was incredible how her business really grew. So cutting out all those extra services actually increased her revenue. Within six months, she grew it by 25 % because her messaging was clear, right?

So she knew exactly what she was promoting. She knew how to attract the people she wanted to attract. She was partnering with the right people. So in the first six months alone, she grew her revenue by 25 percent and it continued to just blow up from there. And here's the best part. All the while that her her revenues are increasing, guess what's going down? The number of hours she was actually working because now she's got this premium experience that she's charging her worth for. She's charging well for it.

because it took a lot of work, but she was able to focus on doing a few high quality weddings at a time as opposed to trying to do three weddings every weekend basically. So basically, if you're paying attention to this, she increased her revenue while working less. She was doing less, she was not doing more, but she was doing all the right things. So here's what I want you to take away from today. If your business is feeling

hard these days if everything just feels overwhelming. If everything just feels like like are you stuck in like that indecision of you you just all I can do is get through the day. If one more person asked me to make one more decision, I'm going to lose my mind. You know it all of these types of feelings this this tends to tell me that there is something out of alignment in your business and it's a sign not to say that you're doing something wrong, but.

perhaps you're ready for a different approach. We need to fill in some of those gaps and that foundation of your business because we don't want that Jenga tower to fall over, right? So success without sustainability isn't success. Because if you can't sustain it, like think about where you're at right now. If the thought of what you're doing today makes you feel like if I have to do this every day for the next several months, the next several years, there's no way I'm going to survive it. If you've thought about like maybe I'm just gonna quit, close things down.

and maybe you have like these these fantasies like these little daydreams about a nine to five, then it's time to make a change in your business. So before we wrap up, I want you to take out your phone. Maybe it's your notes app. Maybe it's a piece of paper. I like doing this digitally to be honest, because then it's with you wherever you go. But if you're better with a notebook, just make sure bringing that notebook with you. And I want you to start doing that vision brain dump. I want you to start getting those ideas out of your head. Don't worry about getting them all down on paper. But I'm sure as I was

Speaking during this episode, there's probably a few things that came to mind. Now, of course, if you're driving, wait until you've pulled over, wait until you've stopped. Please don't do it now while you're driving. If you really need to ask Siri to take a voice note for you, that always helps, too. So get all those ideas out of your head. Don't judge them. Just write them down. And that's going to be one of your first steps towards clarity. And then I've actually got a really super helpful assessment for everyone here. I've talked previously about the accidental CEOs and

It's likely that if you're listening to this podcast, you are an accidental CEO. And what does that mean? It means that you are an entrepreneur who has built a business based on more passion than plan. So you've seen success. You've seen that you've got a concept that works. But as things are growing, you don't have that scalability because you're finding yourself burning out because you don't have that plan. You don't have that foundation. So every accidental CEO is at a different spot in their journey.

If want to see where you're at and get some real tips for exactly where you're at on your CEO journey, you can take an assessment that I've created. It's just go to and check it out. And then what I want you to do is when you get your results, when you take the assessment, I want you to email me and tell me exactly.

what your results were and let's set up a call. Let's discuss your results, see where you're at and see how we might be able to work together to help to move you forward in the business that you initially envisioned. When you first started out, you had big dreams and somewhere along the way, some of those dreams got a little bit quashed because they all just felt too big and too heavy and too unrealistic because you got so stuck in the day to day. And I want to bring some of those dreams back to life. So let's connect. Let's have a talk. I would love to set up a call with you.

If you'd like to set up a chat with me, simply go to Aboutshaunalynn.com/successsession I know there's a lot of S's in that. So listen, I want to thank you so much as always for tuning into today's episode. It is truly my honor every day to that you welcome me into your mind, into your car, into your home, wherever it is that you're listening to me. So thank you so much for doing that.

Don't forget to please leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Hit subscribe so you always get notified of the latest episodes. And then, of course, as always, if you want to really show your love not only for this podcast but for your fellow female entrepreneurs, can I am willing to bet you know someone where this episode is really going to make a difference in their life. So do me a favor and share it with them. That's the best way that we can continue to support each other on our entrepreneurial journey. So thank you so much for tuning in today.

I want you to build smarter or build stronger, work smarter, dream bigger, and until next time, keep thriving.