the bossbabe podcast - 389. Why I Fell Out Of Love With My Business + Exactly How I Fixed It with Natalie Ellis

Episode Date: June 15, 2024

Full transparency – Natalie almost burned everything down and walked away from bossbabe last year. 5 key things were stagnating growth + making Natalie fall out of love with her business… want to know what they are and the exact things she did to fix it? Press play to learn her biggest lessons from this more challenging season of business + how to use it to accelerate your success and not make these same mistakes along the way! TIMESTAMPS 1:38 - 5 Things That Contributed To Stagnant Growth  4:11 - Boundaries 7:00 - Avoiding Difficult Conversations 10:28 - Pattern of Saying Yes  13:40 - Not Taking Risks 16:30 - Making Decisions From A Place of Burnout 19:27 - Creating A Vision + Designing My Life/Business 23:15 - Inner Freedom 26:45 - Moving The Needle + Creating Momentum 27:00 - Special Invitation For You (Life By Design!) RESOURCES + LINKS Get free Bossbabe bonuses when you join Business By Design at https://bossbabe.com/bbd  Join The Société: The Place to Build A Freedom-Based Business Get Our Weekly Newsletter & Get Insights From Natalie Every Single Week On All Things Strategy, Motherhood, Business Growth + More.  Drop Us A Review On The Podcast + Send Us A Screenshot & We’ll Send You Natalie’s 7-Figure Operating System Completely FREE (value $1,997)  FOLLOW bossbabe: @bossbabe.inc Natalie Ellis: @iamnatalie

Welcome back to the Bossway Podcast. Okay, one of the main themes I hear constantly with entrepreneurs honestly at every single stage of business is that they are quickly burning out, which is making them fall out of love with their business and taking them so far away from the reasons that they started their business in the first place. I just want to say firstly, I can really relate to this. I was in this exact space not that long ago and I know how it feels to get to a point in your business where you truly think about walking away and burning the whole thing down. I've been there and I know exactly what it takes to pull yourself out of that place as well and get into a whole new rhythm in your business. One where you're prioritizing the things that matter to you and designing a life and a schedule

that really work for you. So today what I want to do is share with you the five things I was doing that actually contributed to that burnout and ultimately stagnant growth in the business because I truly believe success leaves clues. So hopefully you can take what I learned and action it in your business to avoid making some of those mistakes that I did. I'm also going to share some of my biggest business lessons so you can accelerate your success and make things hopefully just a little bit easier in your business because as you've heard me say so many times working harder and more doesn't always mean that you're going to get better results. This is an episode that I

released last year but I want to bring it back because I know this conversation will help so many of you who might be struggling right now to find that balance or that harmony in your business and I really just want to show you that there is a better way and you don't need to necessarily burn it down and walk away in order to make a change. So with that, let's get into the episode. So I wanted to take some time to deep dive into my own personal business lessons because I know in the episodes with James, I shared little bits here and there and we got a lot of his perspectives on some of the big mistakes that he made and what he did to be able to pivot his business to create a life by design. And I wanted

to get into that with you guys and my own personal experience too, because I feel like there is so much that I can share. One question that I get a lot is, Natalie, where do you spend your time? Because a lot of people are wanting to, you know, grow a big audience, to build a successful business, to bring in that revenue, to build a team. And I think there's a lot of confusion around where do I spend my time?

And so I always say success leaves clues. And I think a lot of people are looking at others to say, okay, well, what are you spending your time on? What are the things you're doing that's really moving the needle for you that I could internalize and think about how I can use that in my own business too? So we're gonna get into all of that.

But where I thought I would start was kind of the opposite. Five things that I was doing that actually contributed to stagnant growth in my business, to burnout and falling out of love, quite frankly, with my business. I wanted to start there because my hope in being really transparent and sharing this is that you can avoid the mistakes that I made and you can kind of skip past that part and build something that does feel great. Because I've been in business for a really long time and I feel like I have gone through seasons

where things felt amazing and I felt really aligned. And then I also went through a very long season where it didn't. I went through a long season where the business externally looked great, but profit margins were being squashed. And externally, it might've looked like we were making a ton of money,

but actually, the profit margins that were starting to decline, and I could really see that and so changes were needed. And there's been times, you know, where I felt crazy burnout. And in those times, I've never been able to show up and kind of say that things are going well, when they aren't, it's just not my personality. And so I've really retreated and, you know, stepped back from what everyone might see, you know, doing less content and stuff, which ultimately then doesn't support the business. And so I thought now that I've come out of that season,

being able to be really honest about what those things have looked like, hopefully will support you in being able to avoid it. So I've came up with five things that I want to share that I think really contributed to five things that I want to share that I think really contributed to that place that I was in. And then we'll talk about what got me out of that. So the first thing, and this is not kind of in order of importance, but the first thing that come to mind that I want to share was not holding my boundaries strong enough. And that's really

interesting because you probably hear me talk about boundaries a lot. But what I've learned is when you are really in love with your business, your boundaries are a bit more flexible because you have the freedom. Like now I'm so in love with what I do. Like it doesn't matter to me if I hop on to create some content on a weekend or I create a podcast after my baby goes to bed. Whereas when I was in the season of really not liking my business and really not feeling invested in it in the same way, there was no way I would be working weekends and evenings. I would hold those boundaries strong. However, what I wasn't holding strong was the way in which people could interact with me within the

business. And I also just want to say, I'm not trying to make anyone wrong here. This is fully my responsibility and my responsibility only. A boundary is not, you cannot vox on me at this hour. A boundary is, I'm not going to respond if you do. And so again, I'm not making anyone wrong, but I would get voxers at all hours. And if anyone doesn't know what that is, it's a voice app. I would get WhatsApp at all hours, Slack. I would get assigned things in a sauna with like a day deadline where it would be impossible to do. I was really at the mercy of my business and the people in it. And I really struggled to set the boundaries around that because I was so exhausted. It was almost like I just kept thinking, okay, if I answer this, if I just get through this, then hopefully the list will get shorter and shorter.

And it didn't. And so now that I'm in a place where I have a really strong rhythm of my week, the way I run my week has a rhythm, the way I run my month has a rhythm. And people don't just assign me something to do tomorrow. If they want something recorded, they'll assign it to me for a recording day and they do it with way more notice or people aren't just going to send me a voice note to ask a question. There's a process now that they will run through to check whether I actually need to be asked that question. And if I do, where's the appropriate place to put it and how long is it going to take to get a response? So there's now rhythms in place and processes in place that weren't in place before. That can take a toll on your relationships too, because you can end up building resentment

for people that feel like they're breaking your boundaries constantly when actually it's just you're not protecting yours. It can create a lot of resentment. So again, it's actually really powerful and important for your relationships to set those boundaries. It's not you saying, actually, you know, this relationship isn't important to me, so I'm putting a boundary around it. It's actually, this relationship is really important to me and that's why this boundary is here because I don't want to build up that resentment. Another thing was avoiding difficult conversations. This really, really contributed to my,

I think, falling out of love with my business, low motivation, getting really burned out, and ultimately the business stagnating. Because ultimately, you know, as the CEO, as the primary revenue driver of the business, as the content creator, I'm not feeling inspired and motivated, then that's going to reflect in the business's bottom line., I'm not feeling inspired and motivated, then

that's going to reflect in the business's bottom line. And I have to take full responsibility for that. I am not trying to shy away from that. The reason the business was stagnant and growing was because of me and nobody else. And I was avoiding difficult conversations. I was in a place of not wanting to upset anyone. So then I would walk on eggshells and bury things down. I would not hold people accountable. And if someone wasn't hitting their metrics, I would jump in and hit them for them. You know, if we were in our weekly meetings and I could see a metric was in the red and it wasn't being hit, instead of having conversations with that person to coach them forward and coach them to be able to hit those metrics, I would just jump in and hit them myself.

And I would do that because I would be like, well, it's faster if I do it. Okay, well, I could do that easily. Okay, I know what needs to be done. That's often the easy way out. The more challenging, but the most important part of moving through something like that is having those uncomfortable conversations to say,

you know, you aren't hitting the mark here. You're not hitting the metrics that we've both agreed on and coaching them either forward to hitting those metrics or figuring out if they're not in the right seat or if they're not able to hit those metrics. Those conversations are really important to have. And I think it's the kind of thing where you only get good at them by doing it. It's not like you wake up one day and you're like, okay, I'm a serious businesswoman now. I'm fine having uncomfortable conversations. It's just having them and holding strong in your own. If someone does have an emotional reaction, holding strong in yourself to know that you still get to have that conversation. And that's the place I'm in now

where, you know, if I need to have a conversation with someone, if they have a big emotional outburst, what I would do in the past is I would put my needs and the needs of the business aside to comfort that person. And actually that's not serving me, the business or that person. And so now after investing in a lot of coaching and learning, what I'm able to do in those conversations is have those conversations to talk about where the metrics are falling, you know, where the agreements aren't being held up, and then be able to coach that person to hit that metric or to come up with a renegotiation of the metric. I feel a lot more comfortable doing that now, but I really did have to invest in the coaching around that because I just found it a lot easier to kind of park things to the side and do more work myself. And that's just not helpful.

That's not how we grow a business. That's not how we grow as human beings. And it's such an edge, I think, for a lot of us as entrepreneurs. So it was definitely a big reason that contributed to that. And again, it contributes to burnout because then you end up taking on way more than you want to be taking on. And also, if you're holding on to resentment, if you're holding on to annoyance, frustration with people that you're working with, contractors, vendors, anything like that, if you're holding on to that, that takes energy. That is an energy leak. That is going to make you feel burned out if you hold on to that for long enough. Which leads me on to another thing. I had such a habit, or should I say a pattern, of saying yes to things because I felt

like a lot of my worth was being proven through my productivity. My worth being proven through not letting people down, you know, always coming through, saying, yes, yes, I can take that on. Yes, I can do that. Look how much I can put on my plate. And I had a real pattern of doing this. And it almost just became to a point I just said yes. And sometimes I wouldn't even question if that thing was going to move the needle. I would just say yes, because I thought, okay, I'm being asked for it. It's obviously important to that person, their role, so I'll get it done. Whereas now my team will tell you I push back a lot. If I get assigned something and I go take a look at it and it's feeling like this is not the best use of my time, I'm really going to challenge my team on that. I'm going to

say, hey, this is feeling like it's not the best use of my time and here's why. Tell me if you're seeing something different. And even if they come back with a reason why they still feel like I should do it, I'll still push if I don't think so. And the reason is because I want them to see through the lens I see through when I'm deciding what to spend time on and letting them know, hey, if I say yes to this, I have to say no to that other thing. So which one's more important to you? Which one's more important to the business? Which one's more important for our results? And I definitely learned that when my time became a lot more stretched after having a baby because I wasn't willing to just sacrifice time with my baby to say yes to everyone else. I really, I would say,

became ruthless with my time because my time came at a cost beforehand you know I had a lot more time on my hands it's not to say you need to have a baby to come to this realization I just did have more time on my hands whereas now I see that my time really has a cost because I adore spending time with my baby I adore being a mother that's for me the most important role that I hold and And so I'm not just going to say yes to please everyone else. And doing so meant that when I was saying yes to certain things, I was saying no to certain things. And the things that I was saying no to were actually the things that were going to grow the business and move the needle. And so I was saying

yes, which meant I was falling out of love with my business. I was saying yes, things I didn't actually want to be doing. I was saying yes too often. So I was burning out. And then I was falling out of love with my business. I was saying yes, things I didn't actually want to be doing. I was saying yes too often. So I was burning out. And then I was saying yes too often that the things that really needed my attention weren't getting my attention. And also want to share, you know, as a business owner, as the CEO, your team might not see the things that you're actually doing that is moving the business forward. They might not see the contribution that you're having to the business because you're not sharing constantly everything that you're doing. And so it's really important that you communicate to the team where you are best utilized, where your zone of excellence is,

and what might not be, you know, the best use of your time. It's really important that you communicate with them because chances are they don't know and they don't know what your capacity is at and they don't know that what they've assigned you actually isn't the best use of your time and so the more you communicate is supporting them and being able to then work out how they can move pieces around to still hit their metrics. Another thing was not making risky decisions. Now you might think that sounds a little counterintuitive, but it's not. So I have talked a long time about having one focus and going all in on one thing. And the reason that I talk about it is because I really learned it the hard way. I made a lot of decisions that I wasn't willing to take the full risk on. I'd say, yes, let's go and do this one thing,

but I wouldn't say let's go all in on this one thing. Even if I felt really convicted in it, I would, you know, sometimes listen to others that were feeling a bit more anxious about it, which I get because also not everyone loves the risk. That's why great entrepreneurs make great entrepreneurs, I think, is because they're willing to take calculated risks, but not everyone is willing to. And so I would sometimes listen to those who had an argument why we shouldn't. And I would have my team kind of straddling strategies, which really wasn't the best thing to do. And what I realized was I was letting my team down. If they were feeling anxious about going all in in something, I hadn't put the

confidence in them, in the vision. I just hadn't communicated the vision clearly enough and I hadn't communicated my confidence in the vision clearly enough so that they felt confident going all in. And everything I'm sharing with you, by the way, this is our full responsibilities as business owners, as leaders, as CEOs. There's no one else that can take responsibility for this. And so again, yeah, I wasn't making enough risky decisions. There were times when I should have said to my team, I get that this is a risk, but we're going to go all in and here's why. And not have people with fragmented attention because fragmented attention will give you fragmented results. Diluted attention will give you diluted results. Diluted focus will give you diluted results.

I was having my team with their focus diluted. And that's just not the best way to run the business. It would be so much better if I had all of my team rowing in the same direction towards one goal, one launch, one number, one thing. And I can look back and see a lot of points that I didn't do that. And it's been a really great lesson. And I would say we've got a lot better at that. And we still

need to hold ourselves accountable because also I'm an entrepreneur just like you and shiny object syndrome still affects me just like it probably affects you. Shiny object syndrome is real. I feel like I have a new idea with every shower that I have, right? And so I do have to hold myself accountable. And I, inside my operating system, I have a place for ideas where they can come out of my head and they can sit in my operating system. And I know that they aren't going anywhere and I can come back to them at any time, but we do all need to stay focused on one thing. And it's my job as a leader to allow people to feel safe in that. And then the last thing was making decisions from a place of burnout and doing things I probably wouldn't have done otherwise, whether that's certain

partnerships I entered into with, you know, the business and other businesses, whether it was certain launches, maybe, whether it was certain hires, so many different things, you know. I definitely can see that I made those decisions from a place of burnout or from a place of low confidence. And if I was performing at my highest, in my highest self, I wouldn't have made those decisions. I would have negotiated differently. I would have known what was actually going to be supportive for me in the business. I would have known when a good deal was a good deal. Whereas when you aren't focused on being your best self, when you're not, you know, well rested, when you're working on things that really light you up, when you've got a big vision to work towards and a great strategy that's going to get you there, when you don't have those things,

you can end up feeling really lost. You can lose your confidence. You can be in a place of tiredness where you're just like, oh, that one person's going to make everything better. Or, you know, if we partner with this company, it's going to take all of this stress away. And it just doesn't work like that. And so I have a rule now that I don't make decisions from a place of burnout. And I don't make decisions if I'm not feeling like I am in a great place to make a decision. And so I will check in with myself before I say yes to any kind of big decision, whether it's partnership, team members, products, directions, I have to be in the best place. And so it's my job as a founder to keep myself in that place. And again, I've built it into my rhythm

now. I've built it into my operating system. I even have a list of things that I know I need to do on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly basis to be my best self. That list is really, really important to me because I know if I'm doing those things, I am going to be operating in a place that an eight-figure business owner operates from. That's something James was talking about when we had that conversation about what took you from two to 10 million. And he was like, I knew I needed to operate as an eight-figure business owner. And if you're looking to make leaps, whether that's you just want to operate and not just, but you want to operate as someone who owns a business. If you are working for a company right now, and you want to be operating as an entrepreneur or a six-figure entrepreneur, a seven-figure entrepreneur, an eight, nine,

whatever your vision is, you have to be able to get in the mindset of operating as that person and that often means that we really need to get ourselves in a great mental state and we need to get ourselves in a place where we can do that so that was a lot of what contributed to where I didn't want to be let's talk about what contributed to getting where I am now and what has been amazing. The first thing, which kind of goes without saying, but all too often we don't do it. And I love what James says around creating a business by design. I step back to create a vision for what I wanted my business and my life to look like by design. I've always been really intentional about creating my reality and not just being in it. And I realized for a while I'd stopped doing

that. I just kind of kept going where the tide would take me. And it was really important for me to step back and really draw a line in the sand and say, okay, here's where I know I want to go. Here's what I want my life to look like. And therefore, here's what I want my business to look like. So I designed my life and then I designed my business around my life. So I got really, really clear on what that vision looked like. And I can share it with you. For me, it was really important to have a business with really healthy profit margins. I wanted to have that freedom. I wanted to have a really healthy, profitable business. That was really important to me. Instead of being able to set those financial goals and have those margins felt really important. I wanted to have a business that gave me a lot of freedom.

I don't want to work a ton of hours. I want my work to be very fluid based on my motivation. I don't know if anyone can relate, but I go through sprints. I have sprints where I really am so inspired and motivated and I want to work, work, work. And I also go through sprints where I just want to really relax, reset,

take a step back, do a ton of reading, learning, gathering, getting motivated, coming up with the next idea. That was really important to me. I also wanted to have a business where I could have a lot of impact, but maybe with fewer people. And so what I mean by that is, you know, I have an audience of almost, if not more, 4 million people. And sometimes that means that a lot of the content I put out, I'm not 100% sure is it landing. Like I haven't had a one-to-one conversation with someone in a while. Like I'm not 100% sure if it's landing. And there was a sense of emptiness there. I'm just going to be totally honest with you. And I've really craved, which is why last year I did something about it. I've really craved having those one-to-one connections, having those smaller groups that I can work with

and connecting with more people. And that's been really important to me. And it just makes me feel so much more motivated to really see the direct impact that I get to have on people's businesses and lives. And so that again has come through. And yeah, I wanted my business ultimately to support the life that I wanted to create. And the life that I want to create is a really happy, healthy, peaceful, abundant, exciting life for me and my family. So an example of that is this summer, we are going away for months and we're going to be living all across Europe all summer. That feels so expansive. It's going to be amazing for our relationship, for Noemi to be able to explore like that, for our health, to be able to

just unplug and reset. And it's just going to feel so amazing. And that's really important to me. You know, we've built our dream house and we have made some investments in companies that we truly believe are going to change the world for the better. That feels really, really expansive to me. There's so many things, you know, the financial location schedule freedom that I really, really expensive to me. There's so many things, you know, the financial location schedule freedom that I really want to create. And that's been something that I have intentionally created. And, you know, I want to be able to take time away from my business to work on my inner freedom. Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know, I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less

complexity, which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place, so it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know, get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students. So if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet, now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering

Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial. Go to kajabi.com slash boss babe to claim your 30-day free trial. That's kajabi.com slash boss babe. I talk a lot about inner freedom, but it's feeling free inside. It's not, you know, living life out of obligation. It's not meaning that you're giving your entire life sacrifice for your business. I have hobbies. I love doing coaching and therapy and retreats and learning about myself and my desires and how I can be the best version of myself. That's really important to me. So I stepped back and I really thought about creating my life, my business by design. I got a lot of mentorship, both in business and in my personal life. I've

invested so much money in mentorship, you guys, over the years, and I've never regretted those decisions. Any single time I want to make a change or I want to level up, I invest because I know it's going to shortcut my success and I love to be supported through it, which is ultimately how I met James, which is why we now have the podcast that we have. I had to make some difficult decisions. That wasn't easy. I would say that's the thing that probably gave me the most sleepless nights. That has been really challenging and I worked with mentors to be able to make those decisions and to come to the realizations that I did. That's been really challenging, but also really important.

And then ultimately focusing on where I can uniquely move the needle in our business. You know, there's generally two places that as the founders, CEOs, we want to focus. One, it is growing our audience, growing an audience of people that we can impact and that will ultimately eventually want to buy from us. That's kind of the long-term play. And the short-term play is actually getting those people to buy from us. So, you know, putting products in front of them that we know are really going to serve them and we're putting them in front of the right person with the right messaging and it's a fit for them. And that's kind of the shorter term. And what I mean by that is you see the benefit of that

instantly in your business in terms of revenue. The long term, it's more of an investment in the long term. And the short term is when you see the benefits and revenue coming in. And so it's really important as founders, we think about what that is for us. What can we be doing to really grow that audience and that pool of buyers? What are we really uniquely positioned to do? And then in the short term, how are we bringing in that revenue consistently day after day, week after week, month after month, building that rhythm? How are we able to do that? And what I've been able to do is figure out what those things are for me and I've created an entire life and business rhythm around it so that I don't even need to think anymore about

is what I'm doing moving the needle everything is mapped out for me in a way that I know on a Monday Tuesday Wednesday whatever day it is I know what I'm doing I have a rhythm and it's all in a spreadsheet it's all pre-prepped for me and I know if I'm doing. I have a rhythm and it's all in a spreadsheet. It's all pre-prep for me. And I know if I just follow this rhythm, I'm getting results. Follow the rhythm, get results. And every little tweak I make, things grow. And I can honestly say the business has never been in a better place. I've never felt more free. I've never felt happier. The business has never been so good. I really, really will say that. And it's not, you know, you make these changes and tomorrow everything's

different. I'm not saying that. Listen, it's been a long journey. I'm going to be totally honest about that. It's been a long journey, but I feel so happy with where things are at and the rhythm I've built around this. Things are only getting better and better and better. And it feels really good. So what I would encourage you to do is really thinking about where are those areas that you can really uniquely move the needle for your business to gain that momentum and then create a rhythm around that momentum so that it stays. Because if we can keep that momentum going, we are growing. Wait, wait, wait, before you go, I would love to send you my seven-figure CEO operating system completely free as a gift. All you've got to do is leave us a review on this podcast because it really supports the growth of this show. This is my digital masterclass where I'll show you what my

freedom-based daily, weekly, and monthly schedule looks like as an eight-figure CEO, mama, and high performer, and I'll walk you through step-by-step how to create this for yourself. It includes a full video training from me and a plug-and-play spreadsheet to literally create your own operating system. It's one of our best trainings and it's worth $1,997, but I will unlock access for you for free when you leave us a review. I know, wild, right? All you have to do is leave your review on the podcast,

take a screenshot of it, and then head over to bossbabe.com slash review to upload it. And then you'll get instant access to the seven-figure CEO operating system. Again, head over to bossbabe.com slash review to upload your screenshot and get access. We are so, so grateful for all of your support and can't wait to hear how the podcast has supported you.