What happens when you stop acting like the CEO
...and merely churn within the business
I feared the worst…
I had a good guess as to how bad it’s gotten.
I stepped on the scale and was shocked by the number I saw.
I… was… the heaviest… I’ve ever been… EVER!!
Admittedly, I’ve been a workaholic for the past few months and have been taking horrible care of myself.
(If it weren’t for my boyfriend, I probably would’ve worked over the weekends, too.)
It starkly contrasted my triathlon-training boyfriend, who was most likely in the best shape of his life.
And me… standing there… looking at the mirror going… “What the hell did I do to myself?”
I let my work dominate my life…
My activity level dropped to barely anything in the past few months.
My sleep quality hasn’t been great.
I’ve been stress eating… and might have indulged a bit too much.
But the worst of them all was working super long hours… every weekday.
My body would naturally wake me up between 5-6am, mind running with ideas.
Sometimes, I’d try to go back to sleep or just get up and start working until dinnertime.
Oftentimes, I’d have a second wind at night and work right up to a forced bedtime because it was near or past midnight.
Time felt like it was just disappearing in a blink of an eye.
Hours flew by, and weekends seemed to come around again so quickly.
But all that time working didn’t diminish the number of tasks on my evergrowing to do list.
I was doing this continuously for nearly 5 months.
In month 3, I already knew this wasn’t sustainable in the long run.
In month 5, I was feeling the damaging consequences of my workaholic choices.
In this month 6, things HAD to change.
I can’t keep going like this.
This ISN’T the business I wanted
I didn’t leave a highly paid, stable corporate job, working 8-12 hours a day, to work those same hours or more for my own business for less ROI.
I convinced myself that it’s because I’m rebuilding a new foundation for my business, so it will take more time, intentional effort, and lots of learning and experimenting to get it done “right” in the beginning.
I convinced myself that all this hard work would pay off and that I would “eventually” get to a phase where the business was a smoothly running machine, at which point I wouldn’t have to work this hard.
…but that was a “white” lie I used to comfort myself.
Every stage of business has its own challenges.
That work won’t just magically let up.
I have to intentionally CHOOSE to show up and structure it differently.
I knew I had to put in place what I wanted NOW, so I’m already living aspects of my desired business model at this moment, not some undefined “maybe” future.
Yes, as a solopreneur, I can’t function as if I have a whole team behind me.
I can only juggle all those different roles to a certain point.
But no matter what, I am the CEO and I am dictating the vision and path of where my business is heading.
If I merely perform as an individual contributor or an employee, then of course, I’m running on this neverending hamster wheel of work.