If you’ve ever felt like the pressures of work and life are pulling you in different directions, this episode is for you.

From the struggles that have been weighing on me, to the practical solutions I’m implementing, I’m sharing an honest, behind-the-scenes look at what it really takes to move through tough moments.

Let’s dive into the lessons, strategies, and mindset shifts I’m using to find balance and keep moving forward.

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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Emily Hirsh: 

 Hello everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. Today’s episode is gonna be a solo episode and I decided to dive into what I am currently struggling with. I. As a person and in the business and what I’m doing about it, and just having a transparent and real conversation about where I am at, what I’m struggling with in my own life, in my own business, to support you guys.

Before I dive into that, I just have to share how grateful I am for. You guys and this community yesterday as of recording, this was the launch party and the podcast experience for this podcast and there was over a hundred of you on live and people who had been in my world since 2015, 2017, and it’s just so cool.

And if this could just be an example for you of what’s possible when you make the decision to build community and to go all in on consistency and consistently showing up for your audience. And I think that as much as I struggle with social media in general. And that’s part of the things I’m struggling with as much as I struggle with social media in general.

It. It has such a powerful component to it in the sense that it allows us to have this impact and to make these connections that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to make. And it’s just been a really cool week and cool last few days for me of realizing how much consistency pays off and also. You know, sometimes you’re creating content like I am right now by myself in this room.

And we don’t always realize the other, the person on the other side who’s gonna receive it. And you can’t create a connection with them all the time. And sometimes it might feel like you’re in an echo chamber or you’re launching into the ether and like hoping somebody sees it. And I think. Committing to that consistency and making that the goal and just trusting that the right people and enough people will eventually consume and see the content is the game.

So I just wanted to share that as I come off the podcast, launch and navigate the solo episode and recording in the studio has been such a humbling learning experience, and if you watch over the next few months. This podcast will get better and better and better because there’s just things that I’m learning that my team’s learning, that my editing team is learning that we won’t know until we actually do it and record it.

So let’s talk about what I’m struggling with right now. The biggest struggle that I’m facing personally right now that I wanna talk about because, um, I think I’m a pretty intentional person when it comes to this problem or this struggle, but I’m struggling with it. Um. And that is like the dopamine addiction.

I have had a very challenging time finding a relationship with social media and consumption that allows me to still have it on my phone and show up how I wanna show up without consuming beyond how I wanna consume. I recently changed my whole. Routine because I decided to hire a one-on-one coach in CrossFit, which means I stopped going to the group classes, which means my whole schedule changed in terms of when I work out, which means my morning changed and I used to for almost two straight years, wake up and go to the 6:30 AM CrossFit class.

And in that routine, I had a routine where I sleep with my phone outside of the room, I wake up and I didn’t touch it. I’d grab it to go drive, but I’d, I’d actually drive in silence. I would sometimes wake up in time to like sit outside for five minutes and just like be, and I wouldn’t actually open Instagram or open any app until after CrossFit.

I’d come home, I’d get ready and I’d be with my kids, and then I’d, I would, it’d be hours since I woke up that day that I’d actually look at my phone. Well, now with my new routine, which is kind of a lack of a routine right now, if we’re being honest. I’m number one really enjoying the extra sleep. I get eight to 10 hours of sleep and for how much I train.

That has been really critical. But I still sleep with my phone outside the room and I walk out and I pass my phone in the kitchen to go make my drink. And I drink this like cacao and protein powder drink and go make that. And I cannot not touch it like I find myself, and this is the level of addiction that we have too.

Our phones is, I walk past it and I’m waiting for my water to boil. I pick up my phone and I literally in my mind tell myself, okay, you’re not gonna open Instagram. Like, I’ll just check my messages. I’ll just check. You know, who might have needed me overnight. And I freaking open Instagram. Not every single day, but I am struggling with that balance of where I want to be with consumption and.

Creation and part of me wants to just delete Instagram completely off my phone and create content and then give it to my team and approve it in a document and like not see it. And I actually did that for two months last, last year. And it was amazing. But then I missed the little bit of consumption that gets to happen.

That gives me inspiration, it gives me connection to this industry and. Is actually a positive thing. So what am I doing about this? I’m about to head onto a trip to Costa Rica. When I’m in Costa Rica, I don’t have a problem being unplugged. It’s really actually very easy for me. I’m also gonna be hosting a retreat, and I don’t think it’ll be challenging.

When I get back, I’m going to move my phone into my office so that I no longer walk past it in the morning. And I am going to set a hard boundary with myself of no. Apps until 9:00 AM and if I cannot keep to that promise, which it’s so wild, the power it has over us, like if I can’t keep to that promise, I’m gonna delete the app off my phone at the end of my day and I might end up having to do this.

I’m gonna delete Instagram when I stop working, and I’m gonna redownload it during the day and the next day because I don’t consume when I’m working as much. And overall, the. Dopamine addiction. What do I mean by that? I’m reading a book right now actually about dopamine addiction and I recently listened to a podcast on um, diary of a CEO about it, and it’s so fascinating to me because we all have it and it comes from all different things, but our phones and social media are a huge source of it.

And there’s been studies that show in the morning the first thing that you do. If that surges your dopamine to this level, which social media does, or checking our phones or many other things. But if all day long, your body will try to achieve that level of dopamine and it’s really hard. And so you’re, you’re like seeking it all day and.

What this does for me is it carries over into after work when I’m with my family and I’m being intentionally unplugged, I notice myself wanting to open Instagram, wanting to just check stories to scroll, and I’m like, what am I doing? I don’t actually wanna do this, but yet I’m falling into that. So for me, the only thing that works is actually cutting off access to it.

It, it’s so addicting. That if it’s there, I’ll use it. It’s like a drug. So I think I’m gonna give myself a chance at setting the hard boundary of. Sleep with my phone where I can’t see it when I walk past it in the morning. And then if that doesn’t work, I’m gonna actually delete the Instagram app. But the lesson in this for you to talk about is, ’cause I think everybody struggles with this, is presence and being present with your family, with yourself without noise.

There is so much noise surrounding us. That it takes serious, intentional effort to shut it down. That’s one of my current struggles and, and I share this because I think that I’m a pretty conscious consumer. Like this is always top of mind for me in terms of consumption of content, and yet I am still.

Struggling with it. So that’s what I’m currently struggling with and what I’m gonna do about it. I oftentimes find that I have to do these like resets with things like this, like bring it back to a baseline, that over time it gets out of balance again, and I have to bring it back to a baseline. The next thing I’m struggling with is related, which is my morning routine, because my routine changed.

With my shift in my schedule, and I think this can happen. Like we go into a new season and maybe it’s like we have a kid, or our kid hits this age or this milestone and this thing’s happening. Or you change your schedule or you’ve got, you know, summer versus school year and the, the daily schedule changes and then our routine changes, but we don’t do it.

Intentionally and consciously, we like let it happen to us. And so because my routine changed in the morning, I kind of lost my structure. I also, at the same exact time or a little bit after hiring my one-on-one coach in training, I got my podcast studio, which meant that I was dropping my kids off at their farm school and then coming straight to my studio.

Versus, I used to come home and I used to do my meditation, my red lights, whatever. So my whole routine has changed and I don’t feel that I have done it as intentional as I would like to. And so what I’m doing is bringing myself back to what are the non-negotiables for me? Like what are the things that must.

Be a priority before I start work. Before I start work is the key there. For me, it’s 10 minutes, at least 10 minutes of a stillness practice. That typically looks like meditation for me before I get on my computer, before I start work. Ideally, before I look at any app, I’ve given myself that 10 minutes, so 10 minutes of a stillness practice and then planning my day and actually still do that.

But for me, like having a, a priority list of what I need to get done. Keeps me and prevents me from going into Slack, going into email, going onto social media, and allowing communication being sent to me, becoming what dictates my day. The bigger the business you build, the more team you have, the more communication that is bombarding you text, email, Voxer, slack, dms.

It’s insane, and we’re so wired to respond immediately. I even notice myself when somebody else doesn’t respond to me fast. I’m like, Ugh. Like, come on. It’s on my mind. Like respond to me. And it’s like, we don’t owe people this immediate response. So I. Before I get into that mode, I have my plan and my intention for the day.

So my 10 minutes of stillness plan my day, and ideally I do some sort of journaling after my stillness practice. That’s not always a non-negotiable for me, but that, and not going on my phone for the first hour of my day. So I really keep my morning routine very simple, but I have the things that I know set me up for being intentional the rest of the day.

If you’re we’re about to transition into a season where a lot of parents are gonna go from school year routine to summer routine, and I think that is also another time, then it’s really easy to like fall off your commitments. Your kids are home. You don’t have that like morning schedule that’s happening.

And so being intentional with what do I want the start of my day to look like can help you a lot in your business and in in the productivity of your day. All right. The next thing I’m struggling with right now. Is honestly a lack of time, which I think we all are. I just said this yesterday to my chiropractor as I was like looking at the next time I could do an appointment, and I said, I feel like my day, every single day is like a game of Tetris.

And it’s like, here’s all the things that you need to fit in in the day and like get it to work when it’s almost nearly impossible. My answer to this problem is maybe gonna surprise you. I think that a lot of people, you know, looking at a lack of time like I am, I am currently right now, I feel very behind.

Also, I don’t, but let me explain. I feel like there is so much that my team needs from me right now in terms of approvals and just like sign offs on little things. I’ve got, both my kids have birthdays this month, so I need to help plan those parties and send out the invitations and like, it’s not just the business, it’s life in general.

I, I feel like I do not have enough time. Like I could use double the amount of time in my week and still probably not be caught up. It’s just the season I’m in, especially like this month. My solution to this is not, oh, like try to free up your schedule. Try to do less. I understand now in the game, in this game that the demand on my time and my energy is only going to increase.

So my solutions are, number one, build a capacity for it. And to know at the end of the day, here’s what you can get done, like going into the next day. This is the reality. This is your schedule. This is how much time you have to get things done. This is all that’s gonna get done. Like it’s just this. It’s just approval of this, approval of this.

And being realistic with that instead of constantly. I feel like entrepreneurs do this all the time where it’s like. Constantly. Each day they set themselves up and I’ve been there for failure. It’s like, I have two hours, but I’m gonna, I’m gonna put on my to-do list, five hours worth of things. And so I’m gonna just constantly be overwhelmed.

And I have built a capacity where I can just set it down. I can go, well, that’s actually not. Priority, or it is priority, but if it doesn’t get done, no one’s gonna die. Nothing’s gonna be set on fire. Like we might launch one day late, or we might, you know, be behind on something, but it’s, but it’s okay because this is where my time needed to go.

So that’s the first thing, is building the capacity for being able to have, it’s like, what’s a good analogy for this? It’s, it’s like you’re. You are standing in this like super crowded mall and all those people and things walking around and things happening, that’s your life, right? It’s like kids and business and clients and customers and audience and content creation and all that’s happening, but you just picture grounded and standing completely solid.

And whole and focused and everything else is like being tuned out except for what is right in front of you. And that’s a capacity that you get to build as you are an entrepreneur and you grow your team and you grow those demands. And so I think that a lot of times we try to address this solution of, I just don’t have enough time with, I need to do less or I need to free up my time.

And while, yes, I’m gonna talk about freeing up time and getting support. First you have to build the capacity for the fact that this isn’t going anywhere. I think I’ve accepted that when you aim to have a life that is full of abundance in a area, and you are really, I saw this, I saw this quote a while ago.

That was like train, like an athlete mind of a stoic. Something, something that basically was representing like each area of your life. You’re, you’re striving for not just excellence but a standard and you’re not settling when you choose to pursue that type of a life, it’s, everything’s gonna constantly feel full, but you get to be present with what’s right in front of you.

And sometimes that, sometimes that does include doing nothing. So for example. I have the fullest week and the fullest schedule, and I can still choose to say this night as a family, we’re doing nothing. We’re putting our phones away and we are, we are doing nothing and, and the to-dos can wait. Second solution to this is hiring help and.

One thing I’ve identified in myself and my team is we’ve grown a lot and we’ve had a lot of we have a lot of growth, but we also have a lot of ideas and things we wanna execute. And so we need to get support specifically for me and the leadership team. So it’s identifying, okay, I’m really feeling like I lack time right now.

How do I offload some things? What can I offload from my plate? What can I streamline more? And what type of support can I hire? So an in-person assistant is what came out of a meeting I had with my team this week and I talked about we have all these ideas as a leadership team and we oftentimes find ourselves like in a place where we have all these ideas, but then the month comes and we can only work on like what’s in front of us and we’re not able to work on the ideas we need to free up some time and energy for myself and the leadership team.

And so what can we offload? And that looks like looking at, okay, how are we spending our days? What are the things that we can make more efficient, that we can get support on, that we can bring in support to actually take these things off of our plate and create more time. So that’s what I’m doing about that thing that I’m struggling with, but it is felt like I am.

Uh, really just the last like two weeks underwater in things that I have to do. But I’ll tell you this, I have not missed a single training session. I’ve not missed a single kid’s sporting practice that I needed to take them to or game. And I’ll talk about another thing we’re implementing as a family to make sure we get present time together, even in the busy seasons, which is.

The next thing that I’m struggling with is some parents will, will relate to this, my kids are now five and almost eight and 10, and we are in the season of sports, and I homeschool my kids or we homeschool our kids with support and I can’t imagine if they were in school all day, I would not see them.

Like they would be gone all day. And that was a, that was a motivation for me. It’s been actually almost exactly a year. That we decided to start homeschooling. One, they were asking and they wanted to, but two. I was like, I can’t do the like get up, rush out the door, go to school all day, come home, rush out the door to your activity home at six dinner bed, like I’m never gonna see my kids.

And so we homeschool and it still feels insane. Each one of my kids is in one activity. That’s it. But every day, except for Friday and Sunday, we have something and I am not complaining. I absolutely love it. I actually really love going to all my kids’ sporting, but I try to all my kids’ sporting events, but I try, I don’t want to have my kids grow up in a, an experience of being constantly jam packed, busy.

I think majority of people live their life that way today. Including myself a lot of times. So I try at least for my kids to help them have white space, help them be bored, help them be able to play at home and have that downtime. But man, like we are so busy, which means I’m driving a bunch, I’m, I’m always at activities and then I’m, we’re getting home late and then it’s like late dinner.

Go to bed, we don’t see them. So my solution to this was I sat my whole family down and I was like, look, I’m struggling with this because I feel like I see you guys, but I don’t really see you. I don’t really get that quality time with you. And I feel like we get that on the weekend, but I know as my kids start hanging out with more friends and doing more, it’s like gonna be less and less.

So I’m like, we get in on the weekend in the middle of the week, I want us to set aside a day that after we get home and it’s dinner time. After the sporting event, we just do family time, mom and dad phone in airplane mode. Kids don’t get your 30 minutes of TV that night. And all we do is we have dinner and then we go, we do something fun.

We play a game. We’ve played kickball, we’ve gone to the park down the street and played T-ball. We’ve gone for a walk and a bike ride around the the loop. And it sounds so simple, but putting it in the middle of the week where. The chaos happens because it feels like it’s Monday and then all of a sudden it’s Friday.

Putting in the middle of the week is a time to just like slow down and be together has been so special. And the kids love it. Like they’re like, yeah, it’s family night. They willingly give up their 30 minutes of tv, which for kid, you know. If you have kids, you know, they like their TV and my kids only get 30 minutes a day after dinner is how we have it structured.

And so for them to give it up, it’s like they’re really grateful for that time. And I’m intentional with that. Time is not to go like do more, do more, do more. It’s like we’re gonna just be together. I think one night we just did an art craft. We like all drew in our living room and even if it’s an hour of that time, it’s so special.

So. Whatever. Like I, I’m hoping that you’re also seeing the theme here of whatever you’re struggling with. You can take that struggle, you can put it out on the table, and then you can say, all right, what are some solutions and let’s implement that. And that’s constantly how I look at my life is like, okay, my husband and I, we’re not, we don’t have enough time to connect, right?

We’re gonna do weekly date night, and we’re gonna schedule that and we’re gonna take the actions. So those are all more CEO personal things that I’m struggling with. I’m gonna switch into a couple of things that we are have in the business as top of mind. So one of the biggest things that we have an intention around is our evergreen strategy.

Two things. So our evergreen strategy, meaning the daily leads and sales, the weekly leads and sales coming in, I crush live launches. It’s why we live launch so much. I would like to live launch less and bigger live launches. And so a focus and an an intention for us this quarter is specifically around evergreen strategies.

So bringing in leads, bringing in sales every single day. Another opportunity. I don’t even like saying struggle because I think that everything is an opportunity to just improve results, but whatever. Another opportunity for us is growing our done for you roster of clients over the years. The number and the volume of leads for done for you level has.

Gone down just in like the natural, organic ways and we almost always hit our goal. We almost always hit our goal around Done with you support around our done with you offer. But the done for you, we have goals around and we’ve kind of like let it be like, oh, referrals and you know, we just get leads who find me or whatever.

And so we are going all in with an intention on growing that. And so I actually just literally got off a meeting with my team and I said, you know, I think this has to be one of our top goals and. Because we, you could have a million goals, right? Like there’s always something to do in business, there’s always something to grow.

And I think there’s a lot of power in saying, okay, but what’s like the number one priority? And for us, this is one of the number one priorities. And so we have some specific strategies in place, one of them being, growing this podcast because my ideal customer for the done for you listens to this podcast.

And so I am putting in a lot more time and energy and attention into the podcast. Than I had been. It’s also bringing on someone who’s gonna support us with Dream 100, which is these are your dream clients. Reach out to them and create connections. So it’s bringing in the support, putting the resources into what do we need to do to fulfill that goal.

So that’s another big focus for us. And so, you know, another thing that I look at in my business, same way that I do with these personal struggles that I have, is like, all right. Let’s bring awareness around what we’re struggling with, and then let’s create solutions and then let’s go execute it. Because the goal is not perfection.

The goal is constantly to go, okay, what has slid off What is not working as well anymore? Like where? Where, when I look at my dream situation, my dream life. My dream business, my dream revenue number. Where is that? Where am I today? Where’s the gaps? And what are actual actions I can take to bridge that gap?

And that’s how I operate every day, every week, every month. That’s how my team operates. And I think operating from a place of, there’s always that room for improvement, but the goal is not perfection. Like, I’m not like, oh, we suck because we’re not signing enough clients in an evergreen way. No, I’m like, okay, this is the reality.

This is the industry, this is the economy. This is where we’re at with our strategy. Let’s implement the solutions. And you know, on that note, from a marketing perspective, I think this speaks volumes to where the economy and the industry is at. Because I think that over the last three to five years.

Evergreen webinars have gotten more challenging to get somebody to actually watch the webinar and consume it. ’cause our problem is not getting leads. I can get Evergreen leads all day long. If I put the ad spend into it. It’s getting those leads to consume the content that I need them to consume to then end up buying from us when it’s a live launch.

I can get people on my live webinar so. For us, it’s like, okay, what are the innovative strategies we can come up with to meet people where they’re at? Based on the industry shift that has happened? Does it mean Evergreen webinars don’t work anymore? No, they still work, but you might have to get more creative with getting people to watch them.

Same thing with the elite level clients. The reality is a lot of businesses that were doing well, um. In 2018, 2019, 2020 or 2020 aren’t doing well anymore. And so the level of client who could afford my elite services, that window’s gotten a little smaller. Am I like, oh, it doesn’t work anymore. I. You know, we’ll quit this.

No, absolutely not. It’s like, alright, we gotta step it up. We can’t rely on organic and referrals only to meet our sales goals. We’ve got big goals this year, big goals the next few years, and we’ve gotta take a different action, which puts you in a place of empowerment versus I’m a victim to the economy, or I’m a victim to the industry, or the Facebook ads or whatever.

So it’s. How can I put myself in a place of empowerment, of taking action so that I can actually meet the goals, I can get the result that I want? So those are the things that I am personally currently struggling with and what we are struggling with in business and the actions that we are taking. I hope you guys found this helpful, and I will see you on the next episode.