How to Sustain Long-Term Creativity Without Burning Out with Josh Zimmerman

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Welcome back to another episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. I'm Anne from the Food Blogger Pro team, and in this episode, Björk is sitting down to chat with Josh Zimmerman of Creator Coach to talk about the mental side of creative work, specifically why burnout hits creators differently, how to reconnect with the why behind what you do, and what it actually looks like to build a sustainable creative business for the long haul. They also talk about the role of fractional C-suite executives and how bringing in the right support can help you manage the business side of things without losing your creative spark. If you've ever felt the weight of your work pressing in on your sense of self, this episode is a great reminder that you're not alone and that there's a way forward. And now without further ado, I'll let Björk take it away.

Josh, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here.

We're gonna be talking about what I would consider to be probably one of the most important things for us as creators. I'm going to cue it up. I'm going to explain why, and I want to hear if you feel like this is accurate. Uh, so I reflect on the fact a lot that what I do primarily is I come in and I sit down at a computer, maybe with a phone, and the only thing I do basically all day is think. I just use my brain. I don't like move heavy objects. I don't paint. I'm not putting stuff together. I just use my brain. And then I go home at the end of the day and, you know, hang out with my family and then I get up and I do it again. And for a lot of people here, it's not exactly the same. You know, we have recipe creators and so they might be in the kitchen, they're documenting, they're photographing, they're creating recipes, but primarily for us, we're just using our brain to create things. And therefore one of the most important things for us is our brain. And one of the things that we often see is that we as creators are getting— our brains are getting fatigued. Our brains are much like a car that you run with the oil in it, you know, can't change it. They're getting burnt out. They're not functioning for a lot of different reasons, which we're going to talk about. Um, you have dedicated your day today to helping creators who are navigating that burnout. I wanna hear a little bit about how you got started with that, and then we're gonna talk about some strategies. So let's start by how you got started doing this work.

Sure, well, and thank you again for having me. And I think the analogy that you had of creators, you know, were you sitting down and not having to lift heavy things, I'd respectfully challenge you on that and say that the lift that you're doing You know, with, with your mind is a workout in and of itself. And that's what we see with, with burnout, right? Because, you know, our mind is working so hard that we don't have the capacity to lift anymore. So the, you know, the way that I got started in this is that I was I went to school for journalism. I wanted to be a hard news reporter in front of the camera telling important stories to a wider audience. And I ended up falling into entertainment, traditional entertainment, which I really didn't have any interest in, but that's where I landed. And then fell into rights and clearances. And at that point, I Then, uh, was asked to be on a show called, uh, YouTube Nation, which was the official daily show of YouTube. And this was a joint venture between Jeffrey Katzenberg, DreamWorks Animation, and YouTube. Um, and that's where I got introduced to creators. And I had no idea about creators. Um, and the whole premise of the show was to help, uh, find the hidden gems on YouTube because there was so much content. In 2013 and now even more.

The hidden gems being creators, like creators who hadn't been discovered.

Exactly. Yeah. And, and taking 15 seconds to say, hey, you should really check this person out and really taking that big YouTube spotlight and shining it on them.

Yeah.

And really quickly, I fell in love with, with, with creators, um, and, and the show because that was my form of journalism. I was helping people see these amazing creators and broadcasting it to a wider audience. After that show, I ended up, you know, starting two companies and then I had creators who were my friends that were asking me to manage them. And I was like, I'm good at negotiating, but I was like, no, I'd rather be your friend. And they ended up really, really hounding me. And I ended up starting Jay-Z Management where I had a full roster of creators. And I loved it. I absolutely loved helping creators build their businesses and negotiating on their behalf. Um, but one thing really stood out to me was friends of mine who are creators were coming to me saying they were feeling burnt out. And I was like, I wonder what this burnout thing is. And I looked more and more into it and, and I wrote an article on, on LinkedIn to other managers saying, hey, we got to figure this out. And then there were these, uh, articles in, in major publications that started coming out profiling creators that were burning out. And it really rubbed me the wrong way because what it was doing was it was really showing the downfall of, of these individuals and there was no solution. And I was at lunch one day with a, a friend of mine and I just sort of snapped and, and said, I, I, I'm gonna be the solution and I'm gonna help these creators and I'm gonna become the first ever certified life coach for, for creators and burnout, which means that, you know, uh, as an ICF certified coach, um, I went back to school for 2 and a half years to learn what coaching is and what coaching isn't. Um, and you know, as I was going through schooling and building my, my practice, more and more creators started coming to me, and then I had businesses coming to me, and then CEOs and startups and founders. So, you know, my, my company Creator Coach is, uh, started really with, with creators, and, and I would say 60% is still very heavily creators, uh, but a lot of the other business, um, and, and my clients are, are founders and startups. All at that intersection of, um, of creativity. Um, and one of the things that I've always been very bullish on and explaining to people is that creators' lives are, uh, are blended unlike any other life in the world because you have to—

Blended meaning work-life.

Work and life.

Yeah.

Those, those you can't separate, right? Like we can, people can go to a 9-to-5 and at 5 they they drive home or turn off their computer. As a creator, you can't, you can't do that. You are your business. You are the brand. And that is inherently something new that people don't know how to cope with. And there really is no separating the business from who you are because people are watching or reading because of your unique point of view. So it presents a really interesting problem on how do you handle that? How do you scale a business when the business is you? And a lot of times we see burnout.

And also it's unique in that, you know, a lot of times people say, hey, it's beneficial if you can have some separation between the work that you're doing and, you know, your personal life. But more often than not,— and especially now in a world of AI, we hear people saying that your personal brand, who you are, is one of the most important components. And I think we talk about it on the podcast all the time. Experts talk about it all the time. Lean into your humanity, lean into your story. But that also means that your humanity and your story and your personality becomes the product in some way. What are the ramifications that you see? You know, a lot of times it's framed up as a positive when we're talking about that. This is something that you should do. It's beneficial. People want to connect with other people. What are some of the ramifications of that that you have seen as you've processed through many different conversations with creators who have navigated the difficult reality of being the brand and the personal being the same? It is a personal brand, right?

You know, this is, I get asked this question quite a bit, and what's so interesting is I hear a lot of experts say either AI is great or AI is bad. And my point of view is that it's both. And learning to use AI in a way to help get that time back, in ways that enable you to go spend time with your family and have that, that life that you have outside of work, but not to take— but not to outsource your, your, your why and your content and your, you know, celebrating the, the human spirit, who, who you are. That can't be outsourced. So there is a major clash that's happening on when it comes to AI and how do we implement that. And people are really, I think the pendulum has swung this way of like using AI a lot and now it's swinging all the way back to not using AI at all. I think there's a middle ground that enables creators to build their businesses and their brand, um, and focus on their why as well as the IP and also get that family time that creators a couple years ago did not have. You know, when we look at the way that people think about their business, a lot of the times it's black and white thinking. Of like, I have to have this much time, um, I have to dedicate this, you know, and it isn't. Life is not linear as much as we want it to be. Accepting that, that you are going to burn out, you know, there is no cure for burnout, right? There's no way to avoid it. Um, and that's something that I think is also important is also learning that This is going to happen again and again and again, but it's about learning how to use the tools that, that I work with my clients on, on how to identify it so that they're able to catch it before it becomes really destructive to their, to their business. Um, and that starts to affect their, their personal brand and, and, and their why as well.

Yeah. And really there are it affects everything. It's not that you can compartmentalize it to business, it's your entire life. We've had different versions of that. You know, we've been in some capacity creating content for 16 years and running a business for 16 years and have come up against different types of burnout. Mm-hmm. Um, one of the things you said that I think is really interesting is this idea that you, it's not a matter of like avoiding it forever because you will eventually get there. You will eventually experience burnout of some type, then the question is, how do you work through that? And so two things that I think are important to identify is what, what is burnout? What are the early stages of burnout? In, in its most critical form, I think you could look at it and say like, is burnout just another way of saying like, you're tired, you're exhausted, or is it something else? Different than that? Because we all get tired. We all get exhausted from work. Is different— is burnout different? And if so, how do you identify, hey, am I just like tired from a hard week or am I burnt out?

Yeah. So the World Health Organization in 2019 classified burnout and identified it as an occupational phenomenon, not a mental health issue. And they very methodically laid out the, what burnout looks like. And while that is a great start, you know, when we, when we look at what burnout is, it can take on a lot of different forms, but a lot of the times it is not being motivated when, when you used to be, it is feeling really apathetic. Uh, you know, not having a short, shorter temper. Um, it is also, you know, not, not really caring and sort of, sort of checking out. And so not wanting to be around the things that you love doing or the people. Um, and that crosses over into a lot of different things that it could be. A lot of those, those, um, symptoms could be something that you would need to see a, a mental health professional on whether— Sure.

It's a depression or it could be anxiety. Like it could be presenting with something that would be classified as a mental health issue.

Right. And so making sure that, and they can all be, happen at the same time. Sure. But one of what, what I, I look for is when did this start? What are you, what are you avoiding? And usually that is a really good indicator of, I used to love to do this and now I hate it or I can't stand it, right?

And I think so many people will relate to that because it's like, you can think back to a time. I mean, we've had multiple different versions of this. Like I've said this recently with some of the new things that have come out, new tools, You know, we did this interview a while back with my friend Jason. He's starting to use this tool called OpenClaw and it's like, oh my goodness, this is really fun and exciting and interesting. And, and it makes me remember back to what it felt like when the internet was kind of like that, like websites. And it was all this kind of like new, unique, and it was like, oh, that's like a really fun feeling for me to remember back to what that was like. Whereas today. 16 years into doing this, some of it feels like work, uh, in a way where before it was exploratory, it was discovery. It was like, you know, it was fascinating. So I can relate to that idea of, hey, not entirely for everything, but there are certain things that I do today that would've felt like, oh my gosh, this is magical. Like you can create a signup form and people put their email address in and then you can email them. Like, that was so cool when we did it for the first time. And now it's like, you know, there's hundreds of people signing up a day and you don't really even think twice about it. So let's say somebody is—

That is so normal.

Sure.

It's so, so normal because one of the reasons the most successful creators that I work with are ones that had an idea. And it was a hobby, something that they liked doing. And they're like, oh, this is cool. And then they put it online and it took off. And all of a sudden their hobby became their job. And if you do it for long enough, that you get sort of get sick of that hobby.

Yeah.

So you start looking for other things. It's not a hobby anymore. So the thing that you loved so much has now become the thing that you resent.

Yeah.

So there's, there's that piece of it that you throw in there too.

Yeah. So what happens if that is you, like, what if you realize that this thing that was something that you love, that you've built into a successful business, that's maybe paying the bills for your family, that from the outside world would be, anybody would look at it and be like, oh my goodness. Like, You create content, you make like cookie recipes and you post them online and you get paid tens or maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars to do that dream job. And there'll be some people who are listening.

They think, they think it is until they see all the stuff that needs to happen.

Totally. Even if you're in it, you can kind of feel some tension around that. Like, wait a minute, this is what I worked so hard to get to. And now that I'm here, I don't love it. This isn't universal, but I think it's really, really common with the conversations that I've had, different seasons that we've experienced kind of similar feelings with it. My question to you is, what do you do if you find yourself in that position where you're, you look at your day the next day and instead of being like, this is the best job ever, I'm so excited to get to do this. It feels like dread, like, shoot, I have to do this thing. What are the steps that you take to get back to a better place, or can you get back to a better place, or is that also the time when you need to look and say, maybe this isn't the right fit anymore.

That's usually when people call me, is this right at this junction of, I don't know what to do. And I would say that anybody who says, I can tell you the solution, you should run the other way because there is no right answer. Because we're human and this will happen. So every person that I work with or every organization that I work with, this happens, but there are different answers to, um, how to move forward. One of the most common things that I see is that people have gone into a routine that is that has taken all of the fun and excitement out of what they've— why they started it. They've gone too far away from their why, from that core, and they've just gone into process work. And so a lot of the work that I do is looking at that from a 30,000-foot view and trying to help them instill that spark back into their daily work. What— and this is— everyone thinks that this is only— they're the only ones that are experiencing this. But every single founder that I work with and every— you can read every single Harvard Business, you know, article on this and study. Is that as a founder, uh, or an entrepreneur, you have this idea and you just go for it, right? And you are leading, you, you, there is, you're, you're blazing a new, new path. And along the way you hire people, but those people aren't as, as passionate as you are. And so it's sort of like always pulling them along. And the bigger you get, the harder it is to find people, um, that are, that see the vision that, that you do. And I always say like, nobody's going to care about your business as much as you do, no matter how much you pay them.

Yeah. Right. Nor should they.

Nor should they. Right. That's not their job. If, if that was their job and if that's, then they would be you. And so. Looking at what a founder does and how they need to look at their business is one of being able to get back to knowing that what they do is unique and what they are developing is something that is not— that nobody else can do. And how do we then take that spark? Because you can't, you just, you're never going to get rid of it. Everyone's scared that when they burn out, they're, you know, this, the passion's gone. I'm never going to, I was like, good luck. Like you can't get rid of it if you tried.

But you're saying you can't get rid of the spark. You have something there and it might be muted in seasons of stress, anxiety. Burnout, but once that's cleared, the spark will still be there is what you're saying.

Yeah. All, all, all what happens is we start to operate in a vacuum, right? And when that happens, there's no oxygen. So that flame, that creative flame may, may start to get smaller and smaller, but there's no way that somebody who is as creative as, as you or anyone that's listening to, to this podcast that has that, that flame, you, you can't extinguish it if you tried. You just have— it's part of who you are. It's part of your DNA. Um, and so it's really about finding ways to give that fuel. Um, and what happens is as you grow, you take on more and more executive responsibilities as a CEO, and that puts you farther and farther away from what you actually love doing.

It's the maker to manager transition.

Exactly. And then manager to founder, because founder CEO, founder CEO, because all you want to do is you want to be in the weeds, right? You want to be that technician in there when you have to be making high-level executive decisions. And not long after, you're not doing the things that you love doing. You're managing people, you're doing payroll, you're dealing with HR, you know, all of these things that you, why you started, you're not doing those anymore.

I think of it, I have a friend who had a couple restaurants he started, super successful restaurants, and Lindsay and I went once and it was, it's a restaurant in Stillwater, Minnesota. It's no longer there, but he, we were sitting out on the patio. It was weird time. It was like 3:30, so there's nobody there. He came out, he's started chatting with us, we're like, how's, how have things been going? He's like, oh, the restaurant's doing well. But one of the things I continually realize is that I, when I was starting a restaurant, I thought I was getting into the food business, but I'm actually getting into the paperwork business.

Yep.

And it's like, oh shoot, what a talent. And yet as the founder of a restaurant, what he realized is that he was doing a lot of paperwork and— one of the things I think about as creators make this transition to manager or to CEO, executive within the business, is I think a lot of those people, if they would've seen that job listed on a LinkedIn profile, they never would've applied for it because they would've been like, that sounds miserable. I would not like to be doing that work. And yet because of the nature of growth and business and adding team members, the natural flow is that you as the founder then have 3 people who are working for you, and then you start to have those recurring meetings, and then you have team dynamics that you're navigating. To your point, everybody's an individual, everybody's different, and there are some select creators who probably really lean into that and realize, I love being a CEO, I love being a manager, this is a good fit for me. I'm gonna create processes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Touche.

Touche.

But, um, we've, I mean, it's like a, you're describing the exact scenario that Lindsay navigated 4 or 5 years ago where she suddenly found that she had a team of really great people, um, really amazing people. But what she felt was, I'm now needing to create in order to keep this pipeline going because people need me to create in order to have deliverables that then they work on. Um, And it goes back to that idea of like, what we're doing is we're showing up every morning and we're using our brains to create. And I feel like what we're, what we're needing to do is figure out how to create the best environment for our creativity, our brain, our, you know, thinking to thrive. So what does somebody do given the reality of that path for so many creators? If they are also ambitious and they want to grow and they want to scale and they don't want to experience burnout by building a team and all of the realities that come along with that?

I would say don't, don't go into this business then. I mean, it's just, it, you know, sometimes my job is to tell people when the baby's ugly, right? And I'm, I'm not here to just, tell people yes and go you. Part of building this, a successful business is being a leader and doing those chores of, but when I think when you explained it, like if you saw this job on LinkedIn, you would never apply to it, right? Most creators are not CEOs. And even people who aren't creators, who are most founders aren't CEOs. You can go to the best school in the world. No one can teach you to be a CEO. It's not easy and it's not fun. But there's a real interesting thing that I've noticed when it comes to CEOs in corporate and creators who are running their companies. And they both have something that is similar. Almost to a T every single time, which is they are lonely because a CEO can't go to the board to talk about their problems and they can't go to the people below them to talk about their problems. So who are they supposed to talk to? Same with creators. You can't go to your— do you go to your friend and say, listen, I just made a million dollars off this cookie recipe? Well, no, then you're talking about— you're going to have to explain the entire process of RPMs and CPMs and page views and what, right? And it's like, I want to avoid all of that. So then it starts to get really isolating. And so looking at how to build, how to work, what you explained with, with, with Lindsay of that she was creating content or creating recipes so it could fill the pipeline. Is where I would say timeout. That's, that's not why you started this. You're now working for the company. The company's not working for you.

Right.

So what do we need to do to switch that and have the company work for you? And sometimes that means bringing in a, a, a C-suite, um, individual, fractional, who is not from corporate.

Do you explain what that means? So for those who aren't familiar, C-suite individual, CEO, CFO, that's what you mean by C-suite. And then can you explain the idea of bringing somebody in fractionally in one of those positions? Sure.

So it means that they're not full-time. It means that they may come in, you may only 10 hours a week because you don't need a COO full-time, but you may need somebody that is, um, that is a, that has done, been a COO and you only need them a fraction of the time. Um, so that's what it means when I say fractional, but—

So these are like high leverage, really, we have a fractional CFO that we work with. 10 hours a month. It's more than we need. He's really great at understanding the work that we do, putting together the spreadsheets we need. We don't need him 40 hours a week for sure. Right, right. But we do need his expertise just at a fractional level.

Yep. That's, that's exactly right. What I would strongly suggest is that if somebody is looking for a, a, somebody in a fractional role, is that the person that you bring in has worked in startups before and don't go for the big shiny person that worked at a big company because—

So different.

They're used to having a team of 50 people do the work. And what you need to look for is somebody who's willing to, you know, get their hands dirty, and work with you, not tell you what to do, uh, and, and advise you. Um, so, and that's, that's hard to find, but it is something that is, starts to take off your plate the things that are, are weighing you down. So you can then think about, you and Lindsay can think about what, how do we want to move forward with, with, with our business and what are the things that we can do that are fun to help, to help grow, grow the business. Finances is usually not the, the fun piece. The other thing I will say is it's really important to delegate, not abdicate, because that's usually a death sentence. When you abdicate something, then, then, then it's like, I don't want to see it. Um, and then you come back and somebody spent all your money and, and it's not a good Can you explain the difference between those two? Sure. So, you know, delegating is saying, okay, here's, here's your role and here's what I'd like you to do. And I want you to report back to me. You know, we're going to meet and I want to see, have you hit these KPIs, right? That's, I'm delegating this to you. Abdicating is, I don't want to see it. Just, just handle it. Don't talk to me about it. Just do it. What ends up happening is you, you know, listen, I hate bookkeeping. I have a bookkeeper. Abdicating it would be giving everything to my bookkeeper and be like, I don't want to see any of this again. Just give me the P&L, give me everything that I need for my accountant. That would be abdicating.

And then forward once it comes in.

Right, right, just for it, right? Delegating would be, hey, let's— here's— I need you to do this and do my bookkeeping, and we need to meet once a month to go over the P&L, and I need to, you know, check and make sure that you're doing everything correctly and that, you know, uh, it's going into the right categories, etc. And as we prepare for taxes, here's what, what I need. So there's, there's there's accountability in checking in. Because if, if I didn't, at the end of the year, I'm going to be left with it, with, with a mess because they haven't had anyone, any guidance from me. So that's, that's the big difference. And that's across the entire company.

You're in this position where, let's say, I'm just trying to paint the picture. So you have, you start out, it's just you, you're doing everything, you're cooking, you're doing the emails, you're setting everything up. And then you're like, in our case, it's like, hey, we need some help with Pinterest. So we hire Lindsay's friend Angela. She comes on, she helps. It's like, okay, we're getting some momentum. We have some more money. We're going to reinvest it back into the business. Uh, you bring somebody else on who helps with the day-to-day. Eventually you get to this point where potentially, uh, if you're lucky, you experience the difficult reality of seeing the thing that you used to love doing change, where now you're maybe managing a lot. You're maybe doing, uh, some of these roles that you don't want to be doing, or you wish that you could get back to doing the other work. And what I'm trying to figure out, what is the best way to have that transition where you bring somebody in who helps take on some of the stuff that you don't like to do? Some of the, you know, you talk about that fractional C-suite type role. And how do you do that in a way that truly allows you to go back to doing the thing that you wanted to do? Because I feel like there's two paths really. One is that you start out, you scale up, you realize, I don't like this reality of multiple people being accountable to me. Uh, you know, there's just more dynamics, relational dynamics that exist when you have more people and then, and then you decide to scale back down. And that's what, that's the approach that happened with Pinch of Yum. It's like we could have, you know, probably 10 people doing work that is additive, that is valuable. But for a number of reasons, you know, both myself, but also Lindsay, it's really her business first and foremost and her personal brand decided that's not what she wanted. And so we have like a really lean team that allows her to have some flexibility and autonomy that is You know, the most life-giving thing for her in this season. Another way to potentially achieve that is to bring somebody in who kind of handles some of the managerial executive type, uh, work. Can you talk about how you've seen that successfully navigated for creators who do want to continue to scale revenue, potentially team size? Growth of the business, what are the most successful examples of bringing somebody in to help with the day-to-day of the executive level type work? And how's that different than just hiring, you know, somebody to do individual contributor type work?

How much time do you have?

Another episode, right?

Right.

Part 2.

What you and Lindsay did was, you know, like chef's kiss, per— perfect, right? Is that you, you knew what you— where you wanted to go, um, and you may want to expand more, but you went— got back down to basics of what do we really need.

And in some season we might. I think that was the thing we realized in it was like, oh, we have two little kids and yeah.

Right? So that's, that's part one. The other option of was expanding even more. What that takes is a strategic plan. And a strategic plan is not one that you get off of Google.

ChatFBP.

Or ChatFBP or Claude or any of the other ones. It may sound really good, but it's, it's, it's not. Or you hire someone to do it. For you. That's also not good because what a strategic plan does is it looks at where you want to be. We do a strategic plan for in 5 years, and then we backwards plan what each of the objectives are every quarter. And it's a living, breathing document. You know, what staff do you need? So you may not be at the point where you need a CFO, but you may need to have that on the future of Q1 of next year. You want to start interviewing people. So being really intentional about what growth looks like and what's important to you before— what, what, what a lot of people do is they do fire, ready, aim.

Right?

Instead of ready, aim, fire. And it takes, and the creators that I work with really don't like doing it, but it helps build guardrails and also clarity around the metrics and the data that they need in order to make informed decisions on hiring. Whether that's job descriptions, HR, hiring products. That is the way that you can successfully scale. And when, you know, an update to Google comes out, you've already looked at that in your SWOT analysis. What are the threats that are, that are happening and what are we going to be able to do to pivot? You know, if, if the, if the hospitality industry had in their SWOT a pandemic, they may have been able to pivot a lot quicker than, than they did. So making sure that you have a clear vision of where you want to go before you hire anybody is really important. Now, that doesn't mean that that vision isn't going to change, and that's okay. But that's why a strategic plan is so important, where it's not like I'm going to write it out and then never see it again. It should have coffee stains on it. It should be You know, you should be looking at it every day and that's going to then help inform how you move forward in each sector of, of, of your business.

Yeah. It's interesting. We talked about this, those, that same analogy, you know, ready, aim, fire, ready, fire, aim positively within the context of just pressing publish on content. Yeah. And I think a lot of the most successful creators have that as a mechanism that exists within them, which is like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna publish and I'm gonna learn from it. And then from there I'm gonna iterate and then I'm gonna publish again. And then I'm gonna learn from there and iterate. What I hear you saying is you kind of have to dismantle that, that when applying it to a strategic plan, because you have to, you can't just build it as you go. That's the whole idea of a strategic plan is it has to be codified. To the best, the best version of it today that you can create, predicting, hey, in 5 years, where do I want to be? And then working back, what does that look like on a quarterly basis in order to then get you to the point where, hey, I've achieved 5 years from now where I want to be. What I hear you saying is it's kind of always going to be 5 years out where you're continually evolving it. You're thinking about what the plan looks like, how it changes. But you're pursuing this goal, but you have to do the work of creating that plan and not just kind of like wing it. Is that what you're saying with a strategic plan?

Yeah. And it can be 1 year, right? It could be half a year. You know, it, it, it's standard is, is 5, but most of my, my clients don't like doing 5 years. So we do 3 years or we do, right. It's too far out. Hitting publish and learning from that is part of the strategic plan. Because what the strategic plan is, is it's exactly that. It's hitting publish, but hitting a, hey, I want to achieve this. What am I going to learn from this? So I think I'm going to make this much this quarter if I do this and this and this. Oh, you know what? I didn't hit that. Why didn't I, why didn't I hit, hit that, that measurement? Okay. Got it. And that's not a failure. It just is, we're learning. And so we actually adjust that end of whether it's a 5-year or 2-year, we adjust that metric to what we learned from that month or week or quarter. And so leaning into the creativity of a strategic plan where you can have fun with it, Um, as much fun as possible.

Sure.

Um, where it is a publish play, it's a play on publishing and what, what do I get to learn from this? And if you're able to start to implement the things that you've learned, just like when you, uh, you know, publish a video or a post, you start to iterate and you start to learn.

Right?

People don't learn by succeeding. They learn by failing. And just failing doesn't mean you're a failure. There's a, there's a big difference. And so there's a lot of pressure on, you know, founders and, and, and, and creators. I can't fail. If I fail, I'm a failure. And I always try and remind people that you didn't get to where you are You did it by, by, by trying and learning from what worked and what didn't work. And then also understanding that a lot of your business is outside of your control.

Algorithms and all that.

Always changing.

Yep.

Yep. You, right?

So looking at how do you, as that as a factor in your, in your, um, in your business plan. What do you do to account for that and not be reactive but proactive? Which is another piece of why burnout happens is because you're always reacting to things instead of being proactive on it.

Yeah. So all of this in pursuit of like healthier days, less burnout. Can you paint a picture of that second scenario that we talked about where somebody came to you and says, I'm feeling burnt out, I'm not inspired. And going through that process of a strategic plan and getting back to a place where not only is the business successful, but they're in love with their work again, maybe at a high level, but what does that look like? And what can people— can you paint the picture of what that experience can be like, whether through a story or through like, you know, the, the average of 5 different stories in order to kind of Anonymize it.

So I'm bound by confidentiality, so I can't say who I've worked with unless they— it's on my website or they've given me express written permission. And each person is different and each company is different. But what I've seen is that when someone comes to me that is burnt out or thinks they're burnt out, it's usually a 5-alarm fire. And so what we do is sort of take a look at really what's happening and is it really a 5-alarm fire and then start to dismantle the most important parts of what they're trying to do. And one, see if it even is a business. And if it is, then what are the pieces that they don't enjoy doing and what are the pieces that they do enjoy doing? And then starting to reshape, um, uh, how, um, how the business looks, but that is also how they look, how they are going to show up each day. So, you know, one of, you know, one of my clients, you know, has an extremely successful YouTube channel and, and, and blog and And yet they have found themselves in positions where they haven't, they've hired too many people or they haven't hired enough people. And there's a huge amount of thrashing going back and forth because they don't know, they've been pulled in so many different directions that they're just sort of in analysis paralysis. So in, in that situation, what, what we worked on was one, helping figure out what support they needed to actually take a moment or a few, few weeks or a few months to decompress and get out of the fear, flight, fight, or fear mentality, and then start to slowly build back the different pieces that they, they really liked. And so what my clients really don't like is how long it takes. I can never make a promise of how long something, how long it's going to take. People always want immediate answers and they want action, right?

Done yesterday.

Totally done yesterday. Totally get it. But that's not how it works. It's customized to each person. So I've seen people who've been able to do this within a few months and I see other people who do it in a few years. But it really goes back to how somebody looks at what they're building. You know, like why? We really get, we need to get back to the why. Like, why are you doing this? Because frankly, nobody cares.

Nobody cares. Hmm. What do you mean by that? Can you, can you tell, talk a little bit more about that?

Sure. You know, like nobody cares about what you make. Nobody cares about your cookies. No, like they don't. What they care about is the why. Why am I feeling this way when I make Lindsay's recipe? Why am I feeling happy or sad or angry or hopefully not angry or, you know, uh, you know, why am I having an emotional reaction to somebody is, is creating and being able to come back to that. You know, there's tons of recipes out there. Why should someone care about yours? It's not because your, your recipe is good. It's because your recipe is good and it has a good story to it. And on top of that, there is a, there is a connection that is made, a parasocial relationship, but there is a connection that's made that is, oh, I've made this recipe. And because of that, I was able to share it with my friends and all my friends are asking me for this recipe. And so on the, on the other end of it is people being like, this is, this recipe is bringing me joy. On my client's side is, well, why does it bring you joy? Why are you creating this recipe? You know? What, what is it about this recipe that, that, that, why did you create it? And how does it make you feel? And people are like, well, this is too woo-woo. And I'm like, well, just, you know, hear, hear me out. And once we get back down to that why, then you see the passion start to, to ignite again. It's so the, the answer to your question is there's a lot of unearthing a lot of the stuff that has, has piled up.

Yeah.

In order to get to that, that core passion. And once that's revealed, there's really no stopping them.

Hmm. It's one of the things I've been thinking a lot about with our house lately is how good we are at acquiring things and how bad we are at getting rid of things. Yes. And I've also thought about that in the context of meetings or just like in general, I'm 40 now, like over my life I've accumulated, uh, more than I've, uh, gotten rid of things. And that's speaking in responsibilities and stuff. And I think the same is true within an entrepreneurial arc. We're really good at adding a meeting, adding a new platform, adding a deliverable.

Mm-hmm.

We're not as good at getting rid of those things. And I've been thinking about that within the context of a lot of different things, but how do I load balance things that I'm adding and things that I'm getting rid of? And it sounds like part of what you're saying is we need to understand that in order to, you, I think you used pile on, like in order to get some of those layers off to get back to the thing that we really enjoy doing, we have to figure out how to get, take those things off that have been piled on, uh, which takes a lot of work, takes a lot of effort. And that's what you do with, with creators.

So as we close out, um, I would, I would just say, I would just say to you that, you know, for your situation, which I hear all the time, I would ask yourself a very simple question. If I say yes to this meeting, what am I saying no to?

Yeah.

And if I say no to this meeting, what am I saying yes to?

Yeah. Because both is true always.

Right. And so that then, if you can start to look at the decisions you make as, if I say yes to this, I'm going to say no to this, that then starts to help— it helps to contextualize really how much are you able to hold on your plate. And then it starts to bring some awareness into, I can't do all of this on my own. So So that's one thing that I would say is, you know, you've put all this stuff on, right? What needs to come off, and this is the dangerous piece, is people saying, I want this off, and they take it off and they abdicate it, right? Versus we need to clear the plate on the things that are just noise, and then what are we saying yes to? That is actually nurturing and nourishing us versus depleting us. And that's where the burnout usually starts to happen. When, when we're putting so much on our plates, that is, is not, that isn't nourishing us.

Yeah. I can almost see it as like in that process, you're just completely getting rid of some things. You're saying we just don't do these things. We've done a lot of that. It's an opportunity. It would help. You'd make money from it. It would grow, but we just are saying no.

Yeah.

The other would be delegation. And I think of Dan Martell's 10-80-10.

Mm-hmm.

You're not giving somebody 100% and just give, walking away. You're shaping up 10% of it. You're letting them do 80% of the work, and then you have the 10% at the end that you're checking in on and being aware of. So it's like completely getting rid of stuff that you don't need to do, delegating some stuff, and then holding onto the things And fully owning the things that bring you the most joy. That to me, when you look at, you know, getting up the next day and you can see a day that is a majority, I love to do these and maybe a little bit of the 10/80/10 here and there, but you're not doing 100% of the things that you despise. You know, you're maybe just doing 5% of it to make sure that it's up to standards. That feels like a, it could be a really beautiful day, week. Month life that you get to live as a creator. I know you've helped so many people make that transition when they are feeling burnt out, when they're not excited about their work. Talk a little bit about how you work with people. If somebody listened to this and it resonated with them, how they could reach out, what does that look like? Sure.

I mean, I, I keep it really, really simple because the, the creators and, and clients that I work with are really, really busy. So If they're interested, they just can reach out, josh@creatorcoach.com. And I have a, we have a complimentary consultation with them and see if it's a fit and we go from there. I really, I don't do, I never make promises because I think that's a setup and I don't use fear-based marketing. You know, that just doesn't, That's just not who I am. And my job is to help my clients, and that's usually one step at a time. And if I can be of service to somebody, that's great. If I can't, I'm usually down to help them find who they are, who can help them, because I think the world needs more people like you and Lindsay and the people listening, because Your job is nourishing. That's, that's what you do. And so my job is to help put everything that you put out, take, take some of that back in.

Yeah. That's great. Josh, thanks so much for coming on. Really appreciate it.

Of course. Thank you.

Hey there, Anne again from Food Blogger Pro Team. Thank you so much for listening to that episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, we would greatly appreciate it if you could share with your community and leave a rating or review wherever you listen to podcasts. We're excited to kick off our Grow miniseries next week as we sit down with Ben Jabawi, the founder of Grow, to talk about memberships and list growth. We'll see you back here soon, and in the meantime, we hope you have a wonderful week.