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- What happens when you’re in a ‘doing’ stage of life?
What happens when you’re in a ‘doing’ stage of life?
Setting guardrails to prevent burnout
💌 What’s happening this week:
Working ‘in’ and not ‘on’
Journaling prompt: 10 things
Surviving or optimizing?
Weekly prep action step: Make me a morning person 😴

“in a doing stage of life, setting guardrails to avoid burn out”
I remember when I started my business journey and was always in the DOING and IMPLEMENTING part of the business.
This looked like I was doing (or implementing):
Marketing materials for myself to get our name out there
Cold pitches for leads (not my favorite activity, but I did it for a while)
Work for clients (ie: copywriting, content marketing, etc.)
Generally, the doing was just all the work that needed to get done because people actually paid me for that work. I felt two things in this stage of business…
🤓 Productive, useful, and excited. I had clients paying me for my work, I was doing the thing I enjoyed, and I felt like I was making a difference and an impact in people’s lives/businesses.
😵 Overwhelmed, a little lost, and like I was always playing catch up. Since I was ‘head down’ in the work, I didn’t have the time or space to actually look up and ask myself reflective questions, review data, or check in with my vision… I was in the thick of it.
Then, in 2020/2021, I worked with my first business coach who taught me how to scale the business, hire a team of contractors, and delegate the ‘implementation’ and ‘work’ to others so that I could take on the role of…
CEO
VISIONARY
LEADER
Firstly, my ego was like… YEAH, I LOVE BIG TITLES! Secondly, switching my mindset to this type of thinking gave me space and time to imagine (or reimagine), ask hard questions, keep my vision front and center, and make strategic decisions to help keep the business aligned.
If you were an online business owner back in 2020/2021, many business coaches were taking to the Internet streets saying things like:
“You’re the CEO… the Visionary, the Leader… you need to be holding the vision and have the headspace to dream and plan. You can’t be (shouldn’t be) doing the work, you need to delegate that to others and take your seat at the head of the table to guide.”
And y’all, I wish I knew back then how BINARY that thinking was. Throwing in a little sociology lesson here, that type of mindset is ableist, patriarchal, and elitist/classist.
The undercurrent of messaging like this approaches POWER from a top-down point of view. Placing you at the ‘top of the food chain’ as the CEO/Leader/Visionary and hiring others to do ‘the work you don’t want to do’ to keep growing the vision of your business. Now, placing those folks at a ‘lower level’ than you.
This type of mindset and rhetoric in any business setting doesn’t take into consideration how a business is interconnected from every department and every team member who ‘just does the work and implementation’. It creates an imbalance of power between the CEO and the team, and also the relationship between ‘visionary work’ and ‘implementation work’ - two types of work that are equally as important under a capitalist society.
Ok, sociology lesson aside (because I can get really deep into this), I realized that I am in a doing stage of my life.
I am working ‘in’ my business and life, head down doing work as a Content Specialist in my new freelance role, building marketing systems for my clients, studying for my driver’s license, putting away monthly savings for a house, and building my business buffer for low months…
In some sense, I’m not ‘doing the sexy work of visioning and planning’, I’m just showing up every day doing the work. But here’s the caveat… being ‘head down’ doing the work all the time without guardrails can lead to burnout (and feeling directionless)...
And, if we’re always head down, then we can also get lost along the way.
So here’s what I’m doing to make sure I build in time for visioning and planning, and joyful moments, so I don’t have burnout from doing all the time:
Blocking the last week of each month for my CEO Strategy Week: A week where I set aside time every day to review my numbers, look at the data, and ask myself big questions on how my month went and what my goals are for the next month (both professionally and personally)
Refreshing my morning and night-time routine: What previously worked for me is not working anymore (sigh…). I am figuring out how to refresh both my morning and night-time routine to better support me in this ‘doing stage’ of life
Giving myself GRACE and changing my mindset: I’m giving myself lots of grace in this current season so I don’t hold myself to perfectionist tendencies and am changing my mindset around ‘visionary’ and ‘implementation’ work. TBH, I enjoy both… idk why I believed I was too good for one or the other.
Planning ‘me’ activities: I’m holding myself accountable to planning 1 ‘me’ activity each week. No coordination with friends, just one activity that pours back into me and lets my creative juices flow, or is a little treat.
Finally, in an interconnected world with many nuances… especially as a small business owner/freelancer/solopreneur…
Implementation work and visionary work are both SO valuable to make a business run. And not only that, they’re both SO valuable in terms of living an intentional life!
We need time and space to vision and plan, dream up big goals, and ask ourselves the hard questions of… is this what we want to be doing? Or… is this how we want to show up?
And, we need the implementation work of showing up consistently to take small steps to change our lives to what we want them to look like.
If you’re reading this like HELL YEAH 🔥 and would like strategic accountability to make all that happen in a planning community - come join us inside the Lounge!
Let me know, are you in a ‘doing’ stage of life? Or are you currently ‘visioning’ what you want the next months to look like? Maybe you’re in a bit of both? HIT REPLY and let me know.
✍️ THIS WEEK’S JOURNALING PROMPT
“10 things I don’t want to do anymore”
I found this journaling prompt on Threads and thought it was so fun! I journaled on it this week, and the answers didn’t surprise me… but it did bring to light areas where I’m being just a lil’ too relaxed with what I want to be doing.
Some of the things I don’t want to do anymore: doomscroll when I wake up, give Instagram all my attention, spend most of my days in pajamas.
💻 THINGS THAT STUCK OUT TO ME ON THE INTERNET
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🗓 PREPARING FOR THE WEEK AHEAD
☕️ TRYING TO BE A MORNING PERSON I always say I am not a morning person, but idk if that’s entirely true. I don’t like waking up early in the morning, but once I’m awake and in my routine… I love the peace and calm of the morning before everyone starts moving around. Next week I’m going to try a ‘morning routine’ experiment where I wake up 2hrs earlier than usual (will I be able to do it?!) and stick to giving myself the slow morning I want… movement, reading, journaling, coffee, etc. Wish me luck. Usually, I wake up about an hour before work to journal and study… but I’ve noticed it’s not giving me enough ME time before work. |
🌻 GOODIES YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED
Whew, this video really took me an entire year to make. At 33, I’m starting over after taking an adult gap year and consciously making decisions to live a more intentional life.
🤝 HOW TO WORK TOGETHER
Want to work together to create time and space for intentional connections? Here are a few ways to do that through marketing support, journaling, and education.
📓PLANS TO PROGRESS MEMBERSHIP: A quarterly membership for big dreamers to intentionally plan each month with the accountability to transform your ideas into actionable steps and projects. Join us inside the Lounge here!
⭐ SIGNATURE BRAND & WEBSITE DESIGN + COPYWRITING PACKAGE: Get 2 brand strategists on your team to elevate your brand visuals, website, and messaging for your next stage of business. Learn more and apply here.
👀 WEBSITE AUDIT: DIYed your website copy and want to get an expert’s feedback and edits? Book a Website Audit and get feedback on what’s working and where to improve in just 2 weeks.
This month has been BU-SY! And not in a bad or good way, just in a… it is what it is way.
I didn’t even get the chance to share with you about the Ment-Art European Union Program that I’ve officially started!! Remind me to tell you about it next week 😉
Until then…
💖 #stayfierce,
Cassandra
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