Balancing Work and Wellness
As many of you know I have been on a social media break for two months. I know I said I was only going to be gone in April, but you know it was good to me! Now I’m back and I wanted to share what the reason was behind me taking that break.
First off ya girl was low key burnt out. I was tired, I was not feeling creative, I was stuck and didn’t have a clear sense of where I wanted to go next. It was totally out of character, it was not the Angie that I know. So I knew intuitively that I really needed to take a break and thought that the best way for me to do that was to pull back from the activity of creating; putting out content, doing videos. I really needed a moment to step back and press pause on all that so I could reassess where I needed to go.
I really needed to clear and declutter my space so I Maire Kondo’d the shit out of everything! Y’all should have seen the bag(s) that I dropped off at the goodwill. There was a full car getting dropped off, ok?
I took this same approach to a lot of other things in my life; I cleaned up my phone, cleaned up all my apps, my Google Cal - ya girl has got a weekly schedule now and know what I’m doing every day!
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Originally when I went on break I had asked y’all in stories what your biggest fear was around taking a social media break and most people were generally concerned about what that would mean financially for their business. Aka they didn’t know where the coin would be at.
For me, I know it would definitely be a test of the business, but I did feel comfortable going into the break because I do have a nice savings and I save every single month. I also have a number of revenue streams and residual income; my online studio, mentorship programs, and I also made some coin while I was gone with some private clients.
I was really able to test the business and see what is strong and what is weak. Where I saw strength was in the community and relationships I have with y’all. When I did my first post yesterday it just lit up the sky! I felt so warm, so loved and so embraced. I knew that was going to be something that was strong and so many of you encouraged me to take the break which was amazing.
Some of the weak points I found were that the business was not fully operational without me. You know, you’re not going to go into Starbucks and they close the door and say “we closed for spiritual maintenance”. Our Instagram was not being posted to, our stories were not being posted to, DMs, comments were not being answered because I wasn’t there to be able to do that.
What we need is to have stronger and more efficient systems to ensure the business runs while we’re taking those breaks.
There are definitely some systems that can be improved upon. Having financial stability is super important and still being able to show up on the ‘Gram; market, promote and connect with the community is really important even when you’re having an off day. When you’re on your Drake you’ve still got to be able to pull up. Drake is feeling his feelings, but he’s still in the studio making songs about his feelings, right? He’s still getting his coin.
For those of us who are focusing on wellness, we value time away and that is fantastic and I’m not advocating that we not take breaks. What we do need is to have stronger and more efficient systems to ensure the business runs while we’re taking those breaks.
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So, what do I mean when I say systems? It’s a process; certain steps you’re taking to get to a desired outcome that are replicable or can be taught to someone else in order to be replicated. I have a process for how I create for social media, from ideation to publication. First I have the idea, then maybe the theming of the content – “what do I want to talk about?”. Then I consider how I’m going to break down the idea and flesh each part out. Next I need to create graphics or pair them with images, write captions and schedule them in my scheduling app. Then once they post and go-live I have to do post-production things like engaging comments. If I decide to take a break that system is no longer functioning because I don’t have someone to implement it. If I had a social media manager – which I am considering hiring for support – I can show her that system or that process which allows that to continue even though I’m not necessarily present.
Do you think Jeff Bezos is out here managing everything little thing? He owns the company, he doesn’t run the company. He’s on a yacht chillin’ and still making billions of dollars.
There is a process for the client or the consumer, right? But I don’t need to be present for any of that. It is an automated system that is generating revenue without me. I’m going to talk about this in more depth in next week’s post but systems and automated process require an implementation timeline and an investment of time upfront. But! Once those things are running, it can be nice and smooth. You’re going to use different types of software and programs that are going to allow you to do those things efficiently. It could be an email sequence that goes out automatically, or your payment processor, or having your website up and updated. Those are all things that are going to support your systems automation processes.
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Next week I’m going to talk about the benefits and importance of automated systems and processes and get a little deeper into what those are and how you can begin to implement them.