I wasn’t happy (and nobody knew)

Jennie Wright [00:00:02]:
Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Acquire podcast where we talk about sales and marketing, lead generation, everything in between, and sometimes like today, mental health. And if this is something that you struggle with, I will give you a trigger warning. I’m going to be talking about my own mental health journey, a little bit of my struggle and how it affected my business and how I had to change things about myself, but also about the business in order to remain, stay and be able to grow. So if that is not your jam today, wait for next week’s episode or find another episode in the list that you might like. And if you were on this journey of mental health with me or this is something that you’ve struggled with and listening to other people’s account helps you because that has helped me a great deal, then I hope you stick around. And again, my name is Jenny Wright. I’m a list build and lead generation strategist and I’ve been in business for myself since 2013.

Jennie Wright [00:01:07]:
And throughout that entire time I’ve struggled with depression. Actually it even started before the business started in 2013. My depression started way, way back when I was a teenager and it has come and gone at various different st. The period of my life that I want to talk about on this particular episode is how it really like basically from 2013, a little bit of that, but mostly about like more recently. I’m talking in the last 24 months because my business was going in a direction that wasn’t making me happy anymore. I wasn’t enjoying what I was doing anymore. And I think it’s really important that if you’re going to be your own boss, that you do something that makes you happy, enlightened, something that draws you to your computer every day, if you work on a computer. And I wasn’t getting that.

Jennie Wright [00:02:00]:
I was starting to dread it and I knew I needed to change it and I didn’t know how, but I know it needed to happen. And eventually I figured out what to do, how to do it. But there was a lot of twists and turns along the way and it really struck, it struck a chord with me. So I’m glad you’re here. And if you struggle as an entrepreneur, I will tell you that having been doing this for 13 years or 12 years, that the majority of people that I meet as my clients and also just people in the same field as me and, and you know, friends, we’re in these online businesses, we are entrepreneurs because we don’t fit the mold of the day to day, the 9 to 5, the J O B And I was in a job at J O B, and I didn’t fit it. And I find that a lot of people don’t. But what that means for us is that we have a lot less structure around us. We have a lot less guardrails around us.

Jennie Wright [00:02:58]:
And because for some of us, you know, as introverts or even just people who are quiet people, sitting on the couch and reading a book is a lot more interesting sometimes than getting on and networking or going to an event. And what I was finding, and this was about. About 24 months ago, that I was really struggling with finding the. My drive for the business. I was doing a lot of summits, which is great. I love summits. I still do. But I was also finding that I wasn’t getting joy out of some of the work that I was doing.

Jennie Wright [00:03:37]:
And I was also building up this weird resentment around the work and somewhat directed towards some of the clients. That’s not okay. And it wasn’t their fault. They didn’t really do anything wrong. What was going wrong with me was that I was. I was feeling that I wasn’t getting challenged enough anymore. That I know summits in and out, you know, having produced hundreds of them, but I was just feeling like I wasn’t challenged. And I think as human beings, we constantly need that challenge to feel invigorated and enjoy things, what we’re doing.

Jennie Wright [00:04:15]:
So. But I let it go on for a long time. And if you’ve ever felt this, then you’ve probably also contemplated the same where you just keep going because you hope that this feeling will go away or you keep going out of obligation. And I had some of that, too. I couldn’t just up and change my business. My. My entire business. And my entire business supports a lot of different things.

Jennie Wright [00:04:42]:
It supports a family, it supports a lifestyle. It supports a lot of different things. And me making a change felt too big and too heady. Me making a change meant that other people might suffer because of what I’d already created, like the lifestyle that I’ve been able to create. And so I’ve always worried that if I stopped doing what I was doing in order to try and figure out what I wanted to do going forward, that I would lose clients or I wouldn’t get new clients, and that bills wouldn’t get paid and so on. And I will tell you that this actually did come to fruition. It literally manifested itself, which sucks, right? I wasn’t happy. And so about 24 months ago, I decided to try something new.

Jennie Wright [00:05:31]:
And I was told by people. You know what you’d be really good at just being like a fractional cmo, or you’d be really good at getting into businesses and doing their marketing strategy, or you’d be really good at such and such. But it felt too daunting, quite honestly, because again, people rely on me. And so I kept accepting clients that, you know, I felt didn’t really bring me the value that I needed out of the work that I was creating. I wasn’t doing work that was really challenging me. I felt like an outsider in my own industry because I wasn’t going to all these really cool and swanky events here in Toronto and then posting them all over social media. And no, no shade to anybody who is able to do that. That is just not my cup of tea.

Jennie Wright [00:06:18]:
I. I don’t love doing that. I love going to certain events and there’s certain people who I support and I will go to their events. 100 but I. I sometimes feel like an outsider in my own industry, which. Which really sucks. And then I was really noticing these signs of depression coming back in and hitting me hard. I knew I had to do something.

Jennie Wright [00:06:39]:
I absolutely couldn’t keep going the same way. Clients didn’t deserve it. I didn’t deserve it. The business didn’t deserve it. And I knew if I kept going this way, something would have to give. And let me tell you, it wasn’t going to be the business because again, it supports people. And I can’t. I mean, I have a team.

Jennie Wright [00:06:59]:
If I screw up, I have a team of six people who would stop getting paid. And I cannot do that to them. And I can’t do it to my family and I can’t do it to the lifestyle that I’ve built. All these things. Anyways. Losing enthusiasm for what you do sucks. I had to figure it out. And I started reading some books, right? I really started looking at my abilities, what I wanted to do.

Jennie Wright [00:07:24]:
Podcast. I mean, I listened to a lot of podcasts, so shout out to a lot of people that I was listening to in order to kind of figure out where I should be, right? So the first things I started doing was like auditing my offers on my clients. What was working, what was making me upset, what was making or triggering the depression or the symptoms of depression to come on, what was bringing me any kind of joy? How could I accept or continue to grow, you know, as an introvert or a ambivert with these tendencies and preferences of, like, not engaging too, too much with people? Because I find it exhausting how could I weave that into my business in a way that still allowed me to connect with people? And how could I acknowledge that my mental health was struggling, that I felt isolated, that I felt depression creeping in? There were days where I just honestly did not want to get dressed, sometimes even wash my hair. Like, those are. Those are clear symptoms of depression for me because I’ve gone through it before. What I realized after some deep thinking is I could redefine my business to match how I was feeling inside as opposed to how I was presenting to the world, not who I thought I had to be. And this felt like a breakthrough. And it wasn’t an aha.

Jennie Wright [00:08:54]:
Like I just ta da. And I figured it out. It was a slow roll. It was a really slow roll. Some of you know that I swim every morning. And so when I swim, I can tune everything out. I can just focus on repeated laps and I mean, like, you know, 160 laps or something. And during those, you know, during that time, I just focus on nothing and everything and I can just think, Jeremy, know what that’s like? So swimming every morning allowed me to, over time, come up with this realization that I could redefine my business, that I could support my goals, that I could, you know, really work on just being who I really wanted to be.

Jennie Wright [00:09:44]:
And oddly, as soon as I had that acceptance of that moment, a whole bunch of things changed. One, I felt like I wasn’t as upset, I wasn’t as unmotivated. I started feeling a little bit of motivation now. Scary motivation. Because if you’ve ever done this and you’re like, okay, I’ve been going down this highway for years, and now I want to get off at an inter pass or off ramp, whatever you guys call it, and then get on a different highway. Scary as I’ll get out. But I knew that I needed to figure this out. And so that was what I did.

Jennie Wright [00:10:25]:
I started setting some boundaries for myself and raising my own standards internally before I did any external visual. Like, anybody could see this. So I was really internally setting boundaries on how I would present myself to clients, how I would interact with people, how I would present my content, everything. And I also completely revamped my onboarding process because I’m a yes person. I’m a very yes ma’ am. No ma’ am. No sir. I’ll help you out, whatever you need.

Jennie Wright [00:11:00]:
Can’t do that. Embracing. Sorry, Embracing fractional CMO work was the thing that made me happy. It was really starting to leverage my strengths. It allowed me to dive into Just being a strategic marketer, high level, deep, fun work, always changing constantly. You know, problem solving, anytime where my brain has to sit and problem solve just is fun for me. So embracing a, a new way, like, I mean, let me preach it this way. Summits are very much like, they follow a cadence, you know exactly how they’re going to go, and I love that.

Jennie Wright [00:11:45]:
But at the same time, being a fractional CMO in other people’s businesses pulls on a lot of different levers for me and allows me to be like, okay, I got to put my so and so client brain on, right? And if I do that, I’ve got to be able to do this. If I, you know, if, if I put this hat on for this client, I’ve got to think about their problems. And then midway during the day, I’m going to switch gears, I’m going to put the hat on for the other client and figure out their problems and then switch back. Oh, and then I got to work on my own business. And I know that seems busy, but I like it. So it was giving me a lot of joy to start working that way, which is great. And I started creating selective summit work. I love doing summits.

Jennie Wright [00:12:27]:
I’ll never stop doing them, probably. And so I was just keeping one foot in the summit world without it being my entire identity, which I felt good and allowed me just to be a little bit more selective. I picked only the summits that I genuinely felt excited about that didn’t drain me. And it was a realization that I don’t have to choose one lane, but I could build the business to fit my life and not the other way around, which felt like how it had been. It felt more like a weighted vest on me than, you know, a joyful and light experience. If you’ve stuck around this long and you’re like, oh, you know what? I’m feeling the same. I, I struggle with not really loving what I’m doing or I have my own mental health issues and whatever that might be. I, I hope that you get whatever support and that you find your way through.

Jennie Wright [00:13:31]:
I really do. It’s a, it’s, it’s a terrible, terrible thing. Depression is absolutely. And just to me is so invasive and it’s so. Gosh, it just takes over every corner. But is. But as I’ve been trying to change things, I’ve seen seeing that the darkness recedes. It’s not completely gone, but it recedes and it allows me the joy again.

Jennie Wright [00:14:03]:
Right? Because feeling bored or burnt out doesn’t mean that I’m a failure. It’s just a sign that I’m ready for something new. And I really had to reframe that. So if you’re thinking about all this, I want you to look in, I want you to audit your feelings with complete honesty. Are you just bored or are you burnt out? Are you both? Is it because you’re working too much or is it because you’ve outgrown what you’re doing? Evaluate how your work builds, creates excitement, or is it just an obligation? And then give yourself the permission to pivot, to try something new without guilt and see how that works for you. Always, always. I will say protect your mental health and energy. The importance of boundaries.

Jennie Wright [00:14:52]:
I can’t even specify how important that is. Clarity in your business and who you want to work with, alignment to what you want to do, that’s how you create long term sustainability, you know, and in five or six years, maybe this changes again. Maybe I, I want to do different work, I don’t know. But right now I’m freaking happy and I haven’t been able to say that for years. So I’m really, really happy about that. One of the things that really brought me a lot of joy was outsourcing and delegating, draining tasks that I just, I should not be doing. And that was really hard for me. And at the time I was getting some advice which was like, hey, you know what? Save money, don’t hire a team.

Jennie Wright [00:15:36]:
And I didn’t listen to that advice. I, I hired a team and it helped immensely. Prioritize your mental health, whatever that looks like for you, Therapy, downtime, both things that you love, hiking, swimming, whatever it is, prioritize your mental health. Don’t let people invade your time. If you, if you could see my calendar now, it is bookended at the beginning and the end of each day with like blocked out ooo time where nobody can book appointments, nobody can book them, it’ll just auto decline. Because in the mornings I’m swimming or I’m hiking or I’m walking or I’m doing some sort of physical activity every single morning from like 7am till 9am I do not go to the desk before 9am anymore. I used to be at the desk at 7am I don’t do that anymore. And then anytime after 6, sometimes even 5, depending on the day, I don’t do any more calls.

Jennie Wright [00:16:33]:
None. And it’ll just completely not accept an appointment because protecting my energy isn’t optional anymore, is foundational to how I run the business. And having learned that, by the way, super hard skill for me to have gotten because not so smart over here sometimes. My business was transformed and my clients respect it. I felt good about it. I didn’t feel so drained. Really, really good. So if you’re feeling that burnt or, you know, that burnt out, that bored feeling, the feeling stuck, the depression creeping in on the sides, 100%, pay attention to these markers.

Jennie Wright [00:17:11]:
They’re telling you something bigger. They’re informing you that something needs to change. And once you learn what that is, you’re going to feel better, I hope. I’m not saying that everything I do is 100% going to work for you, but I really hope that it does. So to that end, a shorter episode today, but an honest one, one that I was a bit nervous about recording, but I really hope that you like it. And so if you’ve been here so long, thank you. I’m so glad you’re here. Check out some of the other episodes.

Jennie Wright [00:17:43]:
I’m getting back in, back into tactical stuff. Don’t worry. If you like the. The tactical episodes, they’re still here. I will bring one up next week, actually, so you can get into that. Thanks so much for listening and we’ll talk to you all soon. Take care.