You Are Not Alone (A Conversation About Comparison, Burnout + Perfectionsim)

The following is a transcription of Episode 2 of The Peaceful Entrepreneur Podcast! Click here to listen on all platforms!

AMY: We are jumping right in today with my very first guest and this was the very first interview that I ever recorded for this podcast. And I am just so excited for you to hear this conversation that Beth and I had. On this podcast, I do not want to shy away from having the hard conversations and talking about the realities of what it's like to be an entrepreneur. Because though I truly mean it when I say entrepreneur life is the best life, that doesn't mean it does not come with its struggles.

And I think that in this day and time of social media, we do see the highlight reel and we do see just snippets of people's lives and we don't get to hear the backstory behind the glamorized picture that they're presenting. Because sadly, I mean, we live in a world where mental health, anxiety and depression are at an epidemic level. Everyone is dealing with something, at some point or another. And as entrepreneurs, we have very specific struggles that come up because our work situation is so unique. And especially in our situation where we're often so alone, we can feel very isolated in those hard times.

But the thing is, we really aren't alone. There are so many people out there going through the same thing, and that's what I wanted to do today. To just encourage you that you're not alone, and though it might feel like it, you're not the only one going through these things.

So I pray that this conversation might encourage you, that it might help you process what you're going through, and at the very least, make you feel like you have a friend, you have a buddy, because we get it. And we're here for you. We've got to be here for each other.

So with all that said, without further ado, let's go ahead and hop into the episode!

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Beth, welcome to the podcast! Thank you so much for being here today.

BETH: Hello, hello, I'm excited to get to chat with you and I'm so excited about your new podcasting adventure. It's such a fun place.

AMY: Thank you. I am too. Beth is honestly probably more experienced in podcasting than I am at this point because she actually has another podcast that she co-hosts. So I am sitting with the best right now.

BETH: Yes, Bestie, Beth, is my cute little name, my stage name, perhaps, but I am the co-host of the Fearless Chase Podcast every Tuesday, and it's a grand time.

I just love to talk. So when Amy was like, "Hey, I'm gonna start a podcast. What do you think about that?" I said, "Absolutely," because I could listen to you talk all day long, and I could talk with you all day long. So it's a great time.

AMY: It's a great combo. Well, as you can tell, Beth and I are besties, as she says. And it's funny 'cause we've literally never met in person, but just over the last, it's been a year now, since we've met.

BETH: Happy one year anniversary!

AMY: One year of knowing each other! It's been a year since we met each other and we very quickly have just become, I mean, our work relationships amazing, but beyond that, we're just buds now, and I wish we could just, I wish we could hang out, but we're very far away from each other. Like, 4,000 miles, give or take?

BETH: Yes, definitely.

AMY: So Beth and I met at a Christian entrepreneur masterclass online and just followed each other honestly for about six months probably, on Instagram. And around mid last year, I started having some needs for copywriting (emails, blogs) and Beth was, of course, the first person that I thought of, 'cause I knew that she was amazing. So I reached out to her and it took a little while. I feel like we talked about it for a while before we actually ended up working together, but everything came together and exactly the right timing and we've been formally doing regular work together for like three, four months now?

BETH: I think it's been like, well, I guess on a regular basis, like three or four months, yeah, but like as far as when I started doing stuff for just ABIDE, like just for you, that's probably six or seven months.

AMY: Yeah, we've definitely, it's been in the works. So Beth, tell us a bit about yourself, some people can get to know you and kind of know where you're coming from before we jump into our mental health conversation.

BETH: Yeah, well, I physically am coming to you from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. The middle of nowhere, Canada. My husband and I live up here. He is an engineer and thankfully I own my own business and get to work for myself from wherever I want. And that has been such a huge blessing in our lives in the season. And so I work from home doing copywriting, I do email marketing, I do blogging. In the past, I've done lots of website copy, I've done social media captions. And my business has kind of, I don't know, evolved a lot with me and with my interests and with where I need to be. And like I started out just doing social media management and freelance marketing work, and niched down to copywriting, and niched down to wedding industry, then niched out. And now I do influencers. I do a bunch of work with ABIDE. And that's been like really my sweet spot lately is doing email marketing and blog management with a lot of the clients that Amy and I actually have together. And that's been such a joyful little part of my business lately that I'm so grateful for.

AMY: It's been so awesome. And if you're signed up for my emails, those are also coming from Beth. And I love Beth, our clients love Beth. So it is just a wonderful situation. I'm so glad to have you on board, but also just to be your friend and chat. Like we're in such a similar life stage with being young, married, not any kids yet and owning and running our own businesses. And since there's not a lot of people out there who have all of those things, we got to stick together.

BETH: Yes, it is a very defined small community. And I love finding those people because I feel like it makes conversations easy. We can talk about the Lord, we can talk about business. We can be like, “oh my goodness, Asana just farted out on me and I don't know what to do about it!”

AMY: “Guys, I'm having a crisis!”That's exactly what happened about 48 hours ago. Another fun thing or funny thing about Beth (and my husband, Luke, who is our podcast editor and producer is going to roll his eyes the second he hears this word come out of my mouth because I bring it up too often). But our personality types…

BETH: Yes, you can't just not talk about that.

AMY: You've gotta just gotta bring it up because people need the context. So I am a Enneagram 1, which if you don't know anything about the Enneagram, what you basically need to know is I am a perfectionist and idealist. So I always kind of see the holes that need to be filled and figure out how to do it. Like I always am like seeing ways to try and make things better. And that's a blessing as a business owner, but it's also a curse just cause I'm like a constant critic in my head of everything. And the one has a relationship with the Enneagram 7 because we gear toward that when we're in a healthy space. And we become more free spirited and fun and carefree. And Beth just so happens to be a seven.

BETH: I do.

AMY: Not just so happens though. I am literally drawn to sevens.

BETH: And I'm drawn to ones.

AMY: It's so funny to me. Like literally my husband is a seven. Multiple of my friends are sevens. Multiple of the people that work for me are sevens. And I have just like gravitated towards you.

BETH: We're the best. It's just non-negotiable.

No, but I think that the one and seven relationship really is something that's so unique. And it's something that I encourage actually a lot of business owners to learn more about is the Enneagram, because it just helps you learn how to communicate with people and how to have a more meaningful relationship with them.

But it's so interesting because it's like you said, like fixing all the holes and finding all the possible issues and being like aware of what could go wrong and making sure everything's perfect. And then sevens are the ones that are like causing the holes and that are probably making things go wrong because we're just so scattered and excited about everything. And that's been something that's been really interesting to learn about myself as a business owner and then see how that is kind of managed by you.

AMY: We balance each other out.

BETH: Yeah, it's really, it's good. And I know even before we hit record, you were the little perfectionist that you are. You're so nervous. You're like, I'm just stalling. I'm just doing it. I'm just going. I'm just going.

AMY: But it’s also, like, there's the downsides, but it also is working really well with the system that we have because with how we work with our clients and our services, I'm the one who's chasing after all the to-do's and making sure everybody knows what they're supposed to do and that relieves Beth. Like she has shared with me on multiple occasions how relieving that is that you don't have to worry about this thing so it's really a perfect pair. And like I don't want to be the one like being all creative all the time and writing things but that's where you thrive so it's perfect.

BETH: Yeah it's interesting because I can and this actually has to do with our mental health conversation is just like knowing your limits and your abilities and like where you where you really thrive. But I can be organized and I am in a lot of areas of my life. But for work maintaining a sense of like organization and order requires more energy from me than it does to like be creative and to write emails and blogs. And so sometimes if I have to get all my ducks in order, then I don't have any energy left for all the email marketing and for the blogging. And so it's really, really interesting, just like knowing my own mental capacity and knowing like, “okay, yeah, I'm good at that, but it's not where I thrive.” And like that is like your happy spot is managing all the project development and the people and the moving parts.

AMY: Do you feel like the creative work and the writing is… would you describe it as almost like second nature to you, like just your natural output?

BETH: Yes, yeah, I would definitely say that.

AMY: Yeah, because that's how I describe all of the organization like I tell people that I hardly feel like I'm working now because I'm just doing what my brain naturally does and that's just like what I've built my role in the business around which is cool.

BETH: And I love that for you. Like I think that is just like the most special thing on I love it.

AMY: It is and I know that not everybody gets that so I'm very grateful that I found it at a young age.

So let's jump in and let's talk about mental health as an entrepreneur because when you're an entrepreneur you're doing it yourself. So you have you and your head and your thoughts and it's a lot to manage. And I mean, it's also important to just recognize how rampant mental health issues are, just among our generation and in our world right now, just as things are, you know. So we kind of have a lot coming at us.

And so today I just kind of want to talk through and hear about what your mental health journey has been because I know that this is a subject that you're passionate about and that you have a lot to say about. So I would love to just start out by hearing your story, your background, what you've been through and how your mental health has affected your business and vice versa.

BETH: Yeah, the thing about mental health struggles as a solo entrepreneur is that everything you deal with, you're dealing with an alone, you know? And so it's interesting like all the issues that you maybe had as a teenager can still come back up. Like, for example, when I was, I don't know, 13 or 14, I started to really struggle with anxiety and depression and body image. And that was just my biggest issue in life was just I didn't feel good about myself. I didn't know how to handle all of those feelings. And I fell into a really deep depression. And that was something that I struggled with off and on, but mostly on, all throughout high school. And it wasn't until I was like 17 that I really hit like a really bad breaking point and I ended up in therapy, which was not easy, but a huge blessing.

And it was just so interesting to see that my mental health was affecting my schoolwork, my social life, and most of all, it was affecting my physical health. I have a lot of chronic health issues that are exasperated every time I am anxious or depressed or just really struggling with something mentally. It comes out in my body, which is not cute. It's not very fun.

AMY: It's amazing how it's all connected though.

BETH: It really, right? Yeah, it's interesting 'cause I think God designed us so intentionally to be like, okay, you have a headache, that's a warning sign for XYZ. Or, oh, your stomach hurts? It's because you're nervous. It's just so interesting.

So yeah, my mental health journey has been like, definitely kind of a rollercoaster, but I think throughout it all, like God has been something that's really brought me peace, and brought me kind of like a safe space in just my relationship with the Lord and knowing who I am in him. And not because of anything that I can or can't do, I am who he says I am, you know?

AMY: And that's the ultimate truth even when you don't feel it in your head in the moments, you kind of have that overarching knowledge.

BETH: Yeah, that's true. And you can like preach it to yourself in those moments.

So that's kind of like my background, I guess, related to mental health was a lot of issues with body image and anxiety and depression and just like the consequences of that and the consequences of, you know, just our normal like sinful selves, you know?

And then when I graduated college, it was kind of, I was already doing some freelance marketing just on the side to, you know, make money as a poor broke college student. But I graduated in May 2020, which was, of course, nobody was hiring, everybody was holed up in their house. And that was a heyday for everybody's mental health.

AMY: Exactly, yeah, that's one of the factors I was thinking about when I was like, we just have a lot to deal with.

BETH: Well, and now that I'm just now thinking about this, like it's interesting because my, I've never thought about it like this before, but my business was kind of born almost out of like necessity because we were getting married, we were engaged. So I was like, well, and Justin was still in school. My husband was still in school. So I was the one like making money to save up for our wedding and to save up for our future apartment and XYZ. And so I kind of had to be making money. I couldn't just like, I mean, not that anybody can just like not make money, but I couldn't, I didn't have a job because I was a student worker and of course colleges were all shut down and stuff.

But I went from just freelancing on the side to thinking, “Okay, well, it's kind of nice that I can make my own hours and it's nice that I can work from anywhere and it's nice that, because Justin and I were long distance, I can go visit him for a weekend and bring my work with me if I need to stay a couple extra days.” And I was like, “What if I just like get a few more clients while I keep looking for a full-time job?”

And I did that the whole summer after I graduated. And then it was like, I think September of 2020 that I was offered a full-time job as a marketing manager for a company in St. Louis. And it was like, you know, well-paying job. It had benefits. It had all the bells and whistles that come with a quote unquote normal job. And I just had like no peace about it. Like I had been praying and searching and applying and interviewing for literally months. And I finally got the offer I'd been wanting, and I was like, “I don't have any peace about this.” And so I was like, “okay, would you guys let me work from home?” Like, A, we're in the middle of a pandemic. B, that's just like something I really value. They're like, “no, sorry, we don't want people to work from home.” I'm like, “okay, what people are dying right now? Like, what do you mean?”

So I don't know, it was, even though it didn't make sense and I wasn't making a lot of money at the time, I was like, I'm gonna turn this job down because I just feel like, I just feel like God's not giving me peace about it. And then after I turned that job down, I got like a big client. And then I won a free coaching session from one of the most amazing business coaches who is a Christian and focuses on faithful business building. Her name is Liana. I always recommend people follow her.

AMY: That's how Beth and I met!

BETH: Yeah, exactly. And it was just like all these things falling into place and the relationships I was building and the people I was meeting, it was just making a lot of sense, you know? And it was interesting because now that I'm thinking back on it, my business was kind of built in a place where my mental health, it was like not great. Like I had to live back at home again, after being on my own for a few years. And that's not easy.

AMY: That'll do it.

BETH: And there's the constant fear of like, “Am I gonna get sick and die?” Because everybody's sick right now. And then there's the constant fear of “When is life gonna return back to normal?” And I'm planning a wedding. And I just graduated college and I don't even have a job yet. And what do you do after you graduate college? You know, like your whole identity was in that. That's what you did every day for your whole life.

AMY: Yeah, and you were a student.

BETH: Yeah, yeah, it's a really weird transitional time for anybody. Even if they didn't go to school, your 20s is just strange. So that's kind of how my business was born…almost like a need, I guess, to, I needed money and I genuinely enjoyed what I was doing. And genuinely was just so happy I could work from home. I just think that's a cool thing ever, honestly.

AMY: So do you feel like starting on that kind of “not great mental health” playing field to begin, set the tone for your business in a way? Or do you think it was just like that was the season and you were able to, it was able to get better as time went on. Like how did that affect the business?

BETH: That’s a really good question. I think, I think in a way it did kind of set the tone for a lot of things. And I think I've since been able to relearn a lot of that stuff. For example, like one of the biggest mental health struggles related to business ownership is just the mental workload. Like the, oh my gosh. Yeah. just the constant ever wondering, like it's kind of like, it's like an unread email in the back of your mind at all times.

AMY: Or 27!

BETH: Or 27. It's kind of like the little banner, the red circle banner when you have notification on your phone on the top, it's like that. And it feels like that always. And I've found ways that work for me to kind of undo that. But for a long time, that was crippling. And one of the things that helped me kind of work through that was not working on an hourly basis, like working per project.

AMY: That's a game changer.

BETH: Yeah, because if I don't have 30 hours in the week, because I have a doctor's appointment, or because I have to go to my wedding venue, or if I just don't have the capacity to work 30 hours, you can still make as much money because you can do a project faster.

AMY: Yeah. Speaking from like a perfectionist point of view with that idea, one of my biggest struggles and transitioning into full-time entrepreneurship, 'cause I did other part-time work for the first year of my business. So I've only been in full-time for a year.

And the hardest part for me was rewiring this rule I had made up in my head that I have to work eight hours a day. And if I'm not, I'm wasting time or someone's gonna judge me that I'm not working enough or filling the blank whatever. It was just this like unwritten rule in my head.

And I am still working my way out of that rule. I have to fight myself to be like, no, you've built this system, like you said, like a package project, or I've built this system where I'm just managing it. And so the time that I put into it on a day-to-day basis is no longer as directly affecting the results that I see. But my brain is still catching up and I still find myself like feeling guilty.

So I'm actively rewiring and and trying to enjoy and be like, “Hey, you wanted to get to the point where you didn't have to work all the time.” Like, “Hey, this is what you were trying to do. It actually worked. You actually got there. So now you have to let yourself enjoy it.”

BETH: Yes, and I think that guilt is something that a lot of entrepreneurs experience is like, which is so funny because that's what we're working towards is to not have to work as much.

Like, I think one of my biggest values is just like, I don't live to work. I work so I can live. Like, I have a life that I love and that I enjoy and I want to live life to the fullest. And whatever job I am doing, whether that's only my own business or working at Starbucks, my job is supporting my life. And I can love what I do, but it's a part of my life. It is not my capital L life, you know. So, but that's something that a lot of business owners struggle with is the guilt.

And then like you said, like judgment from other people, that's something that I'm still really working on because I think a lot of entrepreneurship is really glamorized. I think we see these people who are traveling around the world and working from the beach and like, I don't know, like raising their children and never having to even touch their laptop and I work 10 hours a week and I make six figures a year and you can too. The whole “boss babe” culture is sickening to me. Nothing is worse. Honestly, trigger warning. “Hey, boss babe! I have an opportunity for you to make six figures from your couch!”

It's so glamorized and that's something that I really had to come to terms with honestly just in the last couple of months is people aren't always as authentic about the struggles of being in a business owner and I don't want to be discouraging to anybody like I think there's a lot of beautiful things and I think it's an amazing thing for a lot of people in various seasons of their lives. But like, I just wish there was more authenticity around entrepreneurship.

AMY: And what we're joking about, of these people being like 10 hours a week and whatever. Those are amazing people. I'm not, you know, judging the people who are doing this kind of things. I think what we're really trying to hit at is just that that leaves out so much else of what goes on.

BETH: And of course, social media is about highlight reels. Like, I get that. But I think for me, something I really value in relationships and in the people I look up to is authentic messiness. Like, if you're working 10 hours a week and making six figures, kudos to you. But, how did you get there? I mean, you just did that in a week. Well, and to be super honest, that's not possible for absolutely everybody. Not everyone has that capacity or that drive.

And also, it's okay if someone wants to work 20, 30, 40 hours a week. That's fine. If that's what they want to do, then that's great. I don't know. I just don't think that the amount of hours you work is not directly related to like a moral doing better in life than someone else. You know what I mean?

AMY: Absolutely. And yeah, I feel like what I constantly feel like people leave out is the journey to get there. And I think that's why that's literally the premise of this whole podcast is: let's find peace in the journey. Like let's be content in each day, even when we haven't arrived at that six-figure in 10 hours thing.

Because I see all the TikToks and all the YouTube videos of, "Hey, you can do this. You can make $1,000 a month off of one Etsy product." And, hey, I tried it. And guess what? It didn't work for me. And there are those stories. But even if I were to come out and say, "What is working for me?" That's part of it, is you have to try lots of things and not all of them are going to stick.

But even if I'm sharing, "Hey, this worked for me." I always want to be like, "But this is what I went through to get here. This is the work that I had to do. This is the experience I had to go through. This is the mental burnout I experienced.” I want to include that because I think a lot of the marketing, which partly is just due to our culture and the short form video content that's out there, all you have time to do is this and bam, this big thing is going to catch your attention like, that's all there's time for sometimes.

But I want to include those pieces so people can know that everyone has their own journey and go for what you want because if you're consistent and driven and, you know, doing this with the advice of professionals and training and whatever, you will succeed, but it's not just going to be an easy overnight road. Like, “Hey, I quit my job three months after I started this side hustle!” It's just not always going to be like that.

BETH: And there's no one size fits all formula. I think a lot of a lot of people try to sell a formula or a plan or a blueprint or something that changed their lives. And that could be amazing for you. That could be amazing for a lot of people.

But I think I kind of came into the entrepreneurship world at a time when a lot of people in 2020 were starting their own businesses or turning to digital marketing and social media for just an extra income. And I think that resulted in a lot of people doing a lot of glamorizing and there's a lot of, I don't know, I think that was the peak of boss babe culture or bro marketing tactics where we really speak to the pain points of the people we're trying to sell to and that just leaves— that kind of gives me an ick.

That's what copywriting is, is you write to sell something and I always just feel icky writing to somebody's pain points, speaking to the problems they have. I understand that as business owners, we are fixing problems, absolutely. But when we write from a place of finding someone's pain points and just driving the knife in deeper, where it's like… diet culture, for example, it's like, “Are you feeling ugly? Are you 50 pounds heavier than you want to, are you struggling to get to the gym? No more looking in the mirror and hating yourself.” That's kind of the, I don't know, that's kind of the discourse around marketing for the diet culture, for example.

And as a copywriter, I never want to do that. And I see a lot of business owners who, in their marketing, they kind of just glance over all the really hard parts, you know, because there's a lot of mental health struggles that happen. You mentioned perfectionism. We talked about burnout, there's judgment, the mental workload. We haven't even gotten to imposter syndrome yet. That's something I still am, I struggle with that so hard. That is just impossible to even cover in one episode.

AMY: Oh my goodness. Yeah, true. Yeah, there's so many elements. But let's dive in. If you want to talk a little about an imposter syndrome or if there's another big struggle.

BETH: Yeah I think imposter syndrome and like I guess along with that comes comparison. I think those are probably the biggest things.

AMY: Oh yeah yeah that's that's a whole conversation.

BETH: Yeah wow love that. So you mentioned earlier, Amy, that as a type one, you in your health you go towards a seven. Well I'm pretty surem I could be wrong about this, but as a type 7 in my unhealthy moments, I go to in my stress, I go to a 1, which is the really, really critical perfectionist.

And that is like, at the root of all of my mental health problems: body image, anxiety, depression. It’s all kind of, it's rooted in that. It's rooted in comparison and criticism of myself and imposter syndrome. No matter what I have been doing in my life, whether it was as a student or as a marching band nerd, which is what I did in high school, or as a business owner now, I have so much imposter syndrome because I spend probably too much time looking at other entrepreneurs and other copywriters and seeing how they've set up their lives and how they have their system streamlined and how they have their life looking so aesthetic and they have things all figured out. And I spend a lot of time thinking about that and then trying to model my life after that when in reality I'm not tapping into who God made me and I'm not honoring who God made me. I'm trying to be somebody else and of course that leads to imposter syndrome because I'm not being authentically myself.

AMY: You're trying to do what other people, you're trying to trick yourself into thinking you want what other people have.

BETH: Yeah, exactly. And without even knowing the full extent of what other people have, because at the end of the day, we're only seeing something online. And even with people we know outside of online too, people choose what they want to share with you. And there's always more stuff that goes on underneath the surface that we don't see.

AMY: This is so big. I just, I feel like comparison as an entrepreneur could literally be an entire episode. Because I know exactly what you're talking about and very honestly, that's really the reason that I took three months of social media.

Because I'd gotten into a mental rhythm that all I did when I hopped on there and watched other people's stories and scroll through the feed I saw something and I’d say, “They're doing that, that seems to be working for them, do I need to do that for my business?” And I was doing that for almost everything that I saw and it was sending me into spiral overdrive, overload, mental mode.

And like you said, it was cluttering up my brain so much that I couldn't think about what I actually wanted and what was actually going to be good for me. I had to cut it off. I just had to. And Beth and I are going to talk in a part two about some healthy habits. And this is a little foreshadow of that. Because I had to cut it off. I had to break, I think about the neuro pathways that you like create when you do habits and stuff. I just had to, I had to break them, you know, you gotta take some time to let your brain kind of reprogram so that you stop doing those unhealthy habits.

I did that back in college. I took like six months off of all social media, period. So I could break my addiction to it. And so I'll do that periodically still. So that's what, yeah, this was another one, but it was focused on the business stuff because I was just sending myself into a spiral and there's, we have to remember, and this is like, I have to preach this to myself: Social media is a tool. And that's all it is. And we allow it to be so much more to us. We let it rule our thoughts of, “Should I be posting or should I be, should I, the algorithm says I should do this, so I have to do that.”

And so it rules kind of our schedule in our mind. And then it also can creep in, like we're talking with this comparison thing and kind of rule, really just cloud up our minds, and they can get us very confused.

And so, I mean, I just had to put it in check. So that's why I got rid of it. 'Cause it's like, I gotta put it in check. I gotta come back to my roots, come back to the Lord, journal, pray, talk to my business partner, you know, and get my head back on straight about like, “What am I called to do? What is our business called to do?”

And yes, all the opinions and tools that other people are sharing on social media can be helpful, but we need to be discerning to pick and choose the right ones for us. And I think that's where the struggle is. I'm like, “There's everything, I have to do all of it.” And I need to get better at looking at it with like, “Do I need this? Is this good for me?” Being more discerning in the moment instead of the natural like, “They're doing it so I have to do it.”

BETH: That is huge in terms of how we think about social media and like you pointed out, it's a tool.

And I feel like in the height of my business my huge main focus was really just pumping out as much Instagram content as I could. And I would make like a reel or two a day. And I would post all the time. I was all my stories constantly. And I do enjoy, I love content creating. I always have, even before I started my own business. I love photos, I love writing, love graphics, whatever.

But at the end of the day, I was pumping out so much content because I saw that's what other people were doing. And I was being told over and over by all these people I followed that that was how you would grow your business, is that your Instagram following equaled the amount of money you'd be able to make. Which is so not true.

And I think that finally, toward the end of 2022, I think that as a culture, the online entrepreneurship world is kind of realizing, OK, that's not true. We can do it a million other ways.

And I think ABIDE, for example, is a huge testament to that because I know that a lot of your clients aren't even from Instagram. They're from the connections that you've made and people knowing people. If you have really, really good connections with your clients and really, really good high quality customer service, you know, word of mouth is going to do wonders for your business.

And it's amazing because I know that provided so much freedom for you mentally when you stepped away from social media. Like you were able to really focus on, “What do I actually need to grow my business?” Because it doesn't have to be posting three times a day to Instagram. It can be whatever I want it to be because that's what works for me. And for some people Instagram is like that's it. Like it works period. But yeah.

AMY: And some people, another thing that I think about is, some people's natural draw for output is Instagram. And that's awesome for them. And that's why I started this podcast because I feel like my natural output is more suited as a podcast. Everyone can do their own thing. But you just, you don't need to be a slave to any of it.

BETH: Yes. And I think that is something that's key to figure out for your mental health related to your business is what works for you, what feels good in terms of your natural abilities and your natural interests and then your capacity for what you can handle.

As a copywriter, I will preach the benefits of email marketing to the day I die. But at the end of the day, some people, that doesn't work for them. Their audience might not connect with email marketing or maybe they don't have the capacity or the tools to do email marketing. And even though it's been a game changer for me and my business, that doesn't mean that it's going to work for everyone.

So I just feel like that's something that everyone needs to take into account because if you get so caught up in comparison and that leads to imposter syndrome and thinking like, “Oh, I need to be posting something like this” or, “I need to be talking about my business like this.” It’s just going to lead you to a big season of burnout and to a spiral. And that ultimately will not fulfill you and it's not sustainable. And I think as business owners, we have the opportunity to really prioritize our mental health. So it’s just very unique. Like that's a huge reason why I love owning my own business is because if If I'm depressed, I can just go back to bed.

AMY: You can tailor your life and your rhythms to what's going to work best for you and your mental health. That is such a huge benefit. It's huge.

BETH: And that's something so many people don't have the opportunity to do.

And so it was just interesting for myself when I found that I was caught in this cycle of imposter syndrome and perfectionism and like just a lot of burnout because I wasn't doing what was fulfilling to me and I wasn't doing what was naturally honoring my abilities and the way God created me.

And so I feel like that's something that I really encourage entrepreneurs to do is just to tune into what they were created to do and be intentional about it. Like something that we're huge about over on the podcast that I'm on every week is we're very big on intentional living. Like don't just do something 'cause everyone else is doing it. I think I just feel like we all have lives to live and we should live them to the fullest of our abilities and that requires being intentional.

AMY: And don't be, as you're talking, what I keep thinking about is being governed by “should”. And I get stuck in that of just like, “Oh, I should do this.” And there have been, I would say most of my life, my actions are based off what I SHOULD do. Because it is more important than what I want in my head. And that can really wreck your mental health if you're completely basing it off of that.

And so what you're saying is so good: don't be governed by “should”, live intentionally. And a final piece that I wanna add to what you're saying is you don't have to do all the things. If you see people out there, they have an email list, they have a podcast, they have a social media following, they have this, they have a YouTube channel. And that makes you think, “oh, that means I have to do all of that too if I wanna be successful.” Everything that we're saying proves that you don't have to do all the things. And like you said with your soul searching, pick the things that resonate with you, that resonate with your audience, and focus on doing a few things well.

And that is going to be so much healthier in the long run for you, for your business. And just remember if you do see with someone doing all the things, it's because they've been doing this for a long time and they've added things on as the years go on.

BETH: And they for sure have a team behind them.

AMY: Yes, like we're circling back to the beginning of this conversation, there's so much more behind it that we don't see.

And in our internet, instant gratification world, we see someone super successful and we delusionally think that we can accomplish that in six months. But that person has in real reality been doing what they've been doing for 10 years. So it is just so important to take a step back, gain that perspective. Do you! And don't try to be everybody else, be you.

Well, this has been so good. I think these conversations are so important to have. And I'm glad that we're having them. And I want to have more. So please, if you're listening, join in on the conversation. Get plugged in, we want to hear your thoughts too.

And the good news is Beth and I are not finished.

BETH: We are never finished!

AMY: We're never finished!

Beth and I are also going to be continuing this conversation and talking in the next episode about healthy habits to have as an entrepreneur to promote mental health and peace in the everyday. So we have both come up with a list. We don't know each others. So we're just gonna go back and forth and see what we come up with. And we're really excited to share some practical tips that we have come up with as we've been doing this for the last few years.

So we're excited for you to join us next week!

Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. We look forward to connecting with you more, whether that's on Instagram, TikTok, or our email list. We'd love to hear what you thought of today's episode, and if you have any additional tips to add, we will see you next week with more tips and tools to becoming a peaceful entrepreneur. Bye for now!