Day 7 – it’s officially been a week.
Today/last night has been crazy.
This is the first opportunity I’ve had to actually take a picture of my watch.
As you can clearly tell I didn’t do my 430am start today.
I was awake at 6.45am and then out of bed at 8am.
Here’s why:
Last night I was at the Astteria offices with their head of the company Aviad alongside Media Personality Lizzie Kundy and her crew filming for a piece that ended up in the Daily Mail:
What a surreal experience that was; sitting with an SEO client in their offices helping set up a diamond shoot whilst eating Sushi.
Trust me, it’s less glamorous than it sounds, but still interesting nonetheless.
It was brilliant to see Aviad do his first media interview and ultimately go into sales mode even on camera. The man is a natural born-salesman.
We then ended up in the Mayfair bar on Stratton street after having a Peroni before we wrapped up for the evening.
Or at least I did.
I was absolutely dying by 9pm. My main point of content and client Ofir Bashiri had asked me to come and help last minute, and so I couldn’t really refuse.
He’s also a good friend of mine, and so I binned my evening routine to go and support.
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And this brings me to the question of burnout somewhat.
I’m really going for broke at the moment.
And sometimes it gets to be a bit much:
Have a listen to this voicenote I sent to Ross Tavendale.
Also check out this status update I posted on Facebook before bed yesterday:
I’m feeling it lately. Things are slipping from my clutch, I’m somewhat fed up of everything and I’m slowly going through a ‘culling phase’ as a consequence.
As my good friend Eric also said to me several weeks ago over a late lunch at Maurizio Barca (my local Italian place) –
‘Your priorities will drive you’
And burn out is causing me to question some things.
So Ross had some amazing advice for me in response to my b*tching:
(listen to this)
It’s what inspired me to write this blog post today.
Before we had been discussing the challenges that come with being an agency owner:
And it ended (all of this) with me feeling like this:
Totally energized.
And ready to come for the world again.
So I want to frame this post (now I’m getting to the point) about how to cope with feeling overwhelmed.
For me, sometimes things get overwhelming because, like many entrepreneurs, I just want to do everything (and do everything really well) at once.
So there comes a continual yo-yo effect of doing too much, then doing a couple of things badly, cutting some stuff out and then going again.
But with each sprint the idea is you get 0.1 or 1% better.
In this instance, it’s great to get to meet someone like Ross whom I really respect and is in the same space and who I can actually communicate with about agency life – but also someone who is absolutely f*cking hustling.
I know plenty of agency owners but very few who are committed to the grind.
So his words have given me the energy to push forward.
Here’s my plans moving forward to make my life better:
I’m binning all ‘month-to-month’ clients.
Each month having to cope with the ‘uncertainty’ of whether a client will keep spending is something that I want to eradicate completely.
Some of our long term clients are still on rolling contracts and I’m now binning anyone who isn’t on a 3-month contract.
So far it’s going well:
One conversation:
Second conversation:
The third email I’m sending out:
I’ve identified some key areas of the business that are missing:
- A client relationship manager to just call clients, chit-chat and manage their concerns and report back to the team
- A delivery/innovation manager to be results-focused and make sure results are being delivered and to look at ways to deliver more value to our clients
- A LinkedIn messaging assistant who can sit on LinkedIn for 2-4 hours a day and manage all the messages that come in
- An internal liaison manager to deal with all the internal chatter
Reallocation of internal effort:
I’ve got some people who are perhaps working on the wrong things. So once I clarify which key areas of the business are missing I can get my current team to work upon the most important things and support the business in that way.
I think if I’m able to work on these key areas I can continue my march to getting us to 100k a month whilst still remaining lean.
Ideally, I can find one or two superstars who can cover all the areas above and then it’ll take away many of the problems I have within the company.
That’s probably the main process in my view with burnout.
Have a moment to blow off steam – that’s via my status update, talking to Ross and also writing this blog post.
And that whole process (which happened over a 12-18 hour period but has grown over a 7-10 day period) has got me back to where I am now.
Ready to go to war again.
I’ll also leave you (and myself) with a final piece of advice:
Something that Marquis my boxing coach told me when I was dying on the treadmill when I hit the 16 miles per hour tempo and felt like I was going to fly off the running machine.
‘When you feel like that – push harder still – get to 17 miles an hour and then it’ll feel even worse momentarily. And then come back down again to 16 miles an hour – and you’ll find you have that much more energy’.
And that is actually how you find a new gear.
By getting close to or burning out completely.
And then you say ‘ok that’s where my limit is’.
Now let’s regroup and go again.
That’s all for Day 7.
Catch you tomorrow!
