From Burnout to Brilliance: Navigating the Entrepreneurial Journey with Ash Burnside

Welcome to "Chasing Financial Freedom Podcast," featuring the inspiring episode "From Burnout to Brilliance: Navigating the Entrepreneurial Journey with Ash Burnside." This podcast is designed for ambitious entrepreneurs seeking financial freedom while overcoming burnout. Join Ash, a seasoned entrepreneur and burnout coach, as she shares valuable insights on achieving sustainable success without sacrificing well-being.

In this must-listen episode, Ash reveals her experiences with burnout, providing actionable strategies for maintaining work-life balance, cultivating self-trust, and prioritizing self-care. Learn from Ash's expertise and transform your entrepreneurial journey, unlocking the key to thriving in business and life.

Don't miss this opportunity to gain invaluable knowledge from Ash Burnside. Subscribe and tune in to "Chasing Financial Freedom Podcast" now, and embark on your path to sustainable success and financial freedom!

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Transcript

From Burnout to Brilliance: Navigating the Entrepreneurial Journey with Ash Burnside


[00:00:00] Ryan: Hey guys, Ryan DeMent from Chasing Financial Freedom Podcast. I hope you guys are having a great day today. On the podcast, we have Ash Burnside, the soulful coach, but also the founder of Healing Hustle Company, where she guides established entrepreneurs and founders on how to use burnout, chaos, and seasons of change as a launchpad for alignment and success.

Ash, welcome to the show. 

[00:00:23] Ash: Thanks 

so much for having me here, Ryan, 

[00:00:26] Ryan: you're more than welcome. I know it was a little bit of a wait, so thank you for being patient. So before we jump into everything that you're doing and helping us entrepreneurs, when we struggle with that burnout, cuz I know I've had it before, a little bit about your background and we'll get going.

[00:00:39] Ash: Yeah. 

Oh man. It's very winding. It's been winding entrepreneurial journey. I started about seven years ago as a blogger and a photographer, so tiptoed my way online, but I've always been service-based. I've always been a service-based business. That's just been the thing that's come I definitely identify with that.

Sense of servant leadership and serving in the capacity and found out really quickly, I didn't actually like photographing other people. I also am not that much of a people person to do it in person. So online business really drew my attention as an introvert. It makes it a lot easier to manage my own capacity.

And then, so I got started in online business and. Man. Yeah, the journey has been interesting. I started as a marketing VA and then figured out that I was really good at copy. I have an English degree, so that was like my native way of being, and then just fell down the marketing rabbit hole. Oh, this is called Copying.

Oh, people build funnels. Oh, this is a whole thing in and of itself. So I built a marketing business and I did that for three and a half years, working for some really big names. I did some just awesome collaborations with people. Got to know a lot of different ones. And then where I am now, just like organically evolved because I was the person that everyone came to when they were burning out in their service-based business or when they were having problem team members that were just like under a lot of water and having struggling, like meeting their tasks and their daily demands, they'd send them to me.

Go talk to Ash. You're feeling this way. Go talk to Ash. I feel like so much of my journey has just been like realizing, oh, I can charge money for this, like this thing that I'm just doing. Like I can charge money and make money this way. And so that was another realization. And it was actually a friend that pointed out like people pay for this.

It's called coaching. I was like, oh my gosh, I like this better than marketing. Let's do this instead. And so it started making the pivot from just solely marketing into the coaching world. And I have been a burnout coach ever since. And so this will be my third year in the coaching realm and I love it.

And that's a really. Long story short story, long of how I got here and my entrepreneurial journey so far. 

[00:02:38] Ryan: No problem. Sorry, I was a have a dog barking in the background a little bit, but that's a, that's an awesome journey, but I gotta ask the question. Yeah. What got you into helping entrepreneurs in burnout?

What really drove you there? 

[00:02:50] Ash: It was a lot of my own, I went through a really depleting. Bout of burnout myself. 2020 was actually like I was making the pivot from marketing into coaching was I was doing it really slowly and then the whole world started freaking out. So not great timing, and then I was just dealing with my own.

I was trying to stay on top of my own service-based business, doing marketing, trying to hit my deliverables. I'm a mom with three boys, and so my boys now are nine, seven, and five. But three years ago we were just barely trying to get through kindergarten, virtual kindergarten at that. And then just, there's no daycare unless you were a mandatory worker, that marketing people are certainly not mandatory workers and trying to navigate like that pandemic parenting with being a service-based business and just not really having the ability to go places because again, like parenthood, young Parenthood.

That was really, it was really soul crushing. It was a really difficult time and I don't wanna make light of it at all. And that is where like I had to learn how to pull myself out. No one else was gonna do that for me. No one could come and save me, and my kids were relying on me. We're also a military family, and so my husband got activated during that time.

So I was like truly, like by myself, figure it out. And so it was a challenge to figure out like, how do I meet this every day? How do I get this stuff done that I need to get done with the energy that I have? And how can I do it in a way that is self-compassionate without criticizing, because I don't need more of that, right?

I was gonna deplete myself even farther. So it came from a season of trying to figure it out myself and failing a lot, and then seeing like little successes. And the little successes were the things that have fueled my own coaching business, and then have allowed me to help other service providers that find themselves.

Hopefully not in the same space like most of the time we can catch it before they end up all the way there. But certainly in that similar feeling in season of intensity, 

[00:04:40] Ryan: are there specific type of entrepreneurs that are in a business that you think that you wanna help more than others that you have a passion 

[00:04:46] Ash: for?

Yeah, it's certainly more seasoned entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs that really want a life first business. Those are like the two people that, that's like the Venn diagram overlap right there. Seasoned entrepreneurs because I am not someone that is teaching or helping or coaching to set up a business.

And also like I really understand the mindset of a lot of the seasoned entrepreneurial space just because like you get to a certain point, you have certain level of results, and at that point you really have to start to trust yourself. You really have to have like life systems in place so that you can continue to grow, you can continue to scale.

And that's the point that I see a lot of people either. Go back and get a new certification, or they do a different pivot in their business and it comes down from either a sense of burnout or a lack of self-trust. Sometimes both these can really go together and so they have a really empathetic heart for people in that space specifically.

And then life first business, like that's the type of business that I wanna build. That's the type of businesses that I'm interested in helping other people build. One that they're not always changing their desk like you started. I at least I started a business that I could be with my family more, be with my kids more instead of at a nine to five office.

Like normal. And so those are the types of businesses that I help people build. 

[00:06:00] Ryan: So you're going through this burnout during the pandemic and so forth. What helped you get to the other side? Ooh, 

[00:06:08] Ash: there was a lot of things that helped. And again, like there was a lot of things that didn't work that I tried, but the things that actually helped was, this is gonna sound really silly, but I started with just like 10 minutes a day.

Just taking a break, like a timeout for 10 minutes. And it started with just one, like it was whenever I could find that 10 minutes, cuz that was the thing, no matter what was going on and there was a lot going on during then, like I could find 10 minutes at least sometimes it was at the end of the day when the kids were in bed.

But it started just to get my brain working to try to find like, where are those little pockets that I could just take a moment to breathe. One of the ways that I define burnout is, Something that crowds you out of your own life, because that's what it felt like. It felt like everything else just kept piling on top and there was no space for me to exist doing the things that I love doing, the things that make me feel alive.

And so finding those 10 minute pockets was a way for me to start taking up space again in a way that felt really safe, that felt really doable, that felt accessible to me. And so I started with that. And I was doing something, it was like a two-prong effect. I did, and it didn't. This was very messy. It's, it sounds very succinct now when I say it, but it was very messy to get there.

I did two different things. I did one thing for my body and then one thing for my brain. And the thing for my body was always like very low energy, like light stretching, sip water for 10 minutes. It was nothing like arduous. It was eat some snacks for 10 minutes. Something that was very, just me checking in and saying, what small thing can I do for myself right now?

And then for my brain, it was nothing. I did nothing for 10 minutes. It was like the one time throughout the day that I allowed myself to just, okay, I, there's no expectation. I don't have to perform right now. I don't have to meet a deliverable. There's nothing I have to achieve. Again, just give myself that sense of safety, and that's where it started.

And just starting to take those 10 minutes. And so it started with the once and then once I was doing it consistently once a day, not at the same time, but consistently once a day. Then I started looking for, okay, can I take another 10 minute little pocket break? And then it got to two. Once there was two, it started getting easier to find, have this consistency of, okay, I have my warning, 10 minutes.

Then I have my evening, 10 minutes, and that's where I started. That's where I suggest other people, like start there, like just find little pockets for you to just exist. Just exist without the demands of everything else. On top of you, how did you 

[00:08:20] Ryan: get, how did you get it into a consistent pattern to where it was at the same time each 

[00:08:25] Ash: day?

Yeah, it was looking for the pattern actually, because parenting and everything's different every single day, such as the nature of kids. It was just looking and seeing over time what was the thing that was working, and I really just let it evolve holistically. I tried and failed so many times to be like I'm gonna set, I'm gonna set my new daily schedule.

We'll go. I'm like, you time block it out. And kids don't care. They don't care. That's not how they work. So that failed and burned many times. So I finally just gave myself the permission to just, I'm just going to do the thing. My only commitment to myself is that I'm gonna do the thing. The time doesn't matter how I feel.

Doesn't matter. My only commitment is that I'm gonna do the thing. And then after, I think it was like two and a half, maybe three months, I was able to look back and look at the data and see, okay, was there any sort of thing, commonality that allowed me to take that 10 minute, what time and what was going on around it?

Cuz then it was. Seeing, how are my kids feeling during then? What was I, what was happening before and after that break? And could I replicate that? Was that something that I could install or was it just something that like I could almost have it anchor that 10 minutes to, and it was more of that, of seeing the pattern and then anchoring it too, whatever was existing in that space, and letting that kind of be my representative.

[00:09:41] Ryan: That's interesting. I, because for me, a daily routine is waking up and that's the first thing I do is get up, let my dog out, do his thing, whatever. And then it's my time, 30 minutes of just connecting, being grateful for the things that I have in life, but also reflecting on the last 24 hours and what went well and starting my day with that positivity.

Cuz that's my time. It sets my day up. Yeah, absolutely. To be able to move forward. Cuz if you live, I don't live too much in the past and I don't know too many entrepreneurs that do entrepreneurs live in the future. And that's anxiety. And I have, I do that constantly. Yeah. And that's the battle that I fight every single day is be present for every aspect of your life.

Whatever you're doing, stay in that moment. Find what you need to have done, get it accomplished, move on to the next thing instead of thinking about what's two weeks from Tuesday gonna happen. Yeah, exactly. And that's my center point. And that's, Until I started really doing that about six or nine months ago, I struggled a lot with anxiety.

It was painful to say the least, and I know that burnout of entrepreneurship. But prior to being an entrepreneur, I also was in corporate America and I ran call centers, collection agency, all types of stuff. Two, anywhere between 2000 and 3000 employees reporting to me. So my day was chaotic to begin with.

Damn. And I didn't have that center, and I really sucked at some of that stuff. And it really. Forced me to become a better person, but also to be able to find my point in life. And that's, and that, and there's a long, there's a question in here is we, as people, entrepreneurs, small business owners, we struggle with that because we think the world is gonna fall apart if we're not attached to our business.

Yeah. How do we handle that? How do we work through that? How do we get better at, I guess the word is delegation? 

[00:11:27] Ash: Yeah. Yeah, it is. This is something that I had to get really good at. I have an adhd. I was diagnosed way late as an adult, which was a little disorienting. So I was like, what do you mean? What does that mean?

What do I do with that? So clinically I have a problem prioritizing and delegating and understanding how to initiate certain tasks. Where to start. Do I do it? Does someone else do it? Do I need to show 'em how to do it? I don't know. Yeah, the delegation part is really big To start, the big thing is going to be like the identity piece of.

Who are you when you're not performing? Who are you when you're not in business all the time? Because that is a thing that kind of sucks us down is feeling. Yeah. The weight of the world is on us because like business is everything. We have to hit these numbers or everything's gonna fall apart or we have to make this sale or everything's gonna fall apart.

And so starting to just zoom out a little bit, like there are things outside of business. Who are you outside of business? Cuz Yes. Are you your business? Of course. Are you part of the brand? Of course. But are you also a whole human that has other identities and other ways of being? Yes, that too. And when we neglect that, that's when this other beast of the anxiety, the performance, like that's when that can come in.

And so starting to try to rebalance that with these other identities, with these other parts of life, these life buckets, and allowing those to start take up more space in our life and just in our brain as a really effective way to start combating that sense of anxiety and to make it easier to delegate.

Because now when we do that, when you're balancing it with these different identities, you're able to see what do these other things require of me as well? And am I more evenly, spreading myself over these things? Because now you're able to start understanding, I call it an energy budget, but it's like the energy you have available to do the things you need to do.

And yes, that means in your business, but again, this also means in your life like, How much energy do you need to do to pour into yourself to make it feel like you know you love being alive? How much energy does your family require of you in different seasons or in different phases of life are going to require different amounts from you?

But being really honest and taking a conscious inventory of what that requirement of you is also gonna be a really big eye-opener too. What things do need to be delegated? Because it's easy and business to be like, I can do this. I don't need to delegate this. I can handle this. Meanwhile you have, for me it's always parenthood.

That's where I'm at, parenthood things of, okay, I have two kids that are doing two different intensive sports. One's doing a private club activity. Who is gonna take him to those things? Because that doesn't mean I can work at pick the clock every night. That's, so now it becomes very obvious. Okay, my energy budget needs to have more over in this life bucket and less in the business one thing, which means I have to delegate in business.

This makes making decisions a lot clearer and a lot more urgent rather than, we can put it off. You can put it off. You can put it off. To put it off 

[00:14:13] Ryan: before we go there, I'll come back to it. I love how you put life buckets, and I think I'm doing that already. It's just I'm, I call myself or force myself to be present in that moment, and I guess that could be a life bucket.

Yeah, because when I'm doing something, whether it be personal or professional, I'm focused on the one thing. Otherwise, I'm scatterbrained all over the place. But with that life bucket and the balancing act and being present, That's the struggle because you're bombarded daily, whether it be email, text messages, anything to that extent.

How are you balancing all that bombardment on a daily basis with what you have with the kids and getting where they need to go? And then also the delegation piece. I know I struggled early on in my career with delegation, but I understand the right, give the right people, the tools and the skillsets to succeed.

They'll do well, delegate. But a lot of entrepreneurs and I meet a lot of them struggle with 

[00:15:09] Ash: that. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard. The presence face is really hard. So this is actually a part of a method that I teach called the Brain Space Method, because that's the thing you don't have when you're burning out.

You don't have brain space, you don't have any sort of mental breathing room. So energy budget is always the first thing, but boundaries are another thing, and that is how you stay present is boundaries, which is a very like unsexy topic, but very necessary boundaries. And the thing about boundaries is like people tend to think that it's some sort of like punitive or reactionary thing that you put in place after someone does something that you don't like or someone you know.

It's something like that. And boundaries are not that. Boundaries are a line in the sand that you create for yourself to keep yourself in check, to keep yourself accountable, to create the space for you to still do what you need to do and take care of yourself without compromising wellness, without compromising freedom.

And this could take the shape and. All sorts of course you can have relationship boundaries. If someone crosses a relationship boundary, you feel like you can't either express yourself, you don't feel safe, you don't feel like you have that sense of like personal freedom or agency. That's a boundary.

Again, not punitive, reactionary against them. It's informing your next step of, okay, how am I going to take care, take myself after this? And so that again, all of the life buckets gets boundaries. Parenthood has boundaries. Business things have boundaries. Relationships have boundaries. Hobbies have boundaries.

All of these things have different boundaries, and they're all different levels, so it doesn't have to be this huge judgment pounding of the gavel. This is a boundary official, can be light. Boundaries can be as simple as like a guideline. Maybe a boundary is that for me, I cannot go to bed any later than 11 ever, even if I'm like really like into something.

I'm a night owl. So staying up easy is definitely what I would prefer. But I know that if I cross that boundary with myself, I'm not gonna operate the next day to do what I need to do to be a patient mom, to do all of the things. So that's more of a guideline. And so this is what I mean by boundaries are so necessary, and they come in a lot of different forms and they're in all the life buckets, and it's what we need to do to support ourselves.

But those boundaries are really gonna help us to stay really present and plugged into actually what's happening. Because if that is what's hard, if it's hard to stay present, that's a really obvious indicator and a red flag that like some boundaries need to be laid down. You need some boundaries to keep yourself in check.

[00:17:28] Ryan: So we're into boundaries. You bring, so I'm gonna a come back around and you bring on a client and you're working with him or her. Where's the first place you start looking at to help this person with burnout? 

[00:17:39] Ash: Yeah, Uhhuh. So first I'm gonna tell 'em to start the 10 minutes a day, find one packet I called the burnout protocols.

Start your protocol burnout protocols. Do it right now. Find 10 minutes. I don't care when it is. No matter how hard things are, you can find 10 minutes. I don't care if it's at eight. So do your 10 minutes and then of course we're gonna then look at energy budget of, okay, what are all the things on your plate?

Yes, business things, but what else is on your plate? Because that's the stuff that people don't talk about that makes business things hard. Do you have a parent that you have to take care of that actually takes up a lot of your energy and you have less hours to work in your business? Or the primary caregiver for parent or for your kids?

That's another thing that's gonna take up a lot of energy. Is it really important to you to be able to volunteer or are you really active in any sort of like religious organization? Do you have like spiritual requirements that are required or critical to you in order for you to feel. Like you are thriving that are also gonna take up a lot of energy or time.

So it's like there's a, this holistic picture we wanna get of what are the things that are actually on your plate? Yes, we're gonna look at them for business, but we have to look at them for everything because what you're doing outside of that is going to affect how much you have to pour into your business.

Looking at energy budget, doing it like a, like an audit, almost like a self-audit. And then once we have that, then we start looking at boundaries of, okay. Here's what you want it to look like. You want it to be like, you have this much time for this bucket, and you have this much time for this bucket, and this much time and business stays contained in this little bucket that you're giving it.

Okay? But business is actually like overflowing right now and we can't go in this bucket, which means other things aren't, don't have that much in them. So now what boundaries need to be enacted? What lines can we draw in the sand to help you? Usually this is like a tiered approach. It's not realistic and it's not very compassionate to be like, all right, boundaries across the block done that's gonna lead to either some like serious self-sabotage or things crumbling.

It's just not sustainable. So how do we bath these step our way in there? So what's the first boundary that we can lay that's gonna help you feel safe in this sense, in this season of transition? What is the next thing that we can lay in? So we're just, we're doing this really in small ways. Little boundaries.

Little boundaries. And a lot of them end up being mental. Like a lot of them are mental boundaries and just like the way that we think about things. And this is where I see a lot of the anxiety come in for entrepreneurs because those are mental boundaries. Like the inability to put them up for ourselves, which is hard.

And this is why having a coach, even a therapist, something that someone like that to bounce these ideas off of can be so useful. Cause. We keep hitting up against the same walls over and over again. We're like, how? How did we get past it? You don't get past it. You draw a boundary in front of it and you don't go that way at all.

Yeah, it's incremental and it's gonna look different for everybody, but that's roundabout zooming out. Those would be the steps of how I would start helping someone. So 

[00:20:16] Ryan: taking the small baby steps, is that the, and I'm not saying yes or no. I know for me, baby steps work. I can't just rip the bandaid off sometimes and just go, cause it just doesn't work.

How many entrepreneurs that you've helped struggle with baby steps and they just wanna rip the bandaid off and 

[00:20:31] Ash: go? I would say it's probably like 70 30. 70% of the entrepreneurs I work with are like, baby steps are ao. Okay, gimme the baby steps. And then 30% are like, no, let's climb the big mountain. I'm ready.

And I'm like, okay. Like I, you are in charge. I trust you. I'm following your lead. Like we are building self presses, we are doing all of this. And then we find out the hard way of that was really scary and I cannot sustain this. What's the baby step I can do? Instead I'm like, okay, we'll just back sharp and well now we'll do a baby step.

[00:21:01] Ryan: It's, I guess it's a learning style and I respect both sides, however you wanna do it, but the life buckets that you talked about before, and then being able to put some boundaries in place as you start working towards that. You've gotta get some great feedback from your clients saying that has to feel good.

Because once you start doing that and taking those steps towards each other, so back to buckets and being able to put those boundaries together, that's a struggle. I know it is. So what are some tips that entrepreneurs, small business owners can actually implement to be able to start those? I call it, it's like a cleansing process and this, you can agree or disagree, but until you actually have a clear mind in your present in what you do on a daily basis, I don't think you can be that effective.

So I think these would be great tools and steps to take to get you there, to get you off of the burnout and also accomplish more on a daily basis with less time. 

[00:22:05] Ash: Yeah, no, I absolutely agree with that. That's true. And what I have found with people, So the best way to get started is do your energy audit, your energy budget audit little thing.

And then when you start to come up with those boundaries, the question that I always ask is, what seems hard? What seems impossible? And what do you actually want to happen? Because your answers to those three questions are going to start to inform. Where you might need some more attention, where a boundary needs to be maybe a little bit sicker.

MO one needs to be enforced. Again, like most of these are to ourselves. Most of these are mental. And so a lot of these just ends up being like mindset shifts of how we think about things and how we dedicate ourselves to think about something. So those are the three questions that I always recommend, and those are three questions that I end up asking of my coaching clients of what feels hard right here.

What do you actually want out of this situation? Because those are the questions like what you were saying, like it's. Those are questions that if we don't answer them, we're not able to be present because that means we're often all these different places, we're thinking two or three weeks from now. So if you're gonna answer those, it requires you to plug into right now to answer them.

So even just getting in the space to answer it down shifts you out of the like racing thoughts. That's 

[00:23:13] Ryan: why I say star outta curiosity clients that come to you, how many entrepreneurs or small business owners or whoever they are, actually have a morning routine or that quiet time ORI set up before. They actually come to see you?

[00:23:26] Ash: Ooh, not a lot. Not a lot. Really? Yeah. Not a lot really. And that is what I tend to find as a lot of the problem, not like the morning routine in that it's some, sure. All but just a quiet time. Yeah. A quiet time or anything to, to any sort of like routine or ritual for self to, for them to take up space in their life.

Cuz that's what burnout is. And something that helps 'em to stay centered and present, like a lot of them are missing that. And so it's like it has this compound effect of why they feel so burnt out, why they feel so anxious, because they don't have any of those things in place. 

[00:23:59] Ryan: Do they struggle with being addicted to their phone?

[00:24:02] Ash: I'd say some of them. Not all of them, but some of them, yeah. And that can be more anxious habit, like scrolling, refreshing things. No social media issues. Not as much. Not as much. I've had a handful where like social media was the big problem and a lot of times it's because that's the first thing that they learned or that's like their primary way that they market and they don't have other channels, in which case that's more or less a marketing issue.

A little bit of mindset, but more of the marketing things of just like opening up their perspective to see the, if you do other channels and more like long-term strategy, you don't have to freak out when Instagram crashes. 

[00:24:37] Ryan: Interesting. This is pretty cool to hear a different perspective on other entrepreneurs and small business owners and what they struggle with.

Cuz all of our journeys are different, but we all struggle with one thing is, and I really think it's being present piece. Yeah. And being able to work through that. The really where I wanted to go next is you start putting those boundaries together. You're doing some life balance. You got bucket now you've got you.

You've talked about it multiple times and I haven't come back to it. Energy, life. Energy. Yeah. How are we directing our life energy and being able to put it in the right places at the right time? I 

[00:25:13] Ash: love this question. So it's my answer is sucks because it depends which is the suckiest, but it depends because this is, and this is the fun part though, because it's different for everybody.

So you get to decide and through this process of figuring out where are, where's your energy budget right now, where do, what boundaries need to go in place? That process as you're figuring it out, as your baby stepping boundaries into place, you're really starting to get to know yourself in a different way.

And you're starting to get to know what do you actually want? Because to answer those questions, you have to know that answer. And a lot of us, that's not something we can say right away. We don't really know what we want. We can't articulate what we want. And so once you have that starting to free up, Once you have that kind of life energy that you get to redirect, that means that you have been able to answer that question to some extent of what do you want.

And so now you can budget, allocate more of the energy towards a thing that you want. So maybe it is, maybe you are in a period of ramping up and scaling in your business, and what you do really want is to allocate more to that. That's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. You can be in a season of growth, but maybe you do have more life energy because you want to spend more time with your partner.

Maybe you want to be a more intentional parent in this season of life. Maybe you want to. Go on a three month travel thing across Europe. They get to be different for anybody. But this is where the goals that we have in mind, the dreams that were someday dreams, like this is where we can finally give them some life and some breaths because we have the bandwidth finally to even think about them and to allow ourselves to do them.

[00:26:42] Ryan: That was pretty deep and that's pretty cool because you're allowing people to dream and actually grow and you're helping them get there. In that journey, where is delegation in being able to work through those challenges that we all have? We include? 

[00:26:58] Ash: Yeah. Oh yeah. Ugh. They're gonna keep coming up through every step of this process, so of course we're gonna come up in the energy pu part.

We've talked about that piece. The boundary part though, is also where it starts to come up when we're baby stepping those into place. A lot of times what I find when I'm asking that question of what is hard? What do you actually want? And they answer with, I actually wanna spend time doing this. Or I had one specifically that really loved writing her newsletter every week.

That was something she genuinely loved doing, but she never had time for it because she was always like delivering here and doing this. Even though she has a va, she has some people that can do this, and she was in a season of launch, but she has a launch team that helps her. But she was like editing a bunch of email surfing the, and I'm like, what?

What do you want? She said, I wanna do the email cuz I love it and it's the way for me to be really creative and I stay connected to my audience and I just wanna keep doing this. I'm like, okay, so what's in the way? And this is, it was painful cuz she had to be really honest and realize that she was in her own way the whole time.

Like she's giving energy to all these things that like she really could be delegating. So then it was the boundary was the mirror to show her like, Hey, you're the problem. The ER are the problem. You have to stop doing these things so that you have the energy to do the things that you actually want to be doing.

That's an example of one thing that, of how it comes up for delegation. But yeah, the boundaries are a really reflective mirror for us to see, like what are the ways that we get in our own way and how are we making it hard on ourselves? And that's again, where it comes back to boundaries. So many times, our mental boundaries and the mindsets and the perspectives that we have on something.

There's another way that I see this come up though in the delegation, and that is with baseline. So this is like the three B, this brain space method. It's got three steps here. So the budget, the boundaries, and then the baseline. And the baseline is something, is this is your baseline. So like how you most naturally are, where is your baseline?

This has something to do with knowing yourself and has a lot to do with like your tolerance of resilience. What is your window of tolerant? What can you actually handle? So many people have talked about this in different ways throughout the years with it. Guy Hendrix that wrote the big We, he talks about the upper limit problem.

And so like people's window of tolerance for good things happening. So we have this for good things and we have this for bad things. And like how much can you handle that is like your capacity for this. And so I call that your baseline. And so through this process we're getting to know your baseline.

Where is it at? There's no wrong answer. It's just whatever yours is. Cuz once we can uncover where that lives now we can start to. Allocate this to the other things we talked about. So to that budget, like what's your baseline? How many, some people call these spoons, like how many spoons do you have in a day to allocate to the different things you need to do?

So what's your baseline number of spoons you have on any given day? You might have more. Sometimes maybe sometimes you have less. You're gonna have this many spoons. And so what we wanna do is once we understand this baseline, then we can see, okay, you think you operate up here, you wanna operate here, but if we're being really realistic, you're actually down here is where you're operating.

And this isn't a bad thing. It's not done out of con, any sort of like condescending way or shameful way. It just is what it is. We're just getting to know who you naturally are. So if you're down here and we know that you only have so much in your energy budget now this is going to inform a delegation conversation again.

Okay? This. This, you can't just force yourself to operate up here. Th that, that this is a big window. And so we have to baby step up there too. And so how we can start to do that is with delegation. And so just starting to frame a lot of these conversations from different perspectives. It's the same conversation that a lot of people tend to have.

But we have a lot of baggage, okay? Especially service bank entrepreneurs have a lot of baggage when it comes to allowing themselves to delegate, allowing themselves to prioritize in a different way. And This approach just allows them a different form of permission slip that helps them to start doing that helps 'em to start doing it sustainably without all the mind drama that comes with it.

[00:30:45] Ryan: That is awesome. You're sharing a lot of tips that entrepreneurs, small business owners really need to implement and be able to use in daily life because, If you were around sooner, I would've brought you on, or I wouldn't been working with you because I've been on an eight year entrepreneur journey and it's been tough.

I struggle with everything you talk about has been the struggle. Even though I was a pretty high up director, senior VP at a corporation, and I still didn't have the tool sets or the mindset or even the, how do you wanna say it? The wherewithal to be able to start my day out. It was never taught to me, and I've had to learn that through entrepreneurship and small business ownership.

And it's a struggle. It's just, it's a struggle and a grind on a daily basis. And having somebody like you out there to help I is a huge win. 

[00:31:34] Ash: Thank you. Thank you. I received that. 

[00:31:37] Ryan: You're more than welcome. As we wrap this up, I wanna get you out of here on time. How can an entrepreneur, small business owner get ahold of you?

[00:31:46] Ash: Yeah, get on my email list. I send an email every single Tuesday called The Stir, and this is to help people get in touch with more of their strengths for that baseline, but also to dissolve over overwhelm and do more good work, more high impact work without all of the spoons, all of the extra energy. So I send tips like this every single Tuesday.

You can sign up at Healing hustle.co/luster. You can connect with me on Instagram too. I put daily tips on there. I'm always talking about this stuff. Always giving little tips on just how to help yourself, how to have a lot of these like mental boundaries in place and reframe a lot of this conversation.

Awesome. I will 

[00:32:22] Ryan: put links in the show notes for both of those and we'll make sure people can connect with you when they wanna work with you and get on your email list. I might even sign up too later today and get that going. I'd love to see what you're sharing cuz I'm sure there's plenty of things I can learn.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Ryan. You're more than welcome. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for the wait and also some of our distractions today, which will be edited out, but I thank you for coming on and sharing everything that you're doing. Yeah, 

[00:32:49] Ash: this was awesome. Thank you so much. You're welcome.