EPISODE 86 OF THE MARKETING SOLUTIONS PODCAST: BEATING BURNOUT TO REACH YOUR NEXT LEVEL IN BUSINESS

Sonya:
Today, we have a very special person Vesna who is my naturopath on the podcast. I am so excited that she agreed to join us for this episode. As you all know, I experienced burnout about 12 months ago now. I lost all passion for my business, was totally stressed, overwhelmed, exhausted, lethargic, could not get through a day without having a nap, which was so unlike me. And when I came across Vesna and her incredible marketing funnels, I was hooked, because it was like she was just in my head.

Sonya:
So in this episode, we're going to talk about what you can do if you feel like you are approaching burnout, but we're also going to talk about how she took her business to an online model. I think it's been incredibly valuable conversation and I hope you get a lot out of it. Make sure you go and check out the freebie that she has at the end as well. It helped me so much and I hope it can help you too.

Sonya:
Welcome to the Boom Your Biz podcast, a podcast for the movers, the shakers, and even bigger action takers in business. I'm your host, Sonya McIntyre-Reid, and each week, I'll be exploring the question of what really makes businesses and organizations thrive. I'm on a mission to educate and power and inspire business owners and myself along the way.

Sonya:
Hi, Vesna. Thanks so much for joining me today. Everyone, I've been working with Vesna for a little while now around my health. As you all know, last year, I hit burnout big time. And when I came across Vesna and her marketing and her funnels and all the things, I just thought, "Oh my god, she's speaking to me." So Vesna, welcome.

Vesna:
Oh, thank you so much. It's so great to be here. And I love working with you, of course.

Sonya:
Vesna, tell us about you. What's your background? What do you do?

Vesna:
So I'm a naturopath and a coach. And so I've been doing this work for over 20 years. So I initially started in naturopathic clinics in Sydney, and I did that for about 10 years, which I loved. And then I got to the point where I was like, "Well, I don't want to be in a clinic anymore. And I want to be location independent." And I just wanted to do things differently and just impact people on a bigger scale rather than just ... I just felt like I was being stuck in a room all day in a clinic. And so I decided to start this online business, which looked different in the beginning. It looked like doing Skype consultations. And then it evolved into online programs and longer term packages and things like that. So I specialize in burnout. So anything that's related to fatigue, anxiety, low moods, depression, weight gain, poor sleep, brain fog, anything that impacts performance and our quality of life.

Sonya:
And how did you find your niche with that? Were you always focused on that? Or how did you get to that point?

Vesna:
I had burnout. Basically, I hit burnout when I was running my clinics. I was working really hard and I mean, anyone knows in business that ... especially when you're starting up, you're putting a lot of pressure on your shoulders and you want it to be successful, right? Because if it's not, what does that mean about you? And then you just feel like you're just going to fall into a heap. And so you throw everything into it. And my businesses were really successful, but I started to ... I was really hitting burnout and I didn't know what it was. And I kind of knew, but everything I had done in my naturopathic toolkit wasn't making a difference.

Vesna:
And so I went to see all these other doctors and practitioners and they couldn't shed any light on how to get me to feel better. And I was only in my 20s and they were like, "Oh, it's because you're getting older. It's because you run a business." I'm like, "That can't be true, because there's other people doing way more than me and they're not feeling the way I felt." I just felt like I really struggled to function. I was so tired. I'd have to have a nap during the day in the clinic. I was living off coffee and M&M's and just doing the basics in my business. I wasn't doing the things that I needed to grow. And then I got to the point where I didn't even know if I wanted to do it anymore.

Vesna:
I was so burnt out that it sucked all the joy and the passion. And I was like, "I don't know." And I'd known that I'd wanted to be a naturopath since I was like 14, 15. And then at that point I was like, "I don't know if I want this anymore." And so it took a bit of time. It took like five years I felt like that. And eventually got to what was the problem. And I remember seeing this endocrinologist and she said to me ... She looked at my blood work. I begged her to do all this blood work for me, because it was kind of hard back then. And she just looked at me and said, "What are you so stressed about?" And I just went, "I don't know." But I did, right? Because I just used to keep going and going and going. I didn't know ... I didn't even look at what I was stressed about. And I swear if she'd asked me one more time, would've burst into tears, because it was just kind of sitting under the surface.

Vesna:
And so that started my journey there with looking at ... because a lot of people don't feel major medical symptoms like illnesses or diseases, but their quality of life is really affected. And we get told that it's in our head or it's just part of getting older. It's part of running a business. If you're a mom, you've got kids, it's just part of that. Well, that's all rubbish, because it's due to imbalances in the body that can be corrected and you can live a better life. You can run, do your best work. You can enjoy the time with your kids, and do the things that you've been putting off. So my journey was through burnout, and then after I went through that, I just saw it all the time in people. It was such a common thing that I saw.

Vesna:
And I love specializing it because it is so multifaceted. It goes into correcting imbalances in the body. But then we're also looking at psychological and emotional and all of that stuff, which is good to get into.

Sonya:
Yeah. It's a great holistic approach. And I think I've worked with so many naturopath nutritionists previously, but no one's looked at all of the aspects. So I think that's really important. Do you find this occurs more in women than men?

Vesna:
Yep.

Sonya:
Why is that?

Vesna:
Well, women, we're just different. Right? And I think that's what makes us unique. Men spend less time in their heads and they suffer less of the emotional rollercoaster issues that we do. I'm not saying that they don't suffer it. I think business ... burnout is about the emotional rollercoaster. It's not so much about how much we are doing in a day. It's the mental pressure, it's the mental strain. And for women, we are more empathetic and nurturing and loving. And so we take more things to heart and we make things more personal and whereas men, not so much. They kind of just get on with it, right? Whereas women, we are more heartfelt. And so therefore, we can get a little bit caught up. And they also say that our HPA, so this part of our stress response system is more sensitive in women than it is in men. And so there's that part too.

Vesna:
And I think for women as well, definitely like today's changed. Women are working full time, running their businesses. They've got responsibilities, they've got children, they've got families and there's a lot more on them, therefore, a lot more pressure. And so they're trying to make everybody happy, which is what women do. And they leave themselves last and they end up neglecting themselves and then they wake up one day and think, "Oh, why don't I like my life? I don't even enjoy time with my kids. I don't enjoy my business anymore." And that's what happens here.

Sonya:
So when you hit burnout, what was it in the end that got you back on track, do you think?

Vesna:
So the main thing, which is what I focus on in my work is you have to reduce the stress. I had done ... Like I said, I'd used everything in my naturopathic toolkits. I'd done all the diets. I took all the supplements. I had two dispensaries at my disposal. I took so many different herbs and supplements. It was crazy. I remember people would come over and they'd look in my pantry and I'd open the door to get something out, they'd be like, "Oh my goodness, is that all of the supplements?" I'm like, "Oh yeah, I don't take them all the time." But I was taking a lot of supplements and it was like pushing me further into burnout, because I was taking stuff to give me energy to keep going. So in the end, it was really about reducing the stress. And initially I thought, "Well, you just have to reduce all the stress in your life. Right? Make it easier. Take long breaks, took three months off at a time to go overseas."

Vesna:
But that's not the answer because we can't run away from stress. Life is stressful and it's our ability to be able to handle stress. And so for me and the work that I do with my clients, it's a mental and emotional aspect. You can fix the physical body, yes, but you have to do that in combination. Otherwise, people are just going to keep hitting burnout and they're going to really struggle to get the results. And so people can be stuck doing diets, nutritional programs, sleeping, meditating, doing all the right things and not really moving the needle on their results. And it's because that ... it really has to be a combination because quite often what gets us into that place is our mental and emotional stress. And unless we do that, it's kind of like ... I kind of say it's like having one foot on the break and one foot on the gas. If you're not addressing the stress, you're not really getting anywhere. You're just kind of burning out even more.

Sonya:
So I think, how can we help people not get to burnout? What are the signs that you're approaching that?

Vesna:
Yeah. So feeling tired, right? So waking up, you've had a good night's sleep or maybe you haven't had a good night sleep. You can't sleep and wake up, feel tired. Maybe you have a period during the day where you feel like okay, but you're relying on coffee or whatever it is to keep going, sugar. You hit a wall in the afternoon where you're so, so tired and you need more coffee or sugar. Noticing that your moods have changed. So you may feel unmotivated. You may feel very low or depressed or you may get really anxious. Little things set you off. Little things trigger you so you just fly off the handle. You may be irritable more often. Once you get into burnout, there's that part where you lose passion in what you're doing. You don't want to speak to your clients anymore. You don't want to do the things in your business, because just over it, everything's bothering you. So they're the main things. And then obviously, as systems in the body start to slow down, then we get a slow down in our metabolism so women start to gain weight. So yeah, looking at energy, mood and weight, and other things. Yeah.

Sonya:
So that's sort of the signal to reduce those stress levels.

Vesna:
Yeah. I mean, our symptoms are really a signal like just to get our attention. And with burnout, if you don't pay attention, it'll just get worse and worse and worse until eventually some people in burnout like I almost got to that point. I would have to have sleep during the day, but some people can't even work. They literally completely their body just shuts down and says, "That's it. All you've got now to do is recover. That's it. You're not going to work. You're just going to sleep this off." Right? And for some people, it can take months to recover. Right? And it shouldn't take that long if we don't let it go that far.

Vesna:
And I think the other important thing that I want to emphasize is that the importance of energy and focus for our productivity and our performance. Right? And so quite often, we think, "Well, I just got to keep going. Just got to keep going, keep going." But actually, you're doing subpar, like your quality of your work isn't as good as if you were energized and rested. And I think that's an important thing to see for yourself, because otherwise, people just keep pushing their foot on the accelerator and it takes them longer to get stuff done and they don't realize it.

Vesna:
I always say, if you're anxious, just pull back a bit, right? Just take an hour just to relax, because you are not going to do your best quality work when you're anxious. You are going to be ... you won't have the clarity or the creativity. You'll just be operating from a place of panic and fear. So if you can pull back a bit and relax, you're actually going to get a lot more done without anxiety.

Sonya:
Oh yes, I feel that. I think we've all been in situations where we're putting in a lot of hours and then we look at our to-do list and go, "Okay, well, what have I actually achieved? Because it's taking so long to get through anything." Let's talk about your business rather than health for a second. So I mentioned at the start that I felt like your marketing funnel or your marketing is absolutely fantastic, but in our sessions, you have led on to me that you don't love marketing. In fact, it's probably your least favorite activity in business.

Vesna:
A love hate relationship. No, I will be honest, in the beginning, the whole online world was overwhelming for me, because I felt like ... I'd been in business for 10 years already, but I felt like when I came into the online world, I was like, "I don't even know business anymore." It was so different, right? And it's the marketing, it's all about marketing on the online space. Whereas in my clinic, it was all about word of mouth marketing and whatever little marketing that we did at the time. But online, it's heavy on the marketing. Right? So I really struggled with it because I just thought, "Well, I'm not a marketer, I'm a naturopath." It's like, "I can't do this stuff. Why do I have to do this stuff?" And so it's this internal battle, right?

Vesna:
I've really have learned to ... my marketing got better because I learned to love it. And I learned it was in my best interest to love it. And I found a way that I could communicate with people that felt like I was really connecting with them rather than spilling out a marketing message. Do you know what I mean? I had the wrong impression. I felt like marketing was manipulation or something, I don't know. I didn't feel like it was authentic. So I did it in a way that made it feel authentic to me. And I remember I just thought, "You know what? I'm just going to do Facebook lives and I'm just going to talk to people. I'm just going to give them some tips on the problems that I know, and this is what you can do." And it was really as simple as that, that changed everything for me. And it was really just coming from that place. Well, just connect with people, just help them. And then, yeah.

Sonya:
And now, obviously, you've taken it a step further. You've got this incredible funnel set up. Guys, when I talk about a funnel, Vesna has a free resource or a free webinar happening that looks like it's live, but it's not live. And it's done very well. And then you upsell from there into a program. Right? So how did you learn how to piece all of that together? How did you learn that funnel technique because it's very well known in the online coaching space, but like you said, you're a naturopath. So tell me, how did you discover all this?

Vesna:
I did. I worked with coaches. I worked with business coaches to teach me how to do that. I remember the first webinar I ran, it was dismal. I gave away so much. People at the end were like, "God, that was amazing. I'm going to do exactly what you said." I just basically was doing a lot of teaching on webinars. And so it took a long time to perfect how to get people to take action, I guess. Because it's one thing to get a couple of pieces of information, but it's a completely other thing to get the transformation, to get them to do the work so they feel better.

Vesna:
So I learned it from people. I learned it from other business coaches. I bought programs. I did marketing courses. I've had other ... I've worked with coaches that helped me to implement funnels, but that's just through a long period of refining, really refining, getting to know what the struggles and the pain points people have. And I do know it inside out, because it's ... People come to the webinar. When I do live and they come and they're like, "Oh my goodness, have you been following me around? I feel like you're in my head." And that's when you know your spot on. It's because I hear the same thing so often.

Vesna:
And yeah, the funnel just came through working with people and refining it and hearing what people are saying and just tweaking and testing, tweaking and testing, optimizing like we optimize our body. I saw the funnel just constant optimization.

Sonya:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think it's absolutely fantastic. And for someone who said they didn't like marketing, it's incredible. And I think you said to me once that, "Look, I could outsource it, but then it's not going to have the same heart in it and the message is not going to get across." And I completely feel that. I mean, I'm marketing agency, right? But we need to have our clients involved so heavily with that messaging side of things to make sure you are hitting on those pain points or it's not going to work.

Vesna:
Yep. And I think that for me that was the biggest difference in the beginning. I didn't know how to do that. I didn't know ... When I say I just got onto Facebook lives and spoke, I did, but I also was aware of talking about pain points, where people struggles are. And so you really need to have that guidance. Otherwise, it's really hard. When I didn't have that guidance in the beginning, I really struggled. Because yeah, it's a fine art in communicating this stuff to people.

Sonya:
Absolutely. Absolutely. So with that freebie webinar, I know that you take people through, I think it's like five tips on ...

Vesna:
I do the three secrets.

Sonya:
The three secrets. All right. What are the three secrets in a nutshell? And I will link in the show notes so people can go and watch this incredible webinar, because it helped me so much. And I know there's a lot of people listening that will really benefit as well.

Vesna:
So the first one I talk about how we often think that our energy and mood is being held hostage by everything that we do in a day, but it's not really, it's coming down to core imbalances and people really need to see that, because they think they can't feel better until the stress passes or their deadline is over or they've got less to do in their business or this happens or that happens and that's not true. If you repair the core imbalances, you will have your energy back. You'll feel amazing. You'll have super focus, do your best work, et cetera. So that's the first thing for people to recognize.

Vesna:
The second thing is that, I tend to get women who have tried a lot of things already, right? They've been to the nutritionist, naturopaths, the supplements, the detoxes, the cleanses, the keto, the fasting and all of that kind of jazz, right? And they're still stuck in the same place. And so with my work, because I was in that same place as well years ago. So my work is about reducing the stress hormones. And I talk about that in second secret. Unless you do that, you are not going to get the results that you want. And so in my programs, the first three weeks are about reducing stress hormones through habits, lifestyle, mental reset. And just through that alone, people get amazing changes in their body, right?

Vesna:
Weight loss, energy, concentration, digestive system repairs, like so much stuff just from that. And then the third secret is about I give five habits that they can implement to double their energy and elevate the mood in seven days. And I've used these five habits with everyone. So I know that they work and they're really simple things to do, right?

Vesna:
They're just like wake up in the morning and have breakfast within 20 minutes of rising, right? Don't have coffee on an empty stomach. All of these things that are going to reduce the amount of stress hormone that's being released. And when we can do that, we can have balanced energy. We can have less stress and anxiety. We can get rid of cravings. Our body will continue to burn body fat so we have high energy that lasts all day long. So really simple things. I want people to see that it can be quite simple to make that transformation.

Sonya:
And I think it's so powerful because it kind of goes against everything that anyone that's done courses and read books and research and listened to the gurus. I thought I was doing the right thing fasting until 12 o'clock and then having like a black coffee on an empty stomach. No, Sonya. So now for me eating within 20 minutes of waking up, not having any form of caffeine on an empty stomach, just those two things alone are such a game changer, because you're not getting that instant. And I didn't realize it was happening. I'd wake up tired. And then you lean on the caffeine. So you get that hit of almost like adrenaline in your body. And then you're like, "Right. I'm off." And you go, go, go for the rest of the day. And it's a bad form of energy, I think-

Vesna:
But in the afternoon, you're just going to hit the wall, because the adrenaline comes down. You're actually-

Sonya:
Right. And, like you say in this webinar, and like I said to you as well, I thought you were in my head, because talking about how someone felt like they'd been injected in the afternoon and they needed a nap. That was 100% me. So yeah. It's amazing. Obviously, it's a very, very common thing that happens to people. You think you're doing the right thing. You're seeing all these people trying to fix it, but you're right, until you get that stress sorted and it's not about going and just taking a bubble bath or reducing your workload, it's really not. So ...

Vesna:
It's not the answer. No. You got to get over the emotional rollercoaster. Everyone has the different things in their business or in their life that are a trigger for them. It's about finding what is the big one. There's something that we have a lot of thinking around, and it's about finding that. But it's also just about the overall reduction in internal stress. Not forget about the outside. We're not going to change the outside until even we're more relaxed. Right? Yeah. So that really has to change first.

Sonya:
For anyone listening to this that is seeing clients in person at the moment, whatever service based business that might be, what is your number one piece of advice if they're wanting to transition to more online business model?

Vesna:
So service based, I mean, I would say just do it right. Just try. If you've got something that's not online and your business is good in that place, then adding the online portion should be ... there shouldn't be a lot of pressure in it so you can kind of test and have fun with it and play around with what works. I think that it's a game changer for a business. I mean, look at now. Okay, lockdown's happened. Right? And everyone said to me, "Oh, you're really ahead of the curve." And I was like, "Yeah. Okay. It looks that way." Right?

Vesna:
It just felt like this is the way ... Even back then, I felt like this was the way the world was going ... It is going to. We need to offer that component. I find in the beginning, people were like, "Oh, I'd rather see you in person." Whereas now people are like, "Oh, it's so much easier not to have to come to a clinic or an office." Right? It is. So it's more convenient for people.

Sonya:
Absolutely. And you can work with anyone from around the world as well. So yeah, I think it's so funny. I've been using Zoom for years and years and now people have only heard about it in the last two years. So it's nice that everyone else is sort of catching up and realizing the benefits of being able to work from anywhere and with anyone.

Vesna:
Yeah. I think for anyone starting out, it can be a bit daunting like it was for me. I mean, I was like, "I'm naturopath. I don't know what I'm doing here." But honestly, if I can do it, I just think anyone can, because I found it overwhelming in the beginning, but it's worth it. Right? You open up to a global market and you get to interact with people in the different way. And it just spices things up in your business as well. And it's obviously better for the business bottom line as well.

Sonya:
Absolutely. Vesna, if someone wants to go and watch this webinar we've been talking about or learn more about you, what is the best place to do that?

Vesna:
So I'll give you a link that they can access the webinar, but you can also go to my website, which is my name Vesna Hrsto. We'll put that as a link as well, because my last name is a bit hard. So vesnahrsto.com. And you can find everything about me there and the programs that I offer and sign up to the masterclass.

Sonya:
Awesome. And what about social media? Are you active on socials?

Vesna:
I am. So I'm on Facebook and I'm just started off the old Instagram. I'm a bit late in the game. I've got like one Mark Zuckerberg product was maybe enough, but turns out, no. So yes, I'm on definitely on socials.

Sonya:
Beautiful. Awesome. Well, thanks, Vesna, so much for your time.

Vesna:
Thank you so much.