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SOS: You're Overwhelmed — Here's How to Fix It (Without Doing More) · Growing a Deeply Rooted Business: Launches, Funnels & Email Marketing with Intention

• 0:00
  Rachel: So Jess and I had a full planning episode written out and ready to go today, and then I asked her, "How's it going?"
• 0:07
  Rachel: And we just both said, "Busy."
• 0:10
  Rachel: So if you have been, in the past week, just this overwhelming sense of too much on our plate, have so much things to do, my task list today is gonna literally creep into next week's, hours, this episode is
• 0:28
  Rachel: for you.
• 0:28
  Rachel: We're gonna be breaking down our SOS process of how we think through things, reassess, and take action in the right now, and not allow it to disrupt anything else going forward.
• 0:42
  Jess: What inspired this episode was that everything feels really loud and really fast right now.
• 0:47
  Jess: When I'm having client conversations or even talking with business peers, everyone is feeling kind of this general sense of overwhelm right now, and that they can't keep up.
• 0:57
  Jess: So this episode we're really looking to dig into why is this happening, and then how can we make it stop because this feeling is not fun.
• 1:07
  Jess: We don't wanna dip into burnout.
• 1:09
  Jess: I know I had some very long conversations with Claude.
• 1:12
  Jess: I've been looking into little ways that I can relieve some of that pressure myself.
• 1:16
  Jess: So today we're just gonna be walking you through how to escape that feeling of overwhelm and how to buy back your time.
• 1:24
  Jess: I think all of us as business owners have started our business to have more time to do the things we love.
• 1:30
  Jess: But right now we're kinda all rolling into every week where it feels like every single moment of our day is already spoken for.
• 1:37
  Jess: But before we get into that, I wanna welcome you back to another episode of Growing a Deeply Rooted Business.
• 1:41
  Jess: If you're new here, I'm Jess, your sustainable growth and system strategist.
• 1:45
  Jess: I'm here with Rachel, our marketing ecosystem mastermind.
• 1:51
  Jess: Rachel, Why don't we start with a quick energy check?
• 1:54
  Jess: If you're a little woo, she's got some insights for us, too, of why we may be feeling this.
• 1:57
  Rachel: Yeah.
• 1:58
  Rachel: So before we get into the crazy details of everything, I really want us to assess all of the things that are happening right now.
• 2:06
  Rachel: So one thing we're not gonna do is make sure that this podcast gives you more things to do.
• 2:11
  Rachel: We want this to feel a little bit of a release, whether that is validation that you are also overwhelmed and heading towards burnout, and that there is a pathway forward.
• 2:23
  Rachel: Or we can just be in this chaos together.
• 2:27
  Rachel: But there's lots going around right now in the universe.
• 2:31
  Rachel: And so if you're woo like us, I always check in with these things 'cause I'm like, "It's not me."
• 2:37
  Rachel: And When Jess got on this call today, too, and she goes, "There's something going on."
• 2:41
  Rachel: And so we have five planets going retrograde by Friday, and that causes so many different layers energetically of things that are technology layers, things that are emotional, that your subconscious is fighting for its own attention as well.
• 2:59
  Rachel: So all of that to say this time right now, and the heavy client work, and the rush towards the end of the year just feels like a lot, we're here to validate it is a lot.
• 3:10
  Rachel: So to get through that, we're gonna be going through how to determine why you're so overwhelmed right now, and what you can possibly release in a few different directions to create space in your business and in your life,
• 3:24
  Rachel: too, so that you can breathe a little bit easier as we're all in this final sprint towards the holiday season.
• 3:32
  Jess: So first, before we get into it, we just wanna help you diagnose the problem.
• 3:36
  Jess: And I think for a lot of us, it's gonna be a multitude of these things, but I think even just naming the problem and recognizing it can give you a sense of relief.
• 3:45
  Jess: Number one, there...
• 3:46
  Jess: Here's all the things going on in the world right now that may be making you feel a bit more overwhelmed.
• 3:52
  Jess: I think from a marketing perspective right now, we are seeing that consumers are being very much more cautious with their spending and taking longer with their buying decisions because our economy is not that great right now.
• 4:10
  Jess: So everyone is being a little more cautious, they're taking a little slower.
• 4:13
  Jess: So we're having to do a lot more or shift the way that we are selling or expecting to selling to make up for this, and that is taking more of our time or causing us to kinda have to,
• 4:24
  Jess: pause and readjust.
• 4:25
  Jess: Are you seeing this in your clients' businesses as well, Rachel?
• 4:28
  Rachel: Oh, for sure.
• 4:29
  Rachel: For context, when you're on TikTok or Instagram, everything is an ad right now.
• 4:34
  Rachel: And so that in itself has changed the way that buyers consume content, engage with content, build trust, and all of those different layers of the buyer's journey.
• 4:48
  Rachel: So just that alone, when you have an over-inundated information just fire-hosed towards your potential clients, they're gonna feel overwhelmed.
• 4:59
  Rachel: You're gonna feel like everything you need to say has to be an ad too in order to combat with all of these things.
• 5:05
  Rachel: And then on top of that, you do have the state of the world and all of the things that are happening.
• 5:09
  Rachel: To me, it just feels like everybody's screaming and screaming and screaming, and nobody's actually listening.
• 5:15
  Rachel: But yeah, there's so many layers as to why buyers are overwhelmed, business owners are overwhelmed, and just your marketing in general feels a little, you know, pointless.
• 5:27
  Jess: I think another kind of big thing that is happening in the world right now is the AI of it all.
• 5:32
  Jess: Now, before we get into this, we love AI.
• 5:34
  Jess: We have a whole product where we are building AI skills to help you be more productive in your business.
• 5:41
  Jess: But I think that a lot of businesses are viewing AI kind of wrong, or coming at it at the wrong thing.
• 5:48
  Jess: So first things first, AI is an accelerator of the systems that you already have.
• 5:54
  Jess: So if you do not have strong systems set up in your business or a strategy or a way of doing things, all AI is gonna do is help you do a lot more, busy work way faster.
• 6:06
  Jess: And sometimes you don't need more output.
• 6:09
  Jess: You just need to execute on what you need have already.
• 6:12
  Jess: Rachel said this earlier to me.
• 6:14
  Jess: And also I think the AI of it all, if you're a client delivery person, clients think that you're gonna be able to get things done faster because of AI, or they can throw in some extra little things because
• 6:27
  Jess: we now have AI to help us, when the reality is that AI cannot help you move faster until you've taken the time to slow down and create the system of what good looks like.
• 6:40
  Jess: And I think a lot of people are jumping into that, trying to make it go faster first without laying the groundwork, and all that is gonna do is help you spin your wheels a little bit faster.
• 6:49
  Jess: Have you seen that too, Rach?
• 6:51
  Rachel: Oh, 100%.
• 6:53
  Rachel: Honestly, this part of just the expectation of delivery is, I think, creating an even more burnout susceptible business online business owners and everybody that's like, "Well, just put it together," kind of thing- it's happening across the board.
• 7:09
  Rachel: And so I always tell myself, I need to be patient with myself.
• 7:13
  Rachel: I'm a big fan of processes, both when I was in corporate and now in my business, where has to be expectations of human touch in order to say, "This realistically will take me five business days."
• 7:28
  Rachel: Because if you're a good...
• 7:29
  Rachel: well, I don't wanna say if you're a good business owner, but if you're solid process reviewer, you don't just look at something once.
• 7:36
  Rachel: You give it a day to settle, and then you go and review it.
• 7:40
  Rachel: I'm speaking from a copy perspective.
• 7:41
  Rachel: And so when I write an email, I'm not trying to rush and get it delivered.
• 7:45
  Rachel: I'm like, "Let this breathe for a little bit.
• 7:48
  Rachel: Let me come back with fresh eyes."
• 7:49
  Rachel: And I think that that timeline has disappeared with the expectation of oh, you just get it, just prompt it.
• 7:55
  Rachel: Like oh, get the output, send it off to your client kind of thing.
• 7:58
  Rachel: But the quality of business and the urgency that is just everywhere in life, everything just feels so freaking urgent, ruining a lot of that room to breathe in people's businesses.
• 8:11
  Jess: Generating something faster is not the same as finishing.
• 8:14
  Jess: And we definitely need the time time to let it settle, go look at it from fresh eyes.
• 8:19
  Jess: I love that.
• 8:20
  Jess: And then also I think AI is kind of adding to overwhelm because you can generate so much so quickly.
• 8:26
  Jess: Like sure, Claude can give you 30 content drafts or 30 scripts, but that's 30 more things that are waiting for you to record or approve or schedule.
• 8:36
  Jess: Yes, there are people that are out there like, "AI helps me generate like 100 posts a week."
• 8:42
  Jess: They still have a team behind them, like, We do but How long did it take us to set up the system to be able to do that?
• 8:48
  Jess: I was showing somebody the whole system the other day, and they're like, "You know what?
• 8:51
  Jess: You should really offer setting this up for people."
• 8:53
  Jess: And I'm like, Do you how many months this system has passed?"
• 8:56
  Jess: So I think it's it's kind of misleading when people are like get on AI, and their cool claude artifact with all their pretty branding.
• 9:02
  Jess: And they're like, I just wake up, and I have 10 things ready for me to go in the morning."
• 9:06
  Jess: I'm like, "Yeah, but how long did it take you to build that?"
• 9:09
  Jess: There was something that I saw yesterday on TikTok, and I was like, "I wanna do that.
• 9:12
  Jess: I wanna build this."
• 9:13
  Jess: And I'm like, but no, that is a whole nother project that you need to take and that is not what you need right You just need to execute on the things already have
• 9:20
  Rachel: Yeah, I think the shiny object of it all makes it feel like there's so many more possibilities and so many more things you can get into, but realistically, you're creating more to-dos and you're testing your capacity in a
• 9:35
  Rachel: real way that is not healthy.
• 9:37
  Rachel: I was joking about taking a sabbatical because I was like, I just need a year of my brain to reset itself from this constant urgent, feeling of everything and, let my to-dos reset.
• 9:49
  Rachel: 'Cause I feel like I'm a little too far gone right now to catch up at this point.
• 9:53
  Rachel: But that's because there's so many things that I'm like, "Oh, I wanna do that.
• 9:57
  Rachel: Oh, I wanna do this.
• 9:58
  Rachel: Ooh, a new website.
• 9:59
  Rachel: Oh, a YouTube channel."
• 10:00
  Rachel: All of these things that are exciting and multi-passionate just co-create...
• 10:05
  Rachel: They compound ultimately.
• 10:07
  Rachel: So in the annual planning process, and I know that we're kind of in the middle of a planning series right now, where in my annual planning process, I'm sitting there and I'm thinking like, "Oh, my gosh, this is
• 10:17
  Rachel: the end of 2027, that this is probably realistically gonna get done because of where everything is, falling in my realistic I think that that's something that a lot of people, maybe put too much pressure on themselves for is
• 10:31
  Rachel: they just think they need to get it all done now and that, we'll figure it out, we'll breathe later, we'll do all of the things later, but I just have to constantly remind myself: it's okay if my business
• 10:41
  Rachel: isn't at the whole center of my life.
• 10:43
  Rachel: I'm living in a life right now that I need to enjoy..
• 10:47
  Rachel: So that's my mantra and my reminder as well.
• 10:49
  Jess: I mean I definitely have been having to take a lot of social media breaks right now because I almost feel so much triggered by, any time I see someone doing AI, you feel like you're missing out or you're
• 10:58
  Jess: gonna fall behind if you're not doing it or, you know, this person's saying how they had this many months and it's like, I just need to turn off that noise and focus.
• 11:05
  Jess: So we hope that this helped you kind of diagnose the problem, make you feel a little bit that you are not alone.
• 11:11
  Jess: It is not you, it is everyone.
• 11:12
  Jess: It is the entire world, and if they aren't saying this on social media, then they are lying.
• 11:17
  Jess: So now that we've went through the problem, we wanna give you three moves on kinda how to quiet the noise, calm the overwhelm.
• 11:24
  Jess: We're gonna be talking through kind of three steps.
• 11:26
  Jess: How do you rescue your week?
• 11:27
  Jess: Like right now, if you're tasked and you're just feeling super overwhelmed, how do you simplify going forward?
• 11:34
  Jess: And then how do you stop your plate from refilling?
• 11:38
  Jess: So let's get into step one of how do you rescue the week.
• 11:43
  Jess: And we've done a couple of episodes on our five Ds on how to tackle your task list when it feels longer than my Trader Joe's receipt.
• 11:52
  Jess: But just to kinda give you a quick refresher what the five Ds are, and Rachel's gonna walk you through another kind of way to prioritize called the Eisenhower Matrix.
• 12:01
  Jess: But the five Ds are, You take your to-do list, brain dump everything you need to do, and then go through and delete.
• 12:09
  Jess: Delete anything that is not necessary right now for you to achieve your most immediate goals.
• 12:17
  Jess: Cross those off.
• 12:18
  Jess: Give yourself permission to say, "I am not doing this anymore.
• 12:22
  Jess: It is not relevant for my current business goals."
• 12:25
  Jess: The next thing you wanna do is delay.
• 12:27
  Jess: So what are these things that are nice to do?
• 12:29
  Jess: For example, I saw this girl, she had set up this beautiful Claude artifact for planning her social media.
• 12:35
  Jess: And I was like, "Oh my gosh, this would be totally great to do," but you know what?
• 12:39
  Jess: I've got eight posts scripted that I haven't even recorded yet.
• 12:43
  Jess: So before I go and do that, I'm gonna delay this task of building out this entire content system and just work with what I have.
• 12:50
  Jess: The next thing is delegate.
• 12:52
  Jess: I was thinking about this, and delegate doesn't have to be in business if you're a solopreneur.
• 12:56
  Jess: I was thinking about my Sundays, and ideally what I would love to have done every single Sunday for me to go into a week smooth, and how many hours of my Sunday that would take.
• 13:06
  Jess: And I was like, "This is gonna take me so long, it's impossible."
• 13:08
  Jess: But you know what?
• 13:09
  Jess: I have kids.
• 13:10
  Jess: I have a partner.
• 13:11
  Jess: So if I take some of that stuff and say, "Hey, guess what?
• 13:14
  Jess: You know what?
• 13:15
  Jess: I know when our trash cans are empty and our sheets are clean and our floors are vacuumed, I feel better, but I don't have to do all of that."
• 13:21
  Jess: So, every Sunday, if we split this up, it could take me four hours to do it by myself, or it could take us one hour if we put some music on, jam out, and do this.
• 13:30
  Jess: So writing a list of everything you need to do, and, Only keeping the things that you absolutely need to do.
• 13:35
  Jess: The next thing is decide.
• 13:36
  Jess: Oh, I can give you another example.
• 13:38
  Jess: I have spent freaking hours looking at wedding dresses.
• 13:42
  Jess: Hours.
• 13:44
  Jess: Hours.
• 13:45
  Jess: At least 40 hours at this point, at least an entire work week looking at wedding dresses, going back and forth.
• 13:51
  Jess: Is this the right one?
• 13:52
  Jess: You know what?
• 13:53
  Jess: I just need to freaking decide.
• 13:54
  Jess: I'm gonna have fun in whatever one.
• 13:56
  Jess: I'm sure I'm gonna look hot in whatever one.
• 13:58
  Jess: You do not need the most perfectest, perfect wedding dress or perfectest, perfectest anything sometimes.
• 14:05
  Jess: Sometimes you just need to give yourself a time block to decide.
• 14:10
  Jess: We always talk about that law, and I can never remember the name, but it expands to the amount of hours that you give it, whatever that law is.
• 14:16
  Jess: I have been trying to, especially as I'm feeling overwhelmed, of this is gonna take me one hour, and it's good as I can get it in one hour, this is gonna be, because I think that's another thing where
• 14:25
  Jess: AI, you can constantly refine and refine and iterate and make it better.
• 14:29
  Jess: You just need to decide this is what I'm gonna do to make forward.
• 14:31
  Jess: So did decide on the dress this morning.
• 14:34
  Jess: I'll let you know if we regret that.
• 14:36
  Jess: And then next is blocking out your time- To get the things that are left done, done.
• 14:42
  Jess: Around your meetings, around your life commitments.
• 14:45
  Jess: I like to choose between one to three priorities for each day that I can do, depending on how full my schedule is outside of that, and making sure that I'm committing to moving those things forward.
• 14:55
  Jess: So that is what I do, and my first line of defense when I start to feel overwhelmed.
• 15:00
  Rachel: Just another way to think about this too, is what I've always used, my business coach drills this in our head as far as the Eisenhower metric.
• 15:10
  Rachel: And so it's saying, once you have that full list of things that now you're gonna do, is to then assess them based off of urgency.
• 15:18
  Rachel: So you have four quadrants, which is urgent and important.
• 15:22
  Rachel: These are top priority.
• 15:23
  Rachel: These things have real consequences, deadlines, things like that.
• 15:28
  Rachel: Important but not urgent, you can protect its time to get it done before it becomes a fire, but it's not necessarily tied to any specific deadline, so put it in your next deep thinking time block kind of thing.
• 15:42
  Rachel: Urgent but not important, understand this could easily be delegated or you can really find a time to knock all of this out.
• 15:50
  Rachel: And then the last one is not urgent, not important.
• 15:53
  Rachel: You can either delete this one or put it in the idea parking lot.
• 15:57
  Rachel: So all of these things, so once you've kind of gone through the five Ds and then organized them, should give you a sense of calm, what's actionable to work on right now, what is the next step that you
• 16:09
  Rachel: can then tackle.
• 16:10
  Rachel: And every time I do this, I do always feel like my shoulders release a little bit whenever I'm like, "Oh, my God, I have so much to do.
• 16:17
  Rachel: Oh, my gosh, I have 100 clients that need all of these different things."
• 16:21
  Rachel: And so I always go through this process and say, "Okay, this is my week plan now."
• 16:26
  Rachel: It really does ground me a little bit.
• 16:28
  Rachel: Takes me out of the panic for sure.
• 16:30
  Jess: Okay, so that is how you immediately task triage.
• 16:33
  Jess: Get yourself out of that overwhelm.
• 16:36
  Jess: Your shoulders can release.
• 16:37
  Jess: You're feeling better.
• 16:38
  Jess: You're feeling a little more clear-headed, and then you need to fix what keeps getting you in that space in the first place because you cannot time block or organize or notion template out of your way, out of over-commitment.
• 16:53
  Jess: So if you keep filling up your plate or keep committing to more things than you realistically have capacity, you're gonna find yourself in the space of overwhelm over and over and over again.
• 17:05
  Jess: This is definitely a learned skill.
• 17:07
  Jess: As humans, we tend to overestimate how much we can get done in one year, but we also tend to underestimate what we can get done in five years.
• 17:15
  Jess: So a lot of times our timelines just need to be more drawn out because of what we have because of the capacity that we have.
• 17:24
  Jess: I had a long chat with Claude the other day 'cause my business is shifting.
• 17:28
  Jess: I've got commitments, and I was just feeling overwhelmed and looking back at the goals that I set at the beginning of the year, not feeling like I've made much traction on it.
• 17:35
  Jess: And what I realized is that, there were way too many things that I was equally trying to give importance to.
• 17:43
  Jess: So what ended up happening is that I was able to prioritize, what do I need to do right now to meet my current needs?
• 17:51
  Jess: My current needs are money.
• 17:53
  Jess: I need money right now.
• 17:54
  Jess: I also need to not feel overwhelmed all the time.
• 17:57
  Jess: I need money, and I need time.
• 17:59
  Jess: So how can I get money and time?
• 18:01
  Jess: And, looking at, this business, the podcast, my own business, my client commitments and really figuring out, What am I already committed to?
• 18:09
  Jess: Like clients, I've got to work this amount of hours for them 'cause that's what I'm contracted for.
• 18:13
  Jess: And then out of my other little passion projects or side hustle goals that I have, how do I wanna prioritize and block those in?
• 18:22
  Jess: How can I just really be realistic?
• 18:23
  Jess: If I only wanna work 35 hours a week and I've committed 30 hours a week to clients, then that means I have five other hours a week for other commitments.
• 18:32
  Jess: So can I make the podcast and the things that we take on fit into three?
• 18:36
  Jess: And then can I figure out a way to keep the launch collaborative going on too?
• 18:42
  Jess: This is where Claude, our project management Paula, I know she checks you all the time, is really helpful with trying to help you figure out what you need to.
• 18:50
  Jess: And what we landed on for me is, okay, we know we still need to bring in more revenue.
• 18:54
  Jess: What is a service that I can offer that doesn't drain my energy, that doesn't take a lot of time 'cause either it is low deliverables or I have it systemized so I can delegate it?
• 19:04
  Jess: And then what is the simplest way that I can market it?
• 19:07
  Jess: The past ways that I've sold this offer, and what is the minimum effective dose I have to do to be able to get people to buy that, committing to that, and then just being okay with these other projects
• 19:19
  Jess: are going to scale or grow a little slower
• 19:22
  Rachel: Yeah, and I think that that comes down to also on a marketing front too, where you're thinking like, "I got so many things to do.
• 19:29
  Rachel: I need to make money.
• 19:30
  Rachel: That means I need to post, I need to write this, I need to do all of these different things."
• 19:35
  Rachel: And so when you're at the point of capacity overload, and you're reaching burnout, you have to sit down and do that lead source audit that we always talk about, where it's saying what actionable things that I'm doing right
• 19:49
  Rachel: now actually bring me clients that I am enjoying working with and am converting easily versus the ones that you're chasing or all of those things.
• 20:00
  Rachel: And then what activities that you're doing that really aren't necessarily moving the needle.
• 20:05
  Rachel: And I don't say moving the needle and just booking clients because awareness doesn't always book clients but is still moving the needle.
• 20:13
  Rachel: So really assessing things the actual needle-moving behaviors and then saying like, "The rest can get paused right now and it's okay."
• 20:23
  Rachel: Three months ago I made a YouTube channel and I said, "I'm gonna really be posting two videos a month," blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 20:29
  Rachel: then launch season happened, and of course launch season was the most chaotic because everybody's trying to launch in this very noisy space.
• 20:38
  Rachel: And so I was doing a lot more pivots and client launches, more analytics and stuff like that, where the time that I had dedicated is gone to client support and things like that.
• 20:49
  Rachel: So really understanding that you can simplify your marketing without losing impact, but you just have to be making decisions in a more intentional way versus just spaghetti on the wall, just in a panic.
• 21:03
  Rachel: So really shift you from that proactive marketing execution and take you out of that reactive or just kind of this is what I've always done kind of mentality is for sure the direction you wanna take with your marketing
• 21:16
  Rachel: to get you out of that constant struggle bus.
• 21:20
  Jess: Yeah.
• 21:20
  Jess: So moving into step three, which is stop refilling the plate or stop waiting till you get too overwhelmed.
• 21:27
  Jess: This is a practice that we talk about all the time, but having the meetings with yourselves, those quarterly planning sessions, protecting those monthly planning session.
• 21:35
  Jess: And most importantly, protecting your weekly planning sessions.
• 21:39
  Jess: Because moving every overdue task that you have in Notion to next Monday is not actually planning.
• 21:45
  Jess: It's just pushing it off for you to deliver next Monday.
• 21:48
  Jess: So blocking off a real hour of your time and protecting it to review all your tasks that you or promises you made to your clients last week.
• 21:58
  Jess: Making sure that any work that still needs to get completed is getting slotted in around your other, life and business commitments.
• 22:05
  Jess: Checking in on what your actual, availability is for any other outside projects or business development projects that you have.
• 22:13
  Jess: And making sure that you're kind of going through and, any new ideas that you have parking them in the idea parking lot.
• 22:19
  Jess: I think that act of, taking it from your to-do list and putting it in a idea parking lot, that's giving yourself permission to say, you don't have to think, like, your brain pushing, you don't have to think about
• 22:27
  Jess: this right now.
• 22:28
  Jess: You can come back at it at a later date.
• 22:30
  Jess: And that's gonna help just so much.
• 22:33
  Rachel: Yeah, and I've actually started implementing idea parking lots for my clients too, because we are not the only people that operate this in our own businesses, right?
• 22:41
  Rachel: Our clients are just like us, where they're saying like, "Ooh, I had an idea about this," or, "Ooh, I saw somebody do this on TikTok."
• 22:49
  Rachel: And so you're almost having to, double combat the effort of eager beaver energy.
• 22:55
  Rachel: And so, when I created this idea parking lot for my clients, it's just a canvas in Slack where we can say, "Hey, we talked about this on a call.
• 23:02
  Rachel: I'm gonna put it here."
• 23:03
  Rachel: When we have space or when we think it's the right time, we can bring it off of that idea parking lot.
• 23:09
  Rachel: And things that have actually helped because it gives us a running log of projects when the inevitable panic happens where you're all, "I need clients, I need this, I need to make...
• 23:18
  Rachel: Something needs to change."
• 23:19
  Rachel: Okay, great, let's assess what we've already talked about, what can get brought off and get executed and all of that.
• 23:25
  Rachel: So I think those are always really important to processes that you could easily hold a boundary and say, "I'm not taking that on right now because neither one of us has the capacity for it, but let's put it
• 23:37
  Rachel: here.
• 23:38
  Rachel: Let's ideate on it.
• 23:40
  Rachel: Let's start to plan it and not make it so urgent, and then we can properly put it on the to-do list when the time is right.
• 23:47
  Jess: Yeah, and I think that sometimes it's just about that open communication with clients.
• 23:51
  Jess: I think clients asking for stuff is not them being difficult.
• 23:54
  Jess: They're not trying to overload.
• 23:56
  Jess: Sometimes they just don't see behind the scenes of your workload.
• 23:59
  Jess: So I had a client message me on Friday about a new project that they wanted to take on 'cause they felt like they were behind, and there was a little bit of panic in their voice, and I was
• 24:06
  Jess: like, "Okay, this is great, but I need about one more week to close out this thing that we're already working on so that my brain can get to that."
• 24:14
  Jess: So sometimes you do have to give those gentle reminders of this is scope or this is already what I'm doing right now.
• 24:22
  Jess: I feel like that is such an important skill to have, especially if you are dealing with retainer clients for sure.
• 24:27
  Rachel: All right, so let's go ahead and wrap this up.
• 24:30
  Rachel: Before you download another productivity app, because we're all overwhelmed and stressed, make sure that you're kind of going through this process.
• 24:38
  Rachel: Listen to this episode.
• 24:39
  Rachel: Well, obviously you've already listened to this episode in whole, but let this marinate and then do the following steps.
• 24:45
  Rachel: So step one is we're gonna just rescue the right now.
• 24:48
  Rachel: So make your list, your true actionable list.
• 24:52
  Rachel: Go through whatever process works, whether it's the 5D or the Eisenhower Matrix, and really decide what is the most urgent and top priority right now.
• 25:03
  Rachel: go through and simplify the things that you can simplify.
• 25:07
  Rachel: Make sure that this isn't just re-looping and creating more chaos for next week or the week after that.
• 25:12
  Rachel: Reassess whatever those goals and offers are, and then choose what really matters, and then you can pause all of the other noise and capacity, like pushing boundary things that are not necessarily making much of an impact right now.
• 25:28
  Rachel: Finally, then you're gonna start to protect the room so that you can get out of this kind of overwhelmed state and really assess how to maintain this energy that we're now creating space for, whether that means you're gonna
• 25:41
  Rachel: start doing your weekly reviews, you're gonna, start holding boundaries with your clients when it comes to scope.
• 25:48
  Rachel: Implementing the idea parking lot for yourself as well as for your business, and then understand just what actually is the trade-off when you're committing to new projects or new, things in your business or with your clients.
• 26:02
  Rachel: And then the last one is just
• 26:04
  Jess: Release the AI FOMO.
• 26:07
  Jess: I think so much is what I'm seeing is people feel like they're going to get left behind if they don't implement right now.
• 26:15
  Jess: But the truth about AI is that it is moving so fast right now, that it's changing so quickly, that even if you were implementing as you're going along and doing this, you're probably gonna have to go back and
• 26:24
  Jess: rework it anyway.
• 26:26
  Jess: 'Cause, every day AI is making leaps and bounds.
• 26:28
  Jess: So it's not saying that we don't want you to explore it and use it, but if now is, not the right time, anything that you implement or any system you implement with AI, it is a project.
• 26:38
  Jess: So if you don't have time to execute that project, I just wanna encourage you, release the FOMO because you're probably not missing out.
• 26:44
  Jess: Implementing a content system with AI is great, but probably in three months, AI is gonna get to a point to where that content system may be a little obsolete right now.
• 26:54
  Jess: And everybody is trying, including us, we're trying to sell you some AI stuff too, but only if you have the space and time to implement it.
• 27:00
  Jess: We did try to make it really easy to implement by giving you done-for-you skills, but still be just super honest with yourself about what you have going on.
• 27:08
  Jess: If you enjoyed this episode, make sure that you send this to your business bestie, you know the one that is completely overwhelmed and is hanging on by a thread.
• 27:17
  Jess: And DM us on Deeply Rooted Business on Instagram.
• 27:21
  Jess: Let us know, what are you taking off your plate, what do you think is causing your overwhelm.
• 27:26
  Jess: If you had any ahas or insights, we would love to hear from you.
• 27:29
  Jess: And if you need help finding where the pressure is coming from outside of this, we do have a quiz on our site called the Life First Business Audit.
• 27:37
  Jess: It will give you What is your bottleneck currently, and where you do need to dedicate that energy to so you're not feeling like your energy is all over the place.
• 27:46
  Jess: And until next week We're rooting for you.