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This is Chappell Roan today:

And this is what she looked like 12 years ago, performing under her real name at her middle school talent show:

Yes, she had a voice that could draw instant tears.

But she didn’t jump out of the gate as a full brand. It took years to develop Chappell Roan.

Do you think you’re any different?

Of course not…. right?

But then why do you place such high expectations on yourself?

Why do you think every move you make to build your empire will be perfection upon execution?

I promise you, you will make a ton of mistakes when you’re an entrepreneur. Let’s accept this and keep going anyway.

You can’t grow until you go.

So get going.

Write that shitty first draft of your website home page.

Take a crack at writing up the procedures for your future virtual assistant to follow.

Post what you know on your socials.

Drop into your dream client’s DMs.

Develop that proposal for the conference.

You’ll have to shake off perfectionism to get unstuck and make your first move. That’s the important part – the movement. Go.

It’s intimidating to step forward when there’s so much unknown, vague space ahead. Sure would be cool if we could see the entrepreneurial path in the bright daylight. That way we’d know exactly what to write and say and do to guarantee many happy clients, gushing followers, and a secure bank account.

That’s just not how life works. 

If you want to get anywhere, you have to hold hands with uncertainty and just go. 

Write. Develop. Create. Just get it all out there.

Yes it’s a lot to build.

You’re definitely gonna have to revisit and revise and edit your work. Take heart that there’s a revision step (or more) – you don’t have to execute with perfection on your first attempt.  

In fact, when you finish your shitty first draft, head directly to your calendar and book a time to come back and edit or revise or take your second step. 

You will feel so much better when you make progress. 

Write me with the answer to this question: What progress will you make today?

The Onion – everyone’s favorite satire newspaper – is returning to running a print edition.

Not a joke.

A response to digital fatigue.

We are, to put it mildly, over Zoomed.

The pandemic exacerbated the increasing pressure to Always Be Online. And now, we tired.

Blurry-eyed, we take a break from one screen to look at another.

I’ve heard digital fatigue as a reason for lower-than-expected survey response rates.

I think it’s why my workshop requests are now 75% in-person / 25% Zoom.

Are you seeing digital fatigue in your business as well? Tell me about it.

Looking closer, digital fatigue may be generational.

The Onion’s readership is probably aged 35 and up. We remember a time before ABO (Always Be Online) was a way of life.

We are the ones buying vintage typewriters and actual film cameras.

The young 20-somethings in my workshops are so used to ABO they literally have to borrow a pencil when I ask them to quickly sketch something on paper. (Though I’ve heard the dumb phones are trending with this crowd.)

Digital fatigue may also be geographic.

Those of us working in rural areas or developing parts of the world could be pre-fatigue.

But I think, as AI is increasingly used for evil to make fake images and videos, we’re all going to hit the digital fatigue wall.

We’re quickly learning that we can only trust what we see in real life.

So what will this mean for your business?

You might need to go back to paper surveys. Or door-to-door. Or all of the above.

You might go back to hand-written thank you notes instead of those digital e-cards that get deleted immediately.

Perhaps you need to replace a Zoom or two with a flight and a face-to-face.

Ash Ambridge tells of an entrepreneur who started a print paper to the tune of $800K in income. Maybe you pivot to media mogul.

I don’t have the answer but I can tell you that I’m thinking about this just as much as I’m thinking about how I’ll incorporate AI and new tech into my business. I suspect that we’ll have to be both very online and very offline to be successful.

My bestie Susie runs a cleaning business.

During the day, she’s fielding calls from existing clients – can she do a deep clean on the rugs? And potential clients – how soon can she start?

During the evening, her staff are busting their 🍑 to sweep and mop. Something accidentally gets broken. Someone’s car won’t start. Someone can’t find the key to the new client’s office.

Getting dinner and drinks with Susie often comes with the symphonic background melody of dings and chirps and buzzes from her phone.

It’s annoying, but I get it. And I’m so grateful I don’t have a job that requires me to be on call 24/7.

Most of us, in reality, are in jobs that don’t involve any actual emergencies.

So, why is your work on your phone?

My therapist gently suggested the most radical idea I’d ever heard: Take your work email off your phone.

First my head spun to outer space at the preposterousness of this notion but when it finally reattached to my head I thought about it… for months.

How many times in my decade plus of running this business have I had a true emergency?

Once my flight to Portland was cancelled and there was no way I was gonna make the next morning’s keynote. I called my client (in tears) to report this news. Email would have been the wrong mode for such an urgent situation.

Several times I’ve sent out my email newsletter, linking to my blog, only to learn that my blog never published as scheduled and the link was going nowhere. When that happens, I get dozens of email replies. That used to feel like an emergency. But it happened so often that now I know I need to double check my blog at a predictable time on predictable days so that no one needs to email me about an issue.

…. that’s all I could think of.

Every other urgent issue, and there really are so few, gets handled by text or call – as it should.

Few of us work in jobs that require us to be hyper-responsive (and if your boss is telling you to be available at all times of the day and night, be sure you’re getting paid accordingly).

So…. why is my work email on my phone?

Why am I checking work email first thing in the morning? So I can see the person complaining about a typo in the first edition of my book? Not how I wanna wake up.

Why am I glancing at my work email in line at the grocery store? What, am I gonna drop my oranges and write back to the person hoping to book me for a workshop? Of course not. All that does is introduce a feeling of urgency, to hurry up through this grocery line and race home, as if that person’s offer is somehow going to expire in the next 10 minutes. The life I’m creating doesn’t involve that false sense of urgency.

Most often, I’m not even consciously opening the work email app. I’m very very unconsciously cycling through all the usual suspects (hi, Instagram) and scrolling until something disgusts me and I set my phone down for a little while until I need another dopamine hit.

I’m probably not the only one who has a complicated relationship with my phone.

You’re terrible for me but I neeeeeeed you. My focus over this next year is untangling that relationship. The easiest first step is to take my work email off my phone. Wanna come with me?

The best meal I had in Vienna was at an Italian restaurant (you can only consume so much schnitzel).

The place has a 4.6 average rating on Google. Sure bet, right?

There is no website or menu.

It took us 10 minutes to be seated, even though the restaurant only had 10% of the tables already taken.

It took us 25 minutes to get wine. Dinner, over an hour.

We watched other would-be-patrons sit, wait to place an order, and wait and wait and wait and eventually just leave.

That explains reviews like this:

What Robin B failed to realize is that the waiter was not arrogant, he was just also the host, the chef, the dishwasher, the prep cook, the busboy, the cleaning staff, and the owner.

He ran a one-man show.

So you waited 25 minutes for your wine because he was in the kitchen literally making the fresh pasta for the only other table with the wisdom to wait around.

It’s not that he was arrogant, it’s that he invented the menu every day and only could handle making 4 entrees so no you couldn’t sub the chicken for meatballs.

That pasta! I will be thinking about it for the rest of my life.

The lemon creme brulee🤌🏼

This is what craft looks like.

When it came time to pay the bill, he literally wrote it up by hand, doing old school math to get my total. I tried to tip 20% but he refused, only taking an extra 5 Euros and told me to “keep the rest for a cappuccino after church tomorrow morning.”

Then he sent us off with his homemade limoncello.

He worked as efficiently as possible, while still providing the care necessary to ensure an extremely high-quality meal. Which is why most of his reviews are like this:

When you focus on the customers who respect your craft, you don’t have to worry that 90% of your tables are empty.

You wouldn’t be able to serve them all with the same level of quality.

You have a natural carrying capacity. There’s only so much work you can take on.

Unless you wanna rush your process, do a half ass job, cry, sweat, and burn out.

The trick – what this owner/chef/busboy mastered – was resisting the urge to make everyone happy.

Working within your natural carrying capacity means you’re gonna lose some potential business. You’re gonna get a 1-star review.

But you can’t care.

You have to stay focused on taking care of yourself. And the patient pasta lovers.

You can increase your carrying capacity.

You can hire staff to seat the customers and wait the tables. You’ll also have to hire more chefs to handle the increase in orders.

You’d spend less time with your customers and more time training staff to your quality expectations and dealing with who wore pajamas to work and who is sleeping with who.

I totally get why the single employee of Restaurant Stella Marina worked alone. Management is not everyone’s skill set.

It might be yours. You might have the talent to be a great boss.

Your team will still have a natural carrying capacity and it’ll be your job to identify it so you know when to turn down work instead of pushing everyone harder.

Workaholics Anonymous? Are you joking? Do we really need to have a cousin of AA for everything these days?

That thinking was a clue that I have a problem.

If we take workaholism as seriously as we take alcoholism, let’s not brush this off with a chuckle.

Workaholics Anonymous has a checklist to help you determine if, indeed, you need to make some changes to improve your health and relationships. Read through these twenty questions and count up how many times you answer yes:

1. Are you more drawn to your work or activity than close relationships, rest, etc.?
2. Are there times when you are motivated and push through tasks when you don’t even want to and other times when you procrastinate and avoid them when you would prefer to get things done?
3. Do you take work with you to bed? On weekends? On vacation?
4. Are you more comfortable talking about your work than other topics?
5. Do you pull all-nighters?
6. Do you resent your work or the people at your workplace for imposing so many pressures on you?
7. Do you avoid intimacy with others and/or yourself?
8. Do you resist rest when tired and use stimulants to stay awake longer?
9. Do you take on extra work or volunteer commitments because you are concerned that things won’t otherwise get done?
10. Do you regularly underestimate how long something will take and then rush to complete it?
11. Do you immerse yourself in activities to change how you feel or avoid grief, anxiety, and shame?
12. Do you get impatient with people who have other priorities besides work?
13. Are you afraid that if you don’t work hard all the time, you will lose your job or be a failure?
14. Do you fear success, failure, criticism, burnout, financial insecurity, or not having enough time?
15. Do you try to multitask to get more done?
16. Do you get irritated when people ask you to stop doing what you’re doing in order to do something else?
17. Have your long hours caused injury to your health or relationships?
18. Do you think about work or other tasks while driving, conversing, falling asleep, or sleeping?
19. Do you feel agitated when you are idle and/or hopeless that you’ll ever find balance?
20. Do you feel like a slave to your email, texts, or other technology?

How many did you say yes to? I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.

No wavering, I have a firm yes for questions 9, 13, 14, 15 (absolutely), 16, and 18.

Y’all just three yeses means you have a workaholic problem.

I think entrepreneurship might require a bit of workaholism, at least at setup. Maybe for seasons.

Question 17 about long hours causing injury to your health – yeah, running through airports hauling a suitcase behind me for a decade led to a frozen shoulder. And maybe a divorce?

But I’m not in that season anymore. And maybe I never needed to be. I probably could have traveled half as much and made a little less money but have still fulfilled every definition of success while keeping my shoulder mobile.

Old me definitely took work on vacation (Question 3).

Question 6 about resentment? I’ve d-e-f-i-n-i-t-e-l-y been there. In fact, it’s one of the ways I knew I was burned out.

I don’t love that I can still say yes to 6 of these questions. I guess I’m a recovering workaholic.

I find myself bargaining.

Wait, isn’t it good that I solve work problems while I’m driving/showering/taking a walk?

Or is that the equivalent of an alcoholic saying Wait isn’t it good that I drink at home rather than spending extra money out at the bars?

I’m also justifying.

Watch this:

When you’re a single mom trying to maintain physical health and social life, you gotta squeeze eight hours of work into the 6 that your kid is at school so of course I’m gonna be irritated if someone interrupts me when I’m in the middle of something (Question 16). I had years when I couldn’t even pee in private.

That said, I am very firm NO on Question 19: Do you feel agitated when you are idle and/or hopeless that you’ll ever find balance?

I feel more in balance every month and I teach about ways to do that with the students in my course, Boost and Bloom.

I wish I could force the changes to happen even faster but when we’re talking about the delicate balance of life, income, health, and relationships, sustainable change often means a slower implementation. Unlike alcoholism, cold turkey is unlikely to be a permanent fix. I still have bills to pay.

Where are you at with this checklist? Do you wanna figure this out with me?

Don’t email me “Hi Stephanie, we’re soliciting details from multiple vendors… Would you set up a vendor profile and submit a proposal?”

I’m likely to put your reply at the bottom of my to do list.

If I reply at all.

Because that email tells me this potential client doesn’t actually care about me. They see me as basically the same as people they think are my competitors. They’ve taken no time to get to know me or how I work.

They probably just googled “data visualization workshop vendor” and emailed everybody on page 1.

You might choose a generous interpretation and suggest to me that perhaps this IS their way of getting to know me. That’s kind.

It’s just not true.

Because those emails are more like “Hey Stephanie, we’re interested in a data visualization workshop. I saw the information on your website and it seems like you’d be a good fit. Could we jump on a call and discuss our needs with you?”

That’s more personal. They did a tiny bit of homework. They want to mutually exchange more details.

But when someone calls me a “vendor” it’s a strong signal that I’m viewed as a commodity – essentially interchangeable with everyone else in my field.

Commodities can only compete on price.

Calling yourself a “freelancer” can project a similar vibe.

When I’m feeling super gracious, I’ll reply with a decline and an explanation.

“Thank you so much for reaching out. It sounds like you’re planning to collect multiple proposals and conduct a formal review process. I appreciate the invitation but I must decline. My experience is that these types of methods rarely surface the best candidate. Usually they’re only focused on price. In this field, you get what you pay for. We’ll never be the least expensive vendor. Far from it. Best of luck!”

This has often led to thoughtful exchanges. I get it – some people work under policies that require soliciting proposals from multiple vendors. But look baby I can send you wording for a sole source justification.

It’s just that I’m not spending my one wild and precious life writing up lengthy proposals where I essentially hand over my intellectual property only to be undercut on the budget.

I’m not a vendor.

When I’ve accepted this type of work in the past, I was treated with less respect. Expected to make late night last minute changes. Expected to let the client have creative control. Spoken to rudely. (Facebook was the absolute worst.)

Does that match up with your experience too?

I only want to work with clients where it’s a mutual and enthusiastic HELL YES.

“A mutual and enthusiastic hell yes” is a phrase also used to discuss consent around physical intimacy. Have you heard it used in that area before?

Makes sense, right? You want to date someone who is really into YOU, not swapping you interchangeably for the next hottie. You want someone who likes you because of your depth and personality not just because your peach is poppin.

So if you wouldn’t accept that kind of behavior from a potential mate, why would you allow it with potential clients?