Especially for entrepreneurs like myself, who are not yet a huge name everyone (or at least everyone in target industries) recognises at once, but also for everyone who already has recognition and is trying their best to remain relevant, tools for showing what we can do and who we are (which is gaining more importance than ever these days) are a precious window into the world. And because technology is evolving fast, and we work more and more online, the options are never-ending and exciting.
Freebies, pay-for platform and services, you name it – there is always something new that can be used and there are very few boundaries that limit us in showcasing our work.
This is great, especially for those who are just starting out, and who may not have a huge budget to put behind advertising themselves; but can the choices turn out to be too much?
Often, when we try to do something, we also try to go at it all guns blazing. We stretch ourselves over several platforms, work non-stop and try to do, to our best capabilities, what others seem to be doing to achieve success.
But the reality is that a day only has so many hours, you are not made of your work and your very human body and mind need a break every once so often, and we’re talking a break here… not even a holiday.
For entrepreneurs, which was my truth for quite a while, a break may seem unthinkable. We are, in a way, already breaking the mould by doing something different, and different may not be perceived positively… now consider seeming “lazy” or “unsuccessful” at the same time!
I’ve heard both thrown at me in my time, and I have heard them thrown at others. But the ugly truth of it all is that your human body and mind will remain human, you are entitled to rest and success takes time. No one else can create it, but no one else should also feel that they can dictate not only how you should take care of your health, but also how you should tackle your work. Success is also not a linear path; but because people rarely see small successes and only want and expect big, visible, clear, obvious successes, the vast story behind every success is rarely observed, and even more rarely cross-applied to everyone else. Ultimately, even failure is a part of building a business – and what is failure, also, will vary from person to person, as will how we perceive it in our life in general and what meaning and consequences we ascribe it. Trying out something new on your own takes courage and dedication – and even if you ultimately realise that it is not what you can do without burning yourself out, or even wish to do (maybe you miss working more closely with more people, or find it difficult to constantly create ideas and content but love to do it for others in a regular office context), the whole journey will have left you with precious, valuable experiences others do not have, and that, too is important… and it’s what transforms a cessation of something, like deciding to stop being an entrepreneur in favour of going back to the office and 9-5, which can be considered to be a failure, into a fantastic learning experience.
Having lots of platforms and tools to work with should help you work – but it can also create burnout when too much of everything becomes untenable. For instance – do you ever create a schedule, or do you simply try to juggle as much as possible and add more?
My own experience has been both. I love spontaneity, but I also like organising. And because my work often ends up being very spontaneous, at least at this point of my career, and because I have lived in parts of the world where internet connection was (and honestly often still is) less than stellar, that, too, has ended up influencing how much I could organise and how much had to be done off the cuff. Neither has made my work more or less good – quality is knowledge, not how one tends to organise themselves -, but one does have the tendency to mess with the chaos that is my life more than the other.
And when hours tend to be long already, the last thing you need is more chaos on top of chaos.
Another path to burnout can be the simple act of trying to do what you really don’t feel like doing. This, again, isn’t about failing to do basic tasks or paperwork. It’s about trying to utilise tools and platforms or approaches to showcasing your work in ways that are just not you, and you may not feel comfortable doing.
For instance – when everyone is raving about doing live this or live that, you may want to initially jump on the bandwagon. It may even feel that, especially with any free service, that you would be deliberately dismissing a brilliant opportunity.
…but you hate going live.
You hate going live, because it makes you feel that you have to be extra self-conscious about how you look, what you say, how your background looks, how convincing you end up sounding, how good your tech and, oh the horror, what if something goes wrong with the internet? What if some small personal disaster occurs (as the girl whose bra clip once exploded open during a high school test, I seriously know what I’m talking about here), especially now, when we are all oh so keen on noticing, condemning and hyper-analysing them? What if… and the list could go on, with every personal fear and discomfort discussed for ages.
You can probably guess that, while I don’t hate going live, I’m not keen on it. There is just too much that can go amiss, especially when working from home, which has been everyone’s truth this unfortunate 2020. On top of that, working from home offers extra issues (also something we have by now all experienced). Which part of my home do I show, and to whom? Going live means that, unlike with more curated images or videos, unexpected events may have you reveal more of your home than you’d like, or a situation you don’t want to necessarily show to everyone. (For me, that’s odd cat habits – like the fact that two of our cats carry objects, and that these objects can be everything. Please insert your most hilarious, mortifying picture of the event and object here.) Don’t forget that, when you are going live, you are showing your home to anyone and everyone, numbers and people over whom you have no control (think internet stalking, for instance). And while this may seem like the necessary evil, you may feel more comfortable to only show what you feel like when you feel like it. People with chronic health conditions or disabilities, also, may feel even more hesitant to go live, especially frequently, but the catch there is that using any tool or platform requires consistency and frequency, which may mean that on the days when we feel least like it, or, like myself, we look like the Bride of Frankenstein, and when we feel self-conscious and vulnerable, and it’s difficult to fake any semblance of normal, we may still need to or feel we need to do so or risk losing interest of the followers or potential clients built up via the live streaming tool or platform.
Personally, I much prefer to keep “live” functions for client video chats, and keep everything else to more controlled approaches.
And the important lesson in this is that that is ok.
In entrepreneurship, we often only focus on what to do. We focus too little on what not to do, especially when it comes to showcasing work. If you don’t like going live, then your going live will never be as good as, say, your Instagram posts will be. Maybe you have found yourself in webinars. Maybe you like a combination. But the key point is that trying to force yourself to do something that you don’t feel with all your heart is pointless, and that it may not serve you well at all, even if you try the whole mind-over-matter approach and do it.
It’s better to add than to take away when you are showcasing your work, and while sometimes, we have to take away (I have, for instance, pulled webinars simply because the tech used did not give me the result that would have been optimal for me and those attending), we should minimise how often that is if at all possible.
That’s not to say that you shouldn’t try to conquer a tool or platform because the underlying reason for you not liking it happens to be something deeper. If you want to start live streaming on your path to becoming a public speaker, but you have a horrible fear of crowds, then that is a valuable tool and a commendable effort, and you should, by all means, keep at it.
But if you are just not feeling it when everyone is raving about it, consider that you do not have to do what everyone else does to be successful. Innovation happens outside the usual.
The long and the short of it, then?
Use tools and platforms to your heart’s delight, but be mindful of where you are happiest. Success doesn’t happen overnight. It takes work and effort and dedication. And the last thing you need is trying to achieve all that and persevere when you are hating the process.
