Rachel Miller is the Founder and Brand Specialist at Co-Branding. Rachel shares with us how she was able to leave her 9-5 corporate management job to start her own business. Her serving heart, and how she employed more people than she needed for her company. She almost lost her company, but was able to turn things around and even help the employees find a job some where else after evaluating how much she was spending and how much was coming in.
Her business was nearly at the point of financially not being able to exist anymore, and she realized that she was extremely unhappy with what she was doing. She had scaled up and hired a team far too aggressively, and I cared far more about the team’s happiness and wellbeing than she did about her own. The business could not support the payroll, and she was delegating all of the tasks that she herself loved doing. Navigating a solution was difficult, but she ultimately realized that she had to be authentic and honest. She needed to make changes to ensure that her business (and herself) could be healthy and continue to prosper and grow. It was frightening and very overwhelming at times, but she was able to entirely restructure and downsize her business while also ensuring that all of her team members had a new opportunity to pursue so they would also be okay.
What she does to stay focused on are always making time for a midday walk with her dog. Taking some time to clear her mind during a busy day by getting outside, moving her body, and spending time with her favorite little guy is incredibly peaceful. She tend to gravitate toward spreadsheets a lot when I have to organize my thoughts. I have one spreadsheet called “brain dump” which is dedicated to just trying to make sense of the things in her brain when everything just feels like too much, the most important thing, though, is to be honest with herself without judgment, and to be flexible. If she is having a day of overwhelm or a rough mental health day, and it’s possible to do so, she’ll try to make her workload a little lighter for that day so she can have the time and space she needs to feel what she is feeling and “recharge her brain battery”, so to speak.
In our society, we accept sick days, but mental health days tend to have a stigma around them. We live in a culture of fast-paced overwhelm, and it’s often frowned upon to take time to check in with yourself and make sure you’re okay. Being able to do so now that she works for herself has absolutely changed her life. Rachel shared much with us, so listen and enjoy as I did.
You can contact Rachel @: www.cobrandingstudio.com
