16/05/2024
Burnout Again!
But how? This career was supposed to be different...
I'd done everything RIGHT this time.
✔️I chose a career that still allowed me to help others (the way my teaching career had)
✔️that came with travel perks & adventures abroad (something teaching didn't offer)
✔️& was surrounded by a fun, energetic, soul-lead community of co-workers (something that was hit or miss with teaching).
So how was it possible to find myself 3 years into my corporate career now struggling with worse health issues, a higher degree of burnout, & feeling more isolated than I had been as a teacher?
And what could I do about it?
Surely I couldn't start another career in my late 30s? 🙈
What else would my mix mash of uni degrees let me do?
Like seriously, what does a diploma in small business, a bachelor's in earth science, and a graduate degree in education let me do, other than go back to teaching abroad?
How could I still travel the world, make decent money, and put my own well-being first while still helping others?
Was it even possible?
Was it just a pipe dream?
Was anyone actually doing this?
On a weekend away skiing, 2 close friends shared with me how they were done with the grind as well, and had decided to save up, quit their jobs, and take off travelling, figuring out how to become digital nomads along the way... and invited me to join!
This was it!
This is what I needed to bravely leave another career behind and not have to figure it all out alone.
👉 Or so I thought...
A year later we found ourselves on the beaches in Morocco, surfing & learning acro yoga. The only thing missing... a sustainable income
Leaning into our personalities, 2 of us focused on becoming travel vloggers, the other a travel blogger.
For 3 years I poured everything into growing my YouTube channel, in hopes of going viral and hitting the metrics to be allowed a cut of the profits from the ads YouTube put on my videos.
😷Then the world shut down.
Travel came to a halt.
Every short contract I had relied on to keep funding my travels, disappeared.
The longer the pandemic lasted, the more lost I felt about my future😞
I dreaded the idea of returning to the rat race & compromising my health again.
Once you have a taste of freedom, how can you ever go back to living a mundane life?
But what alternative did I have?
I started teaching online, barely surviving the exhaustion of the final 4 months of the school year.
But it allowed me to save up enough to travel again... if only that were allowed.
What else could I do while waiting for the world to reopen?
I'd tried a low-ticket MLM in the past, but the leaders above me were no longer active, so I would have to turn to online courses from others in the MLM space to learn from.
I poured all my free time into courses to learn how to make this work.
A few months in I saw an ad from a woman living in Europe, building her online biz, only needing to put in part-time hours as she was leveraging automation.
Automation, how?
Everything I was doing was so time-consuming!
But she was spending her time painting, doing breathwork, & making how much per sale?
As the months went by, the jealousy crept in 😡
How unfair!
Here I was, again, doing every RIGHT, everything these course were telling me to do, and making a few hundred bucks a month at most, while she was making thousands.
I was exhausted from the hours I was putting in & felt so alone without a community or mentorship, so when she invited me to a free 3-day virtual event to learn how she lives this life, I said sure.
I figured I could learn her secrets & apply them to what I was doing!!! Brilliant plan!
👉But I was only half right...
What I discovered was that so many in her community had also come from the low-ticket MLM space.
Some had made it to the top of their companies and still barely made what I had been making in my corporate career.
Wait, what?
Even if I made it to the top, I would only be tied with where I left off 4 years ago? 😭
I went over and over the numbers.
If I stayed with what I was doing, to make $10K/month
I'd need to make 100-200 sales a month (and do it alone),
but with their business model it would only be 2-3 sales a month (supported by an incredible online community), so what was the catch?
I would have to be willing to invest in myself, invest into changing my mindset, & invest 1 year's worth of my fun travel money into starting something that could go on to fund a lifetime of travel.
That seemed reasonable, as it wasn't like investing hundreds of thousands into starting a franchise restaurant or a coffee shop that I would be indebted to & physically tied to🧐
What was 10K of travel money, when I still couldn't travel in our locked-down world anyways?
Might as well invest in myself instead 🤑
Of course, I was full of fear, doubt, & uncertainty, but the motivation to never have to return to a 9-5 was stronger, and the numbers made sense.
While the money I've made since has topped any paycheque of my past, the best part has been,
✔️still getting to help others,
✔️the community of travel friends that I've been on countless trips with,
✔️& how the personal work that's encouraged allowed me to become the happiest version of myself before the money ever started rolling in.
So whether it's burnout, health issues, jealousy, or hating your 9-5 that is motivating you, it doesn't matter... what matters is if you are finally READY to invest in your future, take back control of your life path, and eventually go on some epic travels.
👉If you are, then comment READY & I'll send over a DM so we can chat more about if what I do could possibly help you too ✨
