From Burn-out to Business Owner

Inspiration comes in many forms and often when you least expect it. This is a story of what happened when I took a moment to listen to that inspiration, and act on it – changing my life’s trajectory for the better.

Around 4 years ago, I was living my best life on secondment in Auckland, New Zealand, had the job of my dreams (on paper), and was kicking all kinds of career goals. That’s what it looked like on the surface. In reality, I was drowning in role overload, working 80 hours per week, trying my hardest to keep all of my metaphorical balls in the air. I had become a juggling master – my little arms moving at the speed of light to do my best to deliver everything on time. I became sick, developed chronic tonsillitis, living with permanently enlarged tonsils for more than 8 months culminating in surgery, and survived for the better part of 2014 on no more than 4 hours or poor-quality sleep per night. My body was breaking down from the stress, I hadn’t eaten a proper meal in months, my personal life was suffering – I was losing my sanity! Something had to change.

After 12 years in the company, in my role as the newly appointed Group Marketing Manager for our NZ operations, I had developed a little team of four in a department that was brand new to the business. We set on the task of educating the rest of the company about the benefits of Marketing, and slowly worked to insert ourselves as the spine of the company, advocating for our cause and building relationships with all other departments that would become the limbs to our spine, pulling everyone together as one whole body of the company.

With huge goals, it quickly became evident that we needed to outsource some work to agencies if we were to have any hope of delivering all that was expected of us. I had the budget to do this, which was great, but was starting from scratch in an agency sourcing and relationship building point of view. As a time-poor department head being pulled from pillar to post, I quickly became frustrated with the time it was taking for me to source agencies, meet them, build relationships with them, and get them to the point where I could rely on them to understand our business and act on our needs. The market was filled with specialist agencies, one focusing on graphic design, one focusing on website design, one focusing on PR, and so on and so forth. And while it’s great to work with specialists, all I wanted was one contact that I could call on, that understood our business, our goals, our drives, our gaps, and co-ordinate the resources required to execute the outsourced support we needed. I wanted an agency that truly acted like an extension of our internal team. I searched and searched and couldn’t find one.

THE IDEA

Amidst all the chaos, an idea started forming in my mind… Was there really a gap in the market for this type of service? Surely I wasn’t the only time-poor marketing manager on the planet… If I had a need for this, surely others would have a need also…?

I had gotten to the point where my body and mind could not take it any longer. Resources were not forth-coming to reduce the chronic role overload in the company, and despite my best efforts, I lost all hope that anything would change for the better. It took me a long time to mentally let go of my 12+ years of loyalty to the company, however if I wanted to change my life, remove myself from this burn-out and reduce the stress in my life, I needed to take action and physically change it myself. I didn't want to look back in twenty years time and think "I should have done that". I had to give it a go.

THE PLUNGE

After a few months of careful planning, I got myself to the point where I was ready to resign and start my own business – Impact Marketing Services (AU/NZ), my full service Marketing Communications Agency was born! Some might say that embarking on a start-up is not the best way to recover from burn-out, but for me, it was an instant release. A release of the heavy burden of all-consuming stress that had owned my life. I felt lighter. I felt in control for the first time in years. I could breathe again.

THE RESULT

Now, over three years on, I have had the pleasure of working with many businesses both in Australia and New Zealand, to be a reliable, trusted and proactive outsourced marketing resource, helping them execute their vision. I have relished in learning about different industries and applying my marketing experience to these industries. I have gained satisfaction in knowing that I have eased the burden of another over-worked, time-poor owner or marketing manager, and gone out of my way to make their day-to-day lives just that little bit easier. Was it all smooth sailing? No way! For the first 18 months I flip-flopped on the whole “should I give up and go and get a real job?” quandary like a fish out of water. But that’s a whole other story for another time. Starting a start-up and developing it into a sustainable business is hard, it’s challenging, requiring a whole different level of motivation and conviction than my previous experience of working in corporate. But I stayed the course, I’ve done it and I continue to build the business from strength to strength. In this journey from burn-out to business owner, I’m pleased to say, my stress levels are close to non-existent and I enjoy the simple pleasure of a home cooked meal at a decent eating hour, every night of the week!

If you are needing a change, and have an idea that is becoming louder and louder in your head, my advice is to step back and take a moment to consider doing something about it. It may be the best decision you ever make.

Erin Smart is the Managing Director of Impact Marketing, a full service marketing communications agency offering affordable, high quality, targeted marketing strategy development and implementation support for small, medium and large organisations. If you're looking for a marketing partner who will deep dive into understanding your business, dedicated to helping achieve your business goals, feel free to get in touch with me via [email protected]