Her Next Chapters
This podcast is for moms with an empty nest on the horizon who are reclaiming & redefining their identity outside of motherhood, which might include a job search. On this show we’ll have raw conversations about our ever-changing roles as moms, hear from women who restarted their careers, and share tactical tips for a successful job search after a career break.
Her Next Chapters
84. Mental Health Awareness for Moms: Barefoot in the Grass: A Burnout Recovery Story
My guest, entrepreneurial mom Gabs Hayes, reveals how building a seven-figure business the hard way taught her that success shouldn't cost families their well-being. After a transformative journey through career pivots, mental health struggles, and a fundamental shift in priorities, she shares powerful insights on redefining success on your own terms.
• Building a sustainable business without sacrificing mental health or family time
• Recognizing burnout before hitting rock bottom
• Using human design to understand decision-making patterns and strengths
• The healing power of being "present where your feet are"
• Why entrepreneurship is hard but worth it with the right support
• Balancing time and money as finite resources
• The importance of asking for help during mental health challenges
• Creating a life vision before building a business to match it
• Why disassociating personal well-being from professional success never works
Connect with Gabs on LinkedIn
or on her website: gabshayes.com
Listen to her Podcast: Overwhelmed and Over It
Check out her Village for Entrepreneurial Parents
Grab the Free Strengths-First Resume Template - it's perfect for anyone in career transitions, whether with a long career gap, a career pivot, or just ready for a change.
Want to chat about your career goals? Schedule a free call HERE.
Send me an email ---> christina@hernextchapters.com
Connect with me on LinkedIn ---> www.linkedin.com/in/kohlchristina
Hi and welcome to Her Next Chapter's podcast. I'm your host, christina Cole. I'm a mom of three and soon to be an empty nester. I'm also a certified HR pro who restarted my career after being a stay-at-home mom for over a decade. I created this podcast to connect with moms who have an empty nest on the horizon and are wanting to redefine their identity outside of motherhood, which might include a job search. On this show, we'll have raw conversations about our ever-changing roles as moms. We'll hear from women who restarted their careers and share tips for a job search after a career break. So if that's you, you're in the right place. Friend, let's get started. Hey everyone, welcome to this week's episode If you're listening in real time.
Speaker 2:This episode is going live on May 28th and we are finishing up Mental Health Awareness Month in the month of May and with that I have invited a special guest to join me on the show. Today You're going to be hearing my conversation with Gabs Hayes and Gabs and I get really real. This is a raw conversation about motherhood, career pivots, mental health, the reality of entrepreneurship, balancing time versus money and the importance of asking for help. And I do want to insert here a trigger warning there is a section of the show where we will be talking about suicide ideation and some of the challenges that Gabs herself has had and how she's overcome them. So I do want to prepare you for that. So that section begins around minute 15.
Speaker 1:So I've promised you raw conversations here on the show.
Speaker 2:This is one of them. All right, let's listen in. Well, hi everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of Her Next Chapters. I am so excited to have Gabs Hayes here as my guest and you're going to love her. She has such high energy and has so much to share. I'm really excited to get into this conversation with Gabs really quick. Let me give an introduction. Gabs, I keep wanting to call you Gab.
Speaker 3:Hey, you call me, whatever you need to.
Speaker 2:You know, gabs Hayes has built a seven-figure business the hard way, missing bedtimes and sacrificing her sanity before realizing entrepreneurial success shouldn't cost families their well-being. And after losing her son seven years ago, her priorities fundamentally shifted Time over money doing over dreaming, memories over material things. And today this entrepreneurial mom is building the village parents and business desperately need. Well, gabs, welcome to the show. I'm so glad you're here.
Speaker 3:I'm so happy to be here. You know, I just love every conversation that you and I get to have together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we've met. I was thinking about it before we got on the call. This has been like well over a year. I want to say, like December, january timeframe a year ago, that we met and so we've been on this journey together for a while now and I'm excited to share part of that journey that you've been on with the audience. I think it'd be great if we kind of step back in time, because I love talking about pivots, particularly career pivots, on the show. So if we can kind of talk about your career history, where you started in your career and some of the pivots that you've made and the decisions behind those, that'd be great.
Speaker 3:Yeah, pivot might need to be my middle name at this point. So I've got a fun journey and I think it's important to call it a journey. You know, I think growing up we were all kind of conditioned or taught to believe you got to go to school for a thing. You become that thing. You just keep climbing the ladder there and that's what you do.
Speaker 3:So, funny enough, I originally went to college. I wanted to be an elementary school teacher. I was dead set on that, and then life happened. I got, I had my first baby, and then I got married and then I became a nomad, and so college went out of the door for a little bit and I ended up not going back to school until I was several years into my actual career. And so after I had my first baby, it was kind of this wake up call that these like side jobs and kind of just not really building a career was not going to build the life that I wanted for him. And so I at that point started working in healthcare operations and I had done everything from be at the front desk and check you in for your appointment when you're there to see the doctor, to implementing healthcare systems across the largest healthcare organization in the world in the U? S and I kind of all everything in between. So there were lots of pivots even at that point. Some of it was because we moved to different states and so I would just transfer within that company to different positions that they had open. And then some of it was just like I have a kid in daycare and I can't be working Christmas Eve till 8pm, or you know some of the kind of healthcare hours that I needed to shift from.
Speaker 3:And from the healthcare years that I spent, I got a chance to move into software development. So I was recruited to come in and help a fintech company who was built by all financial bankers who were like, oh we actually need someone who speaks healthcare. Can you come help with that? And so I did. And then I spent many years at that point in tech consulting and so I worked from everything with baby baby startups that were just an idea on the back of a napkin, all the way up to consulting for Apple.
Speaker 3:And that's when I decided it was time to start building my own consulting firm and so I went out on my own, built a tech consulting firm, was very successful and I put that in big quotations by every societal definition, but it was also my biggest wake-up call of everything I had been doing for the last 15 plus years was by someone else's definition of success and was by someone else's definition of what I should want in my life. And so last year I decided to shut that consulting firm down and I had a massive wake-up call of like who am I? What do I want to be doing? I now have three kids here present with me, and I need to be more intentional with the time I'm spending and the energy, more than anything, that I'm spending in the work that I'm doing. And so that's when I made this pivot to building the entrepreneurial parent community, and it feels so good to be able to give back to what I wish I had five years ago when I started my entrepreneurial journey.
Speaker 2:Wow, thank you for all that background. So a few things I want to unpack. One just to point out and you mentioned it it's a journey, as in. It's not a linear step-by-step-by-step and climbing one singular ladder. You use your skills and transfer those skills quite often in your career and grew in a lot of different ways. So I love that part of the story. If you could kind of hone in a little bit more on when you started your entrepreneurial journey, when you left the traditional workforce, what was going on in your life Like why did you make that change? If you could tell us a little bit more about that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so just about the year before I officially went out on my own, I started side hustling, meaning I was picking up projects here and there that were still inside of my full-time role or still in that same realm. But I was helping out friends or people in my network who needed support with projects. And at that time my husband was still in industrial construction and he was traveling 9, 10, 11 months out of the year, so I was home with all three kids. This was pre-COVID time, so we were still driving to the office, and at the time I lived in Metro Atlanta, so it was an hour and a half into the office every day, an hour and a half home and pulling into the daycare on two wheels, just begging them not to charge me a late fee yet again, because it was just this constant never enough hours in the day, never enough capacity and I know we're going to get into some of the kind of mental health pieces of this as well and at that time I had just hit a wall where I was like I just can't. I cannot keep driving like this. I cannot keep losing hours of my day like this. I cannot keep operating as a mom literally stretched so thin that I don't feel like I can breathe.
Speaker 3:And there was a night in the middle of the night where I couldn't sleep and I started Googling places that will pay you to move and I found Tulsa Remote, which is a relocation program in Tulsa, oklahoma, who, for those of us who are remote workers and traditionally in the tech space, and I text my husband he was in Oregon, I was in Atlanta, and I text him and I said how do you feel about moving to Tulsa? And he texts me back. He's like, I guess, if you want to, sure? So I put in my application, not expecting anything to kind of become of that, and within a month I was through the entire process and accepted and I got an email that said congrats, it's time to move to Tulsa. And I went oh my God, what have I done? What are we doing? Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:So this wasn't a job, this was.
Speaker 3:No, yeah, just they'll move you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, as long as you have a remote job, they'll move you, and so for tax purposes, like they want the state income tax revenue and that's why they move you, is that?
Speaker 3:part of it. They also have done a lot of work. I mean, I I'm very fortunate. It was a great move in the long run because the entrepreneurial startup community is so, so connected and so powerful there, so I really got to be a part of all of that and it was really part of the reason that I finally said, okay, I think I can do this Like one.
Speaker 3:My side hustle started to surpass my full-time income, so that was like a big kick in the butt of like you can actually do this, so why are you not?
Speaker 3:But then I was just surrounded by all of these accelerator programs and resources and coworking spaces and meetup events and all of these things where I had a community who was also doing similar things that I was doing and I had this kind of safety net. It felt like almost of like I'm not actually figuring this out alone. Caveat is is. I am very headstrong, very stubborn, so I did attempt to figure it out alone, even though I had all of those people around me, because there was something I was trying to prove. I think to myself more than anyone else that I could do it, and so that was a huge piece of it, because once we moved to, my husband was able to stay home, our cost of living drastically declined, and so we were able to make the choice for my husband to come off of the road for a few years, stay home with the kids, and I just went all in on building my business.
Speaker 2:How old were your kids then?
Speaker 3:for the context, yeah, At the time I had a two-year-old, a five-year-old, and what would that make 10-ish? Yeah, two, five and 10, I think Pretty young in daycare, like you said.
Speaker 2:So that's a major life shift and I love that your husband's like, okay, let's do it. And then that it came through like, just like, oh, let's just see what the universe says and I'll put it out there. And you find yourself moving across the country yeah, incubator space, no less, which is perfect. Um, and I can relate to the I don't, I don't know, you should call myself headstrong, but I can relate to your point of like not asking for help, like I can do this. I don't, you know, I gotta prove that I can do it. And why can't I do it? So, so I can relate to all of that. So that was five years ago, right that you made that move. Tell us a little bit more about what's what, the last, whether it's the last few years or maybe the last year, because this last year, 2024, seems to be pretty pivotal, and you mentioned even yourself like there's some kinds of mental health challenges that came up.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so 2024, I think there's some background context to give here. So we landed in Tulsa. It was beautiful, it was literally everything that our family would have dreamed of for family structure and the lifestyle that we built, except for one massive caveat my youngest child has very severe asthma and there's something in the environment there that she was in the ICU seven times and one of those times she was in a coma for a week and they had prepared us twice that she was never going to actually make it and come home from the hospital and, mind you, I had already lost a child two years before that. So it was a very massive wake up call. Like again, life is not promised to any of us.
Speaker 3:And we did absolutely everything we could to make that environment work. We changed everything, we installed all these things in the house. I mean, we did everything that we could and it just was about every six weeks she was back in the ICU. So after that last time it was like, okay, this is it. We literally put what we could in backpacks and in a couple of totes, threw it in the car and we drove from Tulsa to Orlando, where my grandparents had a secondary home that they were fortunate enough, and we're very grateful that they let us stay there for a few months until we kind of figured out what was next. We had no plan, it was just get out of here and we'll figure out what we do after that.
Speaker 3:And this was three kids in tow one of them is school age at least one is school age. So you just, you had to like, jump and go. Yeah, we jumped and go, and so, you know, we got to Orlando and I was just angry there's no better way to describe it. I was angry at losing this life that I had built so hard, or I had worked so hard to build, and that I absolutely was just in love with. I was angry at losing our friends. I was angry at pulling our two older kids out of school.
Speaker 3:And, as much as I'd like to tell anyone who's listening, you can build a business from the energy, you can't, and so my business was falling apart. That's actually when Christina and I met, because I went and hired a coach out of complete, pure desperation, because I was like I'll do whatever, just tell me what it's going to take and I will do it. But the reality was that was the moment that it started to crumble that I had built this business that wasn't in alignment with me or my skills. I mean, I could do it, but it wasn't what I wanted to be doing anymore. But the money was quote, unquote easy. So I kept chasing it, even when I kept saying I was going to walk away, and I held on for about a year, and so a year too long. I already knew but I wasn't willing to make that admission that it was time for me to cut ties and do something different. And so I spent, you know, all of that time in Orlando just grinding and hustling and, like I went to literally working almost 24 hours a day because I was again, I will do whatever it takes, I have kids to feed and I want to get the hell out of Orlando, like that's all I kept thinking. And then we did end up leaving.
Speaker 3:My husband decided to go back to work, we moved to Phoenix for his job and when I got here, there was just this peace, I feel like that. The environment provided that I wasn't living, and I could tell that I wasn't living in that peace because I was still so angry and I still had so many things inside of me that I didn't deal with. And so I just tried to continue pushing for a few more months and eventually my mental health hit a complete and total low where and I'll give a trigger warning here my suicidal ideation started to become really frequent, really regular, almost monthly, and it was the first time I will get chills as I say this that my husband actually understood that I had mental health problems. We'd been together for almost 20 years and he never understood. He just thought, well, sometimes she needs to stay in bed or sometimes she's really angry at other things that don't seem to be rational to be angry at, and I finally had to tell him I'm actually extremely suicidal, I'm actually really struggling, and we tried to work through that together and he was extremely supportive.
Speaker 3:And then, towards the end of 2024, I had an episode where a suicidal ideation happened in front of my children and I had been able to hide that for them for their entire life. And that was kind of my final straw, that I was doing all of this for them and I was willing to let all of it go because I had just was not taking care of myself, to keep hustling and keep grinding and it was scary. It's all freaking, get out. I mean I let every dollar that I brought in the door walk out the door. But I realized wealth was so much more than money in my life and it just changed a lot how I looked at things again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Thank you for sharing that and being so vulnerable. I feel like mental health is talked about more easily these days than it used to be, but I also feel like we have a long way to go. And that it's. You know. There might be someone listening that is relating to your story and you know, understand and maybe feel heard and seen, because people don't usually get quite that vulnerable. You know, and for your kids, so it sounds like up until then you were able to. You managed it in a way that it wasn't visible by your kids, but they probably knew something was off.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, I look back and it's interesting we're having this conversation because I just had a conversation with another networking group I was in where I feel like I healed some of these motherhood wounds that I didn't know I had. But looking back, I don't know that my kids would have ever said, you know, at this point my oldest is about to be 14. So he has, you know, been through all of this with me and I don't think that he would have ever told anyone, or he would probably would have never even assumed to himself that mom has depression and mom has anxiety. But they would talk about mom's real wound up right now. Just stay away from her. Or, you know, mom's got a real short fuse right this minute, like just don't bother her.
Speaker 3:And I was always pretty unapologetic about like I love my bed, that's my happy place when I'm really struggling, and so like if mom is in bed at 6pm, just leave her alone. Like go, go, go get a juice box, go do whatever you're gonna do, just leave mom alone. And so I think in many ways it's just their norm, it's just what they grew up with. They don't totally know any different. It's just what they grew up with. They don't totally know any different. But also, you know, they were going to friends' houses and they had the moms who were running the kids everywhere and wanting to go to the movies with them and wanting to go to the jumpy houses, and I never enjoyed any of that, and so when I wasn't taking care of myself, I couldn't even force myself to do those things. Taking care of myself, I couldn't even force myself to do those things. So I was never the fun mom in their early years Because I just I didn't have that capacity to have fun because I was just so depressed and sad and but I also was such a high achiever that it was like shove that down, because you have things to get done. And so it was always this, I think you know really bad cycle because it was like I would force it, force it, force it. And so it was always this, I think you know really bad cycle, because it was like I would force it, force it, force it.
Speaker 3:And then it gets to a point like it just can't anymore, and then it's a complete collapse and then we try and do this again, and I saw that play out in my career a lot, because I didn't realize then what I realize now, which is I have been burnt out since my son passed away. But I thought and maybe it's just motherhood, right? But I thought burnt out meant, like you, literally like collapse, like fall out on the floor and can't keep going. But, like those of us who are moms, we don't really have that option, right? I mean, there are humans who need you every day. So burnt out actually meant I'm exhausted 24, seven.
Speaker 3:It doesn't matter how good I sleep, it doesn't matter how many vacations I take, it, you know, it doesn't matter how much help I hire. All of it means I still was, was burnt out. And so what I realized now is in my career I never worked at a job, same time, same company, but not same position for longer than like 14 ish months, because that was my burnout cycle where I would be like, okay, I, just my mental health takes a low. I'm completely burnt out. It's got to be the job, all right, go change it to the next one. And come to find out it was never any of the jobs, it was me. And I look back at many of those jobs now and I'm still in touch with many of the people and I tell them all the time I regret leaving here or I feel bad for the way things ended, but it was my reality at the time and I can't change that that's where I was at.
Speaker 2:So what? What's changed since January? Like you, you said you had a kind of this rock bottom moment. I'll call it Um. What's changed since then? You seem very alive and energetic and emanating happiness, and that's a really significant shift in a relatively short period of time. So I'd love to hear your insights about what's worked for you.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I think there's a couple of things and I'll call out some tools that I'm using that I think would help people find the actual customized things that work for them. So one of the biggest things is I found human design. I had actually found it a couple of years prior, but I had only looked at it in the aspect of how I showed up in my business, so I was only using it as a business tool.
Speaker 3:But this time around in January, when I came back to life, I said I'm going to focus my mission. My motto is I'm going to be present where my feet are and I'm not going to stress about what's ahead of me. I'm not going to stress about what was behind me. I'm going to be present where my feet are and that means I need to focus on what's right in front of me. And so that's given me a lot of permission that I probably didn't know I needed to just say no to a lot of things or to let a lot of things go and let a lot of that stress and that anxiety go. And even you know I'd be lying if I didn't tell you I still have those moments, right, they still pop up, but it's that literal, like quick check-in with myself of like, okay, are you being present where your feet are? If the answer is no, you need to go do something about it. And it's like I have to be that kind of rude and blunt with myself but leaning back into, like human design and the modalities that helped me. I know, by my design type, I do best making slower decisions, so that has given me permission to slow down. I know that I do really well being grounded and it's interesting because I hear people all the time that I've known for a while will say to me you're so calm now, your energy is so calming. What happened? And it's like I go outside, I put my feet in the grass. That sounds silly to a lot of people, but I will take my daughter to the park, and I will Our park in the little neighborhood, and I will take my shoes off and I will walk laps while she's playing, because I know it's moving my body. I'm in the sunshine and I'm grounding with the earth again, and a lot of it, too, has just been.
Speaker 3:I cannot control the outcome of what happens. I like to tell people all the time. I would love to tell you that I shut down this consulting firm and I became peaceful and I became focused and I'm making seven figures again. I'm not Point blank, I'm not. One day do I think I will, sure, but I'm willing for that to take slow. I'm willing for it to grow at a sustainable pace instead of a rapid pace, and you know what that means. I may not be able to pay all of my bills right this second. I may not be able to fit into all of the universal laws of how we should be showing up or what we should be spending money on, or that my kids get new clothes every week, or whatever that may be, but I can tell you right now, inside of our home, we laugh every day, we dance every day, we hug each other every day, and that wasn't always happening because I didn't create that safe space for it to happen.
Speaker 2:There's so many things I want to unpack. First of all, when you said grounded, I think of like grounding techniques and breathing and visualizing all that. But you literally are grounded by touching first, like, um, you know, feet in the grass, bare feet, skin touching dirt, and that's an amazing type of grounding too. I just did it the other day with my dog. I saw the wall for her and I'm like it's a nice day, the grass is getting green. I'm gonna lay down in the grass and just feel it and it's just. There's just something about that. That I did as a kid, but not very often as an adult. So yeah, I love that. And then human design. Not that we're going to like go off on this whole tangent and explain everything about human design, but for those that have never heard of it, if you can kind of give a high level overview of what it is and how those profiles can be helpful, yeah, so and I'll give a caveat here, I am no expert, I only know it because I use it for myself.
Speaker 3:And, fun fact, I pulled all of my kids' charts and it's absolutely changed how I parent my children too. So I would, if you have children at home that you're still like actively raising, I would encourage you to pull their charts as well. But basically it is who your body was designed to be like. The inside of you it's kind of the GPS of who you were intended to be for the day and hour that you were born and it has a combination of your type. So there's five types and you will become one of the types.
Speaker 3:And then there's also like what were the planets and all the kind of astrology pieces were when you were born as well, and also, like one of the fun facts, there is like I am the rarest type, so I'm a reflector and that's 1% of the population of the entire world, but I actually have a reflector child also.
Speaker 3:So I very much am getting to kind of heal my inner child right in front of me, because I am intensely learning what that means, because I'm learning how to parent her better, because she is my most you know quote unquote difficult child, so it's been helpful to use that as a tool as well. But it's also been helpful because those design types will tell you, like your decision making authority, so what does your body want you to do when it comes to making decisions? How do you lean into your trust, your intuition and, like certain people, it's inside of the gut. They know that once I have this feeling, I'm supposed to make a decision, or I'm supposed to wait 28 days before I make a decision, or whatever that might be, and so that's been really helpful to. When I talk about helping people focus and stay aligned, well, what are you actually? How are you actually supposed to be? Making decisions is a huge piece of how you can stay focused.
Speaker 2:Thank you for that. I just was at a webinar a week or so ago where they talked about human design, so I'm learning about it and I am a generator. I don't know if there's more to it than that, but I'm a generator, just FYI. I'm still learning and I think that's the most common one, if I remember right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, generators and manifesting generators are 75% of the world, and so it's also helpful when you start to know your spouse or your partner or who your support team kind of how they are, because you start to figure out how they make decisions and what information they need to make a decision or to move forward, and then it just helps with that communication piece all across the board.
Speaker 2:That makes sense. The other thing that really stood out to me that I love that you said I wrote down was you can't control the outcome. So you're showing up, doing things and you're tuning into yourself what you need and using this knowledge that you get they've gained, I guess, from the human design but you're doing the work, staying grounded in the moment and letting go of the outcome, and I think that's a really big lesson for anyone in any life stage. If you're applying for a job, you're, you know, like when, like when you guys moved, like let me just put this in and see, you know, see what happens. Oh my gosh, they accepted us. Okay, let's do it, you know. So you're, you're just kind of releasing the outcome to um to get feedback from the universe. It's just am I on the right path? So that's, that's beautiful.
Speaker 2:And then, if you can share, because I've noticed I've been following you on linkedin okay, we've known each other until we support each other and I've certainly noticed the last it probably has been since January, maybe even sooner your shift in how you show up online, how you communicate, how you are supporting other entrepreneurs, and what I love about your messaging is how real, raw and honest. It is because so much of the messaging, particularly in the coaching space, and if anyone is listening, if you are thinking of going into entrepreneurship, then gabs is someone that you want to tune into. She's got great messages and great support. Um, but I'm just, I just love that about you, so I just want to give you that feedback. Use this time here on the podcast to do it.
Speaker 2:But so many others are like oh, you can make, you know, six figures by this. You know, do this and oh, here's how I did it, and here's how you can do it. And there's not really telling the whole story. This is and, yes, you can be successful and you know, even if you can't control the outcome, you can do the right things. But being in that right mindset and tapping into your natural gifts and talents makes a big difference. And and that community support is so important too, not to little old.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think a lot of that came from because I tried to do it alone and I tried to disassociate who I was and how I was feeling about the world and life and just keep showing up because that's what I thought I was supposed to do. I mean, that's what I did in my career Growing up, in my early days of my career. I mean I remember having bosses who would literally say to me you check your personal life at the door and when you're here you're professional. And you know, I had a boss once who told me you will only ever be able to go by Gabrielle in your career because Gabs or Gabby is so unprofessional. You'll never get a VP title if you act like that. And so you know, there were a lot of years that I've had to like unpack a lot of those things. And so when I went into entrepreneurship you know one of my missions because I was told by someone in my family I was an idiot to leave my career because I was never going to be able to feed my kids, and so of course I was going to find a way to feed my kids. And so even then I kept trying to disassociate who I was versus what my business was. And the reality that I know now and it's only because I've lived it is there is no disassociation from you as a person in your career. There is no disassociation from you as a person in your business or you as a person and how you're raising kids. Who you are is how you show up in this world. And if you are not taking care of you, if you are not providing space for you to feel whole and feel complete, you can't be whole and complete for anyone else in this world. And when I did come back around this time in January, I just decided I was done playing the game of here's what success looks like and if you follow me, you can get it.
Speaker 3:And I've struggled with that a lot because I hear people tell me all the time your content is so vulnerable, your content is so inspirational, but that doesn't actually always mean it moves people to take action and that means it's harder for me to grow a business because I'm not going to do the thing. I've been telling people a lot of times lately I'm not going to do the thing that's going to make you whip out your credit card. I'm going to do the thing that's going to make you sit with it, that's going to make you spend time with it, and then you're going to wake up and you're like you know what she's right. That's what I actually want. I don't want all of those fancy things that they flash. And the one thing I'll say about this, too, is and I have a post getting ready to come out be careful what you follow, whether it is career coaches or whether it is entrepreneur coaches or whether it is people who tell you to go work out, and you'll lose 20 pounds tomorrow. I mean, whatever it may be in your life. We got real wrapped up in our society. That data was the thing that you needed to prove you know. Oh, you know what you're talking about. So, as long as you have some numbers behind it, then I should whip out my credit card and spend it with you.
Speaker 3:And I didn't send a single newsletter for four months because I couldn't, because I literally wanted to kill myself, and that was the last thing that I could whip out and spend energy doing.
Speaker 3:But when I came back in January, I took some time and then I got back up on sending my newsletter.
Speaker 3:So right now, if you look at my metrics, everything's like 4,000% off the chart, because I went from sending zero newsletters to sending 20 a month.
Speaker 3:So of course my open rate is better, of course my click-through rate is better, of course my purchase rate is better, but if I just send you that snapshot right now, which is the actual snapshot for my dashboard, it's not a lie, but you don't have the whole story. You don't understand why that percentage is so high and why it's so much better, and so it has made me look personally, but also the way I show up is like what do I actually want people to know? And I'll give you the data, I'll give you the real truth, but I'm also going to tell you the story of like, how did I get here? Or why is it so hard? Because whether you're searching for a job right now or you're looking to launch your business, there is no easy path either way, and so you need to know the reality of what you're choosing to spend your time and your energy on and make an informed decision, and an intentional decision Is that where I want to spend my most valuable resource, which is my time.
Speaker 2:So in my mind I'm thinking of the listener, that your listener, who is, you know, ready to go back to work. They haven't worked for a while and they're ready to go back, but it's like, well, maybe I want to go into entrepreneurship, or maybe someone is in a career but they're just, you know, they're struggling, they're not satisfied with it and or they're getting laid off. It's coming. So I kind of want to dive into entrepreneurship a little bit, since that's your jam, what you do and who you help. What advice would you give to someone who is thinking about stepping in, like where should they even begin?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so, um, a couple things come to mind. First is this is going to be hard, and if there's anyone out there who tells you it's not run the other direction, they are bullshitting you, but it's absolutely worth it and you can do it. Don't try to do it alone, though. There is nothing to be said for building this thing from scratch alone, doing it late nights, early mornings on the weekends and killing yourself in the process. Specifically for me, I came from the tech world, so like that's what entrepreneurs were doing. Right Is they were just like I sold everything and I'm sleeping on the street corner and I'm building this unicorn, and it's like if you're a parent, that is not the way to do this. You have real people who rely on you and you need to consider that.
Speaker 3:But the other big thing that I wish I would have done so I try to encourage people to do it now is sit down and actually decide what do you want your life to look like, because it's really easy to get caught up in the messaging of like I make 10K months, or I only work four hours a week, or I help 300 clients a month.
Speaker 3:You hear those numbers and it's real easy to think that's your goal, that's what you should be building towards, because you hear someone else saying it, but in reality, if you take a step back and sit back and think about your life, what do you want your life to look like? And then, what role does this entrepreneurial journey play in that life? It helps you make those more focused, intentional decisions, because it's real easy to check yourself. Journey play in that life. It helps you make those more focused, intentional decisions because it's real easy to check yourself. If I'm chasing this 20K month or 10K month, but I just want to make enough money to cover groceries and pay for my kids to be in sports, you probably don't need to do the same thing that that person is telling you you need to do, and so it'll just help you, from a longevity perspective, not get so frustrated with the process, because it's already hard enough without the frustration.
Speaker 2:All great advice and I was thinking back to what you had said earlier. Like you were working pretty much 24 seven and making all the money, but at the sacrifice of your mental health, your family they didn't have a present mom because you weren't where your feet were and there's trade-offs and there might be a season for that where, okay, I gotta go all in and make the money and get, get established, but that's not sustainable. Um, so it's really, you know, I'm actually to my hands and for those who are listening, you can't see, but I'm doing the balancing act Like you know you is. It is it time that you want wealth, wealth of time, wealth of money, wealth of presence, wealth of relationship, and they all kind of have to balance together, regardless of what business you choose to create. Um, I think that's a really insightful information.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, one way or the other, you're going to invest to build a business, and I think as a society, we have decided that time is this resource that you just spend freely and it just keeps coming because it keeps showing up every day. Right, you've never had to work for time, so we don't think about it. Never had to work for time, so we don't think about it. And so, while I don't think that right out of the gate, you should be investing in all these coaches and all this help and all these like things, I mean you know, I tell people all the time I didn't know anything about marketing when I got started. So what did I do? I went and hired a marketing agency. I spent $5,000 to build me a website for a business I never even ended up launching, so it never saw the light of day. It was a stupid waste of money because I wasn't making that much money then, but I knew time was valuable because I'd already lost my son.
Speaker 3:I was already in that mindset, and so there are things that I think don't bang your head against the wall 12 times over and over. Go get help, and sometimes that means you need to pull your credit card out and spend some money to get that help. But on the flip side, also know you can make investments with your time. And so if you want to build at night while the kids are sleeping and that's how you want to build it, that's perfectly okay. But just know you're going to invest one way or the other and it's likely going to be a combination of time and money. But, like you said, where do you want that to fall? On your personal scale? Like, which resource do you have the most of and how do you use it to its most advantage to keep growing?
Speaker 2:If someone is like intrigued and wants to know more about working with you, what does that look like and how can they reach you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I think the biggest thing is I also have a podcast called Overwhelmed and Over it. Christina has been a fabulous guest, so you can come follow me there. I release usually one or two episodes a week, so they're quick, snackable episodes, just so I can reach you where you're at and get that support and reminder how powerful we all are. And then, depending on what you need in your business, I have a couple different options. So, if you connect with me, I'm at GabsHayscom and, like Christina said, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm always there.
Speaker 3:So, you can find me on LinkedIn as well.
Speaker 2:Always, all right, well, is there anything that we haven't talked about that you feel like would be important?
Speaker 3:I think just the biggest thing is like you know, if you're in this space where you're feeling maxed out, you're feeling touched out, you're feeling overwhelmed by where life is at, please ask for help, and I know the ask is the hardest part.
Speaker 3:If anyone wants, I literally will use an AI prompt to write the messaging for me when I feel overwhelmed and I just need help. So I'm happy to share that with anyone if they want to shoot me a DM. But your life and your impact and your ripple effect is far too important to let anything that's going on today to take that away from the world. And so just don't be afraid to reach out and I know that, like I said, that that's the hardest part when you're in it. But I'm telling you this from someone who loves you and from someone who's been there with you that people do love you and want to help. And so you just have to kind of raise the white flag and, even if you don't have all the information, just say I need help and let us come in and help you. And yes, I'm so excited for all of your audience and keep growing their next chapters, because there's always more ahead of us.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Gabs, for joining us and sharing, being so vulnerable and sharing yourself, the gift of you and all of your wonderful insights. I really appreciate you joining us and being here.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for having me, Christina. I appreciate this conversation so much.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, everyone, thank you so much for joining and listening this week, and that is it for this week's episode. We'll catch you next time. Is it for this week's episode.
Speaker 1:We'll catch you next time. Thank you so much for listening today. I hope this episode hit home for you and, if you haven't already, be sure to connect with me on LinkedIn and say hello so I can personally thank you for listening. Until next time. Remember, your story is uniquely your own, and your next chapters are ready to begin.