You are allowed to pivot and change in your business and not care what others think about it.

I’ll be the first one to tell you that I am not a fan of change. It could be my mental illnesses, the ADHD or even just my personality type, but change is something I just don’t do well with. It is for that reason that I sometimes find it hard to make changes in my business, especially if, to me, they feel like they are steps backwards. 

Over the past couple of weeks I have had to take some steps back and really re-evaluate my business and where it is at currently. I finally admitted that I was burnt out and changes need to be made. For me, burn out looks like being incredibly tired no matter how much sleep I get, not being able to get over the common cold for WEEKS, headaches most days, my mental health taking a nosedive and being constantly on a go-slow- things that usually take me an hour at most have sometimes been taking up the full day (even if I have my ADHD medication!) 

It is really hard to admit that some things just aren’t working like you want them too, and that perhaps it is time to take a different approach, especially when it is things that you have talked about to people, and you’ve promoted on social media. You feel like a failure, and you feel like everyone is judging you because you can’t make it work. 

I overcommit to things, and I know that, and I have been taking steps and actions to both lessen my load and stop saying yes to everything that gets put in front of me. I am really trying to be hyper aware of my time and place a high value on it. 

I want to share with you some of the pivots and changes I am making, to show you that it is okay to do it as well. You should always focus on yourself first, and not give a second thought to how you think it looks to the outside world, or what you think they might say about it. 

This was maybe eight months ago now, but I started a UGC account called Catch Content and I ended it within a month I think. If you know a little bit about ADHD you will know that sometimes we get obsessed with something and it needs to be done right there and then, before we get over it and our interest fizzles out. That was me creating UGC. I had huge plans, I was going to be a UGC creator, I was going to use is as *another* side hustle, I was invested (and so was about $700 worth of my money.) 

As I said, it lasted a month. Turns out I was not as interested in that type of content creation than I thought I was and I now have $700 worth of backdrops and little decor props in my garden shed that I try not to think about. Catch Content still exists on social media but it is now essentially just something I cringe about when the account pops up on my recommended following list. 

I launched Catch Content on EJG Creative, I hyped it up, I posted about it, promoted it, all the things you're supposed to do. Then, I just went silent. I didn’t announce that it was over because hello, it was only up for a month. That's embarrassing. I just stopped posting content and should really delete the socials so there is no evidence left that it existed. But it’s there, and it was something that I did and then moved on from. 

My recent business decisions have all been focused on taking some weight off, giving myself room to breathe and really evaluating what is working and what isn’t. 

I LOVE my community projects and being able to give back to the community through them is something I really enjoy. BUT I was trying my hardest to ignore that one of them in particular just was not going the way I wanted it to, and it did not have the backing and support behind it- which speaks volumes as to why it is such a necessary project. But, I think it is necessary to have more than just one person working on it. 

I had to choose to “pause” WELL in the Wheatbelt for an unknown amount of time, which really was not an easy decision to make. I am a mental health advocate through and through and I know how much we need this project, but while people were saying “yes we support you”, they were not showing that through their actions. I ignored that for as long as possible before I realised that it just isn’t working this way. 

I’ll continue to talk about mental health and raise awareness about mental illness and be extra open about my own experiences, but I have had to choose to take a step back from WELL. I didn’t want to do that, the project had so much news coverage and I put so much into it, I felt like it was such a let down and a failure on my part. 

It wasn’t as hard for me to press pause on CommuniConnect Rural because that was essentially brand new, I hadn’t talked about it too much, and it wasn’t ready to really grow. When I sat down and looked at what was going on I knew that it aligned well with EJG Creative, but I just couldn’t put my heart and soul into it at the moment. 

I think the time away from this membership platform will really let me come back and create something bigger and better to serve more rural businesses because I will have had the time to do so. I didn’t leave myself much time between idea and launch (again, ADHD things) and as such I wasn’t happy with where it was at the time. It was either pause it for now, or work long hours to get it to where I want it to be, and I just don’t have those hours. 

Just yesterday I took another leap and decided to shut down Media Co. and instead absorb it into EJG Creative and my personal brand. This one was not expected at all to be honest and the idea actually came from my business coach, because sometimes you do need an outside perspective to really help it all make sense and give you some clarity on your direction. 

What I want you to get from this article is that you absolutely CAN make hard decisions like these ones and not give a shit about what other people think about it. As long as the decision is right for you, then do it. Who cares if Heather from down the road thinks you didn’t give it your all, or if Ken on Instagram “knew it was coming”. At the end of the day, it’s your business, your decision.