I will try to come up with a better time/approach for next month’s meeting so everyone can get the maximum value.
Today’s dispatch is going to be a bit heavier in nature than usual, and a bit more personal so if that is something that may bother you or you don’t find valuable, might be best to rejoin us tomorrow… though I urge you to read on.
In yesterdays dispatch I talked a little bit about self care.
Today I want to talk a lot more deeply about it.
Just before I sat down to write this I saw a rather lengthy post in an SEO Facebook group about one of the “celebrities” in our space who has been dealing with extreme clinical depression that was triggered more in recent months by business problems, harassment, and other things.
(Also a well known Shopify YouTuber passed away today due to depression related issues)
The SEO person I am speaking of closed all of his social media etc… because he has been getting death threats,constant harassment, rumors and so on.
I don’t know him very well but I assume he works alone most of the time, as many entrepreneurs do.
I found a lot of what was posted on his behalf to be very relatable.
For example:
I once had someone get mad that they got banned from the Superstar SEO group and made a YouTube video saying all sorts of nasty (and untrue) things about me and my business and tried to rank it for my name. He reported my Google business, and cloned my site and set it up on superstarseo.net so I had to DMCA
I had another guy get SO MAD that he got served one of my ads on Instagram that he found my agency phone number called in the middle of the night multiple times leaving death threats. He called from a blocked number so it was near impossible to make it stop.
I had someone find my Tinder profile, not like it, and start posting it to a bunch of Facebook groups, on my business pages, on my ads and even threaten to harass my mother with it (apparently this is a thing. Called doxing)
These are just the ones I am comfortable sharing.
In addition to that I have had to deal with all sorts of fraud and cyber threats to my businesses and sites.
I have also gone literal months where I didn’t see another person in person (aside from cashiers etc…) so I understand the isolation.
Fortunately I have found ways through all of that… by taking care of myself, including my mental state.
Things like eating properly, taking time to do things you like, finding out what triggers you and avoid it, finding people you can rely on, sleeping properly and so on.
The point I am trying to make here is that being an entrepreneur gives you opportunities that others will never have, both financially and in terms of freedom…
…but it also comes with problems that no one else could ever possibly fathom… isolation, criticism, debt etc… Add a bit of a public persona on top of that and things get even worse… so you MUST take care of yourself.
Whatever you want to do in life, whether it is business or something else… you will never make a Profiit if your mental health, and self care is not in order.
And that is just the minimum of what can go wrong.
Get your diet, sleep, exercise, hobbies and relationships in order. Avoid your triggers.
And if you need help get it, whether that means a friend, family member, or professional.
In the end nothing else matters if you don’t take care of yourself.
We will get back to business tomorrow, but this is super important and I felt it needed to be covered more.
Talk to you tomorrow.
Best,
CMW