Preventing Burnout in High Performing Agency Teams with Rita Ainsworth

Danyel McLellan [00:00:01]:
Welcome to the Agency Management Institute community where you’ll learn how to grow and scale your business, attract and retain the best talent, make more money, and keep more of the money you make. The Build a Better Agency podcast presented by White Label iq, is packed with insights on how small to mid sized agencies are getting things done. Bringing his 25 years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant, please welcome your host, Drew McLellan

Drew McLellan [00:00:37]:
Hey there everybody. Drew McLellan here with another episode of Build a Better Agency. Really excited about this episode. A little different twist for us today that I think you’re going to find interesting and hopefully get you to do a couple things a little differently. But before I tell you about our guest, I want to remind you that we are super grateful to our friends at White Label iq, the presenting sponsor of this podcast. They’ve been around for a long time. They are born out of an agency and so they really understand how their clients, which are agencies, work. And one of the things I really think is different about them is that they look at their agency partners. They look at them as long term relationships. They don’t see them as quick hits or transactions. So one of the ways that they really dedicate themselves to being of service to their agency partners is every agency gets a dedicated account manager and a dedicated project manager on all of your projects. And it’s not because they think you need to be babysat. It’s just because they know that real collaboration takes an investment on both sides and the work that you’re doing with them. Because remember, they do white label design, dev, paid media and AI automations and implementations. They know it’s super technical.

And so because everyone who works on the white label side has that technical background, they know how to show up as a partner and they take some of that project management, an account management load off of you and your team because they can talk the tech talk and they can translate for you so that you can speak regular old English to your clients and get the job done on time and on budget. They want you to know that that’s how they work because they kind of mold themselves to how you want to show up to your clients and then they support you in whatever way you want with those two roles, account service and, and a dedicated project manager. For them, it’s not just about it being a golden rule, treating people how they want to be treated. It’s really the platinum rule, which is treat people how they want to be treated. And they really live that out. And I think that they do a great job at it and I would love for you to go check them [email protected] ami and do me a favor, if you love this podcast, if you’ve been listening for a while, whether you’re in the market for a partner like White Label or not, head over to white labeliq.com ami and just leave them a note. Just let them know that you appreciate the podcast and you know how important they are to us. Being able to offer this to you every week and thank them. That would make me super happy if you would do that.

Okay. Speaking of stressful situations and project management and getting through technical projects is absolutely stressful. That’s kind of the theme of this week’s podcast. So our guest is a woman named Rita Ainsworth. She comes out of an agency background. She was a media planner and buyer. And one of the things that she was noticing when she was on the job is how, how she would feel so stressed out that she would get really close to burnout. And in fact, at one point in time in her career, she did get to burnout and she had to sort of take a step back from the work for a little bit of time to kind of get her mojo back. And so now what she does is she still does media planning and buying, but now what she’s also doing is she’s working with other people in creative fields like agencies. Figure out how to regulate the way their body reacts to stress, to how they take on their workload, how they manage through like crunch periods of time, all to avoid burnout. And she’s got some really great science backed methodologies and ways for us to kind of keep our cool and to actually enjoy our work rather than being stressed out by it. So I think it’s going to be a really interesting conversation. I know that I can use some of those techniques and I suspect you can too. So let’s welcome Rita the podcast. Rita, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Rita Ainsworth [00:04:46]:
Thank you for having me. Drew. What a pleasure to be here.

Drew McLellan [00:04:50]:
Tell everybody a little bit about your background and how intimately you understand their world.

Rita Ainsworth [00:04:56]:
I have been in media buying, specifically meta buying, for probably 10 years now. I been working in agencies and brand side still media buying right now, as well as got into coaching media buyers and agency people on how to deal with stress because I know it so well that I had multiple burnouts because of the pressure that agency people go through. And I really wanted to see if there is a way of enjoying what we do because it’s enjoyable to run ads to get people, clients, results, but it can be taxing at the same time. So I wanted to see if there is a way to combine the performance and longevity in this industry. And there is some small tweaks. So yeah, it’s very close to my heart. This agency, World Media buying World and also performing without burning out.

Drew McLellan [00:06:11]:
Yeah. So you work with a lot of high performers who from the outside look like they’re crushing it, but got on the inside, they’re just fried, they’re exhausted. So for our listeners, what does driven but drained look like? How do they recognize that in themselves?

Rita Ainsworth [00:06:29]:
So performance doesn’t really drop when we in high stress. When we in chronic stress, we’re still performing at pretty high level. It’s only when we kind of cross that threshold into burnout that our performance, you know, reduces considerably. And what it looks like, it’s, you know, getting up in the morning and feeling tired already reaching out for coffee to get us going. So coffee is a very good way to get adrenaline to, to get us, you know, give us a boost. And we then keep going until we are completely drained by the end of the day. So the decisions happen, work happens. But there is a state of high alert. There’s a state of, you know, don’t drop any balls. If you stop, you’re gonna, you know, fall behind, something gonna happen. Don’t take your eye off anything. So it’s this hyper vigilance is a sign that we already been in chronic stress for a long time. Difficulty to switch off after work. We finish and work and we’re still thinking about it. When we are with friends, family at the end of the day. So that stress never leaves us. We, we keep in this high alert, almost, you know, 24, seven high. It’s hard, it’s hard to fall asleep. It’s maybe hard to stay, to stay asleep. Wake up at 3 o’ clock in the morning still thinking, you know, something from day before, what needs to be happening and you know, the next day. So it’s this constant tension, tension within that that’s the biggest issue, like being able to switch off and relax. That’s what then gets us to that burnout stage.

Drew McLellan [00:08:39]:
So you talk a lot about the nervous system and kind of how it drives performance. So assuming that most people listening are kind of not scientifically perfectionists or have a deep knowledge, what’s a simple way for us to understand how our nervous system impacts our leadership and decision making?

Rita Ainsworth [00:09:03]:
I think that that was kind of key for me not knowing what was happening to me when I hit Burnout. Yeah, and like knowing what’s happening in your body when during stress and burnout can really help you kind of see how that impacts everything that you’re doing. As you say, thinking and energy levels. And like every, everything else that we do. And in, in simple kind of terms, we have three states, nervous system has three states. And we should be mostly in this regulated calm state where everything works well in the body from immune system to digestive system to being able to access our thinking mind. So when we’re in this state regulated state, we get access to our prefrontal cortex thinking brain and we can have more access also to our creative right brain. So we are analytical and creative at the same time. We can zoom in and we can zoom out. It’s like seeing big picture. We can communicate better with others. Like you know, we listen to understand to be empathetic, to get other person’s perspective. Instead of when we in stress in the survival state we listen to respond, we listen to defend ourselves or to kind of prove a point. So this regulated state is, is optimal state where we think best, where we don’t use too much of our energy and where body can still do its processes in the background to keep us healthy. At the same time when we go into stress, stress is basically us thinking there is some sort of danger. So most of our stress in the daily life is really perceived. It’s not real. Not getting client results is not great, but it’s not danger to our survival. But if we don’t think about it like our body just starts producing adrenaline, cortisol, all other stress hormones as if we were being attacked by a tiger. And that takes a lot of effort and energy from the, from our body, from our system. So when we’re in survival like then I, when it’s time to run or fight, like I am not thinking empathetically, I’m not thinking creatively, I’m not, you know, being understanding towards other. So the and we also get very tunnel visions like okay, I am running, I’m running in that direction. I don’t see what else is around me. So decision making can be really impaired because I’ve seen it many times where very smart skilled media buyers who knows so much when they are in this really hyper alert state. In the stress state they can over focus on one metric and completely missing what is actually causing an issue. So being in right amount of stress is good because it gives enough energy to deal with the problem or the situation. It gives us motivation. But when we go into the High alert state. We then just lose that perspective and we can just focus on the wrong thing. We can be going in the wrong direction for, you know, sometimes very long time until we realize that it’s the wrong direction. And in performance marketing everything moves so fast so we, we need to be able to, to change direction quickly. So that’s kind of the, the stress state. And then once, once we’ve been in stress for too long because it’s such a high demand on energy on the, on the human body, we hit burnout. So burnout is energy conservation. So imagine, you know, back in the day, you’re running from tiger and you can see like, okay, I’m probably not going to outrun it. There’s more chance of us surviving, playing dead, like in case it loses interest and walks off rather than continuing to run. So burnout is basically this state. We pushed our body, our mind for so long, we ran out of energy and now the body shuts, shuts us down, literally. And that’s, that’s what happened to me when I was working at the first media buying agency. I started there as a junior media buyer and I was trying to prove myself and do good work and I couldn’t switch off because you know, with meta ads you just don’t flip off that switch on the weekend or right then when you want to take a break. So within, I’d say, like for most people it’s 12 to 16 months when they can hit that burnout state. So for me it was, you know, day as usual, client meetings, team meeting, and then at the end of the day I went to check the high spending ad account. I was looking at the dashboard, I was seeing the numbers that I was so used to seeing and analyzing and I couldn’t make a single decision. Like I saw the numbers but I didn’t really know what they mean anymore. And after that I had this sensation of like almost like a metal band coming across my forehead and a headache, severe headache starting. And from there there was panic. Like what do I do right? How I will work, how I will pay bills, how you know, I don’t want to let anyone down. And that was my state for about two months. Just, you know, I was only able to work maybe two hours a day until I got back to that pre burnout state. And I think because I didn’t know what burnout was, I once I kind of went back to that stress state, it wasn’t, you know, a good, calm, regulated state. I, within like next six months, I exhausted myself again. So that was my second burnout. And I didn’t see any way of staying and working for the agency, so I had to leave. I was forced to leave. And that’s when I started digging into the nervous system, the. The inner workings of, of the body. And I realized like, oh, I was just. I needed more breaks. I needed to take some supplements to, you know, give me my energy back. I needed to, to. To tell myself that whatever stress I was experiencing, it wasn’t such a, you know, big of a deal. Like I didn’t need to expend so much energy on, on these problems. So it’s, it’s like we have more control over our systems and our bodies and the amount of stress we experience than, you know, than we really think.

Drew McLellan [00:16:19]:
So hopefully people can recognize that they’re headed from that normal stress to real burnout earlier than you did. What are a couple of early warning signs that listeners can watch for to see that they’re sliding from that normal stress to real burnout even when everything kind of still looks great? Client list is, well, AGI is good. What are some signs in them that make. Should make them sort of stop and take sock?

Rita Ainsworth [00:16:51]:
So the signs will be, they start subtle, like our body starts sending subtle signals and then it, when we don’t listen, it becomes loud and loud and loud.

Drew McLellan [00:17:03]:
Right, right. You hit with a pebble and then eventually a boulder.

Rita Ainsworth [00:17:07]:
Exactly.

Drew McLellan [00:17:07]:
Yeah, yeah, right, right.

Rita Ainsworth [00:17:09]:
So we, the nervous system will affect the thoughts. So maybe we’ll start losing our motivation a little bit. You know, there’ll be a thoughts of like, oh, not another thing. Not I can’t, I don’t want to, you know, I can’t or I don’t want to deal with another problem. You become a little bit more irritable. Instead of client messages you and you just, you know, deal with it as a. Just a task. You start getting irritated that they asking questions right at the end of the day, you know, there’ll be this want just to collapse on the sofa and maybe watch Netflix and you have a takeaway instead of going and playing sports or doing something, you know, that you normally do after work. There is a little bit of way in stress we may have, you know, the more of the critic and the perfectionists show up and maybe like, you know, people pleaser in that burnout state, we become a little bit more numb and disengaged and we really start caring less than we used to. So this, this disengagement, this lack of motivation, like I can’t do this anymore or it’s like, this is not for me, maybe I should be doing something else. A lot of times it’s like if you take even like a day off, it can really help you to go back to just a more normal state where you have more energy and you are then going back into mobile regulation.

Drew McLellan [00:18:54]:
I think part of the problem is agency people are just sort of notoriously addicted to the hustle, to the pace, to the deadline driven work that we do. I mean, and for a lot of, a lot of us that fires off the endorphins and does all the things. So what patterns do you see in high performers who can’t stop doing and struggle to just be quieter and how do you help them start to unwind that need to constantly be know, busy. Right, that hustle?

Rita Ainsworth [00:19:28]:
Yeah. So high performers are a type of person who do not feel safe when they stop, when they slow down. And it didn’t start with the business, with the, with work. A lot of times it already started earlier in life. So it all is based on our beliefs, so on our belief system. So for me, my personal belief system was that my worth is tied to the output to my work. I was very good student, you know, I was very good at helping my mom with the chores around the house.

Drew McLellan [00:20:14]:
Right.

Rita Ainsworth [00:20:15]:
I constantly needed to prove that I am good enough. And that was then translated through work. And when I would slow down, I would feel this deep discomfort. And it was easier to, to move to work even through exhaustion than to slow down and feel the discomfort. So it’s slowing down and feeling what is the deep, you know, deep sense, deep fear underneath the slowing down. And I think until we are able to, to face that discomfort instead of like, no, no, this is too much, I can’t deal with that. We’ll keep going, we’ll, we’ll keep pushing ourselves. Because you know, after my first and second burnout, I said, this is the agency problem. You know, there’s so much work, you know, there’s clients, everyone needs everything from me, but I was the one allowing it to happen. So then I took a responsibility for not setting boundaries, not to setting expectations right, not to taking breaks like it was my own doing. And in some ways, you know, it’s, it’s easier to blame someone else and give responsibility to someone else. But we have that control, we have the agency. We can say, okay, everything starts and, and ends with me. So I have to work on myself in order to not need that validation through work. Like, I still gonna do good work, but I, I don’t need it to prove my self worth. So to, you know, whatever the wound we are trying to plaster.

Drew McLellan [00:22:10]:
Yeah, so I think what you’re describing, one of the symptoms of that is I think a lot of high performers and a lot of agency owners really struggle with setting boundaries and saying no. So why is saying no or protecting yourself with boundaries, why is that so terrifying for us and why what’s at stake if we never build that muscle, that ability?

Rita Ainsworth [00:22:40]:
So we can’t say no. It’s because it’s not, it hasn’t been safe for us to say no. So it started so early. Like a lot of times it can even start in, you know, pre birth it like you know, our mother’s nervous system, if it was in high alert, we will inherit that nervous system because as babies we need co regulation from our mother. So without even knowing, we can already be in that pre programmed high alert state. So it’s already not safe. Everything else around us can be fine. We can be not having any issues. But within ourselves and within our system, we feel that it’s not safe and we need to start just reprogramming. Even if it’s one second a day, you know, even moment by moment when we start rewiring those patterns that have been great for us, you know, it got us to where we are right now. Like it’s, it’s not something, you know, we wanted this, like it got us here. But is it still helpful me to keep going the same way? And like I found that I was coping with my nervous system patterns very well till I was about 35. And then the naturally the energy starts declining. Like you start noticing how that wired state is really exhausting you and different, you know, ailments start popping up. It’s like okay, no, it’s time for me to say okay, I am safe. I am safe enough. Even just saying these words, you know, when we feel like the stomach stands, the shoulders are hurting, maybe the jaws died, like a lot of stress shows through the body when we can notice that and say okay, I am safe enough, I have enough time, like even that, like it immediately as I say that, it releases my stomach. So noticing and saying that once a day, twice a day, three times a day, like over time it accumulates and I can change the way we behave, like the way we think and you know, what we do, what we say.

Drew McLellan [00:25:09]:
So I want to drill down deeper into this idea of being able to say no and set boundaries. But let’s take a quick break and then let’s come back because I’VE got some more questions about it. Here’s the deal. If you don’t really understand your agency’s money, you are guessing your way through the hardest part of agency ownership. Money matters is our two day workshop for agency owners, GMs and finance leads who want simple, practical agency math they can actually use. You’ll learn a handful of financial benchmarks that matter, how to read the right reports, how to turn AGI into up, how to increase utilization and turn staffing ratios into clear decisions about pricing, hiring and profit. If you are ready to stop feeling blind around the numbers and start running a more profitable shop, grab your seat for Money Matters. We’re going to get together on October 15th and 16th in Denver and you can register at the Agency Management Institute website. All right, we are back and we are talking about probably something that you think about all the time without thinking about it, which is that sense of I’m pushing, pushing, pushing. I am checking off all the things on my to do list. I never quite check off all of the things on my to do list. And I’m feeling this pressure, this, this sense of anxiety around the work and, and that a lot of you, I think, often feel like you’re teetering on burnout. And so before the break we were talking about that and I’m curious, you know, I think a lot of agency owners talk about this. They will express that they’re feeling exhausted, the burnout. And it’s not just agency owners, it’s agency leaders as well. But they also want to be the hero for their client or their internal team. So how do you help someone reconcile sort of these two halves? Right, these two things. I want to lead with generosity, but I don’t want to self sacrifice myself to the point of burning out to lead with generosity. How do you help someone find the balance in that?

Rita Ainsworth [00:27:19]:
I think when we are in this, let’s say, you know, hijacked state, when our nervous system is in survival, we feel like working more, delivering more is actually, you know, going to get better results. And it is true short term to an extent. You know, it is true for a little while we will be delivering more. But then long term it starts backfiring. I see so many people, friends and clients where, you know, they start working at 8, 9 o’ clock in the morning, they barely take a lunch break and then they finish at 5 or 6. And then I drill down and ask them like, how is the quality of your work? You know, let’s say by, by two o’. Clock. You didn’t Take any breaks, right? How is your thinking? Are you making mistakes? Do you need to go back and redo things? Did you actually made a wrong assessment of this? And they answer yes to all of those questions because working longer, pushing yourself more, doesn’t produce better results.

Drew McLellan [00:28:45]:
Right?

Rita Ainsworth [00:28:45]:
It produces something, you know, a lot of times it produce, it can produce, you know, a lot of mess that we then need to undo. But if we can just take a break before we got too tired and we worked, let’s say, you know, we, we have naturally these, you know, circadian rhythms where we can work for, like, for me personally, I can do in the morning, maybe hour and a half, two hours, I’m fresh, I have energy, I can do for that, that many hours in, in one sitting without break. But then I’ll get up, I’ll go and make maybe coffee, maybe I’ll walk around, chat with my, you know, partner. Then I’ll go and do another hour. After that hour, I need a longer break. And then in the afternoon I need breaks probably every 30, 40 minutes. Because I am not, you know, an evening person, afternoon person. I love mornings. I’m more focused. So it’s knowing your body, your natural, like you feel your energy declining before you decline too much, stand up, walk around, go and, you know, look through the window at a tree, do some breath, you know, breath exercises. It’s. You will be able to deliver so much better output.

Drew McLellan [00:30:07]:
Right, right.

Rita Ainsworth [00:30:08]:
Then you can take care of yourself. Like, you know, there’s that saying of, fill your cup first. Like you can’t give too much if the cup’s empty. You know, you’re giving your all, but it’s like, it’s that much in there. Like, it’s not like full, full cup.

Drew McLellan [00:30:24]:
So for, if people, for people who are listening and they’re, and they’re feeling like they have already sort of crossed the line and they are in that reactive mode. They are feeling burnt out. What are some, if you will, nervous system friendly ways that they can kind of get back into a more proactive, longer range, healthier place without. I mean, I know you could take a month sabbatical or you could do something radical, but what are some small things they can do to just start to reset themselves and to kind of heal from that exhaustion and burnout enough that they can get into a healthier state?

Rita Ainsworth [00:31:09]:
So there’s a couple of different aspects. So one is our biology aspect, so our body asp. And that’s bringing to the body what it uses up during stress. So key supplements, you know, Magnesium. Magnesium is used in 300 plus reactions that are happening in the body. And a lot of, a lot of stress uses up magnesium, B vitamins, C vitamin, like simple, like just replenishing the body’s, the nutrients that stress has depleted. You know, our food, even if we eat organic, is becoming less and less nutritious unfortunately.

Drew McLellan [00:31:54]:
Right.

Rita Ainsworth [00:31:55]:
So we need to first like that’s the lowest hanging fruit. Like if you think about 80, 20 of the stress impact, the nutrients that stress uses up, if we replenish them, we can straight away notice the difference. Like we’re bringing energy into the body. There’s energy specific supplements like CoQ10 for example. So that’s one taking breaks, you know, having a lot of people use pomodoro technique. For me it’s just noticing my own energy fluctuations. So how can I stop before I exhausted myself? If I stop five minutes before I’m too tired and I go and spend those five minutes just doing nothing or doing something that is work unrelated, then I’ll come back and I’ll be way more fresh and make better decisions. That’s the energy body piece, the nervous system, mostly nervous system safety pieces. Somatic, very simple somatic practices. So we turn on the stress response when we have danger signals coming through our eyes, ears. So you know, we read a client’s message, we see numbers on the dashboard. It all comes in through our eyes and you know, sometimes you know, through ears, listening. So we can reverse engineer the safety again through our senses. And there’s a very simple exercise called orienting. And we basically very slowly scan our environment so the room we’re in and we look, is there any danger right now in this room? And we let our eyes lead, we can look on the walls and ceiling and under the desk and behind us until we notice a little bit of like softening in the belly, maybe shoulders dropping, maybe there is a yawn or spontaneous deep breath. And that’s body telling us that I have switched off from this stress response to the regulated safety response. And maybe first time when people do it they will not notice much. But if you continue practicing that, then you will notice that your system reacts within like seconds. A lot of times these days if I just even think about doing that exercise, I immediately have the response of like, oh, I can feel my stomach, you know, released. It’s the, you know, everyone’s probably heard of the Pavlov’s dogs and he ring the bell and the dog salivating. So it’s the same like we train our system to like look around, like, okay, yeah, I am safe. It’s good.

Drew McLellan [00:34:59]:
And I’m sure that feels silly the first time you do it. Like, like I’m in my office now and you say, look around. Well, you know, I’m thinking about your tiger analogy and I’m like, well, I know there’s no tiger in my office, so I’m sure it feels a little silly in the beginning, but if you also feel your body reacting to it, it probably feels less silly pretty quick.

Rita Ainsworth [00:35:20]:
Yeah, exactly. And it feels silly to one part of the brain, you know, but right, the, the. Our, like the primitive survival part of the brain, amygdala, it needs our eyes, our ears, you know, we can listen at the same time.

Drew McLellan [00:35:38]:
Yeah.

Rita Ainsworth [00:35:39]:
It needs those signals like, oh, yeah, I am safe enough. Whatever I’m seeing on the. Is on the screen. There is this cold world around me and I am okay.

Drew McLellan [00:35:51]:
Yeah.

Rita Ainsworth [00:35:52]:
And then another very easy, very simple practice is breath. So when we breathe in, we turn on our sympathetic stress response. When we breathe out, we turn on the parasympathetic regulated calm state. So changing our breath with the out breath being slightly longer. So it could be, let’s say we breathe in on three, we breathe out on five or six, or maybe we breathe in on four, we breathe out of six or seven. That slightly longer out breath gonna help our body to switch off stress response and become more regulated. And we can do five breaths. We can. If we have a bit more time, we can do, you know, couple of minutes and we can do that while we on a stressful call. We can do it in between tasks. So it’s something like, you know, no one gonna notice, right. That we’re doing that and we are regulating in the moment. And then there is one model for people who already feel like. So these two are great for when we are hyper alert, when we struggle to switch off. Yeah. If we already cross that threshold and we’re in a little bit more of a burnout state, when we feel tired, there is a. An exercise called eye support. Simple, more scientific name is ocular cardiac reflex. So basically, our eye nerves are linked with the vagus nerve, which is in charge of the nervous system states, can turn on the regulated state. So when we can activate that nerve through our eyes, we can also impact our heart rate, we can impact our breath rate, we can impact the nervous system. So I will demonstrate it. You can, you know, use it at your desk. Not on the cold, that will look strange. But between the tasks, like when you feel like, okay, I just don’t Know how I’m gonna keep going? So you first, you can definitely drew first of all, you just, you find the outline around your eyes.

Drew McLellan [00:38:21]:
Yep.

Rita Ainsworth [00:38:22]:
So you kind of get familiar like. Okay, there’s a. I don’t think we ever, you know, do that when we have this, you know, this eye sockets, like oh, wow, that’s so cool. And then we take our, you know, our palms. Heels. Our palms and we, if it’s easier, like you can lean on a desk and you put, you put the palms in your eye sockets.

Drew McLellan [00:38:47]:
Okay.

Rita Ainsworth [00:38:48]:
And you let your body just lean into those palms, like not holding back. You just let it, let yourself relax. And then I can notice already a deeper out breath.

Drew McLellan [00:39:06]:
Right.

Rita Ainsworth [00:39:08]:
You know, when you reduce the sensory overload, you this complete darkness.

Drew McLellan [00:39:14]:
Right.

Rita Ainsworth [00:39:15]:
So your eyes are not processing anything. And then one, you let yourself relax and you’re being, you know, you’re supporting yourself through, through your hands.

Drew McLellan [00:39:27]:
Yeah.

Rita Ainsworth [00:39:28]:
And then also because you are activating this optic nerve and vagus nerve now your whole physiology has changed. So now you’re in, in this relaxed state. And I remember someone just after this exercise, like she described this as like a micro nap. So if you don’t have time for a break, you can do this for a minute, you know, and it really helps you to get that energy back into the system. Yeah.

Drew McLellan [00:40:03]:
All simple and short, but all probably have lasting impact. You know, it’s not just us too. I think the listeners in most cases are leading a team. And so one of the ways, one of the things I think about is most agency teams are full of high achieving, probably a little bit anxious over deliverers. A lot of type A people are drawn to agency work. So what can we as owners and leaders do to build a culture where people can do great work without sort of burning themselves to the ground?

Rita Ainsworth [00:40:40]:
I think it’s normalizing rest as performance tool. So recovery is performance tool. Like we in performance marketing, we need to stop thinking the same as elite athletes do, as military does. Like they, they focus on recovery because recovery then helps them to perform better. There are, you know, amateur athletes there A lot of times they overtrain, they push themselves and then, you know, that really impacts them and they eventually learn. And I think if we can bring the same minds, that mindset to agencies, you know, it’s. It takes a lot of resources to train a junior person to the senior level for them to then burn out and leave.

Drew McLellan [00:41:30]:
Right, right.

Rita Ainsworth [00:41:34]:
It is very costly. Yeah. So it’s one, I think learning, like starting to introduce that nervous system language. I think it Removes a lot of almost like personal responsibility. You know, there is something wrong with me. I’m not strong enough. It’s like, no, your system is going, it’s been into in the chronic stress for too long now. You’re going into burnout. So okay, let’s not allow that to happen. So it’s like nervous system language is then removes the. Anything to do with personal traits, the personality that who you are as a person. It’s like everyone’s body works differently. Like you know, my nervous system is, might be, you know, more sensitive to someone else’s nervous system and it’s, it’s okay. That’s why it’s great to, you know, to be around all these different humans who have these different strengths.

Drew McLellan [00:42:27]:
Right.

Rita Ainsworth [00:42:27]:
And traits. So one is nervous system language to normal, normalizing rest as a recovery tool. And you know, maybe if you having team meeting, why don’t you start with you know, a breath work practice. Like people will be more on board with ideas because when you’re tired you do not want innovation. Like innovation.

Drew McLellan [00:42:55]:
Yeah, it sounds like more work, right?

Rita Ainsworth [00:42:57]:
Exactly. It’s like, oh, I don’t want to hear this other idea that the leadership has. It’s like, okay, no, let’s all come to a regulated state. And to start with will be awkward because it’s new.

Drew McLellan [00:43:12]:
Yeah.

Rita Ainsworth [00:43:12]:
But in the long run, like just simple things, you know, will really help. And then agency leaders, managers have one to one calls with the team. You know, check in, check in. What, what, what state I in? I have a quiz on my actually website for people to figure out what state they are in. So it’s like, okay, what state are you in? And just having almost like then, then it’s easy like oh, I think I’m, I’m nearing like I’m, I’m in a. Getting into this high chronic stress or I am close to burnout. And then with simple support tools, you can get out of those states and continue performing and don’t need to think, okay, I need to find another job. I need to find a way out.

Drew McLellan [00:44:04]:
Right. This is, this is a, this is an employee retention tool. And I, as you were talking, I was thinking also modeling it like talking about how you’re feeling and what you’re doing to get yourself back into a healthier state is a way to normalize it. But also give them permission to talk about how they’re feeling and that they’re feeling stressed out or whatever as well.

Rita Ainsworth [00:44:25]:
When you think, yeah, yeah, absolutely. We go into this burner state a lot of Times because we feel like there is no way out.

Drew McLellan [00:44:34]:
Right. Or it’s expected of us.

Rita Ainsworth [00:44:37]:
Yeah, exactly. So being able to talk to someone who can understand your situation, where you’re at and knowing that like this, this doesn’t mean it will last forever. Like. Right. You know, if I, I can get back to normal after taking, you know, a day off, like let’s say, you know, extreme cases, maybe a week off. But yeah, I think when we allow ourselves to relax fully, when we can recover so much more quicker than we think, like when I’m in a, you know, burnt out state, I think, okay, I need probably three months to get back to normal.

Drew McLellan [00:45:17]:
Right.

Rita Ainsworth [00:45:18]:
But in reality it might be, you know, four days and you’re back to, you know, your normal energy levels.

Drew McLellan [00:45:23]:
Yeah. As, as we wind down this conversation, there’s so much more to talk about. I know, but what’s one question that you think everyone listening should ask themselves weekly to kind of check in on their own resilience and sort of stress level?

Rita Ainsworth [00:45:44]:
It’s what state am I in? And I would ask that on a daily basis. Like what state am I in? How do I feel? Is my energy like right now? Do I feel already tired? If I feel tired, that means I’m already going past the stress state and I’m going dipping into the burnout. Right. If I am feeling nice, relaxed, I’m like, it’s this, you know, this state of calm aliveness. Imagine, you know, you’re going on a nice hike, you are using energy, but you are inspired by the views by the company, maybe by the actual movements. Like you are in this nice regulated state or am I already like at work? Am I agitated? Am I wired? Like you gone way too far into stress. So I would ask the question of what state am I in on, on a daily basis? Awareness, like just having awareness of your own body, how it feels and body will impact the thoughts. It’s thoughts impact body, but body impacts thoughts more than we then we know. So it’s like what state am I in? I can actually put together a resource for your listeners so they can have like a printout they can see like here’s what I’m feeling, here’s what I’m thinking, here’s what are my, you know, behaviors. Like I will know what state I am in based on this and if I am too agitated, let me orient, let me take longer out breath. If I feel too tired, let me either walk away from my desk for five minutes, maybe let me do this eye support, let me start thinking what, you know, nutrients I can bring to support this energy level? What nutrients do I bring to support the stress that I’ve been experiencing? So, yeah, that, that’s kind of awareness, bringing awareness to our own body. And I, you know, a lot of times you hear you need to do this hack and you need to wake up at certain time and you need to, you know, there’s always something. A lot of times, you know, right being, being sold to, you know, like, what is right for your own system. Do not compare yourself to your teammates. Do not compare yourself to your partner. Like, when I was working at an agency, my manager, she was like, she was unstoppable. She had infinite amounts of energy and if I tried to keep up with her, like, I would have probably burnt out even sooner. So it’s like, it’s, it’s me. And how do I, you know, make sure that I am in the best possible state, not, not comparing with anyone else.

Drew McLellan [00:48:44]:
So I know you have a lot of resources like you just talked about on your website. If folks want to learn more about the work you do or access some of those resources, what’s the best way for them to get in touch with you or to find out more about the work you do?

Rita Ainsworth [00:49:01]:
They can go to my website. Rita Ainsworth coaching.com I run weekly group goals for performance marketers where we go way deeper into each of these topics. Practice tools. So that’s one way. I also do onetoone coaching so they can go to the website or they can also find me on LinkedIn retainsworth. So yeah, I reach out. I love talking about this topic. I love helping people and it made massive difference in my personal life. I am able to perform at high level and my client results, you know, are not sacrificed because I’m taking more breaks and I’m looking after myself, you know, on the contrary. And I see the same with the clients I work with. There is this fear that if we slow down, we will fall behind. But it’s only our thoughts that are driven by the survival.

Drew McLellan [00:50:02]:
Yeah. So we’ll include both of those links, the links to your website and your LinkedIn profile in the show notes so folks can find you. This has been really fascinating. It’s, it’s, it’s almost a relief to hear. That is biology, right? Like they’re like, we can only do what we can do. And it’s not that we’re a slacker or we’re not motivated or whatever. It’s just like this is, this is the way we’re built and if we understand better how we’re built, we can actually improve our performance and reduce our stress. So it’s. I’m hoping that for the listeners that they are kind of taking a breath and going, oh, okay, A, I’m normal. B, this is not something I can out hustle my way past. And see there are techniques and tools to sort of master this so that I can be a high achiever, I can contribute great results, but I don’t have to kill myself doing it.

Rita Ainsworth [00:50:58]:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Like, that’s the key message. Like, there is hope. Like what we’ve been doing is a pattern and we can change those patterns.

Drew McLellan [00:51:10]:
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much for being with us today.

Rita Ainsworth [00:51:13]:
Thank you, Drew.

Drew McLellan [00:51:14]:
You bet. All right, so everybody, Rita gave you some really great, very practical tools, whether it’s the breathing tool or the iris tool. So I want you, your homework, I want you to practice one of this, one of the techniques that she outlined for you this week. I want you just to give it a try. Maybe it, maybe it is just starting your day, asking yourself sort of where you’re at, like, what state am I in and what do I need to get my. If you’re not in the ideal state, what do I need to do to get myself back into that ideal state? And if we do those micro corrections every day, then odds are you never get so burnt out that you have to take the month long sabbatical or whatever it is. Now, you may already be in a burnt out state, so you may have to sort of do more healing. But let’s just start with a couple of these little activities every morning. And then throughout the day, identifying what actually rejuvenates you, what gives you new energy. Start to pay attention to that. And then I want you to talk about it inside your shop. I want you to talk about it with your team because they want to be like you. They model themselves after you. And so if they, especially if you’re a high energy, type A overachiever, they think they have to keep that pace to earn your respect and your trust. But if you show them that the reason why you are a high performer or why you can get so much done is because you do take care of yourself. You do pay attention to sort of where your body is at and where you’re at mental state is at, then that’s going to give them permission to pay attention as well, which ultimately means you’re going to build a team that is more resilient, the results are going to be better, and they’re not going to feel so much pressure. You know, like Rita was saying, that they look at, at our business and go, maybe I’m not cut out for agency life. Give them the tools to enjoy the work, be good at the work, and also have the longevity that you want them to have as a team member. That’s. That’s your homework for today. All right, before I let you go, you know, I want to say thanks to our friends at White Label iq. They’re the presenting sponsor of the podcast that I talked about at the top of the show, whitelabeliq.com ami and I always like to end the show reminding you that I am very aware that you only have so many hours in the day and that you get to spend or you choose to spend an hour, a day or a week with me doing this, having these conversations, learning together. I do not take that for granted. I am super grateful that you keep coming back. We’ve been doing this together for a really long time, and I look forward to doing it for a much longer time. And I can’t do that without you coming back. So thank you for carving out the time to learn with me every week. I’ll be back next week, and I hope you will, too. All right, I’ll see you then.

Danyel McLellan [00:54:09]:
That’s a wrap for this week’s episode of Build a Better agency. Visit agency agencymanagementinstitute.com to check out our workshops, coaching and consulting packages, and all the other ways we serve agencies just like yours. Thanks for listening.