Hey everybody, I am so thrilled that you’re here for this first episode of the Spoonipreneur Podcast. On this episode, I’m sharing my story with you so you can see the ups and downs of what it looks like to build an online business while living with chronic illness and what my life with chronic illness looks like.
Here’s what we discussed in today’s episode:
- Being diagnosed with chronic illness
- How my health & burnout led to me building a business
- The ups and downs of being an entrepreneur with chronic illness
Connect with Nicole
Website: http://www.theresilientva.com
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/theresilientva
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/groups/spooniepreneurcommunity
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wnicoleneer/
Transcript
00:02 Hey everybody and welcome to the Spooniepreneur Podcast. I’m Nicole Neer. An online business manager living with Fibromyalgia and Bipolar Disorder. On this podcast, I’m going behind the scenes in my business and talking to other Spooniepreneurs to get real about what it looks like to be an entrepreneur and living with chronic illness to inspire you to start the business of your dreams no matter what life throws your way.
00:28 Hey everybody, I am absolutely thrilled that you’re here for this first episode of the Spooniepreneur podcast on this episode. I am sharing my story with you so you can see some of the ups and downs of what it looks like to build an online business while you’re living with chronic illness. Just a quick disclosure to kick us off. I fully recognize that what works for me may not work for others. The information that I’m sharing off today’s podcast isn’t meant as medical advice and it doesn’t take the place of the important relationships that you have with your doctors or your therapist. And if you’re anything like me, you see those people a lot, right? So today I want to share with you a little bit about me and my journey to entrepreneurship. So like so many of us, when we’re talking about our journey, we start with the diagnosis, right?
01:23 So, I have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Bipolar Disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder. So basically what this means is I’m in pain all the time, I’m tired all the time and I am anxious about the pain and the fatigue and then it makes me depressed. And on top of all of these diagnoses, I am an online business manager. So what this means is I help high performing entrepreneurs run their day to day operations as well as launches for their products or online courses or coaching programs or membership sites, you name it. And I’ve probably helped with the launch to sell it. I started out my business as a solo entrepreneur. I was a virtual assistant and I still have an agency of virtual assistants, graphic designers, copywriters and podcast editors that help me serve my clients. Really, my business started accidentally three years ago when my health completely fell apart.
02:34 Like so many of us. I had to choose between a career that I had worked really, really hard for or caring for my health and at its heart. My story is really a story about burnout. I know that I am not the only person who has left a toxic workplace because they were so burned out that it made them physically ill. a recent study found that 40% of all people in the workplace today experienced burnout at one point or another. Just think about that like almost half of us have experienced this. I was having this conversation recently with us Spoonie friend and she observed that a lot of entrepreneurs that we know living with chronic illness are all type-A personalities. We are all like recovering perfectionist people-pleasers, incredibly driven and unfortunately, all of these really amazing traits for entrepreneurship can also lead to stress and anxiety and chronic health issues.
03:41 Me, I wasn’t born with my chronic health condition. It’s something that came on. I don’t want to say spontaneously. It came on slowly and then all of a sudden if that makes any sense. And if you’re living with chronic illness, I think that you probably know what I’m talking about. When I look back, I can see that I experienced symptoms for way longer than I knew what was going on. You know, it all started in high school when I had my first spell of clinical depression and I had no clue what was going on. But I knew that there was something seriously wrong with me. And some of that is like being a teenager, right? Because we always feel like what we’re dealing with is the worst thing in the world. But I didn’t admit to anybody that I was struggling with depression or anxiety or you know, all of the issues that come along with that.
04:35 Until I was 19 and I was diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome. I was at college, I was a nervous wreck and I was a nervous wreck really for most of my twenties. I took medication on and off. But like so many of us, I hated the feeling that I had to depend on a pill to make me feel better. It just made me feel so weak and it made me feel like a failure. And there were times during my 20s that leaving the house was really too overwhelming. I spent a lot of time making plans and then backing out at the last minute and looking back, I can really see that part of this was because of how I was feeling with my pain and my fatigue. But I honestly thought that all of that was just connected to my mental health. And in my experience, when you have a mental illness, your doctors, they reinforce all of this.
05:31 They don’t want to look deeper into your pain or into the fatigue issues that you’re feeling because they’re so busy, they’ve got a million things on their plate and they see that you’re depressed, they see you have anxiety and they’re just like, Oh, that’s what’s causing it. Here’s a pill. Go on your way. And I spent a lot of that time feeling like I was a failure because my mind and my body couldn’t cope. And all of my friends are out there going to parties. They’re dating, they’re finding their significant others, they’re getting married and I was just struggling to get out of bed, to go to work every day. And you know, work became my thing. I hid behind my career. I started my career in social work right after I graduated from Sarah Lawrence. I went from being a case manager, which is like low man on the totem pole to being the executive director of the agency in five years, which is crazy.
06:29 And in those five years I consistently worked two if not three jobs and got my master’s degree because I was broke as a joke. And I think I was crazy, but it’s no surprise that I burned out spectacularly. I loved, loved, loved, loved what I was doing, but I was doing the work of three people, right? I would go into the office before the sun rose, I would leave the office late each day and then I took a pile of work home with me and did it. When I got home I started having panic attacks daily and I had to force myself to get out of bed. And I felt like such a failure because I have a “dream job” and my body just gave up on me. And during this time, it’s not like I was trying to do this in a silo.
07:23 I was communicating with the higher-ups. I was communicating with our board of directors what was going on. And they basically just looked at me and said, “there’s nothing we can do to help you with this, this is your job. These are all the things that you have to do, like it or leave it basically.” And the breaking point came really suddenly one morning. Even though I was on Prozac, I was going to therapy regularly, the panic attacks I was having were getting longer and more frequent. And that morning I had just finished putting on my makeup when a panic attack hit me and I dropped to my knees on the bathroom floor and I remember it really vividly because I was, I was in a dress and heels because I had this big meeting that day and the mascara was just running down my cheeks and I was just sitting there gasping, trying to catch my breath.
08:17 And my mom lives in the same house as me and she came in to see why I hadn’t left for work yet. And she took one look at me and she just said, “you can’t do this anymore”. She said, “what’s your doctor’s phone number? I’m making you an appointment. You cannot do this anymore.” So I went to the doctor that morning and he immediately placed me on medical leave and it was absolutely terrifying. And I know that so many of you have been at this place too. I was sick enough that I could not work the job that I had trained to do for years, but I was not sick enough where I would qualify for additional help with like disability or anything like that. So I was between a rock and a hard place. I did not know what I was going to do.
09:09 I ended up falling back on what was my side hustle. Because even when I was executive director of a nonprofit I had to have a side hustle because I was making peanuts, right? It’s the nonprofit world. Even though I had like the corner office I was working as a virtual assistant providing social media support to small businesses. And if you’ve never heard of a virtual assistant before, virtual assistants do so many different things. But you know, social media management, they can edit podcast episodes, they write blog posts for you. They can help build systems for email marketing or client care or maintain your website. I mean, the list just really, it goes on and on. And I started out doing social media management and it kind of grew from there. I remember really vividly right before I was promoted to being an executive director, I knew I was approaching burnout.
10:09 I knew that I was unhappy with the way things were going and I need this plan that I was going to quit. I was going to get enough clients as a virtual assistant and quit the day job and right when I had built up my business, I had made the plan, I felt like I could do this, that promotion was offered and I was at this fork in the road. I could either take the job that I’d worked so hard for that was safe in a lot of ways or I could follow my heart and become an entrepreneur.
10:43 I knew even then that being an entrepreneur is hard work and there’s no safety net. You have to really work hard and hustle to make it work. There are no guarantees, there are no safety nets and there’s no health insurance, which let’s be real, is a thing. So I ended up choosing what was safe and six months after the promotion I had to leave. So yeah, I had the foundation of my business when I stepped away from the “real job”. Right. And even though I had been working as a VA for a year, it was much harder than I thought it was going to be to build a full roster of clients. Like so many entrepreneurs I know and people that I’ve supported, I really fell into the trap of feeling like I needed to make these huge investments to see real growth.
11:40 Everybody tells you, you have to spend money to make money. And I really fell into that trap and this was made a thousand times, if not a million times worse because six months into building my business, I experienced mania for the first time. And for those of you who are unfamiliar with bipolar disorder, mania really makes you feel like you are invincible. I felt like I could do everything and make millions of dollars and it would be amazing. I hired two business coaches. I joined a mastermind group. I bought expensive courses. Basically I blew through my life savings in six months and when the mania ended, my business imploded too. So a year after I left my job to become an entrepreneur, I was sicker than I had ever been. I convinced myself that I didn’t need any antidepressants. I was suicidal and I didn’t leave my bed and when I shuffled to the bathroom or I tried to eat, I had to use a walker because my pain and dizziness was so bad that I could barely stand.
12:53 They literally put me on seven different antidepressants in six months just trying to find something that worked and I was so broke that I had to swallow my pride and get on Medicaid. And I just remember sitting there and thinking, I do not even know where I go from here. And my only choice really was to rebuild that business that I had burned down. There was no way that I could physically manage life as a social worker again, and what I learned as I was rebuilding that business in a sustainable way is that it takes 10 times as long to start and grow a business as you think it will when you have a chronic illness. I tend to have really, really lofty goals of what I think that it’s reasonable for me to do and without fail it takes at least twice as long and then I will take three steps forward and four steps back at least once in the process.
13:56 I also had to do the really hard work of getting to know my body without judgment, which is the hard part, right? I learned my body’s cues. I can tell you when my leg, which likes to go numb, which likes to lose its ability to support my weight. I can tell you when it’s going to go. I know enough to know when I need to sit down, right? I can tell you when I wake up in the morning, if I need to work from bed or if I can get up and get dressed and you know, be able to sit at my desk. I have developed strategies that help me maintain a consistent routine. And a lot of this is really about trying to work with what my body needs to do. So a great example of this is I am a morning person all through high school, through college.
14:52 In my early career I was the person who would get up early if I had something to get done. My coworkers used to laugh at me because instead of staying late, I would get to the office at like 5:00 or 6:00 AM to get work done before everybody came into the office that day. Like that’s just the kind of person I am. And now with the way that my illness is, especially with my fatigue, there is no way that I can get up that early. I usually start my day between 7:30 or 8:00 AM and that’s early for me. It takes me a while to be able to open my eyes and to prepare myself for my feet hitting the floor. And I’ve really had to honor that and build my business around that because if I tried to force myself into those old habits, I would really just be setting myself up for failure.
15:47 And one of the great perks about building this consistent daily routine and understanding what my body needs is that my health has started to improve. And this is something that I see a lot with the people that I coach, is that when we start to build a routine that works around us and we show up consistently, her body starts reacting in turn. For me, another part of being able to show up consistently has really been about building systems in my business to make this happen. I say all of this, but you also have to know that I am incredibly stubborn when I put my mind to something. If I think that I need to do it, I will find a way to do it. And I think that for all of the Spooniepreneurs that I know, that is really the key to being able to run a successful business even when you have a chronic illness.
16:46 So I’ve been thinking about this a lot and I think that for all of the entrepreneurs I know and let’s be real, I’ve worked with dozens of them as a virtual assistant and an online business manager and I certainly know that for my business having a business, being an entrepreneur and having a chronic illness, it’s really like using a Snapchat filter. For most businesses, you have no clue what’s going on. On the other side of things, we can put those pretty filters on our faces. We can write all of the peppy social media posts, we can use stock photos, which are great sometimes and make it seem like everything is fine. And the same is true for chronic illness, right? We can paint a picture that we are doing fine and everything’s great when it’s really not. And I feel like that’s the view that the world wants to take of just wanting us to be okay.
17:42 And one of the things that I love about this community is that we can be honest and real with each other and support each other. So I want to shout out to all of my Spoonie friends and the community that we’ve built on Instagram because it’s been an amazing way to get support as an entrepreneur and as a Spoonie, for my business. I know that there are times that I use that filter, right? My clients rarely know when I’m operating on a few hours of sleep because I was in so much pain that I couldn’t sleep the night before, right? They have no clue that the reason that I forgot to send out that email is because my brain fog is so bad that I’m really struggling to find the words to type in the email, right? My brain just fails me. And so part of the reason that I created this podcast is because I really want to pull back the curtain to show you what it really looks like to live with chronic illness and to run a business. Because I’ve had so many people ask me, how do you even manage that? And I know that I do it, but I also know amazing entrepreneurs out there who are also doing it. And so I want you to hear their stories as well.
18:59 I have asked some of my favorite Spoonies this season to share how they make it work. And I’m also going to share my journey in real-time. I didn’t believe when I started my business that I could make it work given what my body was feeling. And I know now that it’s possible and we are all here to show you how, Oh my gosh guys, like that was for real, really hard to share all of that with you. But I hope that was helpful. I really want you to walk away with the feeling that even if everything falls apart once in your business, you can rebuild it. There’s nothing saying that you can’t get up and try again. And for a lot of entrepreneurs, we have several failed businesses before we hit the one that actually makes money, right?
19:47 So that’s a real thing and I want you to know that it’s possible. I am so thrilled that you made it to the end of this podcast because I feel like that was a lot. It was a lot for me. I’m kind of like feeling emotionally hungover right now, but please subscribe to this podcast. We have an amazing group of Spooniepreneurs who we’re interviewing and I have some really amazing topics that I’m going to be talking to you about and I want you to hear all of them. So make sure wherever you listen to your podcast that you are subscribing. And if you like this podcast, brownie points, if you leave me a review on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you’re listening to your podcasts. So thank you so much guys and have an amazing day.
20:38 Thank you so much for listening to the Spooniepreneur Podcast. If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe, recommend, rate and review on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. To find show notes and to get connected to our community of Spooniepreneurs, go to http://www.theresilientva.com. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next week.