There is a fine line between dedicating yourself to running a business and letting yourself drown in extreme fatigue and weariness. To properly deal with burnout, taking a break and looking deep inside yourself is the first ideal step. Dr. Tracey Jones sits down with Ann Sieg to dissect the most challenging parts of her entrepreneurial career and how she addressed them, from facing the shame of making a bad decision and working for long hours without taking a day off. Ann looks back on some moments of her life that imparted important lessons she integrated into her business processes, particularly when her father got caught in a car accident.
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Episode 123 - Ann Sieg - Leaders On Leadership
My guest is Ann Sieg. Ann’s training and mentorship have impacted hundreds of thousands of people worldwide to achieve online success while working from home, which a lot of us are doing more and more now. Nothing has matched the rapid success of her eCommerce students. It's not uncommon for them to see cashflow in the first few days or weeks of starting their businesses. Ann loves launching new entrepreneurs towards a successful home-based eCommerce business. Ann, we are excited to have you on our show.
Thank you. I'm excited too because this is a topic I am passionate about. It excites me.
Ann, I want to talk about something my father said and he said this in a speech called The Price of Leadership. In it, he said that there are some things you have to be doing to truly be called a leader. He was pragmatic. He was a cautious optimist, but he had been through a difficult upbringing. That showed that leadership is great, but it's also difficult. I want to unpack these four topics with you and get your insights as to what this means for you and your journey. You've had a lot of different things you've experienced. I would love to draw on your wealth of wisdom. Thank you so much.
You're welcome. I'm thrilled.
Ann, the first one he talks about is loneliness. He says, “If you're going to be truly doing leadership right, there's going to be some loneliness.” We hear that there’s lonely at the top. Can you unpack for me what loneliness means for you as a leader?
Loneliness is realizing it all rests on your shoulders at the end of the day. I do have a phenomenal counselor, as I call it. He's on my team. I came online as a result of him and he's like a counselor for me. I also have my husband. I have some great support, but it all rests on my shoulders. Even while getting the advice and support, I still will have to make those decisions and live with the consequences of those decisions. Even though they’ll say, “I'll support you on whatever you decide,” the outcome is still mine.
The loneliness is that the singular role of CEO is all on you. In my case, I'm blessed that way with my counselors. You still have to deal with those and the thoughts inside your head. That whole vast experience, this universe of experience of paths from childhood and all these different things, they all culminate into that time where you have to make what can be a big decision for your company and you have to go there. Also, I will say where it's most painful in terms of loneliness, is when it's grueling hard. Sometimes, these walls are hard that you dance with the demons where it's like, “Is this when I throw in the towel?” It would be up to me and not these other parties that are supporting me. It would be me calling it and saying, “This is it.” That's lonely because only you can decide that.
What’s the benefit of that? I always try to look for that in terms of this role that I play. I have to believe that it's worth doing. What has compelled me to do that? For me, I know why. It's several, but this one is huge. It's been a lot of work to create my team. I understand the enormous asset that my team is to me and my business. When my son was my partner for ten years, he came into my office one day and he sat down. There was a chair that whoever comes in my office, they sit in the chair that's facing me while I'm looking at my workstation. That's when he announced the news that he was leaving as my partner that I had for ten years, my eldest son.
While I have this great support team and everything, he helped get me to where I was at. It was two skillsets. He had the marketing and advertising and I brought the team building, etc. That key part that got us to where we were at was saying, “I'm leaving.” It's like, “Here it goes.” He had been like a booster, a leg up to me. “It was dark,” I was telling my husband, “I never knew when I heard about what panic attacks were.” This field of psychology, analytically, I didn't know what that is. I told my husband, “I know I've had those.” It's when you feel powerless, you have no power, and you're falling back into a dark abyss. That feeling of being powerless is a frightening thing, especially for someone who’s a leader where you've always bootstrapped. You've always coached your way through. You've built this insane mental stamina. You've been through the hard knocks where you've been beaten up. I had an incident that hit me broadside. Maybe we'll talk about that one later.
I'd love to.
When you're used to drawing on your internal reserves and when you feel like it's spent from the perspective of feeling like you're powerless to change the outcome because that's what you're doing. That’s when you make decisions, “If I do this, it should change the outcome in this way.” We're always predicting time, “If I do this and the whole risk mitigation, it should do that.” It's what we go through over and over. When you feel like it hit the end of the road and this is the abyss and I'm falling back into the abyss, a lot of that is associated with a sense of shame. I'm getting raw here. I'm probably revealing more than I have ever. It's the real raw guts to say that.
I want to ask you first. We've all had it happen. Where is my support structure? You're alone. It is jarring. I've had that happen. It's not a new thing to me, but it's always one of the most difficult things that can happen to a person as you relate. I feel that. When you say, “It's tied to that feeling of shame,” can you unpack that? Is it a shame that you didn't see it coming? Is it a shame that you doubt yourself? Tell me what you mean by that.
Deal With Burnout: Sometimes, there are things that are out of your control, and you simply let them be.
It's a sense of shame, especially when you're leading a team of people. I have an entire community that I'm leading. It’s always this feeling. You're the person with the flag, you're going up the hill and the people are falling up behind you. That's exactly what I've been doing since I've been online. That's super weighty. People change their lives around you. They now own homes, cars, and are paying for them as a result of your work, velocity, energy and commitment. They have felt that energy and they line up behind that. There are all these people with their incomes. It’s like, “This isn't just me.” People say, “I can't seem to make an income.” I'm thinking, “You're worried about that. It's for you and your household. Check this one out.” I have an entire team. I have someone who bought a new house and they're moving because I was volitional.
I picked up this flag and decided to march up this hill and say, “Follow me.” When you hit that and you're going into that abyss, the sense of shame is that I made a bad decision along the way. I'm bad at that stuff, which I have to work on. Oftentimes, at business, there are things that are completely out of your control, a new law, a new desk that just happens. All of those things have happened to me. It's this thing where, “I have these people. I have obligations with my husband relative to the commitment to the business and where it's supposed to take us.” That weight is huge. I give pause to people that are like, “I want to be like you, Ann.” I've told them, frankly, “Not quite so much.” You're seeing the pretty outside. That's what you're seeing. I tell them, I’m candid, “Know you're buying into a big business model. It is filled with responsibility. It’s like, ‘Look at that front cover. She did this and that.’ If you know the price, you might think twice. Let me go there with you.”
That's why we're talking about the price of leadership. I appreciate your authenticity with that. I do get it because there's an element of this is what we were all leading for and then it's not there. For our leaders reading, if it hasn't happened, it's going to happen. I'm like you, Ann. I probably carry way too much of that. Everybody's got their own journey they're working to. It still is jarring when it happens.
This takes us to the next point, which is weariness. You've hit that. When you've got a great team, teamwork makes the dream work. You're cooking, you're volleying, and you're all charging in a battle together. When a critical leg is gone and you have to reconstruct, that's how you opened up. The hardest thing is creating that team. How do you combat weariness? How do you stay refreshed? I love that you said, “It's super weighty.” Everybody is like, “I want to be my own boss.” I'm like, “Really? If you want to sign your Social Security Number to an EIN and have the responsibility for other people's mortgage, okay. It looks easy when you're not doing it.” It is an incredibly weighty responsibility. How do you stay refreshed and replenished?
I have experienced extreme weariness, especially when I adapted when my son left and I was doing all the marketing. I looked back and I was like, “How did I do that?” I've suffered physically from it where my body is saying, “Here's how it's going to work. We're going to do this.” This was personal. It’s something called acne rosacea. I broke out with this and I had an event coming up. I'm always into events and all this. My nose was twice the size. I saved the pictures but it was hideous. I’m going to the doctor.
I'm the front of the company, the marketing, the videos and everything, and it's like, “Doc, give me whatever you’ve got to change what this looks like out here. Inside, I know it's screwed up. I know my body is paying the price. You give me what I need. I need this fix.” It was sad because it makes me understand, at a micro level, the backstories of Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson, and all these people who are performers and why they ended messed up. I get it. It's like, “Don't be condemning because you have no idea what that life is like.” With Marilyn, the backstory was they gave her uppers to have her up and downers for her to be down because it was screwed up. It's what happens.
In any case, in that deal, I wasn't getting the right treatment from a regular physician. I needed some help with my glasses and there's a dermatologist on the building. The event was coming up. I went in and they looked at me and I said, “I need to get in today.” All they had to do was look at my face. They got me right in. I didn't call for an appointment. I went into that office and I was like, “I need help. I look like a train wreck.” They diagnose it immediately. I was on double internal antibiotics and double external. I got to turn around enough to be able to show up. I'm saying how bad it has gotten and having it with the face was a real call out to say, “You don't seem to be listening. We'll take you down this way.” You're going to hear the body loud and clear, “You’ve got an issue here.”
We're on the same page relative to this. I made a lifestyle change from a good friend of mine about the Sabbath day. I read a book called Take the Day Off. I've worked Sundays for fifteen years. I know how to put in 80, 90 hours, and work. I read that book and it was finally like, “I won't be working Sundays anymore.” It's tempting as hell. I did a little pinch, it was after dark. It was tempting, but on the whole, when you are a work addict, and I don't mean this in a braggadocious way, what it ends up being is it's a habit that can be difficult to break. It is a literal addiction.
It is, especially when it's your passion. My dad suffered chronic fatigue syndrome back in his mid-50s as a speaker because he would speak 300 days a year. It hit him. I love that you're talking about Sabbathing. I started Sabbathing years ago. We're mere mortals. I've even had younger people on this show in the mid-30s that achieve great success at late 20s and early 30s, and their bodies said, “No way.” It's not just for us middle-aged. There are more and more kids going through burnout and you were not coded like that. If God had to take a rest, so do you.
I would say what I do on a daily basis. For me, I come from the sports world. I was a sports coach for fifteen years. I have to get out and get oxygen. It's where I go get high. It’s my endorphin kick. I got on my bike and I did nine laps in the neighborhood and then went to the gym. That's complete total release, especially like a rowing machine. It's like, “I'm gone.” I have that on a daily basis. I used to work until 9:00 PM. Now, it's pretty much 8:00 and I had the special quiet time with my husband that we do. If you don't do it, then your body will take you down and say, “Here's what we're going to do.”
That's the beautiful thing about these amazing bodies that we have. If you take care of it a little bit, it will take care of you and it lets you know, “We're not doing this.” That’s loneliness and weariness. I want to talk about abandonment. The fear of abandonment is one of the main things. He said, “Stop thinking about what you like and want to think about in favor of what you ought and need to think about.” His was more of a hyper-focus. How do you stay on point? You're like every other leader or entrepreneur out there. Our brains are sparking new ideas and new concepts. People are connecting with us. How do you keep it all bounded?
Take the Day Off: Receiving God's Gift of Rest
It’s unclear when you give that definition of abandonment. It's not someone abandoning me. It's me abandoning what I have to set aside so that I can stay focused. Is that what you mean?
Absolutely. It can be somebody abandoning you. A lot of times, if somebody leaves if their season is over, that is abandonment. I've had employees leave too. You do feel that sense of abandonment. In the end, it gave me the opportunity to stop thinking of how it should be in the present. Now, it's on a clean slate, I get to focus on the future. I didn't mean to lead you with that. As leaders, we can't be all things to all people. Especially as women, we over complicate things and spread ourselves way too thin. How do you stay on point because you could not be successful? The leadership literature hits on that one thing at a time. You can't do it all. You'll end up burning yourself out and you'll be diluted you won't stand out from the crowd. How do you dial that in?
In terms of so much to get done and that works on many levels that we reckon with, and it is a reckoning of sorts. Within the business, there's a reckoning, a prioritization of putting the most urgent and most needful on top. That's something I've honed and crafted for many years. I was trained as a direct response marketer. As a direct response marketer, that fashioned how I look at decision-making versus someone who doesn't have a marketing background. That's at that level.
There's the family level and then there's the relationship level. I'm starting to go into more balance bit by bit relative to having friends because I've been dialed into my business, it's whacked out for sure. Family obligations and duties. What helped in terms of me is this bucket idea of learning how to differentiate what are my responsibilities that I should take on versus ones that I think I should but I don't need to. This is the extreme example I'm going to give on that and it's with my birth family. My parents are both still alive. My siblings got an email from my mom, a longer email than her usual form, that my dad got in a car accident. He's fine, but the car was totaled and this and that. It's like, “Here we are. We’re getting closer to that phase. Things need to change.” My dad was driving.
I made a big decision. I moved away from my home in Minnesota, where everyone is at. We came back and we're back down south. To this point, abandonment, there's my family, there are the siblings, and I tend to be a strong leader. My mom knows that I'm on the estate for executive, as is my brother and all this stuff. They know that Ann will get it done. In fact, my dad wants me to run his business with that eventuality, etc. It’s like, “Ann will be able to do it.”
In my decision to move, I had to look at it in buckets and go, “There are four siblings here. Two have wives that are mega caregivers.” I looked at the whole scope of it, which was conversely to my husband being an only child. That was different. With this, I thought, “I can move away from my mom and dad.” That's hard because everyone else stayed there. I can because they're going to handle this. Normally, I am a take-charge person. I'll lead. When I was asked to be the executor, I said no because of the company. My brother passed away years ago and my mom says, “Now you're an executor, Ann.” I’m like, “Okay.” I moved down south.
That's a profoundly personal thing, abandoning a parent and that whole thing. I'm sharing this because my brother called me and I said, “I manage my husband and all those senior citizens I was all told for single-handedly because they didn't have any siblings.” It's like, “There are my siblings. They're going to be able to take care of it. I'll help out as I can.” No one is running the business to the scope that I am. I despise the cold weather. It was the main reason. That's an example by putting it in a bucket and saying, “My brothers, they can do this. My sister is there. They’re going to be okay. It doesn't have to be me.” I tend to be this mega caregiver step in and take care of everybody's mentality. That's an example.
Sure enough, my brother called and he was checking in with me and I said, “I agree with what you're saying. We need to do something about it. Bring me in if it's a Zoom call. I’m happy to help in any way I can.” It's an example of that. My husband will reassure me too. It is a lonely life as a business owner, especially online. I'm not out and about doing my business, per se. It is the nature of the beast. For example, at church, even, “I should be helping with this.” He then said, “Ann, we have the business and you help people in that way. That's your ministry.” As a person who takes on responsibility easily, it’s like, “Give that to me and consider it done.” Instead of carrying the guilt of these things unresolved or that I should be doing, my husband is saying, “This is our ministry.” I bought some Christian books that I went through and that helped support and solidify that. It's a huge ministry.
Back to what I was saying in terms of abandonment with the projects and all because that's what I deal with all day long. What's the biggest lever I can pull to propel the company forward? We shifted from where it used to be. This is tangible. For years, I would always have three goals for each quarter. “Here are our Q4 goals,” and I would lay them out, run them to my executives, “Do you agree?” Pushback, revise, and bring it to the team. Now, I have a scaling mentor and we're doing one North Star. We went through a two-day workshop to identify our single North Star. Do we have fifteen other things going on? Yes, but nothing precedes the importance of our North Star.
You’ve got to get everything lined up. I love that focus. We need to abandon this need to please everybody or do everything. No is a complete sentence and it's not a bad thing. My dad would always say, he's like, “Whether you're a pastor or not, all of us that are serving others are in full-time ministry. Never take away from that. If you are living your faith and helping people have a more productive, wonderful and connected life, we’re all the ministry and the marketplace.”
I get a lot of people that come to me and they're like, “I feel torn between the two worlds.” I'm like, “Are the two worlds as separate as you think they are?” If you're working for somebody else, they are because you often can't bring that faith component in there. If you're doing your own thing, it's okay to have these onto the mothership segments of it. What's the biggest lever I can pull to move the company? One North Star.
For the readers out there, you guys have heard me on all the different shows. This is hard for me because I can juggle 50 plates. I can juggle more plates than the average bear. It doesn't mean I should, but somebody told me one time the acronym for BUSY is Burdened Under Satan's Yoke. When we make ourselves busy, that's not good. God has this all mapped out. You don't have to do it all for him. Pick that one thing in front of you. I get clear about, “Lord, you've already seen this to the end. Let me do this one thing really good.”
Deal With Burnout: By giving out handouts, you are robbing others of their intellectual and mental capital. Everything that makes them can be snuffed out because of dependency.
Women tend to do that, but is that the best for the company and the rest of the team to follow that? It can lead to chaos.
It's tough. If you're not wired like that, if you're more of a linear person, people like us, it's like oil and water. It’s not good. Thank you, Ann, for that. I love that. It's okay to say no. It doesn't mean you're a bad leader. It means you’re singularly focused. That's Jim Collins Good to Great. The last thing my dad talked about was vision. Vision is like, “Could I ever be a visionary?” My dad always said, “Vision is nothing more than seeing what needs to be done and doing it.” A lot of people talk about it but they don't do anything and I'm like, “That's not vision. That’s dreaming or Post-it Notes in the sky.” Vision is putting work boots on and getting to work. How do you craft? You talked about one thing, but you gave me a lot of different things. How do you keep developing your vision? How do you keep it alive, a living thing?
There are two components to that. Two layers to it are the marketplace and there's the bigger picture vision. For me, that bigger picture vision was forged as a result of my dad and my upbringing. I would say the philosophy and our contribution to society. My dad was instrumental in that. The other is the marketplace where those two intersect. Paul Zane Pilzer was an economic advisor to 2 or 3 different presidents. I love his books. I cannot recommend them highly enough. He talks about us being stewards and our calling in a spiritual way with your business. He took what was in my mind and through my dad's teachings.
It was Paul Zane Pilzer who brought it more into the formation of, “That’s it.” My worthy contribution is to bring to the culture, to society, the more successful entrepreneurs via a strengthened family economy. The strength of their family economy comes from them as their own enterprise. That is my story. My husband and I've had multiple businesses. It was a family economy. We added homeschooling, twelve years of that. We've had this whole internal economy that we sustained ourselves from businesses. We sustained ourselves to our own schooling. That's the formation of our country.
We were primarily an agrarian society, which was also known as farmers who are business owners. It's an economic enterprise. What this does to society is it shifts us away from a give me mentality and creating dependency, also known as a socialist form of government wherein the people's minds, the purpose of the government is to sustain me. My view of the government is to protect my freedom to be able to sustain myself and marry the two crosses in my world. You allow me to be free. You protect that for me and I'll go and be this better-evolved person as a result of that freedom to go and better myself.
The antithesis is when you're giving handouts, you are robbing that person of their intellectual capital and mental capital. Everything that helps them evolve to find out who they can be, you snuff that out because they're in a dependency. The whole premise of being a business owner is you're willing to take on risk. That's the antithesis of, “Is someone else taking the risk? Take his and give that to me because I'm more deserving.” No, you're not. Abraham Lincoln talked about it and it's in the Bible too. It's wrong. It appeals to the flesh. “He'll work. He took on all those risks. He assumed those and he's reaping that benefit. I'll have some of that bread, please. Over this way, please.” No. If we don't teach more of that, I do that by virtue of bringing new entrepreneurs with the strength and family economy. I am super big on this in my messaging. We have an ER physician. She's got her five family members in her business and they love it. That's the big vision.
Where it intersects with the marketplace is where is the best viable business model, realistically, to help make that happen quickly with the least amount of risk, so to speak? That allows them to reach that. What did farmers have to do? There was this dependency relative to, “We pray it rains.” They had to live with these different variables and so do we. Overall, the net effect is it makes for a stronger nation. When you rob a nation of that, you have a weakened atrophied population, a populace that is weakened in atrophy and unable to adapt. The adaptation in business, you're constantly adapting because the marketplace is ever-evolving.
The two have to intersect. I've got this beautiful intersection. To me, that's my citizenship. I've been told, “You should run for office, Ann,” when I was helping with different things. I could but no. I much prefer this. I wanted this sector. Where I shine is teaching and mentoring. In the political realm, I'll support, but I'm not going to run. My dad did when I was young. That too showed me vision and stuff. That's the big picture. That's my vision.
Congratulations on after all you've been through. Now, you're in the zone where it intersected and you're reaping the benefits of that. For our readers out there, it takes a long time and that’s okay. I remember reading Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, 10,000 hours from five years and then five went by. I'm like, “Maybe that’s Tipping Point times three.” You don’t know, but the joys and the journey. Your speech and your call to action about what it takes for people.
For our readers, you know how I like unpacking this. Many people out there have no desire to lift a finger and own their own lives. As a leader, you’re always going to have to deal with the fact, “Okay.” That's not who you're reaching out to. Even if you taught them, they would not be open to receive that. I'm all about being a good citizen of the world, of my country. That means I show up and I give more than I take. There are a lot of people that have it reversed. All you need is about 10% that are on the right side of making it. I love what you said about there. That's incredible.
Thank you. In the converse model that I'm talking about, their true potential is stymied because they're given messaging for a completely different identity that doesn't allow them to come to fruition. I'm a huge believer in source inspiration, having read The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle. The scientific study is with students with their musical instruments and the stick rate, those that would stick with the musical piece. There was one question asked to these students. They had a series but this one was the main predictor. This was over the course of their grade school up to college. This is the question, how long do you intend to play? Underneath that was this premise of, what inspired them to want to play? That first Vivaldi, The Four Seasons. In business, I saw Susie Q could do it.
The Talent Code: Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. Here's How.
I've always been a big believer that you've got to put out pieces of inspiration because it gives the example. I don't know if it was Puerto Rico where they won the baseball series. It started with one player. With that one player, it goes up in the air and it can be done. For me, historically, it was when I saw Olga Korbut flash through my screen when I was a little girl and Nadia Comăneci, “I want to be like that.” It's that source of inspiration. The other thing about the people to attract is there's that beautiful saying, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” It's true when they're ready. The teacher was always there.
We can teach it. Whether anybody is picking up or putting down, that's our gift. We didn't pick stuff up the first time we heard it either. Some of us took a long time.
Multiple messages until. I’m a big believer of that. As what you're doing with your show, you put out all these pieces. It's that net effect of culminating in the human psyche mind. These little triggers that say, “There is potential. There is hope. There is something different. There is a different path.” It culminates in that decision making time.
Thank you. I got many beautiful insights. Is there anything else you want to share with our leaders as we have this time? Is there any other wisdom you'd like to dispense to them?
It’s taking care of yourself. Maybe this is true with leaders, we are being hard on ourselves and putting high expectations. Feed into those things that support yourself for the incredibly high-value role that you fill. It's a rare thing for someone to step into those shoes and lead in that way. You're carrying that flag and people are coming up the hill behind you. It's a weighty responsibility. Nurture yourself through that process. I don't think I've done enough of that. I have an hour of devotion every morning. I could be working on emails but no. That's my time and the Sabbath practice. I’m more coveting these. I'm getting more protective over it to better nurture me through the next phase, quite frankly. I'm going into the next phase in my leadership. Investing, do that for yourself. It's a big role. It's an important role.
Thank you for sharing that with our readers. I'm like you. The older I get, the more in tune I get with that and realize it's okay. I'm developing much more guarded healthy habits. I'm not frenetic and running around. It all has to happen. It wasn't ever ego. There's a whole lot of other things and there are better ways to do it. Thank you for that and sharing that tip with our readers about that one hour. We're not launching a nuclear war. Everything can wait. Even with all the scary things that happened, I'm like, “Do you need to respond to that right now? If not, be at peace. Take that hour, listen, reflect.” I'm glad you're on that journey too. Ann, how can people stay in touch with you? I know our readers are going to want to connect with you.
You can find me and message me through LinkedIn, Facebook. As far as the eCommerce Business School, it's JoinEBS.com if you want to learn more about that. My energy is focused on bringing successful entrepreneurs. I love leaders. My heart is for leaders and the noble work that leaders do, especially when it's a worthy cause, investing in others which I assume your people are.
Where's my energy focused today? Worthy causes. Thank you for all you do. I have learned an awful lot from you. For our readers out there, that's the other bonus. You get to read about Ann's wisdom and all the books that made her tremendous. Thank you so much. If you like what you learned, please hit the subscribe button. If you do us the honor of a rating, we would be thrilled. Also, please share this with your friends. We love to have you join our tremendous email list and move you from a listener to one of our readers as well. To our tremendous readers out there, thank you for paying the price of leadership. Keep it up and have a tremendous rest of the day.
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About Ann Sieg
Ann’s training and mentorship has impacted hundreds of thousands of people worldwide to achieve online success all while working from home.
But nothing has matched the rapid success of her e-commerce students. It’s not uncommon for them to see cash flow in the first few days or weeks of starting their businesses. Ann loves launching new entrepreneurs towards a successful home-based e-commerce business.