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Embrace Your Whims & Make Bad Art with Christi Johnson
14 Plays24 days ago
This week, Gail welcomes Christi Johnson of Christi Johnson Creative.
Christi Johnson is a compassionate business coach and the founder of The Dream Biz® Playground, where she teaches strategy through play to help creative and neurodivergent entrepreneurs build joy-driven businesses that actually feel good to run. After a mental health crisis in 2024 nearly cost her everything, she made it her mission to help others grow sustainably without burning out and with self-care as the foundation, not the afterthought. When she’s not working with clients, you’ll find her playing the piano, hanging out with her 25 nieces and nephews, or recording episodes for The Dream Biz® Podcast. You can connect with her on Instagram, LinkedIn, or Threads.
Christi shares her story of how getting diagnosed with ADHD at 30 made her close her business, crash out, and rediscover her own creativity.
Now she teaches other creative and neurodivergent entrepreneurs how to reconnect with themselves, make art (whether they're good at it or not), and express themselves in the way their true self wants to show up in this world and in their business.
We talk about a lot of practical advice for bringing your dream business to life, and you can find some of Christi's free resources here:
Alt Business Owner Support/Accountability Group
You can find Where's Your Humanity on Instagram, or listen on Youtube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
To learn more about Gail and her work, you can go to her website, worksimple.io, or connect with her on Instagram, Threads, and Tiktok.
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Transcript
00:00:06
Speaker
There is more than enough room. Hold on, Kim. We are and we believe it.
Introduction & Guest Welcome
00:00:18
Speaker
Hello, hello, and welcome back to another episode of Where's Your Humanity. I'm your host, Gail Fraser, and I am so, so excited to be joined by today's guest, Christy Johnson. She is a compassionate business coach and the founder of the Dream Biz Playground, teaching strategy through play to help creatives and neurodivergent entrepreneurs build joy-driven businesses that actually feel good to run. k Christy, thanks so much for being here.
00:00:47
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me. I am super excited to be here. I am so, so excited to have you. And i always love to start off with my guests beyond the business, beyond the professional bio.
00:01:01
Speaker
Who's Christy?
Personal Background & Interests
00:01:02
Speaker
Well, I am a business coach, like you said, but I also have the biggest part of my life is that I have 25 nieces and nephews, which is an insane number. um They keep me busy. I'm not a mom, but I love having my nieces and nephews hang out with me. um They're really big part of my life. They all live super close to me. I am also a pianist. I play the piano. a That's what I studied like formally in school. So that's a big part of my life. And I'm also really into just following my energy um in intuition. I love using tarot cards to support that, things like that. And I really love being outside. yeah.
00:01:43
Speaker
Being outside, breathing the fresh air, especially being being near water is like super important to me. So I always try if I can to go on a walk every day. i would love to live at the beach one day, but I don't. And I'm a big believer in like bringing your dream life into your life like right now, even with if you can't move or you are unable to change your financial situation.
Career Journey & Burnout Experience
00:02:05
Speaker
So I try to walk and see water as much as I can. And that's a big part of my my day. So I've been...
00:02:13
Speaker
Also, my business is a really big hobby for me. I love running my business. I've been a business owner since I was 16. I started as a photographer and then also did swim coaching and piano teaching. Then I went into online business management, which really, really burnt me out.
00:02:29
Speaker
And through the lessons that I learned running my OBM company, that's kind of what brought me into a new way of doing things and followed my energy being less ah glued to my calendar and having more fun and being more creative in my life, which is was a big part of my life when I was first starting my business as a photographer and everything. But somehow like along the way, I think which we can tend to do, the business started to become my like thing that I was tied to and couldn't really escape from.
00:03:02
Speaker
And so it kind of shifted from like fun and creativity and following what I was really passionate about into Messages and meetings and systems and schedules. And I love systems. Systems are great, but it was like not very fun for me. So I burnt out and then I kind of relaunched everything, which we might get into a little bit, but that's the but a little bit of background on me. I think so many people can relate to that story of like, OK, i started a business because I was really passionate about this thing or i'm really good at this thing or I want to pursue this and just feeling really burnt out. And I love your mission behind your business now of helping entrepreneurs and creators find that again. yeah Tell me ah more about your journey. how How did you get to where you are now?
00:03:53
Speaker
Yeah. So when I was a photographer, I really was just following my creative passions and I really was building my business in a way that was just like fun, you know, because I didn't really have a lot of other responsibilities. I was a lot younger um and things like that. I lived with my parents when I first started my business. So there was just a lot of fewer things that were taking pulling my attention away. And I really had the freedom to follow my energy.
00:04:23
Speaker
But then as you know, you get older and you become an adult and you move out and you do your own things. And now suddenly you're in charge of like paying your bills and everything. Then you're like, Oh, I got a, I really got a hustle.
00:04:37
Speaker
So I started hustling.
Impact of ADHD on Career & Strategies
00:04:40
Speaker
But one thing that I did kind of like make the decision to do was I wanted to set aside photography for a while because I wanted to have my nights and weekends free. And because I had recently got married in 2017 and I was like, you know what, this it's really important for me to be able to spend time with my husband and my family, my husband, all the nieces and nephews, most of them, 23 out of the 25 are on my husband's side. Okay. So once he and I got married that this new part of my life came into my life. And so i was like, I really want to be there to be able to go to their baseball games and spend weekends with them, you know, things like that.
00:05:20
Speaker
And so I pivoted into helping business owners and that looked like but private photo editing at the start. I only lasted two years doing that because I was working constantly like 15 hours a day so during busy season and that was just too much. So i was like, okay, how can I use my skills to help business owners? So that's kind of when I started to dabble into coaching.
00:05:43
Speaker
And I didn't really have a ton of experience coaching. And so because I didn't really have confidence in myself, you know, when you're first starting something, I think it is important to be honest about like the level of where you are.
00:05:56
Speaker
I do think I could have grown my coaching business more if I had had more confidence, but I, where I was at the time, it just wasn't there. So I started coaching a little bit in 2020. but then where I really started to see growth was when I shifted into online business management because I had built my photography business with a lot of systems. Like that though that was really important to me was making sure that my workflows were all in place. My processes were solid and like my clients loved working with me because the experience was super easy. And so I started to help other photographers and other creative business owners with their backend systems, building CRMs, things like that. And then I also started managing their teams because that was also a skill that I had. and
00:06:46
Speaker
that was going really well. My business was growing. It was thriving. i was bringing on team members, but then I was diagnosed with ADHD when I turned 30 and like,
00:06:59
Speaker
it was like A lot of people have said, I've seen this happen where you get diagnosed with ADHD and then suddenly lee you're like, wait, why can't I do the things that I used to be able to do anymore? Yep.
00:07:10
Speaker
I think that getting my ADHD diagnosis and then also trying to like start begin to manage that and understand that was also happening at the same time that my business was growing really, really fast. And so I was building my business with like strategies and structures in place that were not fit for an ADHD brain because I didn't know that I had ADHD. Right. So I was constantly like structured. I was having meetings like 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.
00:07:40
Speaker
um I didn't have any boundaries in place because as someone with ADHD, I like to follow my energy. I like to just go to the flow, do whatever is' fun. But I didn't like have the – So foresight to be like, oh, this may be a problem. Like I would, I would have like client ah launches on the same day and not really think, oh, this might be a problem that I've got two client launches happening in at once. Cause that's another big like struggle for people with ADHD is the issue of like time blindness, not really knowing how long things will take. So yeah.
00:08:16
Speaker
It got to be too much for me. um And I wasn't able to manage it. And I ended up burning out and having a a pretty severe mental health crisis where I had to shut down my business.
00:08:28
Speaker
I had to let go my team members and I couldn't work. I had to shut down and let go of my clients for six months because I was having panic attacks and I had a nervous breakdown. I was just like totally unwell.
00:08:40
Speaker
So as I was starting to heal and recover, i knew that I couldn't rebuild the same way that I did before, but I still didn't quite yet like know what
Reconnecting with Creativity
00:08:54
Speaker
that looked like. And so through a long process with my coach and my therapist, I started to actually get back into like inner child work and like play and creativity. i started making music again, which I hadn't done in like eight years. I have a master's degree in piano performance and music my life for so long. But then once I started building my business, it's like,
00:09:20
Speaker
It just kind of went away because if it wasn't making me money or it wasn't productive, I wasn't going to do it. Yeah. So through that time of recovery, I started to get back into things that that really made me feel like me, like taking photo walks like I used to do when I was 16 and playing music just for fun like I used to do when I was a teenager.
00:09:40
Speaker
And then also I started like making really bad art. I'm not, I don't consider myself like very artsy or artistic. Like if, if I'm going to doodle, it's going to be a stick figure and like flowers. And I, but I see the like value in still creating art, even if you're quote unquote, not good at art, because it's part of the creative process of creating expressing your humanity, like expressing your feelings, expressing yourself, and also giving yourself a break from
00:10:13
Speaker
the grind of life, which can be so hard. Sometimes I think it is so important as an adult to continue to play and allow yourself to be bad at something and to just have fun. So I started to bring more of that into my life and it was like something unlocked for me. I was like, wait a minute, have I just been like missing The point of life for a really long time that yes, you're supposed to be successful, but like you're also supposed to be a functioning human who can have fun and have time with friends like and have time with your family. I just didn't have time for any of that stuff for such a long time because I was hustling so hard and not really taking care of myself. yeah So then I began to rebuild and think like, okay, how can I support my ADHD brain?
00:10:59
Speaker
How can I go with the flow and let my ideas flow? Because when I'm in flow, I can get a lot of stuff done. Yes. But when I'm like trying to push against things that I don't want to do, it takes forever. It's like pulling teeth. makes it harder. Yeah. it Makes it harder, leads to burnout.
00:11:17
Speaker
I started studying a lot about ADHD, how to support myself, and then started to build around what actually felt good for me rather than like what sounded good on paper. Like being an online business manager, that sounds good and it got me a lot of clients, but it was a skill that I had, not necessarily like the passion of what I really wanted to do. So it was through a lot of work with my coach, my therapist,
00:11:40
Speaker
And focusing on like reconnecting with my creativity that really allowed me to figure out, no, wait, this is what I want to do. This is the path that I want to be on. And this is also how i want to help people as well so that they can build their businesses and grow with their self-care. Like self-care is the foundation, fueling your creativity,
00:12:00
Speaker
And allowing yourself to have the space to be human and thrive in a world that tells you you are not successful unless you're making money or working all the time. I want it to be like, no, you are you are valuable how you are. And you can make money without burning yourself out in the process.
00:12:19
Speaker
A million percent. And you know I have ADHD too. I had kind of a similar journey. i got diagnosed like – almost 27 had kind of the similar experience of, oh, wow, this really sucked my whole life. And I've just been kind of pushing through. how do I not do that anymore? i think is a really...
00:12:43
Speaker
It's such a like breakdown, almost a mourning, grief process um when you're late diagnosed where you're just like, oh I could have had the support the whole time. i could have been trying things this whole time. i was trying to fit myself into a mold that I didn't need to fit in. And I think so many business owners, especially with the online space and how the algorithm works, and i think I talked about this a little bit on my podcast episode with Andrea Schaub, kind of are expected to build our brand in a way that's super compartmentalized and niched in like hyper specific. Here's what I do and here's who I am in a way that has to be black and white to perform and be clear to people, quote unquote. Yeah.
00:13:28
Speaker
that doesn't leave room for creativity or other aspects of your personality or the things you do outside of work. And it's the reason that I like to ask that question at the beginning of the podcast is like, we're all people outside of our business who do things outside of our business, ideally. And that's yeah how it should be. As you went on that journey with your own ADHD diagnosis and and creating the Dream Biz Playground, and this building this new business, what are some of those systems that you found helpful that you've pivoted to now that you've learned that about yourself?
Aligning Business with Self-Care
00:14:03
Speaker
Yeah, so number one, the biggest thing that I have pivoted to is setting boundaries in my schedule. i used to be available all the time for meetings because I was like, well, I want my clients to be able to book me whenever they want because that's what I would maybe want if I was a client.
00:14:22
Speaker
But now I've realized like when I go to someone's page and they have their certain days available, I'm not thinking anything about it. Like, oh, why aren't they available on Tuesday at 2 p.m.? I'm not thinking of that. I'm just like, oh, here's their available times. Great. Let me pick what works for me. So setting boundaries in my schedule was number one.
00:14:40
Speaker
but I started set it up in my CRM to make it to where I only book a certain amount of meetings every single week and a certain amount every single day. And I'm limited to the timeframe that I create it because that I am allowed to have meetings um because I realized that it's very important for me to have white space in my calendar so that I can follow my creative whims and yeah follow my energy.
00:15:09
Speaker
And that is another system that I've kind of put in place, which is related to setting boundaries in my schedule. But Instead of time blocking, which is what I used to do, now I practice what is called intuitive time management. It's something that I learned from my business coach, Sarah Ziesler.
00:15:29
Speaker
And it's where you write down everything that you want to accomplish. And then when you sit down to work, you just pick what you want to do. You don't have like, oh, on Tuesday at 3 p.m., I'm going to write my blogs. And on Thursday at 1 p.m., I'm going to create my content, which is what I used to do.
00:15:48
Speaker
Yes. Then I would sit down at my desk and be like, I don't want to do this. Yes. Oh, my gosh. That's like the worst. It's the advice that I always got of just like, we'll just block the time in your calendar. I have really bad demand avoidance. And the worst offender I avoid demands from is my past self. Yeah. um So it's like I'd put those blocks in my calendar and now it's like that is the one thing I don't want to do right now. Now that I'm being told that I have to do it, I'm like, I don't want to do that. And I didn't know there was like a term for for this other way of doing it. And that's how I structure. i use ClickUp as my project management and I have a list of things that are due today. And I always say trick myself into the illusion of choice. like Yeah. Like, what's the thing that I want to do today or want to do right now? Because with ADHD, the dopamine helps you get started and gets you into that flow state where you can actually make progress. hmm.
00:16:51
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I don't do that anymore with the time blocks. I follow my energy. Just like you're saying, I just choose what I want to do. And then the other thing that has really, really helped me is involving other people. So doing body doubling and things like that. And one of the things that I do is every week I invite people to join me on a call where we set our priorities for the week. And that really helps me with my time blindness because every single Monday I'm looking at my calendar and I'm saying, okay, what do I have going on this week? What do I need to be aware of that's coming up next week?
00:17:26
Speaker
And so then I can write down those things and just the act of writing down everything that I have going on the next couple weeks can help me to be like, okay, this is a busier week meeting wise. So I need to prioritize these things and oh, I'll have next week to work on this because one of the biggest problems that I was facing was,
00:17:44
Speaker
just having too much work to do all at once. Yes. So the boundaries in my schedule really helped that. And then also now I have a routine that I do every Monday where I'm looking through my priorities, but I used to do that, but I just like didn't really work as well. So involving other people has helped that because there's something about like being accountable to another human that That really helps me. And I think a lot of people with ADHD have a similar experience where like body doubling really helps co-working, things like that. So we do that every single Monday and then get in ah an Instagram chat with people to say, hey, these are my priorities. And then we check in with each other every week to like make sure that we're still we're still doing that. And that helps me to get a lot more done.
00:18:27
Speaker
So those are probably the biggest systems that I've implemented that have helped me to really take care of myself, to make sure that i am not overworking myself, and also to get things done in ah in a reasonable time, have that fourth sight without like making sure that I'm not falling into the time blindness again where I have multiple things happening too much, and then allowing myself to have – the choice, which brings in dopamine to the picture, which is very important. I need to be able to have the choice to do what I want to do.
00:18:59
Speaker
Or how do you manage that overwhelm when you're just like, I have to do this and this and this and this. I call it the and then like and then I have to do this and then I have to do this. Yeah. Well, I recognize, i think it's a lot of self-compassion where I used to think, oh, I have to do all these things.
00:19:18
Speaker
Now I recognize, wait a minute, I can't do all those things and that's okay. Okay. And so number one, it's starting with self-compassion and realizing like, oh, I need time to take care of myself. I need time to go on my walks outside. I need time to go with the flow. So when I start to make that list and it's starting to get overwhelming, then I start to say, okay, what can I remove that is not important?
00:19:46
Speaker
What can I move to next week? And what would feel really, really good for me to accomplish right now? Like, is there something that is giving me a lot of anxiety that if I could just knock out that one thing, I would feel so much more free. So that really helps me to avoid overwhelm when I'm looking at my list is self-compassion. I can't do this all and that's okay.
00:20:11
Speaker
Seeing, okay, what do I need to do right now? What can be pushed off to next week? Almost having your first draft and then editing it down. or Yeah. If there's like something that's sticking out that's like, hey, this is taking up a lot of space in your brain. Can I do that? So then the anxiety will go down.
00:20:28
Speaker
um Another system that I use as well is like ranking things on like time. Like how long will this take? Yeah. And like graphing it. So how long will this take and how much anxiety is this giving me? So on one side of the graph is the time that it will take. On the other side is the anxiety level that it's giving you. So that's another way to be like, okay, these things aren't going to take a lot of time and they're not really giving me a lot of anxiety. So I can hold off on those. This thing right here, that's going to take a little bit of time, but it's giving me a lot of anxiety. I should probably do that right now.
00:21:04
Speaker
um This thing that is going to take a lot of time and is giving me a lot of anxiety. How can I support myself to get that done? Can I go to a coffee shop where my environment is different? Treat myself to a little reward. Can I do a co-working session with some friends so that it's more fun? Or can I really check in with myself? Like, is this something that I really need to do? Because I try to avoid having things that work.
00:21:30
Speaker
are causing me a lot of anxiety and will take a lot of time. So I used to just not even worry about that. Like when I was an online business manager and I was setting up CRM systems for people, it takes a lot of time and it gave me a lot of anxiety.
00:21:43
Speaker
People who set them up like, and they love it. I love that for them, but I didn't actually love it. It was a skill that I had, but not something that I actually enjoyed. yeah, I just don't let those things onto my list anymore. So I had to say no to things and realize like, am I letting this in? Like if something is coming up that I'm letting in that is taking me a lot of time and giving me a lot of anxiety, I need to have a think and be like, should I really be doing this?
00:22:11
Speaker
Can I just not do this anymore? Can I stop offering this as a service? Do I even need to be doing this? Can someone else do it for me? So that's another tool that I use as well. ah In addition to having like,
00:22:23
Speaker
the first draft be kind of everything. And then, okay, this is my real list. And that's one of the best parts about being an entrepreneur that I think we don't talk about enough is that self-study. Earlier this year, i did a big launch for a Done With You program. I got in a few clients. i didn't want to create the content for it. I was just dreading it so much. And I was like, oh, I'm going to put so much effort into my business because this is scalable and whatever.
00:22:53
Speaker
And every day I was just like dreading creating the content. And I was like, I'll just do it as clients and members go through it. And they weren't really engaging with it. And so it was a lot of just like checking in like, hey, don't forget you still are doing this thing.
00:23:08
Speaker
And then I was just like, I don't like that either. I don't want to be the person. project manager of my clients. I just wanted, because I do the setup for their CRMs and project management tools. And I'm like, no, I like the setup part of it. i I don't really want to offload that onto them when that's the biggest lift for a lot of the business owners that I work with.
00:23:33
Speaker
And when that's the work that I enjoy the most and ended up just giving the members credit to ah full setup because I was just like, clearly this is what's going to work best for both of us. And I want them to get the best result. But I think that when we are in a business, we can put so much effort into well, this is my offer and this is what I have to do. And I have to offer this because my competition offers this or I feel like I should or the like so cost fallacy where you're like, I've already put so much time and effort into this. But really, you should be focusing on the offers that you get excited to do and that you get energized by because that's how you're going to give the best results anyway.
00:24:18
Speaker
Yeah, 100%. Just because someone else is doing something doesn't mean that you have to. Just because other people do done with you setups doesn't mean that you have to And i had a similar experience recently too where I, right now my one-on-one coaching is all through Slack. We communicate every day on Slack through voice messages and text messages. But for some reason, like I had it in my head that I need to do calls because that's what everyone else does. And so I came up with this whole plan to do calls but so that I could,
00:24:48
Speaker
be a better coach. And I invited a couple of my past clients to test to beta test it with me. And they were like, I don't think you need this. like we why are you Why are you doing this? kind of That's not what they said, but they were like, hey, this is not needed. like We accomplished all these goals even though we didn't have any cause. And I was like, oh, oh okay, cool. So I was like giving myself a problem that wasn't even there because I was trying to follow what other people do rather than what I actually wanted to do or what was actually working for my clients. And it was just a whole thing. And that's why I'm a big believer in listening to your energy, paying attention, like what is fueling you? What feels really, really good? What feels really bad? And if it's something that feels bad, I'm always like –
00:25:33
Speaker
is there a specific reason that this is not feeling good? And can I give some care and support to that reason so that then I could continue to to do this thing? Or is it something that just needs to be eliminated altogether and I don't even need to offer it because it's not supporting me and it's not enjoyable. And even if I remove this roadblock, I'm still not going to enjoy it. Like you have the freedom to do that as a business owner.
00:25:57
Speaker
And I think the more you do that, too, even when it feels scary, like, oh, I'm removing this offer, especially if you've had success with it, if you've had people buy into it, removing an offer can be really scary if you're just like, this doesn't really feel aligned anymore. Like, I don't really like to do this. But I think you will attract people.
00:26:18
Speaker
The clients who are aligned with either the version of you that you are now um versus when you started that program or just aligned with the type of work that you want to be doing because they're seeing the value of whatever else you're offering or whatever you're offering in place of that.
00:26:35
Speaker
And we don't have to stay one thing. Yeah,
Embracing Change in Business
00:26:40
Speaker
absolutely not. We do not have to stay one thing. You're allowed to change. And I think change is like healthy, actually.
00:26:46
Speaker
As a human, you're going to change. I would love to be ah an entrepreneur who has done the same thing for 15 years. Like that would be really cool. And also, i have to accept that that's not my story. That's not how our brains work. Yeah, I need novelty. It's part of my brain and it's part of what makes me like me. And that's good and great and awesome.
00:27:09
Speaker
And valuable. Obviously, followed you and a lot of other ADHD entrepreneurs yeah on threads and Instagram. And one of the roadblocks I had before I started my business was, well, I couldn't be a business owner because I'm too squirrel-brained for this. like and Yeah.
00:27:28
Speaker
I can't be locked into one thing because then i can't evolve. And I know myself, like i switched jobs every year for eight years. Like I know myself and I know that I like to evolve and I know that I don't like doing the same thing over and over. And I know that certain tasks are really hard for me, even though they're not actually that hard.
00:27:47
Speaker
But I also think that's what gives us strength and value as entrepreneurs is that like we are constantly evolving we constantly changing and constantly looking at this and being like, well, is this the best way to do it?
00:28:01
Speaker
Can I be doing this differently? Can I be providing this service or doing this thing for myself better? I think that's almost essential to entrepreneurship. Yeah. And I think it's important to allow yourself to go with the flow and give yourself what you need.
00:28:18
Speaker
And I think that's why I feel like allowing yourself to use your imagination and to connect with yourself and your intuition is super important. Because when you can connect with your imagination, your intuition, whichever way you want to do it, whether it's through journaling, whether it's through making art, whether it's through like I did reminding myself of the things that I love to do as a kid, like that helps me to be like, hey, these are keys and clues to what I really want to do and paying attention to what you want to do.
00:28:51
Speaker
is what can help you to eventually have your work feel less like work and more like play where you are just totally in the zone, in flow and doing what you love to do, which is my goal for all my clients. And I love using creativity to help them do that because That's what helps you get into an essence of like you. it used to do a lot of in my business is I would be like, well, this person's doing this and they're doing that. And this person over here is doing this. So I need to do one of those things.
00:29:23
Speaker
When you're talking about you're done with you offer, like, You realize it didn't work for you. And I think it's important for you and healthy and great that you were able to say, this is not working for me. I'm going to something else. And when you are able to connect with yourself, like, and give yourself that permission to do what you want, that makes it so much better for you and your business.
00:29:44
Speaker
Yeah. And you touched on using your imagination and tapping into your creativity. I know that that's kind of the center of what you do now in your business. Yeah. What are some of the strategies that you pull from or that you recommend to your clients or that you do in your day to day practice to tap into that part of yourself and use it as a tool? Yeah.
00:30:08
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really good question. For me, work my work with my clients is very intuitive. Basically, the the first step for me is to empathize with them and to say,
00:30:21
Speaker
You're okay. You're doing good. I can see that all this is really stressful and I understand. And let's instead tap into what you actually want.
00:30:31
Speaker
So one of the first things that I do with my clients is we design their dream day And it's an activity that's really easy that they can go through. um If your listeners want to go through this exercise, I'd love to share the link with them. They can they can download it for free. um But I really help them to paint paint a picture of their dream day. And we do an activity where we connect with the future version of you.
00:30:58
Speaker
And this future version of you is fully alive totally embodying all of your strengths and your passions. They have all the resources that they need, whether it's financial or personnel, support, people, community, like the sky's the limit. Anything is possible.
00:31:20
Speaker
And allowing yourself to step into that version of you can be scary at first. And it can also be difficult if you are burnt out.
00:31:31
Speaker
So if someone is burnt out, the first thing that I usually tell them to do is to start incorporating little elements of joy into their day and bringing back play. So one of the, I'm just throwing a lot at you right now, but one of the things that I- No, that's great. this is so energizing and I'm, this is why I have you here. Throw a lot at me. I'm glad. So if you're not able to connect with that version of yourself because you're burnt out, then I recommend creating a joy menu.
00:32:00
Speaker
I don't know exactly where I got this idea from. I think it was from an ADHD support group that I was in where they were talking about creating a menu of tasks to do instead of telling yourself you need to do this and then you need to do that. They were like, make it a menu. So when I was super burnt out,
00:32:16
Speaker
It was so hard for me to even get out of my bed and put on real clothes or put on makeup or do my hair or just get out of the house because I was burnt out and I was depressed. And so I created a joy menu, which was like little things that I can do to remind myself that I am a person who has fun.
00:32:34
Speaker
And it is, then I eventually changed it into where like there's appetizers, which are things that take five to 10 minutes. So that's like dancing to Hamilton track one is one of those things.
00:32:46
Speaker
Putting on lipstick is one of those things for me. um Doing a tarot spread, things like that that take five to 10 minutes, lighting a candle, doing some deep breathing. And then entrees is the second thing.
00:32:57
Speaker
And those are things that take 30 minutes to an hour. Call a friend, go on a walk around the block, play Dance Dance Revolution for 30 minutes or whatever, you know? yeah Anything to bring joy back to your day. And then desserts, those are things that take like two hours or more. like do a day trip to the lake or the beach or whatever makes you feel good. Go get a massage or take ah a half day to walk around downtown in your city that you live in and just see what's what. Or so sometimes I have like have a library day where you go and you just read some books in the library. So that's one thing that I, that's a practice that I do my, in my own life. I do that a lot. If I'm just feeling low energy, I'll say, Hey, let me pull from my joy menu. Um, So that's something that I tell my clients if they're super burnt out, hey, let's start there.
00:33:48
Speaker
Because when you dream about your future, which is back to what i was talking about before, when you dream about your future, it's hard to connect to a version of you that is fully resourced and supported and living out all of your strengths and passions and everything.
00:34:01
Speaker
It's hard to connect with that version of you when you are burnt out. So that's where I would say let's focus on bringing you joy to your day-to-day so you can remember who you are and what you love to do. So then we can say, okay, let's tap into your dream day.
00:34:15
Speaker
We tap into your dream day and we journal about it and then we draw a picture about it. And I always encourage people like, it doesn't have to be good. It doesn't have to look good. It doesn't have to be good by anyone's standards.
00:34:27
Speaker
And you might even be like, that's not a great picture. But the point of that is is not to create good art. It's to express yourself. Because there have been studies that have been done that prove that when you practice creativity, you are preventing burnout. Like, right? I was listening to the Liz Moody podcast and she was talking about how burnout recovery we think is just like rest, but it's not just rest.
00:34:54
Speaker
It's rest and creativity. That's also part of burnout recovery. So, We do exercises like that. And then I'm always assigning, I'm also assigning homework of anything that can be like tactile. Another one that I really love to do is called Chuck the Suck. That's the PG version.
00:35:11
Speaker
You just write down everything that you hate doing and then you rip it up. And then you take those pieces of paper that you've ripped up and you scribble them. Because that's a really fun thing to do to release stuck energy and to just feel good. Like, yeah, I hate i hate doing this. And then we like gather it all together and clump it up and like throw it away or throw it in the garbage or burn it, light it on fire. That's something that's really fun to do. So I try to do things that are like tactile or things that are really creative things. We also do a lot of um brainstorming.
00:35:42
Speaker
I'll have people do like a hundred things, list down a hundred things that you want to, that you want your clients to be able to feel or do or experience. That's something that we just did today in the Dream is Playground was we listed out a hundred things that you wanted your clients to be able to believe or do or feel after working with you and just pushing yourself to say whatever comes to to your mind can help you to tap into that creative part of yourself where you'll start to say things that you didn't even realize were there inside you by pushing yourself to try to get to 100 things. These types of things are something that like a lot of people are not really doing anymore. They're taking shortcuts through AI or through copying someone else's work and not really allowing yourself to like get to the good part of creativity, which is like
00:36:30
Speaker
pushing through the roadblocks that come up for you. I think that pushing through the roadblocks, like we do in my 100 things activity is so healthy and good because then you're unlocking a part of you that you didn't know was there. And that's where like real creativity comes out. So that was a very long winded way to answer your question of what are some of the activities? Those are some of them. I have more. I've created a bunch of them. Eventually I want to make a deck that like a card deck of activities. That'd be so cool. That's on my bucket list for like this year, I think Q2, Q3. Yeah. Because I would love people to just be able to like shuffle the deck, pick one and have a little creative activity that's related to your business. I love the idea of building those pieces back into our day. As someone who's obviously dealt with burnout in the past myself, like...
00:37:17
Speaker
that depression that you like, I also have depression, but yeah that burnout period, it feels very like you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel. And for me, there's a lot of anhedonia. So like not having fun with the things that you normally would find fun Yeah. but like you have to do them anyway even in that period of like ok well here are the things that i know yeah i used to like like here are the things that i know i enjoy if i'm feeling good or maybe trying something new and maybe you hate it and maybe you don't and i think
00:37:52
Speaker
Part of the creative process is that trial and error of this lands well and this doesn't. Or I really liked painting, but I didn't like drawing. Or for me, like I really like knitting, but I don't like sewing as much. There's that trial and error piece, which is so valuable for just your day-to-day life, but also business. Oh, I can figure those things out.
00:38:13
Speaker
And also for me, I find that my creative hobbies are a stress-free way to practice imperfection. And like you talked about with, we're just making bad art and that's great. And I think there's so much personal value in creating art that's quote unquote bad or making mistakes and having to go back and redo it or accept that but in knitting terms for me, your finished like garment or whatever just has some things that are imperfect in it or just being able to be like, okay, well, I'm just going to rip back
00:38:48
Speaker
a bunch of rows and go and do it again. Like when we have these tools and these shortcuts, like you're talking about with AI, it takes out the rub, like it takes out the friction of having to not only learn the skill, but just like experience the trial and error and experience the like, oh, I messed up and now I have to go and do this again whatever.
00:39:13
Speaker
ah just live with the imperfection of it And those are really valuable skills for all parts of our life. Life isn't perfect. Life's going to be lifing. They're coping skills too.
00:39:28
Speaker
Yeah, i I agree with you. And I also think that Outsourcing your creativity is not going to help you long Oh, a million percent.
AI's Impact on Creativity & Connection
00:39:43
Speaker
To your point about AI and generative AI, because I really wanted to talk about this more with you. When you're talking to a chat bot or to ChatGPT,
00:39:54
Speaker
you're not giving yourself the opportunity to go to your actual humans in your life to help you and support you. And yes, the the chat TVT is going to give you a response that's faster, but it's not going to give you the opportunity to connect with another human.
00:40:11
Speaker
And I think that that's what life is about is connecting with other humans. My husband and I recently like we're just – Feeling so discouraged about the news and people in our life who are not doing well and the state of things. Oh my goodness. Yeah.
00:40:30
Speaker
Everything was just weighing really heavily. And one thing that we did that weekend is we had tickets to go see one of my friends perform music on the patio of a restaurant, local restaurant in downtown.
00:40:44
Speaker
Also that weekend, we had the opportunity to go to a play station. So we went to a play and got to see real life humans making real life art and people gathering there in together to watch humans make this art. And then the next day we got to go and hear my friend play music. And he's so talented. And people were dancing. And like the summer, the evening, it was beautiful. The sun was shining. It was sunset. It was perfect weather. People were dancing, drinking, eating, making music. And literally I was like, this is what life is about. This is what we need more of is humans getting together and doing things and creating things and sharing the things that they've created with the world.
00:41:25
Speaker
I also saw this email recently from... Alex Hermosi, you can bleep it out if you don't want to name names, but I'm naming names. but He had this email where he was talking about testing marketing content using robots. Oh, I saw this as a headline somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the email was like, I'm using a hundred robots to to test marketing content and using like AI avatars.
00:41:54
Speaker
I might be getting some of the details wrong. So like if you're listening to this and you're like, well, he didn't totally say that. That's fine. You can fact check me. But basically the gist of it, what I understood with it was that he was making avatars and testing out hundreds of different iterations of content to see what was stick and engage better and perform better.
00:42:12
Speaker
And I saw that email and I was like, we have lost the plot. I don't want to see a robot. Tell me how much a robot liked my content. Exactly. And also, if you're creating that content anyway, just put it out and see how the humans respond to it.
00:42:31
Speaker
Yeah, I think the point was like, because you're one person, you're only going to be able to post like a post a day, maybe. He's like, the AI is generating more, more posts.
00:42:42
Speaker
Or well, you can you can do a lot more posts on threads, you know, but if you're like wanting to, to stick to your boundaries and be a healthy person, I think that posting like once a day on Instagram is kind of a lot. His point was like, the robots are generating the content like through the AI.
00:42:57
Speaker
So, you know, They're testing it out with robots on like, are the humans going to be liking the robots? Whatever. And I was just like, no. It's such a dystopian thing. And I was having this conversation with a friend of mine who was like originally very like pro chat GPT was like, oh yeah, i run, run everything by chat GPT. And she works at a small company and they basically like really did adopt it. They were using it to help them generate reports and generate emails and whatever.
00:43:27
Speaker
And the last time I saw her, she was just like... you know what, I don't want to read emails that were written by AI because I can tell that they were written by AI. And I feel like she's like, our company has basically backed off their cool use of ChatGPT just because she was like, we were creating content and emails with AI that was just getting read by AI and then responded to by AI. And she's like, at that point, what's the point?
00:43:58
Speaker
You're creating content for robots to consume and react to. ok that's like, I don't know, maybe something that you do in like high school robotics team. That's not a business strategy because the whole point of.
00:44:15
Speaker
Art and business and content in in theory and idealizing how content could be is to connect with your client, connect with your consumer.
00:44:28
Speaker
You need a human element to that for it to land. And even with, I've been seeing the Polaroid ads. I don't know if you've been seeing those, but they've been like, take this picture before this water doesn't exist anymore. yeah And obviously it's a marketing strategy. They are trying to sell their product.
00:44:46
Speaker
But they're doing it in a way that emphasizes the humanity. And like these things are important to us to live our lives. and those are the things that we should be pouring our energy into. Whether that's, you know, the environment and climate as a whole, because, you know, we need water to survive and air to breathe and things like that to survive as a species. But like also just in our day to day enjoyment, if you outsource all of your creativity and your critical thinking and whatever to a software like then what are you doing?
00:45:25
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And I also view my content as like practicing my instrument. So as a pianist, I would practice hours and hours and hours and then give a recital. And the recital is kind of like the main event. But even the recital...
00:45:45
Speaker
The imperfections are kind of what made it beautiful because you go to a live music performance to see a human present their art. If you wanted it to be perfect, you would listen to the recording at your house. yeahp You go to a live music performance to connect with that person on a human level. And so for me, when I'm creating Instagram content, for example, I view that more as practicing my instrument. So I am iterating. i am testing things out. I am following my creative whims, but there's a lot less pressure for me personally, because I know that like the main event is me connecting with my work with my clients. It's if I'm going to be speaking at a conference, like things like that, those are the main events. But like my content on social media, that's just me practicing my instrument and testing things out, trying things out. And it's where I have the opportunity to make mistakes and say, oh, that post didn't land. Well, that's annoying. I'll try again tomorrow. And also it gives me the opportunity to be human and to share my thoughts and my views with people and connect with people in a personal way rather than having the AI robots, avatars, try to create my content and perfect it. Like that's not what I'm here for. I'm here to connect with people Because that's but that's what life is about is connecting with people and connecting with others and you doing your business as a human first business. That's what is going to be important for you is connecting with your content and allowing yourself to be creative
00:47:19
Speaker
which for me is a lot of embracing imperfection and allowing yourself to make mistakes and going with the flow. So I very much welcome mistakes in my content or in my creative process or whatever, because I know that I'm human. And also it's going to help me to learn from them and say, oh, well, that didn't work out. So let me try this yeah it other way.
00:47:45
Speaker
And if you think about even, i mean, from the AI stance, I think now it's like, oh, I like to see a typo in an email because it makes me know that a human wrote it. Like nothing lands in my head more than when I make a typo in a post that goes like viral.
00:48:02
Speaker
I'm like, I spelled this really common thing wrong or the punctuation, because I don't know if you have this, but writing with ADHD where I'm just spilling out like a million thoughts and then punctuation is just somewhat there. And sometimes I'll have like a post pop off on threads and I'm just like, oh my God, i didn't even have like a single comma in there. But like people don't care. Yeah. Yeah.
00:48:27
Speaker
I've had reels where things are misspelled. I've had whatever ramblings that I share on threads that like perform really well and better than my content that I spent 20 minutes like figuring out the right wording for.
00:48:42
Speaker
Because ultimately, if people resonate with what you have to say, they don't care that it's perfect. They don't care that you don't have makeup on. They don't care that your hair is greasy today like it is for me.
00:48:54
Speaker
The point is connection. and those are the things that are going to land because someone else is out there going, oh yeah, same. Oh, I really needed to hear that today.
00:49:06
Speaker
Yeah. And something else I thought about too, while you were talking about that was the concept of iterating but and focusing, thinking of your content as some ah way to express yourself and to connect with other people and viewing it less as something that needs to be perfect can help you to Generate more ideas, because if you are constantly thinking that, oh, this needs to be perfect, then you're going to limit yourself when you are using chat to BT, especially if you are trying to come up with content ideas or something like that, which is what I feel like a lot of business owners are using chat to BT for these days is content ideas. or helping them plan their content or even map out your sales pages or your offers or whatever is like the way that the models are structured is like they're using a lot of things on the internet for their knowledge and then they are kind of regurgitating things that they've seen already or they're also like looking at patterns and
00:50:09
Speaker
from content and saying, okay, if the people who ask this question usually get this response, and so we're gonna generate something that looks like this. So the information that you are getting from ChatGPT is likely plagiarized and also possibly false.
00:50:26
Speaker
Yeah, because you are it's relying on work that people have already done on that is available on the Internet that the creators may or may not have given permission for the company to use as their sources.
00:50:39
Speaker
And then it's saying, well, things look like this. This we see these patterns when people ask these kinds of questions about business and content. And so then you probably want something like this. And it's not always accurate because it's not actually giving you a specific thing. It's like this pattern looks this. So we think it's looking like guess it's just going to generate something that may or may not potentially be correct.
00:50:58
Speaker
So I think it's important for people to know that because especially if you're a creator, you probably don't want people plagiarizing your work and having your work show up there.
00:51:10
Speaker
And so that's why I think that like, and ah and also you're probably interested in giving your people accurate information. So that's why I think it's important to use your brain, like yap about the thing that you know about and use that for your content.
00:51:25
Speaker
I used to use ChatGPT a lot to to summarize my podcast transcripts because I thought that, oh, it can just do this for me. But then once I actually started to review it, so I would use it to create a blog post for me based on the podcast transcripts. And when I actually started to review it, I realized like some of the things that it said were actually not things that we really even even talked about in the podcast or it wasn't the main points of the podcast because it's taking what I gave it and then generating something new. Then I was spending time editing the thing that it gave me, more which –
00:52:01
Speaker
took me more time than it would have been if I had sat down and written the blog post myself on the podcast. So you might think that you're saving yourself time, but in the end, I actually wasn't saving myself any time.
00:52:14
Speaker
And also it just didn't sound... Right. Because there were still as many times as I tried to get it to to sound like me, as many times as I would upload my brand voice, it would try, but it still would just sound like a robot. And so that's where I think it's important to rely on yourself and your level of expertise and what you actually know and use that for your content. And if you're having trouble That's something that I always like tell my clients is if you're having trouble creating content for Instagram or for threads or for Facebook or blogging or whatever, give yourself permission to create content in a way that you actually like to create it.
00:52:58
Speaker
We don't have to be Alex Hermosey creating our content on all different platforms a million different ways. Right. You can decide, hey, I'm just going to show up on Substack or I'm just going to show up on my podcast or I'm going to show up on Reels or I'm going to show up on Threads or I'm going to show up on my email. You get to decide which of those tools you want to use that is going be the best way to connect with your audience and it's going to be easiest for you to share your message. yeah You don't have to do all the things.
00:53:27
Speaker
And when you try to be on all the things and use AI to help you, It's actually like distilling your voice and not actually showing people who you really are. It's like that avatar version of you. That's not really you.
00:53:42
Speaker
And I just think that people are going to catch on to that and they – want to connect with you. It's the reason that when you see the thread or the Instagram post that's been clearly AI generated, you just have this like yeah kind of feeling is because we're very new to this world where it's like unique or a luxury or something you even have to think about whether it or not it was created by a human.
00:54:16
Speaker
Yeah. It's like this is a very new experience for us and it's very foreign. And so we go in with the expectation of connection.
00:54:28
Speaker
And then what we're getting is like, oh, I expected to connect with you here. And instead, I just got a robot and like, I don't care. like Yeah. and so it's i think we can lean on that and i like that you bring up just like focusing in on one or two platforms that you like doing are for me i hate writing a carousel i just reuse my carousels and i create new reels because i'm pretty comfortable talking in front of a camera which is why i have podcast and those are the pieces that we can lean on and
00:55:01
Speaker
not listening so much to like, you have to be here. Like I hate LinkedIn. Maybe I'm missing revenue on LinkedIn, but I'm not going to be there. Like I don't want to. And so like we can just focus on the things that you like. And like you said, that bring you joy. And that's what's going to make your business not feel just like so exhausting. A hundred percent.
00:55:22
Speaker
Focus on the things that bring you joy and you will see a return on that for sure. Yes. Well, I want to wrap us up a little bit. My last question is always, what is your humanity hot take?
00:55:37
Speaker
My humanity hot take is that we should care about our individual actions. I had someone tell me that they use ai because they don't feel like their individual action will make a difference.
00:55:54
Speaker
And i understand i understand where they're coming from. But I wanna say you should care about your individual action because it's like recycling.
00:56:06
Speaker
I know that probably my recycling is going to the garbage somewhere. But my hot take is that I should still do my job to recycle because it's better for the environment. And if more people recycle, then we will have a cleaner planet. So ah my hot take, it's probably not a hot take because I think people who listen to you would agree with you on this, is to care about your individual actions. And AI is taking up our water resources and i would abstain from it as much as I can.
00:56:42
Speaker
because I care about having a cleaner planet and a healthier way of life. And I care about the people in Lake Tahoe who are having to switch power companies because the powers are being diverted to the data center. And even though I don't live in Lake Tahoe or California, I still can stand up for my beliefs here where I live in South Carolina and hope that what I have, what I stand for will create a ripple effect.
00:57:09
Speaker
for the community around me. 100% individual accountability for issues that you care about creates collective accountability. Yeah. And that's what leads to change.
00:57:23
Speaker
Yeah. Agreed.
Closing & Contact Information
00:57:24
Speaker
I love it. Well, Christy, thanks so much for being on today. Where can my listeners find you? So you can hang out with me on Instagram at ChristyJohnsonCreative, C-H-R-I-S-T-I. And you can go to my website, ChristyJohnsonCreative.com if you want to work with me and learn about the Dream Biz Playground. And you can also connect with me on threads. I'm decently active on there. And it's also ChristyJohnsonCreative.
00:57:51
Speaker
Perfect. Well, thanks for being here, Christy. Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. Thanks so much for listening. I'm your host, Gail Fraser. And for more information about Where's Your Humanity, you can check out at Where's Your Humanity pod on Instagram. And for more information about me and the work that I do for my clients, you can go to my website, worksimple.io, which is also my Instagram and threads handle.
00:58:14
Speaker
Our lovely theme music is brought to you by Emily Bjorki. And you can go check out her album anywhere you listen to music. Thanks for being here. And I'll talk to you later.