How to Survive the Winter Blues as a CEO

Welcome to The Wedding CEO Podcast, where we discuss all things marketing, sales, and scaling, so you can become the CEO of your life and business. I'm Alora Rachelle, and I've been a wedding photographer for over a decade, and now I'm sharing all of my secrets so you can stop sacrificing your time and make more money like a CEO.

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Hello, friends, and welcome back to another episode on The Wedding CEO Podcast. This episode is going to be about how to survive seasonal depression as an entrepreneur. Basically, if you're here in the Midwest, you will know that the sun sets here. The sun sets at five o'clock. That's not awful. It's still pretty early though, because in the summer we have so long of a day. We have such a long day, the sun doesn't set until, you know.

I remember one time, let's see, in June 9:30, 9:30 was like the longest day or something like that. I miss those days. Now, once it hits five o'clock, I'm ready for bed. I am in my pajamas. I want to shut it down, but my kids are at level 100 and I'm just like, I'm gonna I'm going to ditch Team Elmo for a minute. But we're going to be talking about how to survive this because I think I do this episode probably every year around this time.

But we could always use a refresher. There are some things that I have learned since then, and maybe some purchases that I have bought. They have really helped with this, not to encourage even more consumerism since the rise of the Amazon influencers via Instagram, A.K.A. DM chair to get this new chair for this price that just got back in stock. That's how the vibe. But I think these tools are helpful and useful. 

Obviously the first one is going to be to move your body. Last year, I think, once it hits like about January, February, that's like ice season here, at least in Michigan. For me, I don't like going outside. If there's ice, I don't even like the thought that I could possibly fall on my back and have pain for a week.

Because that's what it's like when you fall on ice in your 30s. You're thinking about how long it's gonna take to recover and all the stuff that you can't do because your body's in pain. I bought a walking pad and I love it. It's so fun. It has a remote control, too. I got the desk, the rising desk and the walking pad. I got it, I think this It's spring because I think winter didn't even stop until almost May for us this year. We've had the longest winter I think we've ever had and I was starting to give up hope y'all. I was ready. I was ready to quit. I was like, cut the show. I'm done. 

I got a walking pad and I got the desk and I got it pretty cheap. The desk was cheap. The rising desk was 130. Like, Amazon does have good deals sometimes. Link in the bio. No, I'm just kidding. 

But I will link it in the show notes if you want the exact one that I have. But if not, feel free to do as you please. It is your life, you know? You're the boss. Having that and being able to, like, take a break from sitting down. Although, right now it's not that cold. It's still in the 40s here, so I can still run errands and not feel like I'm going to get frostbitten, but when it gets even colder, I don't like to leave the house a ton. That's when I start going to Kroger and having them put the groceries in my car because I don't want to go outside.

Having a walking pad and being able to like count your steps, figure out your calories, all that other great stuff, like get moving for some reason. It is therapeutic because I walked five miles from spring until my kids were out of school in the summer. Twice a week, sometimes three times if I was really feeling it, and first building the momentum for walking five miles. Awful. I was out of breath. I was crying, tears in my eyes, the whole thing. But like after getting through that first mile, and then being able to master walking a mile, and then being able to master walking three miles, I was like, ah, let's do five, right? What's the harm? 

The goal was essentially 10,000 steps, but then it just started being fun to walk. I'd walk with a friend and we would go in the morning after dropping our kids off at school. It was just, as soon as we hit that third to fifth mile, our brain became happy. Like mindset stuff cleared everything. I just felt so good. I was still doing stuff by the end. I had so much energy. It is so weird when you do the study. Cause it's like, why does walking five miles make you feel so good? I don't know, but it works. Am I telling everyone to walk five miles? Like, no, but I mean, walking at all gets your brain going. 

For some reason, if our body is moving, then our mind is happy. Just kind of thinking about like finding ways to move your body a little bit more every day and not just like laying around and scrolling on social media. 

That's another thing. Less social media, less blue light if possible. Journaling is great. I mean, if you really can't read a book, you know, audio books, I guess is fine. But when I was walking, I spent the past one to two hours not looking at social media. I was not worried about what someone was doing. Somebody was not selling me something. There wasn't an ad on my screen. It was nice. It was so nice to have that break. I'm really excited to do that again this spring and mind you, we were walking outside because fresh air is just, I'm a nature. What do they call it? Nature bathing. That's what they call it. Like when you go for a walk outside. I think it's like a Japanese term, but I love it. I think it's great. 

Journaling, like I kind of hinted at earlier is so therapeutic as well. I guess all of these, I'll just say therapeutic practices for seasonal depression for the winter, the winter blues, but journaling is great. Even I remember I used to do this thing, morning pages where you would just wake up, get a coffee, and just put pen to paper. First if you didn't have anything to write, you would say, I am writing, it is early in the morning, last night was a great rest, whatever, and then eventually, like, things just would keep coming to you. It was really nice to be able to just free write all your thoughts, that way they just weren't in your brain all the time. Then you felt like your mind was clear to start the day. I loved it. I want to definitely get more into that this winter, being able to like, wake up, write down my thoughts, write down my ideas, maybe write down things I want to do, or maybe things that I'm thankful for. You know, gratitude is definitely probably going to be one of the biggest things I focus on for next year. It might be my word of the year. That's something to think about journaling and just kind of understanding your needs and understanding like where you're at, where your mindset is and  being one with yourself. 

Then the next thing would be just making time for yourself and others. One thing about being an entrepreneur forever is that you notice that a lot of times your business is going to take precedence if the business has tasks that need to be done, it's kind of like at the sacrifice of everything.

Everything will have to wait until I have these things together because the business comes first. That's my paycheck. This is the dream that I'm building. This is the goals that I have. I think one thing about when season slows down is like you kind of crave more connection and community and you kind of want to catch up with the people that you didn't get to in the summer when everything was busy, in the fall when it was back to school for, at least for me, for the kids, and then wintertime is all holiday.

I thought I was done Christmas shopping. I finished, I thought, the second week of November. Only to find out that I'm missing like four other people. I don't know why I thought it was done. I'm still Christmas shopping. That's all that's on my mind. It's like, okay, I need to make sure to hang out with this person, but I also have to make sure these people have their Christmas gifts. Also, so and so's birthday party. I gotta make sure Ella's stuff is packed. She's having a sleepover. You know, it's like all these things are going on.

Eventually when things slow down, especially in January, I think for me, I love everything to come to a halt. I need to go through my friend bank and make sure that everybody is good and healthy and we're all still close and just like putting that top of mind, hanging out with family, making sure that you're checking in with people.

I remember watching something. I don't remember what it was. It could have been an Instagram reel, could have been TikTok, but just being like, call your mom, you know, check in with your parents, especially when they get older, you know, you just don't know how long you have. It's like, I hate to take this a huge 360 or 180, but the time that you have with anything and anyone is limited, right? Every second that goes by, you can't get it back. There are people who still don't have the luxury of having the things that you have. It's just like, once again, gratitude, and just taking the time to check in with the people while they're still here, and not having regrets. I really believe in living life without regrets, so I take constant inventory of being okay.

Am I doing everything correctly? Am I fulfilled? Are the people that are important to me, how do they feel? Is my husband stressed? Can I alleviate him of some stress? You know, things like that. It's like just taking the time and am I assessing my fountain friends that are just bringing in so much encouragement and life and love and laughter into my life and do I have people that drain me? Am I making sure that I'm having some kind of safe boundaries there so I don't always feel tired or emotionally exhausted or socially done? You know, the draining versus the fountain friends is wild. Like when you kind of take into inventory being like, maybe I do think you need to make time for yourself and assess and being like, well, every time I'm with this person, they'd really drain me. Is this how I want to keep things going? Like, does that make me happy? Does that give me energy? Can I keep going at this rate? That's always the question I ask. Can I keep going like this? Can I sustain this? 

Another thing is like I mentioned also earlier, reading more books and not about business, trying to find ways to immerse yourself in anything else other than work, especially as an entrepreneur, I'm only saying this because a lot of us love our job in the beginning. We get in the habit of doing whatever it takes and being everything and doing everything. Then eventually it becomes our habit. Your habit kind of becomes what your schedule is too. 

Like whatever you do habitually, you do that habitually and it becomes your schedule and you don't know anything else and you're not aware of it. You're just like, well, this is just how I do things. But if you start taking up hobbies, if you do other things other than work, it is so fulfilling.

That is the whole thing of work life harmony, just like finding ways to make time for other things and keeping that balance and being like, my work is just work. My work can only bring me so much happiness, right? 

A sunrise alarm, best investment. I mean, I've had it forever, but I just always forget to talk about it. But I have a sunrise alarm. I have the Hatch one, but they also have ones on Amazon. I'll pay full price for something, and then Amazon will make a dupe that's like $25, and I'm like, what? What? Why? If you're on this, I will probably, I think I have it linked in my Amazon, so you guys can check it out, but they have a sunrise alarm. 

When you wake up to the sunrise naturally it is so I'm gonna say therapeutic. It is so nice. I personally like on my hatch alarm, I would go to the sunrise and then there's these flutes that play and my husband's like I feel like we're in Asia and I'm like, I love it I just feel like I'm in a different country waking up to the Sun because the iPhone alarms traumatized me every morning.

My husband's alarm goes off every hour. He is those people that they talk about, on the memes and stuff. Like, you know that one person whose alarm goes off every hour and they're never awake? My husband. My husband. It starts at 5am. Does he wake up at 5am and 6am? No, he does not. 

I am awake. Then I get up and I go make my coffee and just sit in silence, wondering why I'm awake at the edge of the bed of like, why? Why me? Cause once I'm up, I can't go back to sleep. Kids do that to me. That's my life. 

Another thing about surviving seasonal depression or the winter blues—let's call it the winter blues, that's what I'm going to call it—is maybe delete Instagram on the weekends. This could be a challenge. Then maybe start diving into automating your social media.

Now I have automated my social media before. I've actually been  off for like a month and had a lot of things scheduled. I use Plan with two N's. So PLANN. I love it. You can schedule your Instagram stories. You can look at the color palette of your Instagram grid. You can see your engagement. You can see everything. All the data is there. But the best part is you can schedule your reels, you can schedule your stories, like I said, you can schedule carousels, you can schedule everything, and schedule the month and be done with it.

For me, like when I'm in a launch, I can schedule about a month's worth of content, and then maybe add stories later, or just like, do them on the fly. But If you have to do social media, if you are the kind of person that doesn't necessarily think you have to post every week, every month, some people take an Instagram sabbatical and like, yeah, I'm only posting stories because ain't nobody seeing my posts. Look, I'm here with you. I get it.  But there's options, you know, you could just delete it and not post at all and just take the sabbatical and call it. I used to do that in the Spring, even like my whole church, like we would just take a social media break and it was always refreshing coming back, but also being like, what is going on? The world has already changed in like a month. That is definitely how social media is like things come and go so much at a rapid pace. But that's a conversation for another day. 

The other thing is finding ways to shortcut. I will always advocate for automation. I will and workflows because I always say, if I get sick, then what's going to happen? Like, why should my students have to pay for that? Why should my clients have to pay for that? Is there a way that this could be automated? Is there a way that I could be removed from this and it be done better and faster than if it were me taking my sweet time? Maybe during this season is a great time to be like, okay, where are my systems lacking? Because engagement season is coming, right? They say there's a new wedding boom coming, which I'll talk about in another episode. 

During COVID people just weren't meeting each other and that was like a three year shift that was like awkward for us that we didn't know how to handle it. Now people are like, well, everything is going to explode. It's like, okay, wait a minute. Like, what should we do first before it explodes? I think you should take a look at your systems. Look at your outdated email, your workflow emails and stuff like that and just make sure everything's like good to go.

For us in The Wedding CEO, we'd give them email templates and then just plug it in and change it to your voice and automate that in HoneyBook. I love HoneyBook.  I literally once a client booked, I didn't touch anything. They got everything they needed. They sent me all the questionnaires like it was sent without me having to lift a finger and I loved it.

After the wedding was delivered or a certain amount of time went by they would get a thank you email, they would get a hype email like, hey your wedding's coming soon. All the things and I loved it. 

Automation is the way to go and with the way that things are going now and like the hustle culture is finally, I mean, personally, I was over it in 2020, but I guess now everybody's over it and they're like, we want the soft life. I get it. I'm there. But why'd it take us so long? Because I think Girlboss actually came out forever ago. I don't remember what year that book was published. 

But anyway, the hustle culture is coming down and we're ready to get back to enjoying our lives. I do think, too, this really impacted us after COVID of not being able to do anything, see anyone. I feel like I'm still a little socially awkward. People drain me in a way that they didn't used to. I used to be able to go to events for like 8 to 10 hours. My max is like 5 hours social. I can only handle social, front facing interaction for 5 hours and my battery falls out, y'all. I have to literally go somewhere because my face will just fall and I just won't speak. I'm like, I can't do it. I can't do it anymore.

I feel like we just want so much more connection and we realize that money isn't everything. Some of us lost loved ones, especially in the pandemic. So many people. You just realize like, it just puts really into perspective, like what really matters.

The money's always going to be there, but the people won't, you know? That's all, that's it. That's all from me. 

These are a couple of tips that I'm definitely going to be doing. I already do a couple of them. If you have any, please DM and share them with me, though, because once it's January, I'm not leaving the house, so I need something to do. I need to occupy myself and not just default to a work assignment or busy myself, because there's always something to do with work, right? But I think this would definitely come in handy, and if you feel like you're just in a season of slowing down to speed up, the winter is the best time to do that. 

All right. I will see you in the next episode next week. Bye. 

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Wait, don't go yet. If you loved today's episode, I would love if you took five seconds to leave a rating and a five star review. If you do send me a DM so I can give you a virtual hug and of course a shout out. Now, if you're ready to grow your photography business, I invite you to join the waitlist for The Wedding CEO.

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