“I can go 80% of the day now without checking my email.”

Imagine not feeling the urge to check your email and constantly make sure everything is okay at work, when you’re enjoying family time or out on vacation? I’ll let you in on a secret- It is possible.

When you’ve been trained that success =  “go, go, go,” from childhood, that instinct carries into your adult life. 

Nadya’s workaholism  gave her a sense of control, but it also limited her growth. It took releasing that control and bringing in the right help, with the right systems, to lay the foundations for her next round of growth.

After being the sole reason your business got off the ground, how do you get out and gain freedom? Will you lead your team in the weeds, or allow yourself to release that feeling of control?

Key Takeaways

Constantly having your (fingers in all the pots) doesn’t help you grow after a certain point. It Keeps you from growing.  Letting go of control is a process:

• Delegating or outsourcing work can give you freedom to focus on your vision.
• Designing systems that are constantly improving are the key to keeping quality high when you can no longer touch every client.
• The quality of your team is more important than the quantity. If you don’t believe that someone on your team can get the job done and support everyone else, then it’s your job to find someone who can.
• Outside people help you see what you can’t. Professional coaches and consultants are skilled at scaling to see what you can’t. So you can focus on bringing your dreams and visions to life. 

Key Moments

{03:35} “I was producing the show, I was building my client base and I was going to school part-time, so I was working 70 hours a week that year regularly.  At that time it felt very much like,  I gotta go balls to the wall if I wanna achieve this goal and be leading this company.”

{03:57} “I felt like if I wasn't doing something or I wasn't really putting all my energy almost all the time into work, it was like I wouldn't be successful.”

{04:13} “It's not about working hard or working long. It's about working smart. It's about working efficiently, and it's about kind of giving away the stuff that you don't wanna do and giving it to people who do wanna do that and can grow in that.”

{14:33} “If I feel like, ‘oh, I say I'm gonna work a little bit this weekend’, and then the weekend comes and my energy is not saying it wants to work, it wants to relax, it wants to just be like, you know what, nevermind, I'll just tackle this on Monday.”

{18:41} “Start with your life and what you want your life to look like in five or 10 years, and then back into what your business needs to do to make that happen. That’s where purpose and profit can come together.”

More about Nadya 

Nadya Rousseau is a writer, producer, and the founder and CEO of purpose forward marketing, PR, and media company Alter New Media. In just five years, she has serviced over 600 mission-driven companies.

Get in touch with Nadya

Email: [email protected]

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Get Beyond Workaholism

If you’re wondering what you need right now and how to manage your time, take the space test and see for yourself.

“What fills your cup?”

A lifetime of reinforcing that “doing more” = “doing better”. Is the reason many of us find ourselves workaholics later in life.

But what is at the root? Is it perfectionism? Is it workaholism? How do you unpack the two and figure out how to grapple with each set of voices so you quiet them and show up fully in work and life.

Brittany takes us on her journey. It took a problem bigger than she could outwork (and a panic attack) – to hit the moment where workaholism (and perfectionism) weren’t working for her anymore.

Key Takeaways

• It takes different activities to complete your work-life balance. There isn’t ONE thing that fills your cup up.
• Find people who live a balanced life (according to your definition) and then ask them how they did it. 
• Entrepreneurship can be the doorway to releasing perfectionism - because good enough has to be good enough if we are going to stay in business.

Key Moments

{6:03} “Our patterns run deep, the way we show up, the things we do, the belief systems we hold, those were built over decades. And they were reinforced daily over decades. And so for me to think I was gonna make huge changes in 500 people from my desk at the office,  was delusional.”

{8:57} “It's not part of my identity that I would ever be fired or told I wasn't doing a good job. But that's what happened.”

{12:07} “Being an employee, it [workaholism] was more rewarded, almost. The reward path was clearer as an employee to support being a workaholic because if I did more, if I helped people out more, if I just kept saying yes, then I got positive rewards for it.”

{15:42} “Instead of making that energy and focus about me, I made it about being in service of others. And that felt so much better.”

{20:04} “What fills your cup? Like what do you engage in where you leave with better energy than you came into it?”


More about Brittany

Brittany empowers entrepreneurs and leaders to become confident leaders, build better teams, and catalyze culture change. She hosts a weekly podcast, Eye Openers, to share stories of overcoming challenges in running a small business and capitalizing on your best opportunities. Businesses hire Brittany to improve performance, develop leaders, and build company culture. Brittany is obsessed with mastering human motivation and perfecting business management. Away from the office, Brittany is a mom to two little girls and loves to kitesurf!

Get in touch with Brittany

Email: [email protected]
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brittanydrozd
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brittdrozd/

Share your Story

Send it to us at [email protected]

Get Beyond Workaholism

If you’re wondering what you need right now and how to manage your time, take the space test and see for yourself.

“I was eager, and I was a quick learner.”

These two traits are a dangerous recipe for success. I loved to learn new things, and to be successful at taking on new challenges and defeating them. So I did it for my whole life. It fed me.

When my kids lost their dad, and I was left to parent two grieving kids solo, I quickly realized that this wasn’t right. This wasn’t how I wanted to live my life. I couldn’t live my life like this anymore. So I worked and made the change.

This first story is all about:

• The start of my map: The moment when I fell in love with work at 16
• My entrepreneurial journey: The influences of being a business owner on my relationship with work
• The turning point in my map: My first step to fully integrate my life over 20 years later
• You don’t have to be a workaholic to have a successful business or a successful life.

Key Takeaways:

• If you don’t change your relationship with work, you’ll fight yourself every step of the way. You shouldn’t feel guilty about taking time off, or decreasing work hours. If you constantly feel like you need to be working, it’s time to make a change. 
• Just like any behavior, workaholic behaviors are learned. We can learn something and we can unlearn something. How will you apply your successfully learned skills, and integrate that into a balanced life?
• Ask yourself. Have you built something that only you can do or decided that only you can do it? If you answer yes to either question – it might be time to commit to building your map beyond workaholism.
•  Don’t wait until tragedy strikes because it happens to all of us at some point. Be there for the people and life waiting for you BEFORE you need to.

Key Moments:

{3:10}”I easily worked 70 to 80 hours a week, not because anyone was making me, nor because I was getting paid for it or punching a time clock for it. I wasn't, but because I loved every freaking minute.”

{3:51}”Fast forward a year. I am exhausted, burned out, and struggling with health issues because what I didn't know at the time is that my body, mind, and spirit aren't separate things. We are whole and integrated people and we mess with one. We mess with it all.”

{7:07}”It was January, 2021 and I am, eyeing 40 in the nuts. I was standing in the kitchen staring at a piece of paper and there was a few words on it that I understood, likely malignant tumor.”

{9:55}”You are not a workaholic. Your workaholic is an outfit that you put on top of who you are. It's an outfit you can choose to put on, and it's an outfit you can choose to take off.”

Want to share your story or make a change?

If you’d like to share your story, contact me at
[email protected]

If you’re wondering what you need right now and how to manage your time, take the space test and see for yourself.