I'm your host, Amy Dardis, and in today's episode, we're continuing my walk of shame as we dive into this series on idols in entrepreneurship and what that has really personally looked like for me, how these idols have shown up in my life, how I have wrestled with them. And I think it's something that I continue to wrestle with because it is always a battle to put God first in our life and not allow these other influences or things to have the most prominent place in our life above God. And we never get that right all the time. There's a battle that we face daily that we have to remember who's in control. Where do we put our hope? So, just as a quick refresher, we talked about idols, and an idol is an object or an abstract concept that we give higher priority than God. It's something that we rely on for blessing or help or guidance instead of God. It's anything that consumes our heart, our thoughts, or our devotion more than God. And it can be any good thing, bad thing that we elevate to a position of being the main thing in our life. And it's just whatever we are giving more influence, more power, more control in our life, besides God, because He really should be number one. And as we live our life, there's just daily distractions and temptations and ways of living our life or running our business that are just very much of this world, very much in this world, very much just like the day-to-day tactical operations, the schedule, the people, the hiring, the meetings and customers and the fires we have to put out. And it's very easy to allow ourselves to be so consumed by that and to forget what this is all about or who this is all for. And so today's episode, we're focusing on the idol of our own strength, of doing things in our own ability, trusting our ability to make things happen, our strength, instead of relying on the power of God or allowing the Holy Spirit to be at work on our behalf, in the hearts of people, and our own hearts, in situations in our business. And I think this is one of the hardest ones that I struggle with on a daily basis because it is so completely opposite of what the world teaches about business and entrepreneurship. So the world's definition of entrepreneurship is, you know, you have to get out there and you have to be the first one up, the last one out, the person who works the hardest, the longest, the most consistently. You have to do what other people are not willing to do. You have to grow and develop and make things happen. You have to be willing to do the uncomfortable. You have to be willing to step outside of your comfort zone. You have to be willing to push yourself and challenge yourself and stretch yourself and make it happen. Because if you don't, nobody else is going to make it happen for you. No one is going to save you. No one is coming to save your business. It is all on you. Sound familiar? I mean that I just hear myself saying that. I'm like feeling the anxiety of like, oh my gosh, like, uh, because that is that is every influencer, that is every business expert, that is every book that is out there, that is the message. And that is so hard to fight against. And there is this element of we of responsibility. We do have to work hard. We do need to show up. We do need to put in the effort and stretch ourselves. We can't be lazy. We do have to steward well our time and our energy and our gifting and our relationships and everything that God gives us. So then the battle becomes: where is this line? Where is this line between working hard and doing what I need to do, but still trusting in God, still relying on God, still recognizing and accepting the limits of my own strength and my own abilities. And unfortunately, more often than not, it's not so much as me accepting my limits as me coming face to face with my limits because I push myself to the breaking point. And I do this on and off, I think my whole life, of just learning like what, how much can I handle? And how what are the levels of exhaustion and stress and anxiety that I can push myself to to get the results that I need before I break? And this last this last season, this last year, I I had we had this big, huge transition, this big, huge cross-country move that we did in two weeks that we had not planned for at all. God had been moving and working, and my husband and I both just felt a very clear calling from God to uproot our family and our life and move to Alaska and launch this new business, even though it did not make sense to our plans or our timeline. And so once we got here, I spent, I took three weeks. I took three weeks off and just like processed through the enormity of our move and tried to catch up on sleep. And we tried to figure out some basic needs, you know, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and we had to find ourselves a home and a vehicle and get our kids enrolled in school. So we were focusing on more life stuff, and I didn't do anything with the business. And then after those three weeks were up, I was like, all right, it is game time. It is time to get to work and make this happen. And that launched us into a season of grinding. And not only were we grinding in our business, we were also grinding in this house that we had bought that was like covered in caty and had soaked through flooring and sub-floors, and we were ripping things out only to find more issues. And just this, I mean, it was just the project that never ended. And then in the midst of that, my husband actually tore his right bicep fully and had to have surgery, had to have it reattached, and did not have a right arm at all, really, for like three months before he could finally start to build that muscle back up after it had fully reattached. So this was an insane season of our life during which we were trying to get this new business up and launched off the ground while still running our other business. So we've had web design and marketing firm for 15 years. And so we have those clients and that work that we're trying to handle while trying to start a new life, while trying to launch a new business. And this was new for us in the sense that our previous business was very relationship-driven, based in the local area. So we had relationships, we had connections, we had community involvement, and a lot of our marketing strategy was very face-to-face, very geographically based. And by moving to Alaska, that switched us into a very remote and fully digital marketing strategy. So something that we had not really tried before. We this was a new way of marketing our business. And so there was a huge learning curve. And we were spending just hours and hours every day. I was creating content for social, for not just one platform, but for like all the platforms. I what we were writing landing pages, we were writing ad copy, we were creating videos and week in, week out, tweaking, reiterating, trying something else, trying something new, consuming content, learning new platforms, studying new strategies, just consuming everything we could, learning everything we could, trying to understand well, how does Instagram strategy today work? How does LinkedIn strategy today work? How does Twitter strategy today work? How does Facebook strategy today work? How does Google ad strategy today work? How to write a high converting landing page for a product, how to sell digital products online, how to, you know, build relationships and collaborations and build a social following and build an email list and all of these things to try and find the strategy that was gonna work the best for what we were offering for our unique business, for our brand. And through it all, we were just we were giving it everything we had. We were so worried about how this was all gonna work out or if it was going to work out, whether we were going to be able to, you know, recoup our investment back from everything we were pouring into this business and into running ads. And just day in and day out, just grinding it out. And I remember in March, I was tired. Like we had started this in January, and in March I knew I'm like, I cannot sustain this. This is not this is not possible. Like something's gotta give. And so I recognized what was happening. I I knew that this was this was not a long-term plan, but I'm like, well, it's it's the launch of a new business. Like this is just how it goes. And so just keep going. Like, just keep going. Because all the advice out there, every time I got on YouTube, every time I got a Facebook, all these algorithms are, you know, focused around marketing strategies and business strategies. And so everything I'm seeing is talking about how hard I need to work and how I can't give up and how I need to set timers for my day and grind, grind, grind, grind. So I did. I just I kept grinding, my husband kept grinding. And then meanwhile, we're dealing with all of this house stuff and the torn bicep and trying to heal physically, not sleeping well at night, and we keep grinding. And so I get to June. And by June, I am really feeling the burnout. I am really feeling the struggle. And I have notes and I have journal entries, and I even have a video of myself saying, like, I am so mentally and emotionally exhausted. I don't know what to do. I feel like I'm floundering. I'm feeling I'm like I am trying to work harder, but I am not working smarter. Everything that I am doing, all of this energy and effort that I am pouring into, it is just wiping me out faster. And I just I cannot keep going. So something has to give. Something has to work. And in my head, I was thinking that if I just keep going long enough, if I just keep grinding and keep working on this because no one's gonna come and save me, I have to figure this out, then something's gonna give, and this something is gonna be a strategy. And this strategy is going to work. I'm going to start creating a predictable lead gen system, start building in new recurring revenue and clients, and then I can take a breath. Then I can sort everything out, which is very normal thinking. It's very logical thinking. It's very much just what we are taught to believe. And so I at this point I was listening to Russell Brunson's marketing secrets and online secrets, or what what all the books are that his secrets are. We were doing online webinars. We were participating we were attending online webinars and online conferences and three-day selling online challenge. And this is how you, you know, run a master class, and this is how you create a webinar, and this is how you teach content and drive ads to it and build an email list. And I'm like, okay, if if this doesn't work, I I really am just beyond myself. And so kind of gave it this last Hail Mary effort. Like, because at this point, I I tried so many different things. I was so tired, I was so burnt out. I could not handle having a conversation with my children. They would come home and tell me about their day or tell me about school, and my brain would barely register what they were saying. I was not dragging myself away from the computer. Like I would get up in the morning, get on the computer, basically be there all day and barely eat and then come back and not not have a life. I mean, it was just, it was not healthy in any way, shape, or form. And I remember feeling this pressure because I my kids were gonna get out of school at the end of May. And I knew I wanted to have some kind of system, some kind of structure set up so that I could enjoy the summer with them, so that I could find this balance of a couple hours a day of working and then being able to be outside and go for walks and explore this beautiful state of Alaska and have fun, which I had not had like any fun at all since the since we had moved here. And I was feeling this pressure of I need to get this figured out by the end of May. Well, the end of May came, and then I was like, okay, I'm not there yet. I I can't stop here. And so the whole month of June, I I did this, I grinded it out, and every single day I was working all day, and my kids were home from school, and just looking at me like, this is not what you told us was gonna happen. Like you, you promised us a better life. You told us you wanted to spend more time with us, and here you are not doing anything different. And I was like, I know, I just I'm so sorry. And I'm like apologizing to them and trying to explain it to them and trying to justify it to them, and nothing is changing and nothing is happening. So I get to July and I am just beyond burnt out, beyond tired, beyond just like I just I cannot keep doing this. I cannot continue because I'm nothing is working, and all I'm doing is just killing myself in the process. And so we had some family come and visit at the time. And so I told my husband, I was like, I'm just gonna take like the weekend to just, I'm gonna take a couple days to just kind of reassess. And the the weekend came and went, and I didn't have any more clarity or any energy or any ambition. And I was like, Well, I'm just your fa our family is still here for a little while longer. Let let me just give it until they leave. And so another week goes by and I still have nothing. And this ends up stretching out for six weeks because after I finally stopped, I realized just how burnt out I was. I I had no direction, I had no vision, I had no ambition, I had no motivation. I had never really felt like this before. I would wake up in the morning and just feel numb and lost. Like I had nothing going for me at all. Like I really questioned everything. I questioned just the whole plan. I questioned God, I questioned the business and everything that I had learned up until this point. And I was like, God, I thought you brought me here. I thought you wanted me to build this business. I thought that you were gonna bless this, I thought you were gonna open doors, and you're not. And through this six-week period, to this six-week period, I chose to not work. All I did was rest, read my Bible, go for walks, listen to I listened to The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren. I sat through and just one day at a time, I did one day of the 40 days, about 10 minutes a day, read my Bible, I wrote, I journaled, and I just let I just waited and I rested. And that felt very wrong because in my head I was thinking, this is not how you build the business, no one is going to find you, no one is going to come knocking on your door, like that nothing is gonna happen in your business if you don't do something. So you doing nothing isn't helping. And so here's this this voice in my head. And it wasn't that I was trying to just give up, I was really just so stuck and so burnt out that I realized that I needed a strong reset. I was trying to reset in a way that was sustainable and in a way that didn't look like the previous six months because I'm like, that is that is not what I wanted my life to look like at all. If anything, all of those habits were all of my worst habits. All of those habits were a lot of the habits that I had been kind of ingrained and stuck into before we had moved, a lot of the things that were building anxiety and building disconnection and things I wanted to change, but didn't know how to like break free of. I didn't know how to stop doing the things I didn't want to do and start doing the things that I wanted to do. And Paul talks about this in in the New Testament. He talks about how it's like I, you know, the spirit, like I want to do what the spirit tells me to do, but at the same time I I struggle, like I struggle to do what I want to do or wrestling with this, and that's very much what it was. But here this whole time, all these months, I mean, I was I was praying every day, I was crying out to God desperately, but I was relying on my own strength the entire time. I was praying and asking, but I wasn't listening, I wasn't stopping, and I was just steamrolling ahead, even though I knew back in March, I'm like, I can't keep doing this, I can't keep doing this, but I'm gonna keep doing it. And then in June, I can't keep doing this, I can't keep doing this, but I'm gonna keep doing it. And then finally, like, I really cannot keep doing this, and I stopped. And what I learned through this process was like, here I was putting all my hope one in what the business, what I wanted the business to do for me, which I talked about in the last episode about talking about how like our business becomes our idol because we put our hope in our business. But I also was putting all of this pressure and all of this hope in me and in what I could do and in my work ethic and in my strength and in my energy. And it wasn't about relying on God because I didn't want to rely on God. I wanted to figure this out myself. I wanted to do it, I wanted to prove it, I wanted to make it happen so that when it happened, I could be like, yeah, I did it. I I could boast in my own effort when it succeeded. And that's not the heart that God wanted me to have. That is not the everything that I was doing, they were not the mindset, they were not the habits, they were not the rhythms, they were not the routines, they were not the lifestyle that God wanted for me. And what he ends up doing sometimes is he's like, all right, if that's if you want to just do this in your own strength, I'm gonna let you. Like I'm I'm gonna let you do it in your own strength. And I'm gonna do it in my own strength until I can't anymore because I am that stubborn and I wish that I wasn't, but I am, and many of us entrepreneurs are. Until I hit this wall, until I hit rock bottom, until I hit this breaking point, and I finally surrender. I finally give it to God, I finally give it up, and I lay it down at the cross and I say, God, I cannot carry this anymore. I need you to carry it for me. And then I get to that point, and that's where God wants us all along, and it is so completely opposite to what the world teaches, and it's hard. It's hard to walk that path. It is hard to live a life where you are reliant on God, when you are dependent on God for everything in your life, for your daily hope, for your daily bread, for your daily provision. It's it's that kind of need, it's that kind of relationship that God wants from us because that is when he shows up and he shows you what he can do. He shows you what kind of doors he can open, he shows you how he can part the Red Sea. And like he leads the Israelites out of Egypt and they come to a place where they are stuck, they cannot go any further. And God says, wait and see. And he splits the sea. But if we don't ever put ourselves in a situation where we need God to move on our behalf, when we need his strength to get us through, we won't put ourselves there intentionally. It's against our nature to do that. And in 2 Corinthians 12, he says, My grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in weakness. So then Paul says, Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weakness, in insults, in hardship, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. And this idea of embracing weakness, this idea of saying, like, I am, I don't have what it takes to do this. I don't have the willpower, I don't have the motivation, I don't have the grind, I don't have the endurance to do this on my own. And God does not want us to do that. He wants us to take his yoke upon me. And he says in Matthew, he says, Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. And I just think about how weary and burdened I felt, how heavy and how hopeless and how stuck and how lost. And all I wanted was rest. All I wanted was relief. All I wanted was a breakthrough. But I was thinking that I had to do it. So I wasn't going to God for rest. I was thinking I'm gonna push and push and push until I can rest because I've achieved this thing, because I've broken through this thing, because I have made a way, and then I will rest. But that's not at all what God tells us to do. He says, take my yoke upon upon you and learn from me. For I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. And here I think about this as an entrepreneur. I'm like, what is that like to have an easy yoke? What is that like to have a burden that's light? And it's not that God makes everything easy for us, it's that we get up and we get our strength from him because we realize that we can't do it on our own. And so after these six weeks go by, I God starts to clear, he starts to clear the fog, he starts to clear the confusion. And it it wasn't because I did anything for six weeks. I literally did nothing except for seek him and rest. That's all I did. And just little by little, day by day, I started to like feel the Holy Spirit's presence again. I started to like feel connected to God again when up until that point I hadn't for six months. I had felt very disconnected from God, very separated from him, even though I felt like I was crying out, even though I felt like I was desperately going to him for. Answers, I didn't feel like I was getting anything. I wasn't feeling his presence in my life. I knew it was there, but I just I wasn't feeling that intimacy the way that I know I know that I do. And so here after these like six weeks, this this intimacy starts to come back. And this uh this relationship, this uh this friendship, this uh this being, this God who like became so real and so present and so just uh there in my life. And I started to feel him like just uh start to speak to my heart again. And I started to like feel the the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit again. And he he reaffirmed this vision, this this thing that he had called me to, this business, this plan. And I I wasn't going down the wrong path. I w I was I was building it, building what he wanted me to, but I wasn't building it the way that he wanted me to. Because I was relying on my own strength, I was seeking the world, the the business experts, the the strategies, I was seeking the world's advice and I was thinking seeking the world's approval instead of seeking his because I had forgotten this fact that he is the one who is in control of it all. He is the one who is orchestrating this story, he is the one who is moving these pieces where they need to go, and he's shaping me in the process, and he's been doing it all along. And so him calling me to do this and him calling me to this new place, it's like he wants me to build it in the way that honors him, not in the way that the world tells me to do it. And so I was like, okay, whatever I do, however, I build this, he has to be first. He has to be the voice that I want more than anything. He I have to do this in a way that is sustainable for the long term. So these 12-hour days, these grinding, these flip-flopping, this trying this and trying that and learning that and learning this, that's not that's not gentleness, that's not peace, that's not wisdom, it's just desperation and and seeking the answers in all the wrong places. And so it made me take a step back and think, okay, when I run this business, when I build this business, what what are the habits? What are the routines? What are the rhythms and the systems and the structures that I need to have in place right now? What is healthy look like? What is surrendered look like? What is present and engaged and peaceful and joyful and self-control? What are the fruits of the spirit look like in my life as I build this business? Well, it looks like rest, it looks like not 12-hour days, it looks like being purposeful and authentic, and it looks like being present and engaged with my kids right now. And so just very tactically, practically, I put in some new rhythms of like, okay, when I get up in the morning, I don't check my email, I don't check my phone. The first thing I do is just I start in prayer. I I have a cup of coffee and it is quiet and it is me and God. And then I take my kid to the bus stop and I'm chatting with him about his day and just having this time with him, this quality time where it's just me and him. And then I come back home, and then it's 30 minutes of more prayer and and Bible reading and like studying the Bible. And then my next kid gets up, and then she and I have like our 10, 15 minutes in the morning where we sit and we talk and talk about, you know, her day or how she slept or whatever else is on her mind. And then she gets ready for her day, and I take her to the bus stop. And so this whole morning is me being present with with God and with my kids, and that comes first. And then I try and get my workout in in the morning before I start the day because I know if I don't, it won't happen. So I try and get that out of the way. And then while the kids are at school, that is my time to work, record podcasts, create content, do calls. And I try and be very intentional about that time. And I and I take time to make sure I eat breakfast and I eat lunch, and I have, you know, these hours during the day. And then when the kids start to come home, it's like, okay, well, I might have to pick them up, or they might have a game I have to go to, or things that we have to do, and then I have dinner to make, and then we have dinner together as a family, and then we have a devotional at the table, and then in the evenings, it's you know, I get to hang out with my husband and and and rest and wind down for the day before getting up and doing it again. And that's a that's a pace, that's a thing where I'm like, okay, even though there's uncertainty, and even though I don't have everything figured out, this is sustainable, this is healthy, this is this is fun, this is peaceful, this is joyful, like this is this is the life that I want to be living. These are the rhythms and the routines that I want in my life, that when I imagine my life and I picture, like, if I if everything was perfect, what would I picture? A lot of these components are in it. And so I was like, oh, okay, I am going into this each and every day, knowing that every day my strength has to come from God. My strength has to come from the Lord. Because I honestly, I don't have what it takes to do this. I I don't have, I mean, it is a like give us our daily bread. Like, like, God, I need you and help me to take this one day at a time. What can I do today? What can I do today to be productive? What can I do today to be with you? Like, I remember one time during a week, I my plan was to like record some podcasts, and instead I ended up spending two hours in prayer with God. But it was like, that was so good, you know, that was so good. It was so life-giving. And I'm like, that's that's the kind of like prioritization that God wants from us because it's rem, it's me being reminded that God is the one who opens doors. God is the one who gives ideas and creativity. He's the one who makes things happen. Like he already knows how the story unfolds. And so it's like I'm going directly to the author. I'm going directly to the creator and saying, What would you like me to do next? Give me the strength and the grace and the faith to do it. And then I'm gonna come back tomorrow and we're gonna have this same conversation. We're gonna, we're gonna do this every day. But that that that faith, that reliance, like that honors God. That that's that's the kind of positioning that He like He wants us to position ourselves there so that we can see Him move. So that when things start to happen, when things start to fall in place, He gets the credit. It is it is Him I can say, God did that. It wasn't me, it wasn't my own strength or my great idea or my hard work. That was God. Like that was him and his great that grace, that was him and his faithfulness, that was him and his provision. And every story that I tell should be always pointing back to God, it should be always pointing people to God and and just how amazing he is. And it just that's what this business is, or when he calls us into business as a leader, as an entrepreneur, it's like you our job is is to point people to him, our job is to honor him, our job is to build up the kingdom of heaven, to have an eternal perspective. And so it's like, what does that look like here on earth? And it is building a business, it is creating content, it is having a marketing strategy, but it's it's all surrendered to him. It is all, I mean, I'm if I it is all being led by him when I'm doing it well. And again, it's a daily battle, it's a daily wrestling. There are days when I wake up and I'm like, yes, God, you are good. Let's go. You're amazing, I love you. And then there are days when I wake up and I'm like, how is this ever gonna work? I have no idea. But again, day to day, his mercies are new every morning. So if if this spoke to you, like if this resonated with you, I would just encourage you, like share on because if it if it touched your heart, if it spoke to where you're at right now, there might be other people who need to hear it too. And so, like, if it if it's been a blessing to you, that that's awesome. Again, that totally a God thing. But if you want to leave a rating for the show and like help help other people find it and be encouraged, that would be awesome. And if not, that's okay too. Like, you know, this is me just trusting that God's gonna open doors and and hopefully just use this to encourage people at the right time and in the right place. So, as always, you can learn more at ClearAuthenticBrands.com. That's all for this episode. See you next time.