I was sitting in a doctor's office when my body finally forced me to pay attention.

I'd developed a severe case of vertigo. The room spinning and eyes unable to focus. Couldn't work. Couldn't function. After running tests, my doctor told me it was a viral ear infection — but then she asked a question that stopped me cold.

"This level of severity usually has a stress component. Why is this happening now?"

I looked at her like she was crazy.

And then I burst into tears.

"I hate my job."

The words came out before I could stop them. And in that moment, sitting in her exam room with tears streaming down my face, I was shocked by what I’d just said.

A truth I had been terrified to admit to myself until desperation forced me. It took the rest of the day for me to process this realization and understand the devastating reality at its core.

I'd built a business doing all the work I didn't love, for people who treated me and my team like shit.

And my nervous system was so fried from operating in constant stress mode that my body couldn't fight off a simple infection.

When I first went out on my own, I was doing marketing and demand generation strategy for early-stage startups. I loved it. The strategy. The creativity. Finding ways to deliver big results with small budgets.

But then clients started asking if I could help with execution, too.

So I said yes.

And then everyone started telling me what I needed to do next. "You want to grow? You want to make more money? You need to build an agency."

So I did that too.

I started hiring people. We went upmarket — bigger clients, bigger budgets, more polish required. We hit $50K/month in revenue with a small team. On paper, it looked like success.

But here's what was actually happening:

→ I had clients who were constantly making my team cry.
→ I was overwhelmed and stressed.
→ And I had this growing, gnawing sense that we weren't actually very good at what we were doing.

We were dropping balls everywhere. Managing an agency requires a project manager, and that role fell to me because I didn't know I should have hired someone for it. And I'm a terrible project manager. It requires all the skills I didn’t have or enjoy.

So there I was — running an agency that made money doing ongoing, low-level execution work. Managing social media. Writing blog posts. Creating content marketing campaigns. All the things I didn't love doing. All the things that weren't my strength.

I was good enough at the work to keep clients paying.

But I wasn't doing the work I was meant to do.

Here's what I've learned since that doctor's office moment — after many conversations with other people who've dealt with burnout:

You don't develop burnout from working too hard.

You develop burnout from working too hard on the wrong things. On the misaligned things.

That's why taking a vacation doesn't fix it. You rest, you recover a little, and then you come back to the same life, the same business, the same misalignment — and it happens again.

Because you haven't solved the problem. You've just temporarily escaped it.

The problem isn't the hours. The problem is that the hours are going toward something that's slowly hollowing you out.

I wish I could tell you that I had this realization in the doctor's office, went home, made a plan, and fixed everything.

That's not what happened.

That vertigo episode was in February 2020. A month later, COVID hit, and the world shut down. Three months after that, I was attacked by a dog, almost lost my life and became caught up in the physical, emotional, and spiritual recovery from that trauma.

And instead of using those realities as opportunities to shut things down and start fresh — which probably would have been the smart move — I felt this, probably misguided, loyalty to my team. I wanted to keep them employed. I got caught up in trying to stay afloat.

So I kept going.

And for the next few years, I ping-ponged.

One month, I'd chase market opportunities. Follow the money. Pick up whatever deals I could find, even if they weren't aligned.

The next month, I'd swing the other direction. Do the work I loved, the work that lit me up — but that didn't really bring in revenue.

Back and forth. Back and forth.

It took me years to figure out what I know now.

Here's what made it so hard:

All the advice out there falls into one of two camps.

Camp One says: Do what the market wants. Find the demand. Build what sells. Follow the money.

Camp Two says: Follow your passion. Do what you love. The money will follow.

And neither of them worked for me.

When I chased the market, I made money but lost myself. When I followed my passion without a strategy, I stayed broke but felt righteous about it.

What nobody told me — what I had to figure out the hard way — is that there's a third path.

You can build something that's genuinely yours — aligned with your strengths, your style, how you work best — AND have it be profitable.

But it requires getting surgically clear on who you're meant to serve, what you're meant to offer, and how your specific weird combination of skills and experiences becomes your competitive advantage.

One of my clients discovered this when she stopped writing 'professional' offer documents and started letting her real personality — including her impatience with BS — actually show. She didn't lose clients. She attracted better ones.

It's not passion OR market. It's finding the intersection where what you love meets what people will pay for.

Remember the Essentialist CEO sweet spot?

That's the work I do for myself now, and exactly what I teach my clients in the Essentialist CEO Collective. And it's the work I wish someone had helped me do back in that doctor's office.

Here's what I want you to understand about wrong-fit clients — and wrong-fit businesses:

Yes, they cost you time. Yes, they cost you money. Yes, there's the opportunity cost that we talked about on Thursday — every hour with the wrong client is an hour you can't spend building systems that compound.

But there's another cost. One that's harder to measure but far more dangerous.

Wrong-fit clients erode your confidence.

When you're doing work you weren't meant to do — even if you're good at it — something starts to hollow out inside you. I've written before about how we systematically undervalue the work that comes naturally to us — and how that creates a machine specifically designed to destroy our confidence. It's not random. It's predictable.

You're wearing a mask, performing a version of yourself that fits what they want.

I've done this in other areas too — building something authentic, then abandoning it because I got tangled up in what I thought I should be doing instead of what was actually working.

And that takes a toll.

Not just an energetic toll. A soul toll.

You start to lose faith in your vision. In what you're building. In yourself.

In my 15+ years of experience working with entrepreneurs, that self-belief is the biggest differentiator between those who sink and those who swim.

And here's the really insidious part: when an ideal-fit client finally does come along, you're less likely to show up with full confidence. Less creativity. Less optimism. Less of the magic that made you good at this in the first place.

Because you've been depleted by people who didn't see you. And now you're not sure you see yourself either.

This is the thing that kills me.

We got out of corporate because we wanted to do our own thing. Chart our own path. Build something that was ours.

But if you end up doing work you weren't meant to do, for people you don't want to do it for, in a business model that drains you instead of energizes you...

You've just recreated the cage.

A cage with your name on the door, maybe. But still a cage.

I didn't leave a stable paycheck and a clear career path so I could cry in a doctor's office, wondering how I'd built something I hated.

And I don't think you did either.

If you're reading this and feeling that pit in your stomach — the one that knows something's off — you don't have to figure it out alone.

The Revenue Multiplier Calculator takes 2 minutes and shows you exactly where small shifts in your business (better clients, not just more clients) can change everything.

See what's possible →

Here's how you know you've crossed the line:

You've lost your joy for the work.

Not the hard days — everyone has hard days. Not the challenging clients — growth requires challenge.

I mean the bone-deep joy and satisfaction. The thing that made you want to do this in the first place.

When it all feels like a grind. When you're going through the motions. When you can't remember the last time you felt genuinely excited about a project or a client or an idea.

That's not burnout from working too hard. That's burnout from working on the WRONG things.

And no amount of rest will fix it. No vacation will solve it. You have to change what you come back to.

After years of figuring this out the hard way, I finally built something different.

I let go of the agency model. Let go of clients who weren't right. Let go of work that wasn't mine to do.

And I rebuilt around what I was actually meant for: helping people find their thing and build something that's genuinely theirs — not a copy of what everyone says they should build.

Today, I generate similar revenue with 3x the profits.

And infinitely more joy, meaning, and purpose.

I haven't had vertigo since.

Not because I work less. But because I work on the right things, for the right people, in the right way for me.

If something in this story hit a nerve, pay attention to that.

Maybe you're not in the doctor's office yet. Maybe your body hasn't forced the conversation. But if you've lost your joy — if you're wearing a mask — if you're doing work you're good at but not meant for...

That's data.

And you don't have to wait for a crisis to do something about it.

You don't have to choose between following the market and following your passion. There's a third path — one where what lights you up and what people will pay for actually intersect.

Finding that intersection is possible. But it starts with getting honest about where you are now.

One of the fastest ways to see what's possible is to look at the math.

I built a Revenue Multiplier Calculator that lets you play with the numbers in your business — and see how small adjustments can yield massive results.

Most entrepreneurs think they need a ton more leads. What they usually need is better leads and more revenue per client. The kind of clients who value what you specifically offer — not the ones who drain you while you chase volume.

Plug in your numbers and see what shifts when you stop chasing more and start building right.

[Try the Revenue Multiplier Calculator →]