Overcoming Post-Launch Blues
Everyone feels different after they are done working on something big: a book, that speaking event, or planning that large company retreat. But most people get the post-launch blues like not knowing what is next feeling or even maybe physical illness. In this episode, Rob and Traci discuss this phenomenon and how to overcome these feelings before they even start.
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Rob:
So I think we've all had that feeling when there's something really important out into the future where with all this buildup, and we finally get there and through the event, and we're left with this what's next feeling. This, "Wow, I've been stressing, I've been working, I've been excited, I've done all this work and I've looked forward to this thing, or dreaded this thing, or just worked really hard to get there. And when I get to the other side, I'm left with this what's next feeling."
And we've kind of come to talk about this as the post-launch blues and launch in this case could be anything. It could be a big event, running your company retreat, speaking at an event, a big project that you've worked on, or maybe you published your first book, and that feeling of what's next.
And we know that your body even has a response to this stuff where the stress can build up. And there's oftentimes, at least in my career, where I've had something big that I've looked forward to, or worked really hard at and then gotten sick where my body's almost taken a break from an immune response system. So I think that today what I'd like to do is talk a little bit more about those post-launch blues, and what we can do with them, and then maybe how do you get excited about maintaining what's next.
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Rob:
Good morning, Traci. How are you?
Traci:
I'm good, good. Yes, I can relate to everything you're saying so great intro.
Rob:
So maybe a book that just came out.
Traci:
Yeah, yeah. It's my book, speaking events, projects it is when you are working on something so big and you and your team and you've invested an insane amount of time, energy, resources into something as big of a project—at least for me as writing a book. What's interesting is that the emotions you feel leading up to it, which can be excitement and anticipation and anxiety, fear, doubt, a lot of stress, but good stress. Because stress is an okay emotion, usually it helps propel us to really excel, especially if you're going to be speaking at a big event want to channel that stress. You don't want to just have no stress because then you might not put as much effort into it as you should.
But then when you come out the other side, there's almost this kind of your body releases. It's not as though all the stress is gone, but there's definitely, like you were saying, you can even get sick. You just have this post sort of emotional experience where the emotions just feel different. And for me, it's like you can feel very tired, you can feel like you need a nap. You start Monday morning quarterbacking, of course, after these things happen as well. So it's easy to get fixated on some of the wrong things or the wrong emotions if you don't do the right amount of work on the front end.
Rob:
Mm, that's good. I like that. Okay, so what are some examples of the right of work on the front end then? Because that's a good place to take this is how do you prepare knowing this is a real thing?
Traci:
Yeah. I'd say, first and foremost, what I tell myself and everybody else is define what success looks like before the launch. So before you launch that project, before you give the speech, before you publish the book, before you do the big thing, you need to literally put pen to paper and define what success looks like. And it can be bullet points.
But for the book, for instance, to me was just writing it. Creating something I was proud of and eager to get out into the world was one point of success for me. Giving it to my daughters was another big point of success for me. And then touching people's lives where the message, I actually get feedback that the message at the book, the stories in the book, whatever it is, touched somebody, helped them in whatever crossroads or journey they were at.
So I wrote down those points first before I ever got to what you would as far as business KPIs, book sales, or what type of business it brings in, that type of thing. What type of speaking engagements do I get? Before all of those, I wrote what really in my heart looked like success to me. What was making me write this book in the first place?
And I think the same can be done with any project you work on. So even if it's a speech that you're given, you want to make sure that maybe just one person is affected in the audience, or that you get at least a couple people coming to you saying that helped.
And I think for projects that companies are working on, whether that's retreats or specific big projects, having the team do that together. Like, "Look, before we even launch this thing, let's write down together what we think success looks like." And the reason it's so helpful to do that is because post a launch, you can get caught up in all those other measurements, and forget where your heart really was when you began and what you really wanted, how you really wanted to positively impact your own life, or other people's lives, or the business.
And I think we can lose those more important points because we get caught up in the, "Well, did it reach this goal or did I do this?" And that's where you can all of a sudden be filled with this on top of being completely tired, you can start to be like panicky because you want to reach all the goals, all the points. And that can be a really slippery slope emotionally.
Rob:
Yeah. I also think that one of the things that's worked really well for me and I've seen work well for others is intentionally scheduling that time right after that launch. And what I usually do for me is it's not nothing. I can't have empty space because that makes it worse. But I also can't fill my schedule to the brim thinking that I pushed a bunch of things off because that stress is bad too. It's a what is the right intentional amount of things to do to give myself a break, to allow myself a little bit of self-care, to allow the blues, the immune response, whatever it is, enough time to know that's going to be there, but still have my mind occupied and some easy things for some of those easy wins to start building momentum to whatever's next?
If I can do it, I'll schedule a vacation right after with my family because that's, at least the way we vacation, isn't something that's a whole lot of free space and just mindless stuff, it's always going. But if I'm going to be back in the office and working is being really intentional about having routine things, but not something that is so going to stretch me the other way that it delays that response even longer.
Traci:
Yeah, that's really good because I do think that it's easy ... If you don't schedule it before you even launch, you're going to make a ton of excuses why not, or calendars get all booked up. And then it's like you didn't even have time to celebrate, not to mention rest. And there should be some moments of rest, relaxation, and celebration. If you're not holding up a glass of wine or patting somebody on the back or giving somebody a high five.
And I find this so much with overachievers, for lack of a better word, type A personalities or whatever that I coach where they just want to get onto the next goal. They're really fed by those goals, reaching those goals, achieving, and they don't celebrate. And that's the number one reason for burnout is that people aren't even taking a moment to say, "I did it. Wow, that was great, and I'm going to take a nap, or I'm going to go on vacation, or I'm going to just take a long weekend, and do the things I want to do to reward myself."
And I think building that in beforehand is just going to be the safest way to assure that it's going to happen.
Rob:
Well, it's that time again where we thank our sponsor, the Bureau of Digital, a community of digital makers that all get together and share and support each other. And today we have a special treat, Carl, the head of the bureau is here with us.
Hey, Carl.
Carl:
Hey everybody. Thank you for having me be on the show. We don't sponsor any other podcasts and when I listened to what y'all were doing, I was like, "We need to support them. We need to find a way that we can help." So I was like, "Ah, we'll be a sponsor."
Rob:
Yeah, and we really do appreciate it. And if you have any questions, check out bureauofdigital.com. The 2023 event schedule is up and live. And a big change for this year is if you join and become a member, all of the online events are included and there's some really good ones. You don't want to miss out, so don't wait. Visit bureauofdigital.com.
Rob:
So I have to ask, you just had a book come out, and we're talking about this kind of in response to some of the conversations we've had. Did you follow your own advice that you just gave with your book launch?
Traci:
With the rest and the celebration?
Rob:
Yeah, the rest, the celebration, the intentional-ness and all that.
Traci:
I did allow myself probably not enough time. I didn't take a vacation, but I did take a long weekend and I did schedule, well, the party, we did have a little party to celebrate, but that was a lot of work. Sometimes parties are a lot of work. It was a lot of fun, and I didn't want to do it at first. I just thought, "That's just weird." I don't want to be like, "Yay me," which was wrong. I don't know why I didn't want to celebrate publicly such an achievement. I would've been mad at my friend if they hadn't done it, but my husband was adamant. He's like, "No, we are absolutely going to do this because it's real. It'll make it real. It'll help you to really feel like what you did was as important as what you did. And your friends want to be there for you. Your friends want to celebrate you."
And I think sometimes we need people in our lives that are going to tell us that, that are going to say, "Yeah, you want to be celebrated." And even if it feels awkward, you just need to do it.
And I think for teams, when you pulled off something big and the next day the boss comes in and just says, "Okay, what's next? What's up? What's next?" That's really hard on teams because they want to celebrate, they want to also rest a little bit. And I know that sometimes work doesn't allow us a lot of rest, but we should have that mentality that we do need to high-five each other, we do need to thank each other, we do need to share gratitude, and we do need to celebrate.
And so if we're not baking that in for ourselves and for our teams, then we're going to burn out. It's just we're going to burn out, and we're just going to move on to the next thing, and not realize why we feel burnt out. We're going to be like, "Wait, I don't get it because last launch was successful. This launch is successful. Why am I not happy or why do I feel like I'm unfulfilled?" And it's because you didn't celebrate.
Rob:
Yeah, and I know that I'm not wired that way to stop and smell the roses all the time. I've been guilty and still am guilty of moving on to the next thing before we even get all the way through launch. I've got the next thing queued up that I want to tackle, that I want to move on to. And what I've learned a little bit about myself is I have to have five of those thoughts before that rest and celebration because I have to know where I'm going, but I also need to keep it to myself.
Traci:
Yeah, exactly.
Rob:
Because not everybody is wired that way. There's a whole bunch of us that are just like we're all created differently. But I think that leading well during that time has to allow that space for that to happen.
And your point about the overall party that you have after, I think I would make the argument that that party was actually part of your launch. It wasn't the break for you. It was about you, but it wasn't for you, it was part of the events. And I'm sure that the stress continued to build through that and then after the fact is when the air got let out of the balloon a little bit because you had finished the public parts of that.
Traci:
Yeah. And I think what's interesting is whether something's a success or sometimes for a lot of type A personalities or teams, we could celebrate the success for like five minutes and then all of a sudden start thinking about what are the things we should have done differently and ... And not saying that you shouldn't learn from those types of things.
But I mean, I think for me, I celebrated and it was super exciting and things went really, really well that I started thinking, "What's the next book I could write or what's the next ..." And again, my wise husband is like, "Yeah, you need to take a breath and maybe not be thinking about that."
Because as an entrepreneur when you write a book it's typically because it's part of your business plan, and it's part of, for me, it was a moonshot goal, it was something I've always wanted to do for the last 10 years. I had spent years collecting research and writing the book. So it was a personal achievement, but I also knew that it was part of my own platform and the work that I want to do with people.
So you go from launching the book to then extending what you're going to be doing in your service lines. And I think that makes it even harder to rest or to really celebrate because your mind is just going 100 miles an hour and you're thinking about, "Okay, this went really well so that means we could do this, and we could do this, and we could do that."
And I think one of the things that has really, really helped me is playing the long game. And I think this could be true for anything. If you're just starting out doing public speaking or your business is just starting to hit its stride and you're having project after project, or you're hosting your first company retreat, you've never done it before because your team is remote and you're bringing everybody in. And whatever it is, you have to in your mind, play the long game, and know that this is just the beginning, that this is my runway, these are the mile markers. I'm going to give myself time and space to get there. Rome wasn't built in a day and I can't even count how many times I've said that to myself. And it's not supposed to be.
I know with the world around us, it's like the hustle culture. And every time I open Instagram, there's another thing about productivity or how can you be ultra productive? How can you reach all your goals? Like all these things. And when you're inundated with that, you think everything needs to be immediate. You think you have to build your business by tomorrow. You think you have to build a platform by tomorrow. You think you have to book five speaking gigs by tomorrow. And that's not realistic or healthy.
So you really have to look at your calendar and say, "This is going to take a year. I'm going to take the next year, and I'm going to do these things, and this is where I want to speak, or post-launch what I want to do next. I'm going to take these three months to, whatever it is." And I think when we give ourselves that runway is when we start to relax into it. And it allows us to be more innovative, and more creative, and to make fewer mistakes because we're not racing against some imaginary clock that only we have created because we've sort of fed into the societal pressure of the pursuit of success, which is how much money you're going to make? How big is your business going to get and how well-known are you going to be? All these things and it's very fleeting measures of success.
So you have to play the long game. You have to define what success means to you, and make sure that it's not about money, or power, or fame because that's a never win game. There's always going to be somebody like wealthier than you, more powerful than you, bigger company than you, more fame or more recognition, or more followers, or more likes, whatever. And so you have to really define things for yourself, what's going to bring meaning to you, meaning to your business, what is your business mission, and will this get us closer to that? And if so, great, rest in that, celebrate that.
Rob:
And I think that playing the long game also allows you to let things evolve, and change, and explore possibilities, and allow possibilities to develop that you couldn't see, you can't see with where you are today. And there is so many things that I've gone through in my career or whatever where I've had a plan, and the plan doesn't work out like I had it written, but it works out a different way. And I think that that long game allows that small iterations, and to see what develops, and course corrections.
Because we have to be able to lean into learning and assume that we're going to know more about this tomorrow than we do today, because we're going to have more experience if we continue to get better and strive towards things we'll have a better idea of what we want, where things are going, and what's possible over and over and over again. And I think that's such a key piece.
I've seen several people over my lifetime that come up with those really specific plans and then be really disappointed when it doesn't work out that way. And there are times where I just want to shake them and be like, "Listen, it didn't turn out exactly like this, but if you would open your eyes to the things that could be possible or doors you've opened, then there you'll still may be able to get to your vision and your goals."
Traci:
Yeah. And I think that's why overarching strategy is a great thing. I'm all for planning. I think what you're talking about is leaving room for how that plan's going to come to fruition. And I think when you set overarching strategic goals, and you're setting kind of action steps behind that, sometimes when those action steps are executed it gives you more information and you realize, "Oh, now I think I'm going to kind of shift these next action steps because that didn't turn out as I thought it was going to, or the information I got from doing that kind of makes me think about things in a different way."
And so I'm always very cautious with entrepreneurs and visionaries about allowing them to have this mindset that vision can be shifting all the time because that's super dangerous for visionaries because they think, "Oh, well, I can just reshape the vision and I can for the 15th time in one year." And then their team is just like, "This guy doesn't know where he wants to go, what he wants to do, keeps changing it, we got bought into it and now it's shifting again." And we hear that so often when we survey teams and it's like, "Okay, let's know who we are, and what we want, and where we want to go."
What's going to be kind of fluid because life is always going to throw us curve balls is maybe how we get there, so some of that may need to be flexible. If you haven't done the work the right way on your vision or on your mission, then it's going to alter, then you're going to find a leader that's always shifting it. And I know immediately it's because they just thought up by the seat of their pants and they just were like, "What? Let's throw something at the wall and see what sticks." And it was like, "Well, how'd you get there?" And then you start to process it with them and you're like, "Okay, we need to go back and we need to do the proper work."
And it takes time and energy. And I'd say launching mission and vision with your team and strategy with your team is just what we're talking about here like a big launch, it takes time, it takes thought, not a lot, but it does take taking a pause out from the whirlwind, defining all these things, testing them with the leadership team, really like stress testing them and defining what success looks like, and then we kind of launch it.
But what happens with entrepreneurs is they launch it and then they have exactly what we're talking about. They come out the other side and they're like, "Whew, I finally got it out there. I feel so good." And then all of a sudden they're like, "Well, what should we do next? And I don't know, and maybe I need to rethink that, and was that the right thing?" And then they started having all these emotions post-launch so you kind of have to talk them down and say, "No, we're going to rest in this, and we're going to play the long game here, and we're going to see how this is going to play out, and we're going to let our team marinate and really execute well."
And those things take time. And so it's just launching anything when we think the long game, we have to have patience for success. If you are impatient for success, you are going to make mistakes. You need to be patient in the process.
Rob:
Yeah, that's a good point to make about patience. Rome wasn't built in the day as my friend Traci likes to say.
Traci:
I'm going to get a shirt that says that.
Traci:
Hi, Overly Human friends, it's Traci. And if you haven't heard, I wrote a book, it's called What If There's More?: Finding Significance Beyond Success, and it's out right now. If you're thinking about a career pivot, wanting to follow your dream, or just want to fall back in love with what you do, then I think this book is for you. And if you like what you read, please feel free to head on over and leave me a review. You can learn more at tracischubertbarrett.com and you can find What If There's More? wherever you buy books. Thanks.
Traci:
Whatever the kind of personality type that tends to show up often in these types of roles tend not to be super, super patient. And so you want to check it off the list. And it's not for ego's sake, it's usually because you just are so used to checking off lists that you feel vulnerable when you haven't made that mark yet, or you haven't reached that level of success yet, or you haven't reached the goals that you laid out for yourself even though every human around you is like, "What are you crazy? That takes time. Why are you so antsy? What's wrong with you?"
A lot of people, lot of leaders are like, "I don't know what's wrong with me. I just feel completely anxious, and impatient, and I just want it to happen. I just want it to be over with." And you're not alone if you feel that way. It is such a universal feeling, but we have to take a breath. I mean, we really collectively need to take a breath. We are burning ourselves out. It's super dangerous to our mental health, to the people around. I mean, I'm preaching to myself, by the way, this is like a little self-therapy session.
Rob:
Oh, well, I'm glad somebody's getting something out of this. No, there's two of us here.
Traci:
Exactly.
Rob:
Yeah, I think those are all great things. It gets back to this idea of being intentional of thinking about what comes next. The launch of whatever we're talking about is rarely the end. It's often the beginning of what's next and what happens next is every bit as important as what it took to get there because the work's not over. There's always something to do.
It's an independent thing, there is making the most out of what we just launched if it is something with our team that is the socialization and getting everybody else on board. And knowing that it's going to take them time. You didn't get there in a day, they're not going to get there in a day and you have to stay the course and at the same time have to be open to the things that you're learning, and the things, that are coming in. We want a solid vision, we want strong plans that are loosely held.
Traci:
Yeah, I think too, we want to have fun. I mean, we talk so much on this podcast about living intentionally and kind of the present. You have to be present to do that. And I think we don't give ourselves enough space to have fun when we're doing these projects, or have fun when we're launching things, and really give ourselves the space to be present and to feel things deeply. And I think this whole busy for busy sake, or I have to achieve to achieve really kind of sucks the joy out of things.And so we just have to ask ourselves periodically, "Are we having fun? Is this fun?"
Because if it's not fun, what's happening? What's missing? And I know work is toil. Work is always going to be work, but it shouldn't be sucking the soul out of us. It should never be. That means something's wrong or we're doing the wrong thing. But yeah, I mean, we have to be taking a pulse check every now and again and say, "Do we have to readjust here?"
Rob:
Yeah. I mean, that's one of the reasons why it's been about three years we've been doing this podcast that we just keep doing, it's because we're still having fun.
Traci:
Exactly.
Rob:
Right?
Traci:
Yep. Yes.
Rob:
So.
Traci:
Yeah.
Rob:
Yeah, I think so. I'm having fun. Wow, I guess I just didn't expect that to leave that hang in there.
Traci:
No, I was nodding my head since nobody else else can see that though.
Rob:
Nobody else can see that though, Traci.
Traci:
Exactly
Rob:
Okay.
Traci:
Yeah, this is great.
Rob:
All right.
Traci:
Yes, we're having fun.
Rob:
Yeah. Any final thoughts here about the hard part after launch, like the work? Anything you want to leave anybody with?
Traci:
I would just say that, and I'm sure this is kind of the psychotherapist in me to name your emotions, know what you're feeling, and recognize those feelings. And they're all there for a reason. We're humans with feelings for a reason. And don't skip over those emotions, recognize them, and take a pulse, but don't push them down, or ignore them, and just go on to the next thing.
Rob:
That's really good. Yeah. I guess the last thing that I'd like to say is be kind to yourself. Listen to what your body needs. It's telling you things, those emotions are communicating with you, be just in tune with that and listen. And if it's saying that you need to take a step back, give yourself a little break, give yourself some downtime after one of these things, but not too much.
Traci:
Exactly. Don't go into a coma, just take a little rest.
Rob:
Yeah, so, all right, thanks, Traci.
Traci:
Thank you.
Announcer:
The Overly Human Podcast is brought to you by Navigate the Journey and Sparkbox. For more information on this podcast, or to get in touch with Traci or Rob, go to overlyhuman.com. If you like what you've heard, subscribe and tell your friends to listen. Thanks.
