Episode 423: How to Avoid Burnout as an Entrepreneur (+Why Multiple Income Streams Help) with Nicole Liloia

EBT423 – Nicole Liloia

Intro: Food bloggers. Hi, how are you today? Thank you so much for tuning in to the Eat Blog Talk podcast. This is the place for food bloggers to get information and inspiration to accelerate your blog’s growth and ultimately help you to achieve your freedom, whether that’s financial, personal, or professional.

I’m Megan Porta, and I’ve been a food blogger for over 12 years. I understand how isolating food blogging can be at times. I’m on a mission to motivate, inspire, and most importantly, let each and every food blogger, including you, know that you are heard and supported. 

If you can relate to being a burned out entrepreneur at any stage in your game, or maybe you’re just working really hard to get that first stream of income and you feel like you’re never going to get there, wherever you are on that spectrum, you are going to love this episode.

Nicole Liloia joins me. She’s from nicoleliloia.com. She talks about being a burned out entrepreneur, how we can avoid this, how to build multiple income streams into your business in a way that you’re being the most efficient human you can possibly be, and getting the right work done and avoiding burnout and overwhelm and exhaustion.

There are a bunch of little nuggets that Nicole leaves throughout the episode, so be sure to listen to the entire thing. You’re going to love it. This is episode number 423, sponsored by RankIQ. 

Sponsor: Hey, awesome food bloggers. Before we dig into this episode, I have a really quick favor to ask you. Go to your favorite podcast player. Go to Eat Blog Talk. Scroll down to the bottom where you see the ratings and review section. Leave Eat Blog Talk a five star rating if you love this podcast and leave a great review. This will only benefit this podcast. It adds value, and I so very much appreciate your efforts with this. Thank you so much for doing this. Okay, now onto the episode. 

Megan Porta: New Jersey based Nicole Liloia is a small business coach and a strategist. Over the course of her nine years in this business, she has helped over 500 service providers build their business and diversify their income streams through her signature Bigger Business Bootcamp and Grow Your Income Mastermind. Her Facebook group supports over 10,000 entrepreneurs by giving them real unmatched support and resources to get to that next level in their business. Nicole, how are you today? Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. 

Nicole Liloia: Hey, thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to chat. 

Megan Porta: Yes, we’re going to talk about entrepreneurs being burned out and what we can do about it today, but first we want to know if you have a fun fact to share.

Nicole Liloia: Yeah. My fun fact is that I actually have nine nephews. 

Megan Porta: Lots of boys. 

Nicole Liloia: I’m child free by choice, but I have nine nephews, so it’s great. I get to do the fun stuff. 

Megan Porta: That’s amazing. Boys are the best. I’m a boy mom myself, and I just, I never thought I would be a boy mom, and they’re so awesome. I also have a lot of boy nephews.

Nicole Liloia: Yeah, they’re great. 

Megan Porta: They are great. That’s awesome. Love to learn that about you. So you’re here to talk about entrepreneurs and this thing that happens to us. We all get burned out, or a lot of us do, if we’re in the game long enough. So you have experience in this. Can you tell us your backstory about why you know so much about this?

Nicole Liloia: I actually started out first as a social worker. I got my master’s in social work from Columbia. I went immediately into a full-time job where I was getting my hours and my clinical hours and stuff for my next license. I had gone straight from college into grad school, into a job. I never really took any time off. Obviously entered into the job world with a lot of financial stress thanks to grad school loans, and jobs as a social worker don’t really pay well. So you’re really in a stressful environment. You’re working hard and you’re dealing with a lot of bureaucracy and you’re barely surviving on top of it. I had five roommates, which was very hard as an introvert. So I actually did the three years I needed to do to get my license and then I left the job because I was just ready for something different. But what ended up happening is I took some time off to travel and volunteer in Venezuela. When I got back, I was just like, oh my gosh, I don’t want another job. I must be lazy. Something’s wrong with me. The nine to five world. I was just thinking, what am I going to do? I really think I was just burnt out and I didn’t realize it right because I always loved working. I loved making money. I had multiple jobs at a time in like high school and other times of my life. So I really felt confused. But I ended up needing to get my license, needing to do paperwork to get my license because I had to take the exam and I passed that. It just was so hard. I just couldn’t do the tasks I needed to. I just felt dead and I really was not making money. I didn’t really have a lot of savings because I didn’t have a job that gave me excess money to save. It was just a really bad spot in my life. But I still will say, I don’t even think I identified it as burnout. I just really thought I was lazy. Eventually I did get myself together, started working again, doing a lot of different things, having different income streams. I had a part-time job, I had some contract work. Eventually decided to start my own business, then when I did that, I was like, oh my God, I just recreated a nine to five because my first business was as a therapist. Essentially you’re just in an office all day seeing clients at the same times every week.

Megan Porta: Same thing, right? 

Nicole Liloia: Yeah, so I just recreated the whole thing. So I’ve had severe burnout several times in my life. I also have ADHD and ADHD burnout is a rea thing because of just our struggles with executive dysfunction. So I can see how just the complicated process to get my license just really overwhelmed me. It didn’t need to be so complicated, but because there were just like some random steps in there, as someone who struggles with the executive dysfunction, it really was hard to just follow through. But I didn’t know that at the time. 

Megan Porta: Oh my goodness. So many cool things to learn about you and your story. I love that you said this a few times, that your burnout was perceived by you as being lazy. I think a lot of us can identify with that. Often when I get to that point where I am maybe on the verge of burnout, I’m like, what’s wrong with me? I start questioning is there something wrong with me? Do you think that’s fairly common in the entrepreneurial space? 

Nicole Liloia: I do. I think because a lot of times, as business owners, we really do thrive on being busy, right? I think the world still, it maybe started to shift a little bit, but I think that busy is a sign of being successful because you have stuff to do. I don’t know. I’m from the New Jersey, New York City area. So I think here especially, it is very important to be busy and thrive on that and saying how busy you are and how stressed you are. I think that we just don’t realize it because we’ve been so motivated and we’re like, I love working. I love my business. I think a lot of us do say we go into business for our freedom, but then we just end up working all the time. So I think that when we do get burnt out and we do get tired of it, we just feel like we’re being lazy. But it’s just that we’ve been working in an unsustainable way.

Megan Porta: What I found is that, even though I enjoy most of the work I do, I can still get burnt out. I think I like get caught up in that thinking that, oh, it’s not work because I’m enjoying it and I really like the progress that I’m making, or I like the project I’m working on, or whatever, fill in the blank. But in the end, you can still get burnt out, like looking at your screen and working too much. No matter how much you love your job can equal burnout. 

Nicole Liloia: Yeah, definitely. Absolutely. 

Megan Porta: That’s like a lie that we all buy into. I like my job, so I’m not going to get burnt out. But we actually can. You mentioned ADHD and how that can drain you further than probably most people who don’t have ADHD. I feel like there are certain personality types that just get drained. I’m a huge empath and I can get so drained being around people. That’s really all I do these days. So I am tired a lot of the time. So thinking about things like that. Do you have adhd? Do you have executive functioning issues? Are you a huge empath or introvert? All of those things can make you drain more easily. Do you agree with that? 

Nicole Liloia: Yeah, I think so. I think for sure doing things that might not align with our natural rhythms or again, everybody’s like a little bit different anyways. So it’s easy to be like other people are able to do all these things, so I should be too. But a lot of times we just don’t see the behind the scenes of the supports they have or what’s really going on. 

Megan Porta: Yep. We don’t have the full story all the time. So how can we alleviate some of this burnout, getting to the point where we’re just feeling lazy but not able to work anymore. Do you have a solution for us, Nicole? 

Nicole Liloia: I think it’s definitely important to have support, right? Whether its in both areas, personal and business life. So definitely looking at what are the things that drain you, making sure that like you’re not responsible for everything so that you are working towards a place. I think there’s also, the same thing about burnout. I hear a lot of people who have this like thing of pride in Oh, I DIY everything. I learn everything. I do everything. That’s not a good thing. That’s great in some ways. Sure sounds good, but long term, that’s going to wear you out. So definitely getting support with things, whether it’s getting groceries delivered, outsourcing getting cleaning help. I know some of these people like outsource their laundry, just little things that. Take a responsibility off your plate, I think are really important. In business too, right? Whether it’s even just tools that you could use, like client management systems, so you’re not manually sending different documents, different papers, having to save everything in the same spot, try to find it. Just tools or systems or processes that you can use to just take extra steps out of your processes. Save you some time is really helpful. 

One of my favorite things is multiple income streams. Again, when I started out my first business, I was a therapist, so my thing was, I’m just only going to see one-to-one clients. That’s it. I was happy with that, but again, I realized that was unsustainable because I realized if I don’t have a session, I don’t get paid. If I don’t have a client in that spot, I’m not getting paid. If I take time off, I’m not getting paid that week. So I realize that having a variety of income streams could be super helpful so that you’re not so stressed with the ebb and flow of income.

Megan Porta: And seasons, right? In our food blogging space, a lot of our ad traffic is very seasonal, so including extra income streams to our business, is only going to help us because it can be really stressful. Like for me, late spring, early summer typically is oh gosh, what am I going to do now? So having something else to rely on. So how can we do this? What are some ways that entrepreneurs can add income streams to their business? 

Nicole Liloia: Yeah, so I think it’s always good to look at like layers. So what would you say is for the people listening, where does the bulk of their income come from? What is the number one type of income source?

Megan Porta: Once a food blogger can get enough traffic, they go into an ad network and get display ad money.

Nicole Liloia: Yeah. So ad money, affiliate income, that sort of thing. 

Megan Porta: Ad income would be by itself. That would be number one. Affiliate would be separate. That’s a separate avenue to explore. That’s a possibility. Not a ton of people make a lot of money from that. I would say digital products also would be another one, freelance work, working with brands, doing sponsored work. Those are the top five. 

Nicole Liloia: I think first of all one, you want to focus on one income stream to be bringing you in like enough income to survive because.

Megan Porta: It can be really hard if you’re spread out too thin amongst too many income streams, right? Like people who start out and they’re like, oh, let me do affiliate. Let me do ads. Let me try a product. And they’re not really directing their people towards one particular thing or focused on that big traffic source to the blog, right?

Nicole Liloia: Which then means that everything’s spread out and they’re overworking. So I think it’s really good, again, to focus on one income stream and really get it thriving. Then the next one, I think if ads are going well, then it’s also good, even if affiliate income isn’t a ton of income, to put those opportunities in place because they tend to be natural in blogs, right? If you’re talking about making a recipe for a crockpot, linking to the crockpot, that kind of thing. It’s just extra. Extra income coming in that doesn’t require you as well to trade time. I think also the other thing is to make sure that you are building your audience at the same time so that it’s not just sending people to your blog, that you’re giving them opportunities to get onto your email list. Because we don’t control Google, we don’t control Instagram or TikTok or any of the algorithms, so they could change things so quickly and cut off your access to your audience.

Megan Porta: Yeah, it happens. It’s for sure a real thing. People lose instant access to their Instagram account and it’s oh my gosh, this is devastating. I spent years building those things.

Nicole Liloia: Yeah, or just like their, what you were doing worked, right? It used to be just pictures, then it used to be stories. Now it’s reels. So you have to keep also learning new strategies and adjusting to that. 

Megan Porta: Absolutely. 

Nicole Liloia: Or else again, the algorithm doesn’t feed you people. So I think also just putting in those securities take off a lot of anxiety and stress and worry about losing access to your audience, which is your income. I think definitely, one of the important things when you’re doing an ad network and it’s so important to get that traffic and get those mass numbers. I would also think of something that you can make more money for doing less of. So a higher price program, or service or something like that. A higher price program or service, because typically, like for me, I start off with services so that’s easier and then it’s layering in lower price things. But for you guys it is usually lower cost income at a higher rate of sales or, clicks or whatever. So I would think about, are there workshops you could do for your audience? Is there some kind of demo you could do for them? I think that could be really cool, to bring in those higher paid sponsorships. Can you bring them in for a training and charge them a rate to get the training in front of your audience or selling something that does have a higher affiliate rate rather than just Amazon links, which are really low at 4%. Selling someone else’s workshop or product or book or service and linking people to that. Really just thinking about what are other things that your audience wants, needs, who are they? What are other things that are solutions for problems they have that you don’t need to create? 

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Next, I dive into each post with confidence because each keyword has been handpicked by the creator of the tool himself. With other tools, I approach each keyword tentatively because I really don’t know how each one will perform or whether it’s going to produce a good crop of traffic for me. Last, the RankIQ IQ optimizer is the best optimizer out there, in my opinion. It provides very specific recommendations about content to include inside each post. This makes the writing process go really smoothly as the optimizer acts as my guide leading the way to a comprehensively written post. Go to Rankiq.com to sign up and check it out for yourself. Now back to the episode. 

Megan Porta: I think in the food blogger space, it’s a little bit more challenging to find those higher price items, but it is possible. I know plenty of food bloggers who are able to do that. So whether that’s a cooking class or like you mentioned like a workshop or a webinar or something, just trying to brainstorm a few other ideas. I know that a lot of food bloggers work with sponsors or brands and they can charge high dollar for those. So that’s that for some people. 

Nicole Liloia: Yeah. One of my clients had a blog, she was a dietician, but she had a food blog and Instagram and everything. Not so much specific food, but recipes. She had a lot of sponsorships that she would get or getting paid to write guest blogs for them. So there definitely are those opportunities there, those partnerships there. I think that, again, what does your audience need? If it’s a food blog targeted to busy working moms, would a program on time management help them? If it’s new moms, could you bring in someone, like a parenting sleep coach who has a program? I think it’s really thinking outside of the box because it doesn’t necessarily have to be related to food, but it could be related to something else that your audience struggles with that takes time away from their enjoyment of food or cooking or things like that that is just another problem in their lifestyle. 

Megan Porta: That’s a really great way to think around that. I love that. So how many income streams do you think are ideal? Once you have one set, like you mentioned, getting one kind of established and going and solid and then working on others, what is an ideal number for you?

Nicole Liloia: I think it really honestly depends on how much income they’re each bringing in. So there’s been times where I’ve had 12 and then I got rid of some, and my income increased with six. Because I just put more time and focus towards the income streams that were working, and got rid of others and I wasn’t spread so thin or trying to do so many things. So I think definitely like looking at and assessing what are your profitable income streams. I think for you guys with your blogs and stuff, it’s so great because you have the stats right there. What are your most read blogs, what are the most popular ones? Are there maybe some opportunities in there for some extra income or sponsorships or resources to direct people to where you would get affiliate income or a resource for you to create that’s a little higher paid, right? Higher cost. So I think that, it doesn’t necessarily have to be this massive number, but looking at also your income, your income goal, and I call it goal chunking. Breaking it down into different income chunks. Those are the different income streams. What do you need to sell at what rate for each of those income streams? If you need to sell thousands and thousands of things for each income stream, that means you need this massive audience. So do you have access to that? That might not make enough sense. So it might be better to get rid of one of those things and work it into just selling more of what you’re already doing or increasing your traffic to what you’re already doing and focusing on that. So again, you’re not spread so thin.

Megan Porta: Yeah, no, I love that. That’s great advice. So it really is a case by case basis. It’s not one size fits all for anyone. We just have to look into our own lives and businesses and see what’s working, see what’s not working, and go from there. 

Nicole Liloia: Yeah. I think it’s also a little bit about personality, what you like doing. Again, like it goes back to your ideal client audience, right? What’s going to be helpful for them. You could have the best idea in the world, but if it’s not something your ideal clients are interested in, and that’s why it’s a good idea to survey your audience. Make sure you’re bringing them on your list and be putting out surveys to them. Maybe link to a survey in one of your most popular blogs that gets a lot of traffic, right? Ask them like, what are their other struggles related to that? Issue of the topic or what else would be helpful to them? Ask them what they are interested in, because I think the other thing is a lot of times we create stuff that we’d like to be successful, but that doesn’t mean it’s something that will be successful with our audience.

Megan Porta: So you’ve talked a little bit about energy and how being an entrepreneur can be very draining on energy. Do you have any tips specifically for just maximizing work and lives, productivity type tips? 

Nicole Liloia: Yeah, definitely like I said, getting support, right? Outsourcing things. I know that does cost money, but sometimes it’s cheaper to outsource something and get your time back so you could focus it on areas that you like that aren’t as draining for you, especially draining tasks. The other thing is just really assessing your schedule so you know what times of the day are good for you for different tasks. Batching things works really well. Also, having what I call a master schedule. Making sure that you’re looking at your week and where’s your writing time? Where is your time where you’re doing your social media so that way you are not switching back and forth from task to task, which is a big ADHD thing. Or multitasking, which I know we’re all like, it really helps, but it really doesn’t. I think those are those like little energy leaks that are really helpful. 

I think the other thing is looking for money leaks. What are you spending money on that you don’t use anymore, or that’s not helping you actually grow your business. That increases your profit, which is free money, I’ve had clients who have done that and they’re like, oh, I’m not using this software, I’m not using this program. If you cut out $200 a month, that’s $2,400. I’ve had clients cut out a couple of things and they’re like, oh my gosh, that’s a thousand dollars in a year. So that’s like a little less work you need to do too if you want to save the time or it’s just extra profit. 

Megan Porta: I think one of the sneaky energy drains that you’ve touched on a couple times is just that pride thing, people say, I can’t afford to hire someone to help me, or I’m busy. I do it all I do everything in my house and we almost get to the point where we’re just so proud of that, that it keeps us from being open to getting help. Which I feel like is just taking up our energy unnecessarily. So just maybe assessing that. Are we prideful about being busy and why?

Nicole Liloia: Yeah, I think not so much since the pandemic anymore, but it used to be this badge of honor. I’m really busy, I’m really stressed. Also sometimes people get embarrassed about saying they’re not great at things, whereas like for me, I’m going to be honest, like I really don’t care because it doesn’t help me to act like I’m good at something I’m not good at. I’m very honest about that. Because you think a lot of business owners are doing everything and they’re not. They have help behind the scenes or maybe they even have, another, like they’re, they have a partner who has, is bringing in income too. They have some extra help there or less financial stress so they could make other investments. 

Megan Porta: Yeah, there’s so many ways that we can get help that we might not think of. Maybe your partner makes dinner every night or helps with the kids, or does school pickups or whatever. That’s huge. 

Nicole Liloia: Sometimes it’s just rebalancing things at home. So looking at that, but for sure, so many people have cleaning help. So many people get their groceries delivered. There’s just little things there. Again, it doesn’t necessarily also mean you always have to do that, right? If you’re just at a busy time in life, maybe it’s a temporary thing. Let me just get help for a little bit. I think the other thing is people think they need to have a steady VA or have 40 hours a month for them. When I started out with a VA, it was five hours a month, yeah. Or you could outsource help with one project. It doesn’t, like nothing is permanent. Yeah, no, those are great points. So I do have some listeners who are not yet monetized. So they’re listening and they’re like, okay, this is great, but I don’t have any money coming in at all, and I know that feeling it can be discouraging.

Megan Porta: It can be like I’m not there yet, so this doesn’t really help me. Do you have advice for them how they can just get into their businesses and even think about these things without having that first stream of revenue yet? I think that, when I wasn’t really making enough money in my business and I felt like I was in business, but I was really like scrolling, Facebook lurking, like reading things, researching, and I wasn’t really actually taking action.

Nicole Liloia: I think it’s really important. I’m not saying That’s everybody. But that was like my thing. Like I was working on the wrong things. I really like search to be like, okay, like what would a six-figure business owner be doing? Would they be lurking on Facebook groups, like reading things and like never commenting, right? Would they be watching a million YouTube videos? What are they really doing? So it really comes back to making sure that you’re spending time on what’s going to bring in money in your business.

Megan Porta: So act like the person you want to be. I think that’s huge at something. It’s so underrated. Like you were saying that, scrolling through Facebook groups and not commenting or contributing. I used to be that person. I would just scroll and then I remember having this stretch of time that was far too long that I would just sit on my couch and look at my traffic and it was bad. I was getting no traffic, but I would just stare at it and then I would watch Netflix shows and I was like wondering why I wasn’t making money or getting the traffic I wanted. Hello? It’s obvious. 

Nicole Liloia: I think it’s important to be honest. Really say are these actions connected to what’s going to bring in income? If your goal is bringing in income.

Megan Porta: So for those people who aren’t doing the things that I did that I shouldn’t have and are actually working and putting in the efforts where they should be, all of that, and they’re still not quite there. Do you have thoughts for them?

Nicole Liloia: I do think unfortunately, and I have been in that spot too, it comes down to doing some market research. Do you have a clear audience? Are you actually creating things that are helpful for them, that they’re looking for? Are you using the words they use? I think figuring out where your people are and surveying them somehow, or looking at what are other people in your niche doing for this audience that is getting engagement. Knowing it takes time to build up to that. But again, I think that time tracking is really important too, because I think a lot of times we think we’re doing stuff and we’re not. So I like to use toggle t og g l.com. It’s free and actually track the different things that I’m doing. So how much time are you just creating more and not actually working on getting it out there? Do you have 80 tabs open and you’re just clicking from tab to tab so things are taking you a lot longer? I think it really is examining the evidence of what are you doing and also what do people want? 

Megan Porta: You are speaking my language. I love time tracking. I recommend it all the time when people are like, wait, I don’t know what I’m doing. Where’s my time going? 

Nicole Liloia: Yeah. It’s like a free babysitter for me.

Megan Porta: It is. It is so revealing too. For me, I find there are things that I thought I was doing more of and then things that I thought I was doing less of, and it’s just so revealing. 

Nicole Liloia: Time blindness is a real serious thing I think for all of us, but especially again, people, if you have ADHD, it’s huge. So I’d be like, oh, I’m just going to fix this email. It’ll take 10 minutes. Then when I started tracking, it was like an hour, and I was like, oh my God. What? No wonder I can never get stuff done. 

Megan Porta: Then your other point I just wanted to touch on too, so being a private investigator, and just like really digging into what people want are wanting. I think messaging is so huge. If you get your messaging wrong, but you have this amazing product, you’re not ever going to sell it. But if you can nail the messaging, oh my gosh. It’s a game changer. 

Nicole Liloia: Yeah, it definitely is. It’s a hard thing to do. I know I avoided it because I was like, what if people don’t want what I am doing? Which obviously that’s what you need to know, but it was like scary to do. People didn’t want what I was putting out there because they didn’t even know what it was. I was just very vague. So I think that’s really important. That’s one of the things my clients struggle with the most too, is just really making sure you’re selling it before you create it. So even for your audience, if you’re like, I keep creating these, digital downloads or books and it doesn’t sell, make sure that you’re pre-selling it. Don’t create it until you sell it, that you’re not wasting time and energy or money. That’s a big money time leak. 

Megan Porta: I have done that. I have been there, sadly. 

Nicole Liloia: Same. 

Megan Porta: All right. This is so great. So what have we missed? Is there anything we need to touch on before we start saying goodbye, Nicole?

Nicole Liloia: I don’t think so. I think really honestly, just get your one income stream first. I would say maximum profitability. So you know, are there any time or money leaks in it so that then you could focus in on adding the next one. 

Megan Porta: Yeah. This is great. Thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate everything you shared. It was fun to talk to you. Do you have either a favorite quote you love or words of inspiration to leave us with today?

Nicole Liloia: I really don’t have a favorite quote. My memory’s probably not good enough for them. But I really do think, just be willing to make mistakes. Be willing to not be perfect and just get yourself out there. Don’t keep tweaking it. 

Megan Porta: That’s great. We need to hear that. This is a bunch that needs to hear that. So thank you. We’ll put together show notes for you, Nicole. If anyone wants to go look at those, you can go to eatblogtalk.com/nicoleliloia, l i l o i a. Why don’t you tell everyone where they can find you, Nicole? 

Nicole Liloia: Yeah, I’m Nicole Liloia on Instagram, but if you’re interested in the income chunking and really looking at how to hit your income goals with different income streams, I have a consistent income generator that you can download that works you through the process. It is at Nicole Liloia, N i c o l e L i l o i a.com/cig. 

Megan Porta: Awesome. Thank you again so much for being here, Nicole, and thank you for listening today, food bloggers. I will see you in the next episode.

Outro: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Eat Blog Talk. Don’t forget to head to forum.eatblogtalk.com to join our free discussion forum and connect with and learn from like-minded peers. I will see you next time.