Blue Balls, Burn Out, and Trying To Make Harmful Sh*t Work

The peanut allergy that explains why 6-8 months of your year is spent in a puddle of imposter syndrome

I’d rather have my period 4x’s a month for the next decade than go through burnout ever again.

For those of you with male anatomy, maybe your equivalent is blue balls? 🤷‍♀️

Something you should probably know about me.

When I feel uncomfortable, I say inappropriate shit… because it’s better if we’re all uncomfortable, together. I wonder what this says about me? I’ll add it to the list of things to figure out later.

Ok, fine, I’ll keep the private part-talk to a minimum, mostly, probably, ok, only when I feel like it drives the point home. And this is one of those times.

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For years, I clocked the equivalent of TWO full-time jobs (hours-wise), but spent half-to-three-quarters of each year not able to work because I was in a black hole of burnout.

Math that!

Over 4,200 hours of (mostly) unpaid work… shoved into 3-6 months of creating shit no one was asking me for.

80% of my income has come from selling services through referrals + emails (meaning, little to no marketing required), yet I’ve spent 70% of my time chasing the “passive income dragon” instead of focusing on fostering the rewarding relationships that were right in front of me.

What was in front of me was never enough.

I needed more courses to generate more clients for my services.

I needed more lead magnets to generate more leads for my courses.

I needed more billboards to promote more lead magnets… to generate more leads for my courses… so I could sell more services.

Each pursuit of more ended in burnout.

7-months on…. 6-months off…. 1-month on… 5-weeks off… 4-months on… 3-months off.

Over + over, my confidence, clarity, and creativity would go dark, and I’d be left in a puddle of imposter syndrome, depression, and pivoting for months.

I have a theory about this.

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TRUTH: Burnout is the product of not knowing who we are.

Think of it like a peanut allergy.

When you have one, you make decisions accordingly.

You’re not sticking your hand in the free nut mix…

You’re not making almond lattes your daily ritual…

You’re not baking fresh nut bread every Saturday…

Or frying everything in peanut oil.

You’re not ingesting shit in aggressive amounts that might as well be laced with poison, wondering why you’re on the brink of death.

You know yourself. You know you’re someone who CAN’T eat peanuts.

It doesn’t matter that 98% of the population can consume them and run marathons, climb mountains, and build empires… YOU will die when you consume them, so you’re 1000% comfortable making the choice to say NO.

We try and make these “things” work, and when they don’t, we try even harder, and when they still don’t, we assume it’s a defect of ours and retreat into our black holes of burnout + imposter syndrome.

But these “things” were never going to work, no matter how hard we killed ourselves trying to make them work because we’re fucking allergic to them.

The burnout cycle that comes with the “create shit to sell” model is because we’re trying to make harmful things, not harm us.

We’re not the finicky entrepreneurs who are impossible to nourish; we’re the unsuspecting humans who are going into anaphylactic shock because we didn’t realize we were allergic to anything.

No one’s ever given us that option before.

Not in business, anyway.

To be able to say, that’s actually going to kill me, so NO, I’m not gonna do it.

Can you imagine saying that, straight face, dead serious, to one of those cocky guru asshats? I want to so badly. Dre 2024 is ready to go there.

*** SIDE NOTE: I had a guru’s team reach out a few weeks ago to ask if I wanted to promote his whatever, and if I did, I would get a shoutout in one of his emails… and “he has a list of 54K.” It had all the hallmarks of trying to look like they knew who I was, but really did a 30-second scan of my homepage - showering me with compliments + telling me how cool I was. My response in a nutshell: I don’t share random shit I don’t use, but it sounds like you love what I’m doing, so you should ask him to shout me out because you really enjoy my work. It might even be more genuine that way. The guy: crickets! Never heard from him again… and it felt good.

When we stop doing the shit we’re allergic to, most of the unpaid (burnout inducing) work goes away too.

We don’t spend 5 months slaving over a new lead magnet.

We don’t spend family time prepping for sales calls.

We don’t spend downtime answering emails.

We don’t spend me-time scheduling social posts.

We don’t spend vacation time thinking about our next offer.

​We don’t build “lists” or pages that “squeeze” people.​

We don’t create billboards that no one’s meant to see.

We don’t offer big ass menus of products + services.

We don’t spend our time chasing the “passive income dragon.”

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Burn out has stolen more of my life than period cramps, friendship fights, and breakups combined.

Each time made it harder to be me.

Each time made me feel like I was 10% less whole, confident, and successful than I was before it.

Each time convinced me of new lies, that I created new stories around.

Each time made me do more things that sent me into anaphylactic shock.

It’s hard to forgive myself for what feels like a decade of self-induced internet Munchhausen's syndrome, but I didn’t know I was allergic to this many things – I thought it was all a mountain of me-issues.

I think a lot of us are feeling like that. Like, this can never work because we can’t make any of this predatory shit work.

But what if we accepted that we're allergic to it… that it's not an option... and that if we did it, it would kill us?

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What ordinary AF paid newsletter + community would we have the time to build if we weren’t burning out creating shit no one’s asking for?

I’ve been thinking a lot about how we get ourselves this “hot dog cart” kinda success we want.

Ever since I let that be more than enough, starting over kinda feels like the most important thing I’ve ever done.

It feels like permission to be a small town “nobody” just quietly living my cart-sized dream.

I’m ready to embark on this really new, really different, and really rewarding cart-sized business. I know you are too, which is why I would la la looove to do this together. Ground up, fresh start, indoctrination free, YOU-shaped, feel good, kinda do.

I have a proposition... don't worry, there's no private part-talk involved... and it's not another course you're going to end up hoarding, either.

​I’ll tell you about it on Thursday!

To being so true to who you are that you let the period + blue balls references stay,

Dre ‘Potty Talk Proud’ Beltrami

P.S. This Hot Dog Cart-sized initiative is so important, I would la la looove your help getting it into more of the hearts + minds who need it. If you have enough in your social tank, would you forward this to any friends or loved ones who need this permission slip (if you're on email) or restack it for your readers (if you’re on Substack)?

Imagine a world where all of us pro-carters came together? It gives me chills! 🥰