Burnout-Proof Your Creative Business, with Celi Arias

Celi Arias knows what it means to struggle as a creative entrepreneur. From sleeping on an air mattress on her factory floor to building and selling multi-seven-figure businesses, her journey has been anything but linear. Now, as the founder of Grown Ass Business, she's on a mission to help other creative entrepreneurs build sustainable businesses without burning out.

The truth about turning passion into profit isn't what most business coaches want you to hear. As Arias reveals, passion alone is a "finicky lover" that can't sustain you through the challenges of entrepreneurship. What truly matters is recognizing that business itself is an art form with its own set of rules—rules you need to understand before you can successfully break them.

At the heart of entrepreneurial burnout lies a fundamental problem: working without clear direction. When you're "just working to work" without a defined end goal, exhaustion inevitably follows. Whether your vision involves a specific revenue target, lifestyle freedom, or building a legacy brand, knowing what you're working toward transforms how you approach each day's challenges.

The most successful creative entrepreneurs resist "shiny object syndrome" by building proper business systems. They think in terms of departments and metrics even when working solo. They understand that delegation isn't just about offloading tasks—it's about creating a business that can eventually run without them constantly "pulling all the levers."

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Chapters

• 16:38 [Ad] Real Talk About Marketing
• 17:26 (Cont.) Burnout-Proof Your Creative Business, with Celi Arias

Transcript

Erin Manning: 0:02

Welcome to the Dead Pixel Society podcast, the photo imaging industry's leading news source. Here's your host, Gary Pageau. The Dead Pixels Society podcast is brought to you by Mediaclip, Advertek Printing and Independent Photo Imagers.

Gary Pageau: 0:18

Hello again and welcome to the Dead Pixels Society podcast. I'm your host, Gary Pageau, and today we're joined by Celi Arias. She's coming to us from Long Island, New York, and she's the CEO and founder of the Grown Ass Business and she's going to be giving us great advice, practical advice, on running your business. Hey, Celi, how are you today?

Celi Arias: 0:40

I'm great Thanks for having me.

Gary Pageau: 0:43

So, Celi, how did you get into this business? What's your story leading up to today in the business world?

Celi Arias: 0:51

Well, it's a long story. Usually when I tell people my various career paths, they're like you don't look that old. I'm like. I promise, I am that old, am that old? I'm actually excited to be on your show because I am a creative and my husband a while ago was saying you're not creative.

Celi Arias: 1:09

You're not a creative, you're like a systems operations person and I would say yes, I got here by way of being a creative and having creative businesses and realizing some of the pitfalls and downfalls that come with being a creative and also running your business as a creative.

Celi Arias: 1:27

So I actually have a degree in modern dance. I was a professional dancer in high school and college and right out of college and then I went and got a second degree in fashion design and started a fashion label and ran a fashion label in South America for 10 years and I made all the businesses mistakes that you could imagine, all those mistakes that you're like, oh God, why did I? I've probably done it too, and I have been in times in my life where I had no home and was sleeping on an air mattress in my factory floor.

Celi Arias: 2:03

So, I always say I have been there with you, I have been in the lows of the lows and I've also been in the highs of the highs. It's possible in business. So I started to get very curious Once I got over the ego bruising and the pain and the hurt of it all.

Celi Arias: 2:18

I went and got an MBA and I found that the MBA didn't answer my questions and didn't actually help fill some of the gaps that felt like gaps to me when I was a business owner. So I got more and more curious about what that was and how to address those things that I found so hard in my 20s when I had my first business. So I worked my way into corporate experiences in high luxury sales and brand partnerships, and then I've discovered in that journey that what I really liked was fixing the systems and making everyone's lives easier. I'm a little bit as a fashion designer, I'm a little bit of an engineer anyway. So fashion designers really, if you like, to make the things you like, to take things apart from the very beginning and build them Right, deconstruct and then reconstruct you deconstruct, or you know how to construct from nothing, right?

Celi Arias: 3:08

You take a piece of paper and you can turn that into a 3D wearable piece of art. So I think I just got interested in understanding business and I discovered this thing called operations and I worked my way into operations at a few startups. I became a COO and I helped sell a few multi-seven figure businesses and then, once I did that, I started getting asked to coach and I coached for a company and discovered there were gaps in that system that I was a part of. So I created my own company called the Grown Ass Business. So it's called the Grown Ass Business because I teach a lot of creatives and visionaries and founders how to turn their passion and their business into a grown-ass business that's running like a business.

Gary Pageau: 3:53

so that's how we got here okay, well, that makes sense and you know, and that will resonate with some of the folks, I think, in my audience, because there are folks who got into this business, whether photography, whether they're a photographer, whether they they're a printer, they make pictures or things because they like the category, they like it Right. Or they got into selling cameras because they like cameras Right. And then at some point you realize that it needs more than that.

Celi Arias: 4:18

Yeah, like I. Ok, I need this to pay the bills regularly. I need it to be predictable. I need to not feel exhausted and burned out all the time. I need to start feeling like the business isn't running me. Yeah, all those things.

Gary Pageau: 4:31

Because you always hear like from the startup community and the entrepreneurship ecosystem and industrial complexes, I like to call it where it's all about workshops and seminars and all these things, and they talk a lot about passion. You got to have passion. That's the sole thing you need. And I'm thinking I mean I'm sure it helps, but if you can't do the thing you say you're going to do, when you're going to do it, the price to say you're going to do it. You don't have a business, you've got a hobby.

Celi Arias: 5:00

Yeah, and I think that actually, if you run your business from passion, you have more of a hobby than a business. Right. Okay, because the thing about passion is what keeps you going on those days where you're really tired or you're discouraged or you're beat down. Right? Probably not passion. Right, because passion is a finicky lover. So I think eventually entrepreneurs either get tired and quit and burn out or they go. Okay. Now it's time for me to stop attracting myself to the shiny object things that keep promising me the quick fix.

Celi Arias: 5:41

It's time for me to get real. It's time for me to really make this thing work. I really want it to work so I can go home at night and I can have dinner with my family or by myself, or.

Gary Pageau: 5:50

I can even have a family or even have a family.

Celi Arias: 5:53

My God, yeah, I mean, I'm in my forties and I only just now have a family.

Gary Pageau: 5:58

So and a lot of that is due to my just a history as an entrepreneur, so sure you've had an interesting evolution from, like said, creative and then you, kind of, which actually mirrors a lot of the people that I know in the industry. Right, a lot of the people running some of the biggest photo labs in the country, you know, started as photographers, right, and they got into printing because, gosh, they, you know, wanted, they wanted to be such control, not control freaks, but they want to have control over how the prints looked. So they started their own labs and then eventually, rather, and then they stopped actually doing a lot of photography, right, they kind of fell in love with the process of being a business. Do you think that's typical? And if so, why don't more uh workshoppers and uh people like that talk about that? It seems like that part's not talked about very much I actually don't think that's typical okay I don't think it's super typical.

Celi Arias: 6:55

I, I, you know now my, my nerdy data brain is like oh, gary, let's do a study. I'd love to know. That's a great question. I'm gonna guess it's 50 50. I know a lot of creatives who go. You know what?

Celi Arias: 7:08

you taught me all the things and I hate the things and I just want to feel like painting and then they don't turn it into a business, and I always say good for you exactly for knowing yourself exactly that is the best move and decision you can make for yourself, because the last thing you need to do is turn your passion into a business if you don't actually enjoy the process of making it into a business Right, because business in itself is its own craft.

Gary Pageau: 7:36

Sure.

Celi Arias: 7:37

So if you're only into your craft of photography or developing or whatever it is, and you'd find that you don't like the things about business, well, you're going to have a very frustrating journey as a business owner. Right.

Celi Arias: 7:50

But business is its own art form. It really is its own art form and as an artist, as a former dance teacher, I always joke with people that I'm a very, very good business coach and I'm also a certified mindset coach. But I always say everything I ever needed to learn about coaching somebody through something difficult I learned from teaching tango, because business, like all art forms and sports, has its own set of rules and it has a language and it has an understanding and it's a game and you need to understand the positions and how the positions play, what the rules are.

Celi Arias: 8:26

You need to understand those things and, like all good art, you need to understand the rules before you can break the rules, because the best artists break the rules and you can break the rules in business, but you kind of have to understand what rule you're breaking. So it is an art form in itself, and I think sometimes what happens is there's probably 50% of the people that fall in love with the sport of business and there's probably 50% of the people that go nah, I just want to keep doing some photography when I feel like it. Right, and that's great, that's cool too.

Gary Pageau: 8:59

Yeah, because I think part of it is. You know, people get into this idea that, hey, I see the art right, I see the art right, I see the thing you make, I see you dance, I see your pictures, I hear your music. You should go pro.

Celi Arias: 9:13

Right, right.

Gary Pageau: 9:15

Maybe not right.

Celi Arias: 9:17

Yeah, I think it's interesting if you pay attention to. I like to look at athletes because they're a great example. They're a very externalized example of what it looks like to take the passion to pro, but with the you know the Netflix series that show some of these like world famous soccer players and kind of shows behind the scenes. They have no life. They train and eat grilled chicken and veggies for nine or 10 months out of the year.

Celi Arias: 9:44

You see pictures of them like spending their money on the one month of the year that they have off, but you know what I mean. The rest of the year they're still in very intense like boot camp level training and I think that we forget that when somebody says oh, no, and frankly, all creatives have that.

Gary Pageau: 10:03

How many hours does it take for someone to prepare a dance piece for performance? You know you're talking hours upon that when you talk about. You know if you're painting.

Celi Arias: 10:13

Or like two minutes on stage. How many hours does it take Hours and hours and hours and months and months and months for two or three minutes on stage?

Gary Pageau: 10:19

Exactly. And then same thing with paintings, same thing with photography where you know you may, if you're doing the old school chemical stuff, right, you're spending hours in a dark room trying to dodge and burn to make that picture just right, and all these other things. So I think that's sort of the thing that happens with the passion piece. Right is, they see the outcome, but not what's below the surface, right, it's like an iceberg. In that sense, I think business is a lot of that way too. When, in that sense I think business is a lot of that way too when you see people who are successful in business, who've, you know, quote, unquote, made it whatever that means, you didn't see them the time they were sleeping on the factory floor or they were, you know, struggling to make payroll and they had to, you know, beg their wife for a second mortgage so they could, you know, buy that piece of equipment and have them turn the corner or whatever those things are. You just don't see that.

Celi Arias: 11:07

Yeah, and now it's more trendy to talk about it. So you starting to hear those stories, but every successful entrepreneur has many of those stories that they often don't share.

Gary Pageau: 11:20

So let's talk a little bit about sort of the challenges that these business owners have about avoiding, because that is one of the things you talk about. I know there's not a checklist, there's no quick fix because we've talked there is no quick fixes to this. So how can somebody identify when burnout is starting to be a problem? Can they self-diagnose it? Or is that the way someone on their team to slap them upside the head and said you need to take a break?

Celi Arias: 11:47

Well, hopefully both. I think it depends on how your personality is. I mean, I am basically a pro athlete, so I'm probably the worst judge if I'm getting close to that place. But I do have people on my team who go no Like, I was on my third flight in the past three weeks to my third event and I was telling my assistant oh, I'll do that thing for you from the plane and she said, no, you will not, you will sleep on that plane.

Celi Arias: 12:17

And I said oh, yeah, good call, good call, Good call, I see you, I got you, thank you, thank you. So I'm not the best at judging it myself. I think some of the symptoms are it's actually in the actions that we find ourselves doing, when you are already like doing, when you are already like okay, I'm exhausted, I feel my brain feels fried, my eyes hurt, I can't remember things. If you're having conversations and you can't remember important names or things that you talk about all the time, those are really obvious extremes. But I think the beginnings of burnout are more interesting, which is, are you spending your time and focus and energy obsessing on the little things? Because I did this thing last year. I asked on threads, I asked people hey, I'd love to know your thoughts. What do you think causes burnout?

Celi Arias: 13:10

Because I find, especially in the female entrepreneur space, women are always talking about burnout, and that's also probably because a lot of female entrepreneurs who have children are also probably balancing a lot of things Sure. So I asked the audience. I said what do you think the definition of burnout is? The really cool thing was I got brilliant answers back from people who complain about burnout and say they're struggling with burnout, but they knew what the cause of burnout was right which was often not having a clear sense of direction, not knowing how I'm going to get to the next goal, not even having a clear vision and clear goal post.

Celi Arias: 13:51

So I'm just working to work. That's like classic. When you find yourself and you're just working to work and you're going through the motions and you're kind of just going through your to-do list every day and you know you're just kind of showing up, that's a sure sign that you're headed to burnout. Because what I found in this community everybody answered when you really don't have a clear map, so you're working but you don't see an end in sight, you don't see the honeypot at the end of the rainbow Right.

Gary Pageau: 14:21

So actually the old Stephen Covey thing, right, begin with the end in mind, right?

Celi Arias: 14:25

Which is what I do with my clients all the time. So I found it fascinating that these people who struggle, or say they're struggling, with burnout had a clear definition, just didn't really have a practical way of turning that around. So I always say, in your business, what's the goal? Is it a specific number? Is it a lifestyle? Is it that you? Is it a legacy business that you want to hand down in your family and you want it to be a brand that outlives you? Is it something you'd like to do for a few years and put aside good money for retirement? Is it something that you'd like to grow and scale and you want to sell?

Celi Arias: 15:00

But you need to know what that end in sight is. What is that goal for you that you're trying to? And the goal can move, but you need to know what it is, because if you have a clear goal, you can work backwards from the goal. So today, when I'm feeling a little tired, I may look at my whole to-do list and go I'm a little too tired for that to-do list today. But if this is my goal, I know that I need to do one thing today. What is that? And I stay focused and I can stay fresh and I'm not just showing up and going through the motions and getting a bunch of tasks done and kind of wondering what does it all mean and what's it all for and part of?

Gary Pageau: 15:38

that could be even delegating some of those tasks right Knowing what is okay to delegate, because, as you and I know from a lot of business owners that tend to be very possessive or control or can be possessive and control freaks in a lot of ways, in an unhealthy way.

Celi Arias: 15:54

Yeah, absolutely. And I think again, I think that when you have a clear big goal in mind, it actually helps you become a better delegator, because now you go okay, well, I can't possibly spend an hour a day in my emails. If I'm going to change the world with my business, I got to start delegating some of that stuff, right, right.

Gary Pageau: 16:15

So it helps you also prioritize where you're spending your time so when you use the phrase like a true business right when that that was sort of and some stuff I read about you talk about you know what a true what is your definition of that? What do you mean when you're saying you want to operate as a true business? Is that where you're talking about like the hobby thing, or is it the change the world thing, or what do you think that is?

Celi Arias: 17:17

I think a true business is a business that runs like a machine, a business that knows how to play the game of business. So what I mean by that is, even if you have a very small team, if you're a solopreneur or you have, you know, a two to three person team you, under you, build a business that runs like a machine and that machine looks like having clear departments for for lack of a better way of saying it we understand, like I have a small team, but I understand what my role is as the CEO and founder, what I really need to own, and I understand what metrics and tasks and projects and departments other people in my business need to own. So what happens is I'm not building a business around me and around me doing all the things and me getting exhausted, but I'm actually building over time. I'm building a business based on systems. So, for example, I have intellectual property. I have a methodology that I on systems. So, for example, I have intellectual property. I have a methodology that I've created.

Celi Arias: 18:17

I have a way that I've. I have created a way that I deliver that methodology. It happens the same every single time that I sell it. I have a marketing machine. I know which of my channels work for me in terms of marketing and I know how to make content for those marketing channels.

Gary Pageau: 18:35

And.

Celi Arias: 18:35

I'm looking at my marketing in a systematic, metric based way and understanding what worked, what didn't work, what can I tweak, what can I learn, where can I grow, where can I expand. I'm not just creating content and kind of spraying it on the wall and hoping for the best, but I'm approaching my marketing department as a marketing department, even though I don't have a marketing assistant or a head of marketing. I approach my marketing in the way that I teach, which is, if I did have a CMO, if I had a chief marketing officer in my business, what would they do? What are the questions they would ask themselves and what are the answers that they would have to report to me? What are the metrics?

Celi Arias: 19:13

that they would ask themselves. And what are the answers that they would have to report to me? What are? The metrics that they would look at, and so what that does is then I don't feel like I have to be on every social media platform.

Celi Arias: 19:21

I have to also have a podcast and I have to all like. People tell me all the time like, oh my gosh, it's so great, you have such a great voice, and we talked about this earlier. You and I right when people say, oh, you should turn that passion and go pro. Well, people tell me all the time, oh my gosh, you should have a podcast. No, I should not.

Gary Pageau: 19:40

I know how much work it is.

Celi Arias: 19:44

I know how much work it is. I know that I would be adding a whole other channel with its costs of production editing Absolutely not. That is not the channel that my business needs right now. I'm happy to come on people's shows and talk about all this stuff that I love talking about, but I have podcast clients and, nope, it's not for me.

Celi Arias: 20:06

So, when you run your business like a business, you start to go. I know what works for me I can run my marketing campaign and at night I can eat dinner with my husband and play with my seven month old and maybe watch a movie and have a life. Right. But if I'm not running, if I'm not building that real business that starts to run on its own, and ultimately, the goal is that you build a business that runs without you needing to pull all the levers and turn the knobs, and you know fix.

Gary Pageau: 20:35

Right, it's the loose screws so you touch on something that I want to come back to is kind of or you've got a creative person right. Creative, pretty people like to create. How do they resist the temptation?

Celi Arias: 20:48

I felt your deep side, it was like how do we talk about this Right? How do we resist the temptation to what'd chase say

Gary Pageau: 20:58

the shiny right. I mean to, to, to, to find the shiny object right. Hey, listen, this works for me and you know I got to do this on TikTok and things, because I've been to conferences like that in the industry where they talk about you know you need to be on TikTok, you need to be on this stuff, and it's like do you really? You know, do you really? Just because you know, my advice to people has always been just pick two, just pick two, just start with two.

Gary Pageau: 21:25

I love that advice Figure it out make that work and then maybe play with another one, but just don't spread yourself too thin. You don't need to be everywhere.

Celi Arias: 21:33

I agree with that. I was told by many people you're so great on video, you have to be on TikTok and I tried. But the problem is when you get on a new platform, each platform has its culture. So it's not just oh yeah, I happen to be great on video and I can make videos and I can post them. No, I also have to understand the ecosystem and the culture of that world and that platform and I have to get into it and I have to be involved, and so it doesn't work for me because I don't really.

Celi Arias: 22:00

I'm not a scroller and I don't really enjoy being on TikTok.

Celi Arias: 22:02

So, it's not going to work for me as a platform. In terms of the question about creatives and how do you get around that, I think there's several ways to get around it. One it's we go back to what we said earlier, where you just accept that you're a creative and this is a hobby business. I think if you accept that, it's a way of self-love, it's a way of loving yourself, accepting who you are, accepting where you're at and going. Oh yeah, I'm always going to be a creative and a passion person when it comes to my creations and I'm not going to turn it into a business. I just don't like to. That's option one Own it. Option two is you hire some people around you who are more systems-based, who go okay, we're going to let you have that one shiny object thing that you want to do this quarter or this six months. You can't do five of them, but you can do one them, but you can do one Right.

Celi Arias: 23:02

So, for example, I used to be a COO to a very creative young influencer entrepreneur and she was literally that person that every day would come into the morning. We were all. I was there from 8am on. My team would come in around nine and she was that person that would like barge in at 11am and go I have an idea we have to do. And she'd start spitting out to all my team like you do this, and I'd be like Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay, right now we're working on this partnership, this thing, this thing right, the dev team is doing this Like so, is this a must do right now? Can we just make a deal that we do one? Of your special projects per quarter.

Celi Arias: 23:42

But so if you can't do that for yourself, you've put somebody in your world who goes not right now. You made a deal and this quarter your special shiny object project is X Y. Z. And then you go to that person and say do you want to give up X, y, z for this new idea? So something you need to that person and say do you want to give up X Y Z for this new idea? Right, so you need to know yourself.

Celi Arias: 24:02

Right, right. I think I'm pretty good at staying super focused because I teach this stuff all the time.

Gary Pageau: 24:09

Do you think that comes from the dance?

Celi Arias: 24:12

Yeah, I definitely think that I have a very, very disciplined background of dance.

Gary Pageau: 24:18

Because I think people don't understand like dance is very mentally challenging.

Celi Arias: 24:24

Very. I mean, dancers are some of the smartest people I know in the world. It's very mentally taxing. It's a very difficult sport, and I call it a sport because you are as much, if not more, of an athlete than many athletes. But even so, I have somebody on my team who sometimes will go Celi, stop it.

Celi Arias: 24:43

And that's my keyword. That's what I say to my clients. So I always tell people on my team. I give my personal assistant permission to say stop it Right? And she's like, are you sure? And I'm like yes, if you ever see me trying to do too much or go off the rails, you have 100% permission to tell your boss stop it. Now, that's me I don't.

Celi Arias: 25:02

I like when people talk back to me. I like when people aren't scared of me. I like when people are like you're doing that thing you tell your clients not to do, stop it. And I'm go, oh, thank you. I really appreciate that. I almost went off the rails, didn't I? Because I'm a creative too, and so I can go down that road too. And the other problem is some, some visionaries, some entrepreneurs are really, really smart and we're capable of a lot. So you put a lot on your plate. This is the beginning of burnout, too, when you put more and more and more on your plate because you know you can. But just because you can doesn't mean you have to. It doesn't mean that's the pace that you necessarily want to keep up every day of your life. Right doesn't mean you have to. It doesn't mean that's the pace that you necessarily want to keep up every day of your life doesn't mean you should right.

Gary Pageau: 25:44

Just because you can't just mean you should.

Celi Arias: 25:46

That's the old saying yeah, and so even me, who is like the queen of stop it and getting people focused on the right strategy, because that's what I do. I let everyone around me tell me to stop it if I'm trying to do too much.

Gary Pageau: 26:02

But for someone to be able to do that, to have the mental fortitude to do that, you have to agree that if someone tells you that, that you have to do what they say, right, if your assistant says you know, Celi, we need to stop this, you're, you know, we're not doing a TikTok promo and you say, but I really want to and I'm going to override you, right, I mean, you want to do for 30 days, does it actually measurably get you closer to that goal? Right.

Celi Arias: 26:50

And is the goal still juicy and exciting enough that you can go? Oh yeah, I probably don't need to do that. If I'm actually going for this goal, I probably need to put that thing down. Right.

Celi Arias: 27:05

And and yes, it takes mental fortitude. This is what I coach people on all the time. It's why people hire coaches. Honestly, I used to think, you know, once people have all the skills that I give them and all the trainings that I give them, they don't need me anymore as a coach. Now I realized that was very naive thinking, because we all need somebody to kind of keep guiding us towards the thing.

Celi Arias: 27:24

I think there's a lot of reasons why we even avoid our goals sometimes, but that's more of a mindset thing. But the way around that is wait a minute is the thing I'm working towards so sexy and exciting that I can put down this short-term dopamine hit Right. Keep my eyes on the prize. Maybe it's that new home, maybe it's early retirement, maybe it's retiring somebody in your family, maybe it's spending more time with your kids, maybe it's revolutionizing a part of your industry and how things are done. But is it super juicy and exciting enough that you can put this shiny thing down and go just like a dog, like, ooh right, bigger ball. Bigger, more colorful, more exciting ball. I want that one.

Gary Pageau: 28:08

And also you may not realize that your goal, whatever it is, may have multiple stages.

Celi Arias: 28:13

Yes.

Gary Pageau: 28:14

You know, I mean, that's part of the recognition too. You're not gonna get to the. In five years I'm going to retire because I'm going to make $30 million. It's like there's a whole lot of mini goals that lead up to that.

Celi Arias: 28:25

Yeah, absolutely yeah, but you're going to get there a lot faster if you drop the TikTok challenge and you drop the things along the way right, because what happens is when burnout is also this thing that happens to us when it's like, but I'm doing all the things and I'm working so hard and I don't really feel. My revenue this year was the same as last year, but I feel like I did so much more and I worked so much harder and yet I'm still kind of in the same place. That's also why you start to feel burnout, because you're actually it's not just the level of exhaustion and doing too much, it's when you're doing so much but you feel like you haven't actually made any progress. That's exhausting.

Gary Pageau: 29:04

Is that maybe a sign as well that it may be time to exit the business?

Celi Arias: 29:10

If you haven't made any progress.

Gary Pageau: 29:11

Yeah, or just you're feeling that way. Right, you've been at it for two years and you're kind of leveled off and you're like you know.

Celi Arias: 29:25

I've given this all I can and maybe that's all there is for me. Yeah, I think that's a that's a sweet spot to be in, where you get to ask yourself that question Right, because usually when you get into this place where it's like, wait a minute, I've been working really hard and I'm kind of in the same place, that is actually a sign of the way you're doing. Things has to shift and change. The question is actually am I willing to change? Am I willing to take feedback? Am I willing to look at things differently? Am I willing to maybe show up differently in my business to get to the next milestone? So that's really the question, not should I quit, but something probably needs to change here. Am.

Celi Arias: 29:59

I open and willing to changing how I'm doing things.

Gary Pageau: 30:03

With that question where can people go to find out more about your business and maybe ask you that question?

Celi Arias: 30:11

The easiest way to find me. Your audience is probably visual and they're on Instagram, I'm guessing, and all my handles everywhere are Celi Grows Business, c-e-l-i. Grows Business, and I'm very easy to find on all, not all, platforms. I'm not really active on TikTok anymore for the very reasons we talked about, but on Instagram and LinkedIn and YouTube you can find me there.

Gary Pageau: 30:36

Awesome. Well, thank you, selly, some great talking to you. I know a lot of people are going to get a lot out of what we just talked about because I think it resonates, and we'll speak to them because a lot of them are going through that. So thank you so much for your time and best wishes.

Erin Manning: 30:50

Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to the Dead Pixel Society podcast. Read more great stories and sign up for the newsletter at wwwthedeadpixelssocietycom.