#223 - The burnout conversation every business owner needs to have with Mia Poklepovich
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Burnout doesn’t usually arrive with a dramatic crash. It creeps in quietly; one extra client, one more late night, one more “I’ll rest after this deadline,” and “just one more email.” As business owners, we wear a lot of hats, carry a lot of responsibility, and it’s easy to find ourselves running on adrenaline instead of intention.
I spoke with Mia Poklepovich, who is an occupational therapist and business coach, about what burnout really looks like, why it happens to high-performing business owners, and how to build a business that’s sustainable, not just successful.
Mia’s story is both inspiring and deeply relatable. Like most professionals, she found herself caught in the cycle of overdelivering and overcommitting, and burnout became the catalyst for change. She is an Occupational Therapist and Director of OT Inspire. With a passion for delivering effective, sustainable mental health services, OT Inspire travels to remote areas throughout the Northern Territory to deliver therapy services within the home, community, and justice system. She hosts her own podcast, The Freedom Therapist, and is also the creator of the Freedom Therapist Club, which is a platform for therapists, health professionals, and practitioners who want to create large, impactful businesses without burnout.
Avoiding Burnout: Key Lessons from Mia
One of Mia’s clearest messages is this: success isn’t running at 150%. It’s knowing your capacity, setting boundaries that actually hold, and staying anchored to your vision even when your people-pleasing instincts want to say yes to everything. We talk about how burnout often isn’t a time-management problem; it’s a boundary problem, a structure problem, and sometimes a values problem.
A standout takeaway from Mia’s approach is quarterly planning. She recommends setting aside one dedicated day each quarter to step back, reflect, and realign with your goals, not as a “nice-to-have” strategy session, but as a non-negotiable practice that supports your mental health and the longevity of your career.
The Role of Alignment in Business Success
Alignment is a recurring theme in Mia’s philosophy. She encourages business owners to zoom out and ask the bigger questions: What do I want my business to look like in ten years? How many hours do I actually want to work? How do I want to feel in my work day to day, not just on the good days?
But alignment also shows up in the small moments. Mia talks about creating “little pockets” of space throughout the day, like short breaks that help regulate your nervous system and give your brain room to think clearly. These aren’t indulgent; they’re practical. And they often make the difference between operating in survival mode and leading with intention.
Trusting the Process (and Yourself)
We also unpack the role of trust. Trusting your intuition, trusting your vision, and trusting that doing what you promised, and nothing more, is enough. You don’t need to overextend yourself, nor do you need to overdeliver to prove your worth. For many business owners, especially those conditioned to go above and beyond, this can feel uncomfortable.
But Mia’s perspective is grounded: integrity isn’t doing more than you said you would, it’s doing what you said you would, consistently and sustainably.
This conversation is a reminder that avoiding burnout isn’t just about feeling better; it’s about building a business that can actually last. One that supports your life, your health, and your long-term goals. Because you can’t pour from an empty cup… and you also can’t grow a business from one.
Talking with Mia was a powerful reminder that sustainable success is built on structure, boundaries, and alignment. Not constant output. I’ve already started weaving some of her strategies into my own routines, and I know many of you will hear your own story in hers. If this article sparks something for you, whether it be a realisation, a hard truth, or a permission slip to slow down - take it seriously. Those moments of awareness are often where change begins.
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Tracey: [00:00:00] Welcome back everyone to another episode of the Rise Up in Business podcast. This is the perfect time of year to be having this conversation. [00:01:00] Today's episode is a conversation around burnout and how we as business owners end up in burnout, but more importantly. What we can do to set ourselves up for success, to manage our stress, and to avoid the path to burnout.
I'm joined by a wonderful guest today, a beautiful client of mine, who is an occupational therapist and a business coach. I'm joined by Mia from both OT Inspire and the Freedom Therapist. I've known Mia for many years and we've shared many stories and the conversation we have today shares many more stories and I found myself taking notes in this conversation and I've since gone back to listen to it again because the nuggets of gold Mia has shared, which will apply to all of us in one way or another.
Was so valuable that I've actually started implementing some little bits and pieces from the episode into my own day-to-day. So I just [00:02:00] know that it's going to land beautifully for you too, and that there will be things in here that you can take away and start implementing right now to avoid the path to burn out, which is too familiar for so many of us, but to set ourselves up for success for the rest of the year. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I clearly loved having it with Mia. I'll be back here with you at the end.
Tracey: Hello, Mia. Welcome to the podcast.
Mia: Hi, Tracy. Thank you for having me.
Tracey: It is my pleasure. I'm so pleased that you've been kind enough to make time for this.
This conversation is going to just be so important and resonate for so many business owners. Dozens off the top of my head that I can think of, myself included.
So I cannot wait to dive in. Before we start, can you just tell us a little bit about OT Inspire and what it is that you do, and you're so passionate about this, and I just love listening to you talk about this.
Mia: [00:03:00] Oh, thank you. Likewise. Right back at you. I'm so excited for today's conversation. It's so nice when you get to sit in a room with somebody who's very values aligned as well. So we are gonna have a ripper of a time. But my name is Mia. I run an occupational therapy practice called OT Inspire. I think it's over seven years old now, which sounds wild to me.
I actually cannot believe that. We run a therapy practice where I'm an occupational therapist. I have therapy assistants, other staff members who work for me, and we do remote outreach to very remote communities as well. So we have a beautiful team. We do remote outreach services to places in the Northern Territory that.
Not a lot of people have been to that are very isolated, sometimes 14 hours by car, often on those single lane roads. And so we go out for a week and we have these incredible supportive therapeutic outreach visits and we deal with a lot of things. And what I was noticing as a therapist, primarily myself and for my [00:04:00] beautiful team, is that the work is really hard.
We were going over and above all of the time, and I noticed in the space, because I've been in there for a long time, a lot of people are like, oh, you've been doing this work for a long time. But I was seeing this cycle of therapists come in for a year, two years, like be really excited about it and then suddenly.
They would burn out, they would become exhausted, and they would either leave the profession, leave the region, it would become too much. And I was sitting with my partner a couple of years ago, and I remember saying to him, there just has to be something out there that is gonna support therapists around this.
Because I hit burnout myself a few years ago. I restructured so many things in my business. I changed a lot of things, a lot of boundaries, a lot of my own personal stuff, which was really tricky. Hardest bit, and. We actually have a really beautiful, sustainable practice now. And so from that conversation, the Freedom Therapist Club was born, which is a mentorship program for therapists and practitioners running all sorts of different [00:05:00] practices all over the world.
And we have therapists and practitioners come in who want to find out how to stay in this work that they love doing for a really, really long time because we all start our businesses for. More time, more freedom, more flexibility, more energy, and I would almost guarantee that 90% of us a year in have less of all those things as well.
Tracey: Thank you for sharing that. I just love hearing your journey and why it is that you do the incredible work that you do. There's so many ways I could take this and oh, and that would all be so valuable. I want to focus on what you said about people wanting to stay in this business for a long time.
Mia: Mm.
Tracey: That hits hard. And then I really also wanna talk to you about the changes you made in your own business, because that's going to be so valuable. But when people say, I wanna stay in this business for a really long time, of course we do. We all want to, but then things change.
Mia: Yeah.
Tracey: What are the challenges that [00:06:00] you see?
What can you share with us here just in relation to that? Because I feel like we're gonna go down the path of stress management and burnout and all of those things.
Mia: Delightful. All of my favorite things. I love it. That is such a big part of it. Like we all start our businesses because we wanna stay in them. Usually a business, especially with women, is started because we have this deep desire, this purpose, this meaning like where. Emotional beings, which we shy away from in a lot of business conversations because you know, the status quo of business is to be really hard, really like firm, really direct and all of that.
And I know when I had my business, none of that felt true. Like I would come in three guns blazing, like hit the ground running and I was just getting burnt out time and time again. Like I was going in this little cycle. And I think as women, because we're so passionate about what we do specifically because.
We do. And a lot of men also start their businesses because they're so passionate too. But I really see it particularly with women, because we have that [00:07:00] emotional desire, we have that sense of purpose. And so we start these businesses, they light us up, we say yes to everything because it is, it's like, you know, say yes to that, figure the rest out later.
And that is really good advice in some areas. But I'm also like, say yes. If it aligns with your vision and if it aligns with the business that you want to run, because it could be the most incredible opportunity in the world, but if you've said yes to this opportunity and it doesn't match the business that you wanna be in for a long time, it doesn't matter how much you're getting paid.
It doesn't matter how much leadership, all of the things, all of the shiny, glorious things that we have, you're not actually. Going to feel fulfilled by it in a few years or in even a few months. And I see this time and time again, we create these businesses that we love. They light us up, we stay up late, we finalize all the things.
We go over and above. And I could see you nodding because I'm like, we've all done it. We've
all been on this journey. Like we genuinely care and we love the work that we do. We love the clients. And so we go over [00:08:00] and above. We go over and above and suddenly like. We are no longer operating at a hundred percent, but we're off operating at 120 as the norm.
And then we are like, oh, at our busy days we'll sit at 150. And for me, I realized I was just running at 150% all the time. I was miserable. I remember one day getting home from a week long outreach trip and I left the hose running in my backyard for seven days. So I'd come home to a beautiful flooded garden 'cause I'd left in such a flap.
Like just all of the things.
Tracey: why do we do this? And. A lot of clients that, well, a lot of business owners who are, are clients, but a lot of people that I talk to, it's around the fear of niching. You mentioned a moment ago say yes to, to, to the things that are aligned. And I feel like that can be challenging to know because when we, particularly when we're earlier on in business, but I want to help everyone, but I want to provide this service to everyone.
Which leads very quickly down the wrong [00:09:00] path. But then once we get confident and we're able to get clarity over what, what we actually want to niche into, is that a key, do you think, to being able to then say no to what's not aligned? How do we know? Always
Mia: That
Tracey: when it's aligned.
Mia: A good question. It's literally, this is what we do in the foundations of the Freedom Therapist Club, and so many therapists have said to me, every single industry needs to do this work because as a therapist, like it's similar because we are so generalized in a lot of settings. So like there is no single niche person almost in the therapy world, there would be.
Specific niche, but everybody's got a different unique need, and that's a really big part of like the challenge around niching in the therapy space of your marketing. But when we talk about having those values being aligned and having those aligned business vision goals as well, I always come back to the same things like how do I figure out something is aligned?
I think about, okay, what is the business that I feel really good [00:10:00] in? What is the business that in 10 years. I wanna be sitting in and I think sitting and getting really deep with like, what business do I want to be in in 10 years? How do I wanna feel in 10 years? How many hours do I wanna be working? How much time do I wanna be in my business?
What tasks light me up? What tasks do I wanna be doing? More of the things that I. am Doing right now? Are they draining my energy? Are they exhausting me? Are they not lighting me up? If they're not and they have to be done, they've gotta be delegated or they've gotta go, right? Like, but we do all of these things and we need to really sit with the intention of our business.
How do I want my business to look in two years, five years, 10 years? How do I wanna feel in my business and what. Is my freedom based goal there. What did I create this business to have? What is that like really big factor? Is it time? Is it picking up my kids from school? Is it for me? It was going to be able to travel between the NT and Bali because I met my partner here and fell in love.
So I was like, okay, [00:11:00] I need, I need a business. It's gonna let me travel. That's gonna keep me happy because when we find a lot of joy in our business, the structure and everything behind it will flow on. But we need to actually know. What we want out of it first, and I think that's how I always come back to everything.
Tracey: My gosh, there is so much there, Mia, so much with what you've said. I'm nodding along and thinking about this in the context of both myself, but also clients that I'm working with at the moment. And gosh, going a step back though, I feel like it's important to give ourselves a permission slip to take space to think about this because otherwise we're so busy in the doing and we're in the weeds sometimes, but it's the old
cliche that we've heard about, make time to work in the business. Sorry, make time to work on the business. Not always in the business, but it's that taking time to take the space to think about those things because the questions that you just put are gold. They're golden [00:12:00] questions, but it takes time and spaciousness to be able to really meaningfully think about that, to get clarity.
What if we don't have it, we don't have it, we're going to end up potentially going down a path where we're gonna learn some hard lessons.
Mia: Yeah, and those hard lessons, we've all learnt them. I'm sure if we're in
business with all that, then we've all, we all know people who've learnt them. We, the story of like having a successful business for five or six years and then closing it down or like reopening it a few years later is so common.
People feel so much shame around this, but it's so common. We get in the weeds and we start to get on that hamster wheel, and we don't take that space to think about these things. I have a planning date every single quarter in my business, and I take a day where I go somewhere nice. I sit. I sit with these questions, I figure out what's still aligned and what isn't.
At the end of the year, I spend quite a bit of time on these questions as well because it's essentially, it's telling me what kind of business I wanna be in. It's telling me what kind of business I wanna run, [00:13:00] and it's also allowing me to reflect on the type of leader I want to be to my team as well, which is really, really important because we can't run a beautiful freedom based business if we're the only one experiencing that freedom too.
We have to make sure that our values align across the whole company. So one thing I would say there is. Definitely making the time to work on your business, but it's all about the time management and making sure that time's not gonna get written over because in the therapy world, everything is urgent, everything is important.
There is no such thing as a non-urgent therapy case to every single person you work with. Their issue, their challenge is urgent in their own right way. And that's such a significant part of the work that we do, why people get burnt out so regularly. And so what I say to my clients as soon as they come in is I recommend them.
I say at the start of each quarter. Put that in, put that day in at the start of the year. Put that day where you just go. You don't have to go into the office. You can go and do it from a coffee shop. Go [00:14:00] and do it at the beach. Go and do it somewhere that you feel really good in as well. But it's really important to allocate that time away because.
We often write over it with client work with admin. And I had like, we still need to remind ourselves, I had a week the other week where I was trying to write an email and this email took me about a couple of hours, which is ridiculous. Like we're still humorous at the end of the day. And at the end of the day, I sat with that and I was like, if I'd gone for a walk, I would've written that in 15 minutes, but instead I was fighting that.
And so no matter how many structures and skills we have in place. We still need to like re remind ourselves and it's a really regular thing. And so for me, making sure that I have little pockets throughout the day is really, really important for me. Where I'm like, my team know, don't call me, don't knock on the door.
That's my time. You can probably see my yoga mat in the background. I'll like lay on the floor. I've got like a little trigger ball, but it's, if you can't find that full day. Starting with what you have, because it's almost, we need to provide evidence to [00:15:00] ourselves and our brain. That's how our brain works.
It needs evidence to know that something is gonna work for us because it's always protecting us. So it's about finding those small pockets and creating those successful little habits. And then we go, oh wait, I went for a walk around the block before I did that. That felt better. That was successful. That was the evidence.
I have to do it again tomorrow. And those tiny little moments are gonna be so much more beneficial than going, I'm gonna take. Off to figure out my business at the end of the year when you're just gonna feel incredibly overwhelmed as well.
I honestly swear by it because remote travel. I often didn't have a lot of say in my schedule, and I am very good with boundaries now, but when you are traveling to remote communities in Australia, there might be, sorry, business, there might be a funeral, and my calendar can change really quickly, and that is the reality of the job that I've chosen.
But I'm also like, that does not mean that they, that that takes control over [00:16:00] all of my time, over all of my space. Like there is an element of that that I can't control, but there is so much that I can control. And even when we're on the road, we will pull over. We will have a little break. We will sit down.
We made, like when we started restructuring the business, I spoke with our ops manager, Molly, who's incredible. And I remember the first. Trip where we'd really made some big changes and we went on this trip for a week out to Roper Golf Region in Southeast Island, land in the Northern Territory. And so it was 40 degrees.
We were in the car for like a couple of days. We were driving around, we were there for a week and like, you're dusty, you're dirty, you're hot. And we made a pact. I said to her, look, I really wanna start bringing in these strategies. We're both gonna need to be on board because we both love this work. We both wanna do as much as we can.
We're out here, but I was like, I really just want us to sit with, if we implement a few of these small things that maybe take an hour out of our time across the day. Let's see how better our [00:17:00] productivity is. We both got to the end of that trip and we were like, oh my God. Neither of us came home sick.
Neither of us came home exhausted. We came home with our notes finalized, like we didn't come home with a backlog of work, and the quality of care that we gave to our clients was so much better.
Tracey: Wow. Okay. Okay. There's so much there Mia. So I've written some notes and I wanted to start with, and this segued, which is excellent. So. Quarterly planning. I love that. The quarterly planning day. I always take a day towards the end of the year to plan for the next year, but I'm really loving the intentional time around that quarterly planning.
I know I do a lot of planning, but it's more ad hoc, but I'm loving what you've said there about carving out that time at the beginning of the year, at the beginning of the quarter, and go somewhere else. Go somewhere lovely. Go somewhere else and have your questions to work through. It's that permission slip that we give ourselves to take the time.
It's okay to take that time, and I feel like we're more likely to do it If we set [00:18:00] it up at the beginning of the year or the quarter, that's our permission slip and block it out so that it doesn't get overridden. So I'm loving that. You've then segued into taking space more regularly in every single day and oh my goodness.
Oh my goodness. So my gosh, so much to say around this. What is it that you do in those little pockets? When you say little pockets, do you mean a total of an hour over the day to add up to an hour? That's what you are finding. Can you talk about that and explain that a little more?
Because I personally wanna know a little bit more about that.
Mia: Yes, I love this so much and this is something, as soon as I feel myself slipping into getting a little bit too busy, I really notice this is the first thing that's impacted. And that's almost like my first warning that goes off and I'm like, oh, hang on. Let's anchor back into these. But these little pockets, because I've worked with some incredible humans and that is how I learned about quarterly planning way back when through some really beautiful business coaches who supported me years ago as well.
And I think quarterly planning is something a [00:19:00] lot of businesses do, and we do that with our strategy and I had a lot of support around that with how to do that with the strategy and how to do that for, you know, the revenue and the clients in my business. But I was like. I need a section that is like almost my quarterly reset too.
So that was where it was molded in a little bit together between the strategy and between, you know, all of the other work that we do, the nervous system regulation and all of the things around our mind and looking after ourselves. And what I realized was I would take that day, I would feel so good the couple of weeks afterwards, I would be so creative and then suddenly you come back down into this little slump.
And I also was observing myself in my own behaviors. When I'm in the office all day, I can get so rattled so quickly and a little bit irritable. Towards the end of the day when I'm out on country, working out remote, outside, I can have these big days but still feel so energized and so fulfilled and observing.
Like the differences. When you're out remote, you often walk to somebody's [00:20:00] house or walk up to the general store, like it's a really small community. There's only 2000 people, and so I was getting all these movement breaks and I was also an occupational therapist telling teachers, kids, adults, teenagers, to have all these movement breaks inside their day, and I was not half surprisingly following it myself.
So that's where I was like, I need to have these breaks for my own regulation too, because my best self as a leader and a business owner is regulated, is energized, is calm, is present, and so in those little breaks, I will do anything. I'll stretch on my yoga mat. I might just go sit outside and just sit out in the sun and read a book for 10 minutes, or I might pop out into the rice field and go for a little walk, whatever it is.
For me, a big part of it is actually getting outside. It's getting out of the four walls because especially if you work from home like so many of us do.
You go into your office at seven, eight, whatever time, nine. If you're like, I'm gonna start early, I'll finish early. You go in at [00:21:00] seven, you really finish early, you always end up finishing at the same time.
And so I realized if I set little alarms on my calendar, because that was actually, Matt suggested that one to me and I was like, Hmm, OT has really been rubbing off on him. But alarms in your calendar works so well, like so, so well.
Tracey: I feel like this is something that we could say to listeners and I, I know I'm going to do an experiment. Try and see, do it for two weeks and see how you're feeling at the end. I know myself, I, I do get very caught up in all of the doing because I wanna do it all and I want everyone to have all the things that they've, that I've told them they're going to have, and I want to.
Deliver it sooner rather than later. And that then piles up. And then I find myself going, holy dooly, I have to now bolt like a crazy person out the door to go to pick up. And then I'm really rushed and then I'm met with, you know, the day's events from a 9-year-old, which are always all consuming. And then I've got to be there for [00:22:00] that.
And then it just, it's a downward spiral. It feels like just taking a deep breath, what you are saying in terms of these little pockets to support the nervous system, to set you up for success, which serves the business, but it serves you, and then it has a flow on effect to those around you too.
Mia: It does. It has such a ripple effect, Tracy, and even something as simple, like I have a few little meditations on my phone. I sometimes I don't feel like a meditation, so I'll listen to what's called an activation and I might just listen to it while I like do the dishes or do something so mundane. But it's really about that.
Circuit breaker that gets you out of your screen. And I think it's really important to like leave the home office. Like you've gotta walk out of it, you know, if it's your lounge room, go outside. If it's a different room of the house, whatever it is, it's almost, it's creating that sensory experience for your brain.
Like as an ot, we work a lot with the sensory system. But it's not only giving you that cognitive signal, so that brain signal, but it's also creating that sensory experience like, [00:23:00] oh, that felt different. I noticed that. I smelt that. And it starts to become a little bit more of a habit. Plus it's more regulating because we are bringing in the sensory systems as well.
And the ripple effect that I noticed on the team was. Everybody else's productivity went out, went up like a hundred percent as well. Because we are no longer, your nervous system reacts because we, we get messages from each other's nervous system. If I jump on a call and I'm dysregulated, I'm a hundred percent gonna dysregulate you and vice versa.
And so the entire. Mood and the entire regulation of the office has decreased there too. We're human beings. That's what our nervous system does. But you touched on something that I think was super important too, because you spoke to how you just wanna get all these things done for clients in this amount of time.
That is one of the core foundations that we also roll through is around, not over promising and not overdelivering, because therapists are.
The worst for this, we over function. We overdeliver, we over [00:24:00] promise. I ran my business for the first two years on overdelivering over promise because I was taught, you know, to be the best.
You've gotta go over and above, and the quality that was coming out like could have been so much better. It could have been so much better. And the pressure that we put on ourselves to have something done. We initiate that a lot of the time 'cause we say, oh no, I'll get that two in 48 hours. And so one of the things that we really practice at OT Inspire inside the Freedom Therapist Club is taking a pause.
Never committing to anything on the spot unless you are so aware of your calendar and where your capacity is, or if you're ringing someone to do a follow up, knowing what your capacity is before you jump on that phone. Because we're human beings, we're automatically gonna want the quicker option if that works better for us.
But so often. We give that quicker option without even offering like a delayed option, then we spend so long stressing about it, we get really dysregulated from it impacts the rest of our work, the rest of our team. Whereas if [00:25:00] we just taken a moment and not over promised or not like tried to over deliver, it would've worked so much more.
And even if we have got in that situation over promising. Putting in a phone call and just saying, Hey, look, this situation has changed. How do you feel about, you know, an extra 48 hours? People are human beings, but we put that pressure on ourselves to be perfect, to have it all right, and to have everything there straight away.
Tracey: Oh my gosh, Mia, this is beautiful. That this is what you talk about with your therapist, but also this is every small business owner.
This is honestly, and just hearing you again, I feel like this is another little golden permission slip to take a step back and say, hang on. And I love what you've said about not overdelivering, because I've heard lots of commentary and talk over the many, many years around Don't over promise.
are saying don't overdeliver either. And that's a, that's a perspective shift and I feel like that's a real aha moment for so many. It is for me. Just do what you say you're going to do when you say you're going to do it, you don't [00:26:00] have to overdeliver. But I love that the take a pause part because I know all of us pedal really quickly because we wanna do so well and we wanna please the clients and all the things.
That's everybody. Everybody who's listening, no doubt. But there's nothing wrong. Just taking a pause before you promise, looking at the workflow, looking at your commitments, looking at what you've blocked out for yourself and not compromising that. And to your point about saying to a client, look, I'll have this to you in 48 hours.
They probably won't care if you say next week either. we do do it to ourself, don't we? We really do.
Mia: We do a lot of it to ourselves, and it comes from this, like a lot of us are high achievers. If you're running a small business, we want to please, we, it's a new area that we're working in. It's, our business. It's highly vulnerable. There's a lot of people pleasing tendencies and. I would almost argue that most business owners have some people pleasing, high achieving tendencies in there, especially if you're working in a service led business.
Because we get our reciprocation from that client relationship from that, oh my [00:27:00] God, that supported me so much. It's such beautiful feedback, but we often will over deliver. For therapists, it looks similar to probably your industry as well, like you have an hourly billing, but we're like, I'll just throw that in just as well, just to make sure my service is good enough.
Like it comes from this place of like, I need to trust my service. I need to trust what I do, and I speak to this. I think this is gonna be really supportive. I have this meeting with a lot of new grad therapists, a lot of early therapists when we are doing like PD and supervision because they will often come to me for a session.
And so sessions for ot. 45 minutes long. Often we're working with six year olds to anywhere to like 70 year olds. So the, it's very broad, but it's always the same. It's usually in the first few weeks of the service and they're getting to know, getting to find their feet and they'll come in and I'll say, right, we've got like a transition.
So like pre-primary child that we're gonna be working with, we're working on these skills. Can you do me up a session plan and we'll come in and they bring their session plan in and there's like fine motor activity related to this. There's this worksheet related to this. There's this worksheet [00:28:00] related to this, there's this related to this, there's this related to this.
And then they go into the session. We obviously do a bit of supervision before this, but often therapists will prepare so much and then we might go into the session and the child's had a really shitty day and they're in tears and actually what they need in the moment. Is to be co-regulate, but we're trying to throw a worksheet at 'em, throw this at them, can we do this?
And so we're so focused on what we wanna get out of that session that we are not actually looking at what the client needs. And we're so focused on making sure we prove our worth and our overdelivery. We're also not focused on the client and what they need as well, and I think that is one of the parts where it comes from this place that we need to trust ourselves.
We need to trust our business, we need to trust our vision, and we need to trust our service.
Tracey: Wow, my goodness. The trust, trusting ourselves that really stuck with me and your vision and your service. And don't over promise. And don't over deliver. And you can still deliver [00:29:00] outstanding services without overpromising and without overdelivering. And you're also preserving yourself in the process and avoiding the path to burnout because there's so many factors aren't there?
And you've touched on so many of them, and I feel like without even saying, right, let's talk about burnout. We've just talked about it and you've shared all of the things that you can do to avoid ending up on the burnout track where you say, after six or seven years, I wanna blow up my business, or I wanna put it in the bin.
I don't wanna do it anymore.
We don't have to end up there
Mia: We definitely don't, and I think it's one of the saddest things that I see across so many industries because we lose good people, because we overdeliver, we over-function, we work ourselves to 150%. Burnout is inevitable. If you've been burnt out once and we don't make any changes, we are creating the same conditions to do it again.
And I'm not saying overhaul your business. Like the first thing we wanna do is we think I need to download that template. I need to do this, I need to put this [00:30:00] in the bin. I need to change this. Change. Like one thing, change one thing to how you walk into your business and take that responsibility for your energy and your business.
It's be like, be super responsible and super aware and super intentional of the energy that you bring into your business. And this is something that I come back to all the time because I mentor, I coach, I do all the things. And a lot of this work is like this in into exchange of energy, but it's my responsibility to make sure that's filled.
It's my responsibility not to give it away. And I think when I sit with that. At first, it feels a little bit brutal, but then it's empowering because I can make those changes to show up how I want to.
Tracey: I love that so much. I've just taken more notes. Oh my gosh, I love it.
And I am gonna go back and listen to this again. Mayor, this has been just value packed and you're so generous with your sharing, particularly about your own journey and your own business and what's worked, and I'm so grateful that you've made the time.
Thank you so much for coming on and having this conversation and [00:31:00] sharing all of these nuggets of gold and all of this wisdom with my listeners. It's just fabulous. Thank you. Tracy, you are so welcome. I love having these big conversations with you, and I know that you do such incredible work for women too, and small businesses, and I'm just so glad. I think that these conversations need to be had more. And if any little part of this supports anyone, then I'm stoked.
Oh, I have no doubt it will. People are going to want to know more, listeners are going to want to know more. Where can we find you to follow along and learn more from you?
Mia: You can find me over on Instagram at mko, so at M-I-A-P-O-K-O because my last name is way too long for an Instagram handle and no one can spell it. Or you can find us over at www do the freedom therapist club.com au. You can also follow along OT Inspire on Instagram too. We otco inspire underscore underscore therapy.
I like so many underscores in there.
Tracey: And we will include those links in the [00:32:00] show note as well to make sure that they're really easy for people to find. But I'm going to go and go over these notes again, and I'm actually going to take a sneaky peek at this episode again before it drops because there was so much in there that I'm loving to be able to take away, and so much that there's actually clients that I have in mind that I'm gonna share some of this with Mia, because it was just.
So, so super important and I'm so grateful. Thank you for coming
Mia: Oh gosh. You're so welcome. Thank you so much for having me.
Tracey: Isn't she wonderful? She just is so generous with her time and she's so generous with the gold that she wants to share so she can have real impact in the lives of all, all of us, all business owners. I loved talking to Mia. I love having her in my world. She's an absolute gem. We're going to include in the show notes.
Details where you can find Mia. Connect with her. Follow along and you can listen to her podcast too. The Freedom Therapist. As always, thank you so much for joining me. I'll catch you next time. [00:33:00]
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