142: Creativity is Your Biggest Resource: Get Published, Find Your Flow State, and Prevent Burnout with Spiritual Business Life Coach Tracee Sioux

Robert Plank: Today we have Tracee Sioux. Tracee's work has been featured in the New York Times Magazine, forbes.com, today.com, and many online, regional publications.

She won the Utah State Newspaper Association Best Photograph Award and the Utah State School Board Association Award for exceptional journalism and she's a featured essayist on PunditMoms, Mothers of Intention. How women and social media are revolutionizing politics in America. How are things today, Tracee?

Tracee Sioux: They're fantastic. How are you?

Robert Plank: I am better than ever. What are we talking about today? What is it that you do? What are you good at? What makes you stand out? All that good stuff.

Tracee Sioux: Okay. Well, I'm a spiritual business and life coach, and an author, and I own a publishing company called Sioux Ink, Soul Purpose Publishing. I help other authors publish their work that feels like their soul calling. That's pretty fun. I love it. What am I good at? Words. I love words, I love design, I love art. I really just get to play all day. It's pretty awesome.

Robert Plank: That's what we're all looking for right? The dream job that's not a job.

Tracee Sioux: Yeah. I believe you have to create your own dream job that's not a job. I help a lot of people do that through my business and life coaching. Yeah, I don't know that this ever was a profession, but it is now because I made it.

Robert Plank: Cool. Even if it did exist, why go the same path as everyone else. Why do the same, old, boring stuff? You've got to be your own person. You say you help people find the book that's within them or whatever. Could you walk us through a case study of someone like that who maybe they just needed some help and you helped them out?

Tracee Sioux: Yeah. I have a pretty full-service operation from concept to finish in terms of basically making a person a personality or an expert in their field. I have one client I've been working with for about 4 or 5 ... This is going to be the 5th year. When we started, she had a dream. She wanted to be a healer.

She was a massage therapist. She wanted to have digital products. She wanted to make a name for herself in the industry, and make money doing what she was gifted with which was energy healing. The first step we did was create a online platform. Websites, social media, newsletter, get the branding together, make sure that all of her marketing materials had all of her right information on it.

That was the first year. We established a platform. Then, we began creating content. We did a project over this year where she created basically 2 major content. One, books and CDs and that sort of thing. Audio books on Amazon, eBooks on Amazon, print books, work books, teaching program that we created this year. We're going to launch by Thanksgiving. We're going to launch her book and CD mediation set.

Then next year it's going to be publicity, publicity, publicity, publicity. It's gone through the whole entire process of getting a hold of her dream. What does she really want to do? What does she want that to look like? That's from a soul-deep level. I often find that people think they know what they want, but if you get deeper, it's something else that they're afraid to do.

We work to get what is that? What do you want it to say? What do you want it to look like? Who are you? Is this going to make you happy? Is this going to make you money? Let's put a business model around it so that you can make money at it. We start from there and then we begin to build a platform so that people will begin to know who they are. Social media, blogging, website.

Then we begin to create a significant amount of content that's good enough to be made into a book or a product, an audio product or a video product, that they can sell online at speaking engagements, which leads to, of course, more speaking engagements, more radio shows, more media, more press because now you've got this book that you can say, "Hey, I'm an expert in my field. I've written this book or I have this whole program or class."

Then you sell stuff at the back of the room. You sell it online, and you begin to really grow your tribe that way. My company does all of those things and along the way, there's a lot of spiritual business and life coaching.

What I work on with people a lot, especially ... Oh my gosh, entrepreneurs are so bad at this, is not being a workaholic, not letting your business eat your life. Making sure that you do have enough time to be this hyperproductive. It's a lot of work, but it doesn't have to take all your time and energy. There are ways to manage things and make priorities for yourself that matter.

You'll notice I didn't say, "And in one year, we created the whole entire website, all the branding, all the content, and the book," because that would just overwhelm any person and make them crazy and set them up for failure. We took it one step at a time so that it could be reasonably accomplished, very good quality, and still fairly quickly.

Robert Plank: Dang, so when you were saying that you do start to finish, you weren't kidding.

Tracee Sioux: I'm not kidding.

Robert Plank: It sounds like there's almost a lot like 3 or 4 parts to it right? There's the book part and then that leads to the speaking part, and then even like a little bit before that there's the getting deep down into their what they really want to say part and then there's all the content in between, I guess.

Tracee Sioux: Yeah, and the platform building is really important too. When people say, "What should I spend my money on?" You should spend it on your website. You should spend it on looking like an expert, looking like a professional. If you're going to just slap up a WIX page, people visit those pages and check out whether you're credible.

You should spend money on marketing and branding. Then it pays off in the end if you really do my plan. If you really follow through, miracle things can happen.

Robert Plank: Along those lines, as far as the building of the platform and making the content and stuff like that, one thing that I'm kind of curious about is ... I don't know. It's one of those things like if I write all these blog posts or I write a book myself and stuff like that, it's almost like it takes so much time.

I'm worried that I won't finish as opposed to anytime I've tried to do a shortcut, like I've tried to throw money at the problem and have someone else write the book like me, it doesn't sound like me. You're already laughing, but if I get it transcribed, I have a lot of cleanup to do. What are your thoughts on all that stuff?

Tracee Sioux: Blogs, I think, are different than a book right, unless you're making a blog compilation book. If you're reusing content, that's great, and it can come in a different format. What I tend to do is ... Oh gosh, that's a big question. You want to give yourself deadlines and you want to give yourself enough time.

For instance, this client that I recently told you about, she did sections of 11 ... It was like an 11-day meditation with chunks over the year. For 12 months, that's what she did. By the end of the year, we have 132 of those. That's a lot of content. That's enough for a book, like a journal, workbook meditation thing.

Then she's going to read those aloud and create an audio book. There's going to be several products brought up from that. She's going to get a book, she's going to get an audio book, and then we're going to get an email class that goes annually and delivers automatically through email. Thee ways to market that content.

She didn't sit down and write a book because she's just not the type of person who really could do that on a realistic ... It would just be too overwhelming to her. Often when I'm going to write a book, I make a goal like 1 chapter a day. Just write it. One chapter a day, it doesn't matter how good it is. It doesn't matter how bad it is, just get the one chapter a day on the page.

Then further down the process, it's one chapter a day of editing. Then you have broken it down into pieces that allow you to, every day, be like, "Hey, I did good. I did my one chapter today. I edited it or I proofread it or I wrote it." It's not like taking on this ginormous, intimidating, scary project.

Then also, I strongly suggest that people hire professionals. If you are publishing a book, you need a professional editor and you need a professional designer. For one thing, Amazon won't publish work that sucks. They won't publish work with excessive, grammatical errors. They won't publish work that has bad formatting, bad covers. They're a legit retailer which means they have a legitimate expectation for quality.

Also, if your name is going on a book and you're the writer, you need another set of eyes to look at that, give you suggestions, give you creative feedback, and fix whatever mistakes are in there. I've been writing as a professional for 20 years, but I have people edit my work before it goes out there.

Robert Plank: We all make mistakes. It's almost like if I'm looking at anything that I write, then I tend to skip over it because I think, "Oh well I've already seen this because I wrote it." It's like just having the other set of eyes helps so much, I think.

Tracee Sioux: Oh it's true. It's called, "Refrigerator blindness." When you open the fridge and you're like, "Where is the ketchup? Where is the ketchup? Where is the ketchup? Where is the ketchup?" It's right in front of your face.

Robert Plank: It was there the whole time.

Tracee Sioux: Yeah, and when you're writing, I don't care how good you are at writing, that's going to happen right? You're going to see it so just even when I proofread for myself, even before I get it to an editor, I've gone through 3 rounds of proofreading. Then by the time I get it ... One of the steps that I do when I'm proofreading is I take a break for a couple days.

I'll proofread it, I'll take a break, then I'll come back to it and I see new stuff. Then if you put it in different form, that's why you want to proofread a proof, a print proof, of your book because the second that it's on the page and it's not on a computer screen, you're seeing it totally differently and you're going to pick out even more mistakes.

Then by the time you get it to the third eyes, hopefully you've got most of it, but you won't have caught all of it, especially the third eyes are so important ... Or, third eye. Second pair of eyes is so important when looking at content, and flow, and structure. You may have a lot of really great ideas, but they're not put in a way that the reader can really grasp it.

One of the things that I'm constantly getting on my clients with is they're experts in their field. They have an incredible bounty of knowledge. They want to start where they're at. You can't do that if you're writing for an average reader.

You can't do that. My energy-worker client, she has this vast knowledge and she's just aching to deliver that vast knowledge. What I've really worked on with her, especially in the last content that we created, is not everyone's at your level. In fact, almost no one is. Let's break it down to what I call, "Kindergarten level," so that the beginning person in this can understand what you're talking about.

I have another client. Huge, spiritual, brilliant mind and he's writing a memoir spiritual scholarship piece. Same thing with him. I'm like, "Okay, I get what you're saying because I've done a lot of study in this and I understand the context, and I understand theology because it's also one of my hobbies. If you don't have that background, no one's going to understand what you're saying. We have to break it down."

An editor, a publisher, they're excellent resources to help you do that so that when someone picks up your book they're not like, "What? What? What is going on? What does that even mean? I don't understand that."

Robert Plank: Isn't it called, "The curse of knowledge" or something like that? I think that's an actual term. You know so much, it's like you have to stretch yourself to make it like 5-year-old level.

Tracee Sioux: It is a huge stretch for them and that's one of the things that I can do to serve them well, even in their marketing and their blogging. If you're just surfing the web and you're interested in spirituality or energy work, or whatever it is you're interested in.

I have one client who's doing Airbnb Investing. If you're just interested in it and you're not an expert in it, basically your target audience if you're the expert, the idea is that you know more than they do. You can't give them the information that you know now, you have to give them the information that you learned before.

That's really hard for people. It really is. One of my talents is to break that down for the average person. I have 20 years of journalism experience. What they teach you to do in journalism is write at an 8th grade level because that is the average reader's reading level. The average person walking around, that's their reading level.

The idea is to break complex ideas down into layman, approachable language which is one of my gifts. It comes in handy enormously with everything. With content, with branding, with writing books, with publishing books, with making eCourses, with the whole thing. If you are an expert in your field and you publicly want to be an expert in your field, that's critical.

Robert Plank: Thinking about all that kind of stuff, when any kind of writing's involved, I think a lot of people either get burned out or stuck or frustrated. Do you find yourself, even with all these years of journalism experience, do you sometimes get stuck in your writing mode?

Tracee Sioux: I never have writer's block, ever.

Robert Plank: Wow. I've got to hear the secret on this one then.

Tracee Sioux: The secret is that I've trained myself to get into flow. Flow is ... It's a state of being that you get into to where you're really just receiving information and letting your body serve as a conduit for it. If you think of these creative geniuses out in the universe and they're like, "Ooo, we found an open portal. Let's give her all these awesome ideas."

If you train yourself to do that ... In journalism, oh my gosh, you can't even believe how many blogs I've written about carpet cleaning, and tomato seeds, and pipe fittings, and newsletters. I have done this for a living for so long that I trained myself so that I can enjoy myself while I did all of that less-than-awesome work to just get in a flow and let it come through me so that I could have a good time.

If you are a writer, or a painter, or a dancer, you know what that feeling is. Even if you're writing computer code, you know what the feeling is because that's why you keep coming back to the work. That's why you love it is because you're reaching the state of flow. If you have writer's block, your job is not to make yourself, "Okay, now I'm going to push through." Your job is to learn how to get into flow instantly.

Some of the ways that you can do that is write at the same time every single day. Then your body, your brain, and the universe is trained to deliver at the same time every day. This is just what we do. It's a habit. We don't write when we feel like it, we write at 9 AM, after the kids go to school or whatever your plan is.

I believe that the structure is the key to creativity. Putting structure around your work with deadlines, with goals, breaking that down to smaller pieces and deciding, "Okay, I'm going to get into flow at this time every day."

That said, I do take periods of time off because if you are a creative person and you are pumping energy out of you to such a degree that you're like, "Oh my gosh, I just wrote a book."

I wrote a book in 2 days once and I was so flipping high and vibrating so fast when I did that, after I did that, it was like this incredible spiritual high, but it was also overwhelming. I had to bring myself down form that back to planet Earth back to walking through the planet with the mortal humans.

I had to go away for a little while and take a little vacation, and regroup, and get some grounding time. When you are an artist or a creator or an innovator, you have these bursts of energy. I believe burst working. I am a creative.

That's how I work. Most of the people I know that are creatives work that way. I will sit down ... This weekend I put together 2 books from content that I had already created. I sat down for the weekend and I did it. I was like, "Awesome, great."

I can't do that every day. I can't write a book in 2 days every day. There has to be some space between those kinds of huge, ginormous energy expenditures, or else you will burn out. We see artists all the time who burn out and they try to ground themselves with drugs or alcohol. They go a little off the rails. They get a little bonkersville. A lot of that is because they're not resting between their bursts of energy.

Robert Plank: It sounds like what I'm hearing from all of this is just like you can't force it. I'm glad you brought up the computer programming thing because I hadn't even made that connection. I'm a computer programmer and I get stuck the same ways. Any kind of writing, like I'm writing a blog post, book, whatever, it's the same kind of being stuck in the programming kind of thing.

It's like I can get jazzed up and I can have those long sprints where I get those things done, but you're right. If I try to sustain that every single day then it would just be this burn out that I don't think I would even see coming.

It would just kind of sneak up on me and next thing you know, now it's like all this extra work just to get back to that place that you could have gotten back to easier ... more easily if you'd just had a little better system right?

Tracee Sioux: Oh absolutely. I have burned myself out. I released a book called The Year of Yes in 2014. Man, for 6 months I worked my tail off like you would not believe. Guess what happened 6 months after that? For the 6 months after that book came out, I was exhausted, I got Leaky Gut Syndrome, I mean I was a mess. I finally went away with my kids to Mexico for a month to try and recover.

Burn out's a real thing. It is a biological response because that energy's flowing through you. If you're like in the zone and you're programming and you don't take a break until you finally break, you're going to pay for that later. If you say, "Okay, today I'm writing one chapter," or "Today I'm programming this piece." Then you're like, "Okay, and now I'm going to go hang out with my kids or go ride my bike or take a kickboxing class."

If you create the rest and you create the structure and the regouping period in that, just take a freaking nap man. A nap will change everything. A nap is a huge cure for creativity block and getting stuck. I think it's really important that you ... Here's how I think about it. I think about my creativity as my biggest resource. It is the thing that I make my money on. It's how I express myself, it's what I need for my sanity.

It is something I protect as the most valuable thing that I have. To protect that, I need to not burn it out. I need to make sure that I'm taking care of my body. I need to make sure that I'm keeping to reasonable schedules. I need to make sure I have a social life, that I have a relationship with my kids.

If I don't have those things, if I'm not getting enough rest, if I'm eating like crap, if I'm just working all the time, I'm going to burn out and then what have I lost? My most valuable resource.

Robert Plank: Interesting. I hadn't thought about that. It's like treating creativity like anything else. Normally we would think of it as some abstract concept, but you could think of creativity in the same way that you think of your blood sugar or your cholesterol or something like that right?

Tracee Sioux: Even your house. It's the most expensive thing that I own and I don't go around trashing it because it's the most expensive thing that I own.

Robert Plank: Without that, everything else falls apart.

Tracee Sioux: Yeah, without that, I've got no place to live and then what am I going to do? My phone and my MAC are huge resources because that's how I make a living. I don't go tossing my computer across the floor. I make sure that it stays in good condition and I handle it with care. You're creativity is the same thing. Even a child or a baby, you don't go throwing those thing around because they're highly valuable to you.

If you think of your creativity as the way you make a living, the way you live your life, the way that feeds your soul, the thing that is so valuable that without it you couldn't do those things, you're going to want to protect that. You're going to want to take care of that. You're going to want to nurture that.

Everything that you do that's self-care is going towards that, is going towards protecting and enhancing your creativity. I consider getting a massage like a business practice. Touch is critical and meditation is critical, and what better way to do that than getting an awesome massage. I consider that time, work time. It's like this is for my business. This is for my family. This is for my abundance to get this massage.

Same with kickboxing. I get so many great ideas when I'm kickboxing. It's great for my body, it's great for my brain. I consider that something like fundamentally critical that I do for my own success.

Robert Plank: Would you say that with your client that you help out, would you say that the ... Is there one big thing that stops all these people, that holds them all back? If there is, would you say, is it this burn out thing, is it the lack of having a life? Is it lack of structure? What would you say is holding back all these people that you're helping out?

Tracee Sioux: There are 3 things. There are 3 lies that your ego will tell you to keep you where you're at, to keep you stuck. My clients and everyone I've ever met, has one or all or some variation of these 3. Time, "I don't have enough time. I am too busy. I'll do that later. Some day I'll write that. Some day I'm going to do that."

Money, "I don't have enough money." We're the richest country in the entire world in the history of the world and I don't know a single person who is like, "Yeah, I've got enough money." It's like some kind of mental ... It's like a collective mental health problem that we all think that we're totally broke.

What I find with a lot of people, and this isn't true for everyone, sometimes people just really don't have enough money. For most people, they have money, but they're spending it wrongly if this is their priority.

If you have money, and you've got an iPad and a closet full of designer clothes, but you don't have enough money to write your book or hire a publisher or a coach, it's not that you don't have enough money, it's that you're spending your money in a way that does not support what you try to do.

"I don't have enough money, I don't have enough time," and the last one is, "I'm not good enough. Who am I? I need another certification. Who's going to read my book? No one cares what I have to say? My parents told me I would amount to nothing or my spouse doesn't think I'm good at this."

Those are the 3 things I see over and over and over and over. As we work together, that piece gets less and less strong because they have more and more experience to prove that that's wrong. At the beginning, I've got to tell you, I considered it a ginormous success when one of my clients went and visited her sick mother for 10 days.

The only way I could get her to do it is say, "This is an entrepreneurial experiment. What happens if you remove yourself from your business and actually let the people who work for you do the work?" She made more money.

Of course she did but she didn't believe that that was going to happen prior to the experiment because she had always believed, "I don't have enough time, and if I don't do this for myself, and not really allow the people who work for me to actually do their jobs, then my whole business is going to fall apart. This big catastrophe is going to happen. No one's going to call me anymore. Everybody's going to be mad."

I'm like, "Okay, it's 10 days. You could go on vacation, that's what they do. They go on vacation. You will pay these people. Let them do their job." When she came back, what she discovered was that her employees really, really, really appreciated being allowed to do their job and not have her getting all up in it and micromanaging it.

It's changed the way that she works. She works less. She makes more money. She's happier. That was a huge struggle for her, huge, enormous struggle for her.

Robert Plank: What I'm hearing, not only from that story, but from this whole call is that it seems like we all kind of wish that in a perfect world, that we could kind of turn on the switch, flip the switch, and always be in that flow state 24 hours a day and just be a workaholic, but it sounds like for you, what's really important is that time spent away from the computer, away from the business to get that clarity, the focus, the "Aha" moments, all that cool stuff.

Tracee Sioux: Yeah. Think about yourself. When you're programming, do you get your best ideas while you're doing it?

Robert Plank: Usually what happens is I'm stuck for 8 hours. I take a 10-minute-break and then I instantly figure out what's been blocking me for 8 hours.

Tracee Sioux: Now you know that, right? If you got stuck and then 5 minutes later you were like, "I'm going to go take a nap or take a walk around the block," your insight would happen faster, which would make you more productive right? You wouldn't have wasted that 8 hours. Long, lone, long time ago I realized that if I did not try to finish a deadline at 11 PM, I could wake up the next morning at 6:00 and I could jam that sucker out in 45 minutes. It would feel great and it would be good work.

I had already tired my brain out by 11 PM and I could sit there for 5 hours and just stare at that computer and not be able to create a coherent thought. If you know this, if you're like, "Hey, every time I run, I get great ideas," or "Every time I take a nap, I wake up and I know the answer." If I sleep on it ... That's why people say, "I'm going to sleep on it," that's actually extremely great advice.

When you sleep on it, your brain and your soul does all this stuff in there and then when you wake up you're like, "Oh, I don't know why I didn't think about that yesterday, but that's a great idea." Just do it before you waste the 8 hours. Just make it a part of your system.

Robert Plank: That's good advice and that's been a hard lesson. That's been kind of a slow road for me over the last few years to slowly retrain myself. As you said, it's not an overnight thing and it's almost like a blow to the ego almost.

It's like I tell myself, "But I have to put in these 8 hours of so-called hard work," when if it can all just be solved in 10 minutes, it's almost like ... You know what I'm saying? It's almost a blow to the ego that I thought it was supposed to take me 8 hours of suffering but then it turns out there's a 10-minute shortcut.

Tracee Sioux: Right. You're exactly right that it's the ego because in our culture our egos are trained to think that if we're busy we're going to get richer. Totally untrue. If we work all the time, then we're cooler and make more money, which is also totally untrue. If we get the Doctorate degree that we're going to make more money and get higher positions. Also totally untrue.

The facts do not bear these things out. We live in a culture that makes it really easy for the ego to make you feel guilty for finishing your work and going to the pool at 2:00 or taking a month off to go travel with your kids. I took my kids to New York City this summer and it took me about a week to stop feeling anxiety and guilt about getting away with it.

Like not having my business go to crap during this period of time was some kind of miracle. The thing is I have set my business up like that on purpose with intention. I've set up ... I've worked my tail off before. I work my tail off after. I met with clients over Skype. My business did not suffer one single bit. My family benefited. I benefited.

It took me a minute of doing it that I was like, "I can't believe I'm getting away with this. Is this even allowed in America? Should I be doing something?" It's training and it's ego. Ego loves to use that and it is a little bit of a challenge to get the ego to hush up so that you can enjoy the time that you're taking.

Robert Plank: What the heck else are you doing all this for?

Tracee Sioux: Yeah. That's kind of where I was at when I started taking these month-long vacations with my kids. Why am I an entrepreneur? I'm an entrepreneur so that I have the freedom to be able to spend with my family. I'm an entrepreneur and I don't have to go to an office every day. Well, why, why, why is that important to me? It's so that I can travel and go have some adventures right?

Robert Plank: Right. Work hard and play hard.

Tracee Sioux: Work hard and play hard. If that's not why you're working, we might want to have a conversation about why the heck you're working.

Robert Plank: That's a great place to kind of transition a little bit into if someone is out there and they need help. They realize that they need that extra set of eyes, or the third set of eyes, or the third set of the third eye. Even just someone to help them get to where they need to go, can you tell us about you and your websites and your coaching and your services and all that cool stuff?

Tracee Sioux: Sure, yeah. I'm very reachable at TraceeSioux.com. You can email me at yes@traceesioux.com. I'll get right back to you and we can schedule an appointment to have a chat about where you're at and what you want to do, and how I can help you with my services, whether that's for coaching and getting clear on what you want and mapping out a path, or whether it's you need a marketing platform to create the brand that you are or whether it's you're ready to publish a book and let's get on it.

Robert Plank: Awesome. Whatever they need you give them the whole package. Cool. I'm excited for anyone who's headed your way and thanks for coming on the show, Tracee, to share what you have to say about ... It sounds like we talked about everything right? All the life stuff, all of the important stuff. Thanks for coming by.

Tracee Sioux: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It's been great fun.