Hello friends, welcome back to The Dream Biz Podcast, the business podcast that helps you build a life and a business that you love. I’m your host, Christi Johnson. I’m a business coach and a photographer dedicated to helping you make your dream biz a reality. Today I want to talk to you about something pretty vulnerable. I want to share about my mental health crisis of 2024 and what led me to do a kind of hardcore shutdown of my business for about six months, and how I got to where I am now.
For me, it’s important to be honest about what it actually looks like to run a business and show that it is not always great. As business owners, we face challenges constantly. I want to show what it’s like to pivot and come out on the other side with tools to support yourself while continuing to chase your dream.
The Power of a Great Coach
I’ve already talked on the podcast about how, at the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023, I was really contemplating quitting my business. I hadn’t made a lot of profit, and it didn’t seem like a worthwhile venture.
Then I hired a coach, Sarah—I’ve talked about her before, she’s phenomenal. I started working with her in April 2023, and she really helped me grow throughout the year. By December 2023, I had my first $10,000 month. I brought on a full-time team member in June or July of that year and was making steps to grow a creative agency by early 2024.
Sickness & Ignoring Burnout
But then everything came crumbling down, and I want to talk about what happened. I’ll be discussing some mental health challenges, so if that’s triggering for you, you may want to read at another time.
At the end of 2023, I’d had my biggest month ever and was starting to grow my agency. After Christmas break, at the beginning of January, I got sick. It was just a normal cold, but because I had done so much selling in December, I had a lot of work to do and didn’t take care of myself.
I’ve always been the type of person who doesn’t like taking sick days. I didn’t communicate with my clients that I was sick, didn’t take any time off, and just kept working. In January, I traveled a lot and wasn’t sleeping well. I started waking up in the middle of the night with manic energy, self-doubt, and racing thoughts—wild ideas swirling in my head.
Mental Health Challenges
What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was experiencing stress-induced and lack-of-sleep-induced hypomania. If you’re not familiar with hypomania, it’s when you have a lot of energy, a decreased need for sleep, and a kind of overconfidence that can make you feel like you’re going crazy. That’s what I was experiencing because I wasn’t sleeping or taking care of myself.
In February, I got sick again and experienced a full-blown hypomanic episode. For about a week, I was barely sleeping—maybe one or two hours a night. I was still trying to work, but I was making mistakes and overpromising to clients. I would say, “Yes, we’re going to get this done,” but things wouldn’t get done on time.
Then I got COVID, which made everything worse. I had two clients launching on the same day, and I didn’t even realize how stressful that would be. At that point, I was still the only person who really knew how to do many tasks in my agency. My team was still in the process of learning and building their roles.
My mistakes during this time were clear:
- Not taking care of myself when I was sick.
- Not sleeping or setting boundaries with my work.
- Taking on more clients and work than I could handle.
Because of my mental state, I wasn’t communicating well with my team. The instructions I gave were incomplete and scrappy, and I thought it was fine because my brain was in such chaos.
By March, I had another hypomanic episode that lasted a week, and it was worse than before. I barely slept and stayed up working in the middle of the night. There were a couple of days where I was texting people—random people—very quickly and saying wild things that didn’t make sense, but in my mind, I thought they made perfect sense.
People started worrying about me. They noticed something was off. Thankfully, I saw my therapist during this time. I hadn’t slept the night before, and when she asked me about it, I told her I had slept the night before last but not the previous night. She told me, “You need to go home and sleep.”
That day, I had ridden my bike to her office, even though I hadn’t slept. On my way there, I had this manic energy and was thinking, “Everything is great. Everything is working out for me.” I felt like I was on top of the world. But as we talked, I could tell my therapist was serious. She asked if she needed to call my husband to come pick me up because she didn’t think I should be riding my bike back home.
When she said that, it finally hit me how serious the situation was. After our session, I went outside to unlock my bike, and I couldn’t remember the combination. My brain felt like it had snapped out of the manic energy, and I called my husband to pick me up.
During this time, my brother-in-law, his wife, and their son were living with us. I remember thinking I was hilarious and amazing. I thought I was the greatest thing since sliced bread because of the energy I had from the hypomania. But in reality, I was overconfident and out of touch.
Burnout Recovery
That week, I finally went to sleep and spent several days recovering. I was barely functioning—only waking up to eat or go to the bathroom. When I started to heal, my brain still wasn’t fully working. I was forgetting things mid-sentence and struggling to communicate.
One of my clients parted ways with me during this time because I wasn’t delivering the quality of work I promised. Part of the problem was my overconfidence. I thought the work I was delivering was good when it wasn’t. I felt so much shame, failure, and embarrassment.
Once I realized what was happening, I was honest with my clients about my situation. The ones who continued working with me were incredibly understanding and supportive. I’m so grateful for that because it’s exactly what I needed at the time.
I cut my client load in half and realized I had to start taking care of myself. But even as I recovered, running my agency brought me more stress than joy. Whether it was the lingering feelings of shame or the mounting financial pressure, marketing my business became a necessity instead of something I enjoyed.
Closing My Agency
By June, I had to make the hard decision to close the agency. I told my team that if we didn’t hit our financial goals by the end of the month, I wouldn’t be able to afford to keep them on. When we didn’t reach those goals, I gave them 30 days’ notice and let them go at the end of July.
It was devastating. I had spent so much time building this team and investing in my business. Letting them go felt like a public failure. I had introduced them in marketing videos and everything. After shutting down my agency, I felt an immense amount of shame, failure, and embarrassment. I took time to process and heal with the help of my therapist and coaches.
Support from My Community
First, my Embodiment Coach Brittanny Taylor helped me release shame and focus on healing through yoga, tarot, and coaching. I spent three months with her learning to sit with my emotions without rushing to the next thing.
Currently I’m working with Business Coach Katrina Widener. She incorporates human design into her coaching and encourages business to feel like play rather than work. She’s been helping me rediscover what truly lights me up.
With the help of my coaches, I started journaling and reflecting on what would actually feel good to do. It took months, but eventually, I realized I wanted to be a coach. For a long time, I had doubted myself and thought I didn’t know enough about business or how to help people. Katrina helped me understand that a coach’s role is to guide and collaborate, not to have all the answers.
I thrive when I’m with people, sharing vulnerably about what’s going on in our lives and businesses. I also love helping others create the business they want while having room for creativity and play. I’m a musician, and I love making art—even if it’s not good—and just being creative.
The Dream Biz Mastermind
After a lot of reflection, the idea for The Dream Biz Mastermind came to me. As soon as it did, I got emotional. I hadn’t played piano in months, but I went to the piano and started playing. That was a huge moment for me.
This whole process felt like grieving. I was mourning the loss of my business, my identity as a business owner, and the vision I had for my life. For months, I didn’t want to get out of bed. I felt numb, with no joy in anything.
I spent a lot of time in therapy talking about whether I was depressed or grieving. When the idea for the mastermind came to me, I felt excited for the first time in so long. That excitement was a sign that I was finally starting to move forward.
The mastermind combines everything I love: business strategy, creativity, and community. It’s a space where entrepreneurs can talk about the struggles of business, build aligned strategies that reflect who they are and what they want, and make room for creativity, play, and self-expression.
I want to show people that there’s no one “right” way to do business. Your way of showing up in the world will look different from someone else’s, and that’s okay.
The idea for the mastermind made me emotional because it felt so aligned with my purpose. I sat with it for a while, and it continued to feel exciting. Now, it’s finally here. The doors are open, and we’re starting in February.
Believing In Myself
This vision has been on my mind and heart for years. When I started Christi Johnson Creative in 2019, after moving to California and leaving photography, I wanted to create a community. But I didn’t think I knew enough to be a coach or that anyone would pay me. I played small, tried other things like photo editing and OBM work, but none of it felt right.
After this long process of loss and reflection, I’ve realized that coaching is what I truly want to do. I want to create a community where we can support each other, share our struggles, and build businesses that align with who we are.
If you read this entire post, thank you. This has been a very personal and long-winded update, but I wanted to share where I’ve been and how I’ve gotten here.
If you’re struggling with your mental health, please know you’re not alone. I encourage you to seek help from a mental health professional, tell someone what you’re going through, and lean on your support system. I couldn’t have gotten through this without my husband, friends, and therapist.
Let’s chase more joy together in 2025. Thank you for reading, and I’ll see you next week.
