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The advice show for creators that tells it like it is. Host Stephanie Woodin takes calls from web creators grappling with the big questions: burnout, branding, revenue, and keeping up with AI and SEO changes. Each episode, an expert guest or fellow creator joins Stephanie to answer your questions with research-backed, practical advice you can put to work in your own business.
Brought to you by Raptive, the full-service creator media company that empowers creators to turn their passions into thriving, profitable brands.
Do you have a question? Record yourself on video or audio, or write it up and email it to ctrlaltask@raptive.com. Anonymous questions are welcome!
Laura Fuentes:
Well, I have been doing this for a while and there are times that I go home at the end of the day and feel burnt out.
Stephanie Woodin:
Burnout. We've all been there. And at the end of 2025, I know we're all feeling it. It's been a long year. And for you creators who are hustling right now through the holiday season, congratulations, guys. You've almost made it. In today's episode, we're hearing from a creator who's been in that hustle a long time and she's finding that burnout is killing her creative spark. How can she get it back? We have an expert on burnout with us today, the creator coach, Josh Zimmerman. He's an ICF certified coach and he works with creators and entrepreneurs from all backgrounds. He's going to walk us through why burnout happens and what we can do about it. Hi, Josh.
Josh Zimmerman:
Hey, Steph. How are you?
Stephanie Woodin:
I'm great. How are you?
Josh Zimmerman:
I'm doing good.
Stephanie Woodin:
Good. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. I'm really excited to talk to you about this topic because I feel like it's a pervasive thing that so many people are dealing with, creators and not creators. And so I think it's a really perfect time to talk to you because we're sitting right at the beginning of winter and holidays. So thanks for being here and we're going to jump into it. But before we do, I wanted to first start out, as we do with every podcast episode, getting to know you a little bit better. And what I thought I'd ask is how did you get into being a creator coach? To me, it's a really cool, unique line of work and something that is so needed in this digital society today. So tell us a little bit about how you found yourself in this career path.
Josh Zimmerman:
It's a great question. I always ask myself the same question. I’ve been in entertainment and the digital world since 2013, I was part of the official daily show of YouTube called YouTube Nation. That was a joint venture between Jeffrey Katzenberg, Dreamworks Animation, and YouTube. The whole idea behind that show was there's so much content being uploaded. How do we find the hidden gems? And my job was doing rights and clearances. And so I was the guy that was reaching out to all of these creators and all of these MCNs and multinational corporations asking if we could feature them on the official show for 15 seconds.
Stephanie Woodin:
Wow.
Josh Zimmerman:
And I had no clue who I was emailing. And people would be like, "Do you know who you're emailing?" I'm like, "No clue." And it was like these massive creators as well as companies. And I really found that I fell in love with working with creators. When that show came to an end, I started to have friends who were creators reaching out to me saying, "Hey, I'm feeling burnt out." I was like, "What is this burnout thing?" And I kept hearing more and more about it. And then probably three months later there was this tsunami of major publications writing about creators burning out. And every single article that was published I got more and more frustrated and that was because they were profiling this amazing artist, but there was no solution.
Stephanie Woodin:
I see. They're just talking about the problem.
Josh Zimmerman:
They're just talking about the problem and saying, "Here's this person who's had all of this fame and all this stuff and here's the crumble." And I sort of thought to myself, I was like, "I need to help." And so I decided at that point, I was at breakfast with a manager, and I just sort of snapped. And I just said, "I'm going to be the first ever life coach dedicated to creators and burnout."
Stephanie Woodin:
You had a light bulb moment.
Josh Zimmerman:
It was a huge light bulb moment. It sucked all the energy out of LA because that's the big light bulb moment. It was just sort of like ...
Stephanie Woodin:
Wait, that's a big light bulb.
Josh Zimmerman:
It was a huge light bulb. And at that moment, I just said, "Okay." Now, that's the thing, Steph, is that coaching is not a regulated industry. The good news is it's not regulated. Bad news is it's not regulated, but there is a governing body, the ICF, the International Coaching Federation, and they are sort of the gold standard. And they are the ones that do accreditation and ethics. And anyone who wants to coach in a Fortune 500 or the government has to be ICF certified. And for me, what I decided was that if I was going to help amazing artists and storytellers, I needed to do the right ethical thing for me and that was to get certified. So I went back to school for two and a half years to learn what coaching is, what coaching isn't, how to coach, and continuing to learn how to support creators. So that's how I started Creator Coach.
Stephanie Woodin:
That's really interesting because it feels like your community of creators around you just led you to that path in such an organic way. It's like it just all fit together, experience plus opportunity and need. And that need definitely hasn't let up.
Josh Zimmerman:
Right? And I was like, "There needs to be a solution to this."
Stephanie Woodin:
Yeah, and I think that leads me to our question today because finding a solution to this idea of burnout is what Laura Fuentes, who is a creator at laurafuentes.com is asking. And I think we should get into her question and kind of go deeper into this topic after we watch. So let's check out what Laura had to say.
Laura Fuentes:
I'm Laura Fuentes and I started creating content back in 2011, which is the dino years of the internet. In fact, I was the first one out there telling you how to boil an egg. I am that old. I'm really fortunate that my business is thriving and I'm still doing well. However, if I'm being honest, I'm really not enjoying it as much as I once did. This, I think, has a lot to do with juggling a lot of roles as a content creator and, well, navigating a really quick moving world, which is the internet. It really feels uncertain. The day-to-day just doesn't feel fun and exciting. In fact, sometimes it can feel like same old, same old because, well, I have been doing this for a while and there are times when I go home at the end of the day that I just feel burnt out and I know I'm not the only one. So my question for you is how can creators like me who feel the routine of creating content tap back into our creative side and be excited about our day-to-day work?
Stephanie Woodin:
Laura, I love seeing her. She's just got such great energy and she's an awesome creator. If people don't know her site, they should check it out. But it's a great question and I think something we're hearing more of. What do you think, Josh? When you hear that, what really stands out to you?
Josh Zimmerman:
The first thing that stands out is I need to know how to boil an egg if I've been doing it wrong.
Stephanie Woodin:
Same.
Josh Zimmerman:
Steph, this is a question that I get probably five or six times a day.
Stephanie Woodin:
Wow.
Josh Zimmerman:
I think that there's something that really interesting that Laura said is she goes, "I know I'm not alone in this." And that is huge because most people feel like they're alone in it. And so hearing Laura say that is really, really helpful. What I would say is that there's no way to avoid burnout. There's all these people out there saying, "Oh, this is how you avoid." You're not going to avoid it. And just to be really clear, in 2019, the World Health Organization, they recognize burnout and they included it in the 11th revision of the ... I'm getting geeky now of the international classification of diseases, right?
Stephanie Woodin:
Really?
Josh Zimmerman:
An occupational phenomenon.
Stephanie Woodin:
I mean, that feels right. I think we can all recognize that we're living in a culture that is primed for burnout. And I think going back a little bit, maybe we should talk a little bit about burnout because I think it gets thrown around in a lot of context that maybe would be good to clarify. Sometimes I think people think it's just, "Oh, my God, that person needs a vacation. They're working too hard. They're burning the candle at both ends." But what's actually happening to someone? What's happening in their brains, their bodies? If you could explain that.
Josh Zimmerman:
Yeah, so what happens is that when you start expelling more energy that you're putting in, what ends up happening is you start to get stressed. And when you're stressed, your adrenals kick in. The other thing that happens is cortisol kicks in because this is what's happening, is the fight, flight, or freeze mode. And we go into survival mode. And when we are in that survival mode in our reptile mind, there are things that our brains stop us from doing or sort of block out, put blinders on. And one of them is creativity because ...
Stephanie Woodin:
Yeah, because it's like evolution. You don't need it, right?
Josh Zimmerman:
Exactly. Right. I mean, listen, if a bear's chasing you, you're going to figure out how to climb a tree. But I think bears climb trees, so I wouldn't suggest that. But what ends up happening is we continue to push and we continue to get more stressed. More cortisol is released, less creativity happens. We get more and more frustrated. We try and push harder and it's just this vicious cycle. And then it comes into how do I stop? I can't stop. And so it's sort of like whoa. And so what ends up happening is we end up getting to the point where we have nothing left. One analogy is when you're doing a workout. And if I was like, "Okay, Steph, let's do some high intensity interval training." By the way, there's no interval. I just want you to do high intensity training and you just keep going. Just go and you don't stop." You're going to run out of energy.
Stephanie Woodin:
I mean, I think they even call it like you burn out your muscles as you do these higher reps or higher weights. I think that's literally what they call it in those sessions where you're trying to just fully burn out your muscle. That doesn't really translate to your brain and your body's nervous system, I imagine, if you never rest or never take a pause and assess what's actually going on in your body and in your mind.
Josh Zimmerman:
And that's the hard part because as creators you can never turn off.
Stephanie Woodin:
I know. And so that's actually a great segue to my next thought and question, which is are creators, it sounds like, one of the most susceptible groups to this? I can imagine that creators are always on to feed their audience, their algorithm, everything that keeps their business going. And when do they say this isn't sustainable? I'm sure there's pressure. So do you feel like that's increased lately as the creator economy has really taken off, too?
Josh Zimmerman:
With creators, the recipe here around burnout is that there is a lack of perspective on how many jobs they're actually doing. One thing that we don't really recognize is that they are the business. Normal 9:00 to 5:00, you go to your job, you leave, you go home, you have your life.
Stephanie Woodin:
Right.
Josh Zimmerman:
With creators, you are the brand, you are the business. You don't get to turn the lights off and go home because you are at home. And then as you grow and get bigger and bigger, people start to recognize you. So when you go out, you can't just go out. You need to know how to turn on the curated version of what you creators are putting out there. And that takes a huge amount of energy. I think the perfect example, Steph, is like the podcast right now. The, I don't know, 30 minutes, 45 minutes before this of lighting and soundchecks and restarting.
Stephanie Woodin:
Exactly.
Josh Zimmerman:
Right?
Stephanie Woodin:
I was just thinking that. Yeah, there's a lot going on behind the scenes where consumers are seeing a final product that's taken days. And working with creators myself in a different capacity, I know the amount of work that it takes to put one reel up on Instagram or post one recipe that is tried and tested on their website. It's themselves, it's maybe an editor, it's a recipe tester, but most of the time the creator is all three of those things. I feel like it's fine.
Josh Zimmerman:
Yeah, they have around 16 to 20 jobs. What I would say to anyone listening is take a moment and write down all the different things you do to put out one piece of content because you're the writer, you're the producer, you are the editor, you are the sound, you are the R&D, you are the cook, you are the prep cook, you are the associate editor, you're the director, you're filming, you are the SEO expert, you are finance, you are payroll, you are ...
Stephanie Woodin:
Oh, my gosh.
Josh Zimmerman:
And they are wearing all of those hats at the same time.
Stephanie Woodin:
And now with this explosion of content and creators, creators now see that as like, well, I can't let up. I have to keep going to keep up with the landscape and produce content, but feel like it's fresh because everyone is seeing so much content.
Josh Zimmerman:
There is so much pressure around the holidays. And then you put on top of it what am I going to do to stand out? How am I going to rise above that and break through it? On top of once they put that creative piece out there, they have no control.
Stephanie Woodin:
Yeah. And the engagement, the reactions, the performance of it is ...
Josh Zimmerman:
It's all up to the almighty algorithm, which everyone loves blaming, but I just want to remind everybody it's a bunch of zeros and ones. It has no feelings.
Stephanie Woodin:
There you go. Well, so what, Josh, could creators do as they're entering this time if they're feeling like it's same old, same old? I'm in a rut, I'm on this treadmill of just having to keep going, but I'm not feeling creative. Are there tips that you could offer that they could think about getting out of that rut?
Josh Zimmerman:
Yeah, I think it's more common than we let on. If you are in a rut and feeling like it's the same old, same old, I just think it's just so important to name that there isn't any other job in the world that puts as much demand on an individual than being a creator. It does not compare to Hollywood. We all love our shows, Steph, but there's a reason why it's season one and then there's season two because there's a hiatus.
Stephanie Woodin:
A year later.
Josh Zimmerman:
Because they take a break. A year later, which we expect creators to be putting out content all the time the entire year with no break.
Stephanie Woodin:
That is such a great point.
Josh Zimmerman:
Yeah. They're doing the same thing again and again and again and it's Groundhog Day. That's not sustainable.
Stephanie Woodin:
Can they pull themselves out of that? What in your practice has worked for creators who are feeling that?
Josh Zimmerman:
So I think there's a little bit of ... Routines are great, but when creators feel like they're in a rut and they're doing the same thing again and again, it's time to change that routine up. And when I look at what the routine is, what usually is missing is self-care. And how they set the beginning of your day up and the end of your day up is going to be vital for changing everything.
Stephanie Woodin:
I love that.
Josh Zimmerman:
And that's really hard to do, but it is necessary because you're not creative when ... You can't just be like, "Oh, I feel like being creative." You have to go into flow and flow happens when we're relaxed, right? I'm sure we've all been had shower thoughts, right?
Stephanie Woodin:
Yeah.
Josh Zimmerman:
These brilliant ideas in the shower. The reason why, and I talked to one of the leading psychiatrists about this, what he said is, "What you're doing is you are shutting out all other stimulation and you are putting yourself in a situation where there are no distractions. And all that you can hear is the water and it's warm unless you take cold showers, which fine, God speed." It gives your body a time to relax and it gives your brain an ability to go into flow, to go into that place of those brilliant aha moments. That can be a shower, that can be yoga, that can be running, that can be driving, that can be cooking. I'm sure people who cook for their job don't do that or they do, but it is finding the things that can put you into flow are really good things to hone in on.
It's going to be different for everybody, but we all know there are things that we do. So whether that's meditation or like there isn't ... And I'll tell you, a big pet peeve of mine is when people make declarative statements of like, "This is how you do this." That's not how creativity works.
Stephanie Woodin:
Is there anything else morning or night that people can do maybe before they go to bed or when they wake up that kind of can help maybe reinspire?
Josh Zimmerman:
Yeah, they're not going to like the answer. I'm not sure you're going to like it either, is that the morning time is the most important time of your day. And we all have our phones by our beds for an alarm clock. Listen, you can still buy an alarm clock. Go buy an alarm clock. Whatever is going to wake you up, that's fine. But as soon as you open that phone and you see those notifications, you've let the world in.
Stephanie Woodin:
And I can imagine the stimulus of that, it's just like bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. And think about the blue light is probably stimulating you in a not so healthy way.
Josh Zimmerman:
It's all the dopamine hits.
Stephanie Woodin:
Yeah. And your brain is immediately reacting as opposed to being able to kind of collect and pause. It's a practice that I think creator or not is really important. I've heard people who sleep out with the phone outside of their room completely so that they're not even tempted.
Josh Zimmerman:
Right. That morning time, you can wake up at whatever time you want, as long as it's a constant, the same time every day. And there's a certain amount of time that when you wake up that is yours, that you get to do what you want to do. Not email, not the news, not anything except what you want to be "selfish", but you're not being selfish.
Stephanie Woodin:
I can imagine that you get there if you kind of adopt this every day. What is it? Every habit takes 21 days to ...
Josh Zimmerman:
Actually, it doesn't. It takes a lot longer.
Stephanie Woodin:
Okay. Debunking myths.
Josh Zimmerman:
Debunking myths, new segment. By setting up a morning routine and a night routine, what we're doing is we're creating predictability. And predictability means that we know what's coming, we know what's happening. And especially for creators who have so much that is outside of their control, let's do things that put everything that they can in their control. And so when you know I'm going to go to bed at this time and I'm waking up at this time, those are your choices. And that then reduces the stress and the anxiety of what am I going to do? You already know.
Stephanie Woodin:
Yeah.
Josh Zimmerman:
It's really about identifying when you let the world in and when you turn off. Now, it's really easy for me to say that, but when I tell a client this or a CEO this, that doesn't go well because they have so many hats that they're like, "I can't turn off. If I don't do this, I'm not going to make money." And now we're automatically into the fear and so we're negotiating with fear and that's not good. So it's about being proactive instead of reactive.
Stephanie Woodin:
Yeah, that's a great way to put it. Is there something that creators can do, like you said, being proactive in their content calendar? Can they build rest into their content calendar? Is that something they can do without losing that momentum? Is there something you've seen work?
Josh Zimmerman:
I mean, listen, if you don't rest, you're going to burn out and then you're going to become a client of mine really quickly. You have to build rest in. Now, when it comes to thinking about building rest into your schedule, and when you're burnt out, it's like, "I'm so far behind. I can't rest. I have to do this." Yeah, you do. I get it.
Stephanie Woodin:
But that goes back to being reactive versus proactive. If they're not proactive to build it in, they will have to because their bodies will force them.
Josh Zimmerman:
Right. Listen, it's just like getting a cold. And if you get cold and you're like, "Hm, it's a little tickle in my throat." And you just are like that and you just keep going and your body's like, "Nope, we're going to make you feel a little bit worse." And you ignore that, you're going to keep pushing yourself until your body goes, "We're going to win here." And it's going to lay you flat out, right? Then you have the flu, then you have this. So thinking about burnout as a cold, right? And like, okay, if I start feeling these symptoms, I need to figure out what happened because I'm going to get sick. You're going to get burnt out and identifying those. Steph, what I go to is the oxygen mask when we're on an airplane. You watch the video and it's this person and it's always like, "Put your oxygen mask before helping others." And the first reaction is like, "That's so greedy."
Stephanie Woodin:
I know, I know.
Josh Zimmerman:
Help the kid.
Stephanie Woodin:
You're like, "Why would you not help this child, this helpless child next to you?" Yeah.
Josh Zimmerman:
Right? But if you decide to try and help somebody else first, you don't have the air to breathe and you pass out. And what happens then, you're done. The kid next to you is done. It's over. However, if you put your oxygen mask on first and you're able to breathe, you're then able to help the kid next to you and that all stemmed from you taking a moment to say, "I have to take care of myself, otherwise I can't take care of anybody."
Stephanie Woodin:
Yeah, that's a powerful analogy, Josh. And I'd love to talk about goals when it comes to creators. And whether you're a creator or just a human being, it's really enticing to want to set goals for the new year. And maybe one of those goals is self-care. I'm curious your thoughts on goals for creators and how they think about that under the umbrella of this conversation.
Josh Zimmerman:
So this is not my saying and I can't remember who said it, but goals are dreams with deadlines. The reason why we have goals are because we want to achieve something, but there's a big piece that's missing if you think about New Year's resolutions. The problem with setting the same goal every year is that it wears away at your own belief that you can actually achieve it. So you're starting out with a negative mindset and in many ways ...
Stephanie Woodin:
Yeah [inaudible 00:25:43] self-talk.
Josh Zimmerman:
Right? And that's our inner critic. And so in many ways, that is way worse than not setting a goal at all because if nothing changes, then the future is going to resemble the past.
Stephanie Woodin:
And you're just feeling like you let yourself down and that's just ...
Josh Zimmerman:
Again and again and again. Right. And yet we set ourselves up to do this. And so what we need to get to is the why. Why is this goal important to you? It's not just to lose weight or to post more content. There's something deeper about why you want this for the future. And the future lives at the gut level. It's deep and what happens is the motivation wanes.
Stephanie Woodin:
So instead of a New Year's resolution, what could creators do to think about or frame the new year?
Josh Zimmerman:
Whether it's a resolution or a goal, it's about getting to the why.
Stephanie Woodin:
The why.
Josh Zimmerman:
And when you get to that why at the gut level, it's like, why am I really setting this goal?
Stephanie Woodin:
Yeah.
Josh Zimmerman:
Why do I want this? And a lot of clients come to me to help them work through this to really dig deeper and deeper and deeper because it's like four or five or six or seven levels deeper. And once you get to that why of why you're really wanting it, then there's clarity on how to achieve it. And by doing that, we are enabling ourselves to have a realistic expectation of what's actually possible.
Stephanie Woodin:
I love that. I feel like that's advice that I'm going to take in from this, too. I've heard that and maybe put in other ways, but this is a very tangible thing. Keep asking yourself why. Why do I want this? Why do I feel a certain way about this thing, whether it's creating more content, engaging a different audience? What is that really doing to serve me as a creator and a human being? Because I think at the end of the day, creators are human beings. Whether their audiences remember that or not, we know that.
Josh Zimmerman:
Right? What I see time and time again is that when creators look at ... The goal may be hitting 100,000 or a million page views or a monetary goal. The loss of perspective on what those numbers actually mean is massive. And so what I want to tell everyone that's listening is you have no idea how many lives you have changed and you are changing as you are sleeping, as you are creating, because every single one of those numbers is a person.
Stephanie Woodin:
Wow.
Josh Zimmerman:
I just want people to take a moment to think about the content that they consume or one time that they absorbed something and watched something that really meant a huge amount to them. And did they reach out to the person that created it and to tell them? Because my guess is they didn't.
Stephanie Woodin:
Yeah.
Josh Zimmerman:
And so there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people looking at your content every day 24/7, 365, but I just want everyone to remember that those numbers are real people.
Stephanie Woodin:
Yeah. And content creators truly are part of the fabric of people's lives and I think that's a great takeaway. You are helping so many people and changing lives and changing perspectives and giving people joy. And them prioritizing themselves is going to only help further that joy online, so there you go. Well, I can't thank you enough, Josh. I could keep talking to you for another hour, but our poor editors will have too much to deal with.
Josh Zimmerman:
They're going to burn out.
Stephanie Woodin:
They're going to burn out and we don't want that. So this has been extremely helpful. I think you're going to touch a lot of people with this and we're just so grateful you came on and shed a little light. And I hope that you enjoy the holidays and don't feel any signs of burnout.
Josh Zimmerman:
Well, I'm an expert in burnout for a reason, Steph, because I always burn out, but thank you.
Stephanie Woodin:
I loved our conversation, so thanks again and we will talk again soon. Thank you so much to Josh and Laura for talking about this issue that affects so many people. I hope all of you creators listening can build some rest into your end of your calendar. You deserve it. We're currently planning episodes for the new year, so if you're a creator with a question, we would love to hear from you. Send us an email at controlaltask@raptive.com and tell us your story. For more information on everything we talked about today, you can check out the show notes or visit our website at raptive.com/controlaltask.