238 | Are you tired? We are.

BusinessPodcastMarketing

Dec 15

Written By Melissa Klug

This podcast is a real one. Cabri and Melissa are talking about burnout, how our phones are making life really hard for everyone, boundaries for 2026, and so much more.

We hope this podcast helps you know you're not alone!

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You can listen right here by pressing play, or you can read the full transcript below!

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

Melissa Klug:
Hey, Pro Organizers—it’s Melissa. I just got off a flight from Zurich, and I’m waiting for my flight to go home and get ready for the holidays and all the things. I was supposed to actually put up this podcast before I left… guess what? I didn’t. But I think that’s okay, because the topic of the podcast is one that I think we all need.

2025 has been kind of a tough year, and the news—especially the last day—has been just horrific. A lot of bad things happening in the world, and it’s just reminding all of us that taking some time, slowing down, appreciating what we have, and trying to be a little happier… I think we probably all need.

This podcast is one that Cabri and I wanted to put together because we wanted to get really honest about the year, burnout, and a lot of other topics that I think apply to a lot of us.

If you’re having an absolutely spectacular year and nothing has gone wrong for you, please tell us your secrets.

But I think it’s important to talk about when things are good and when things are tough. So I hope this podcast helps you, and I’m happy to be back. I’ll be back at work and back working for all of you guys starting soon. But until then, here is your episode this week. I hope it helps you. Have a great day, organizers.

Cabri Carpenter:
Time is flying, and I’m not prepared for it.

Melissa Klug:
This year has been… like, this year’s been weird.

Cabri Carpenter:
Yeah.

Melissa Klug:
It’s been weird.

Cabri Carpenter:
It’s been very busy, and it’s just so fast—

Melissa Klug:
Time… it went so fast. And then also just a lot of things happened. The other day I said—you know, because I’m leaving on this trip and I get back on the 15th—and I’m like, “The 15th? That’s 10 days before Christmas,” and 16 days until the last day of the year. It has felt like a really, really accelerated-pace year.

Cabri Carpenter:
That’s even worse for me to say, because last year for me personally was that much more chaos. But this year, for some reason, is moving 10 times faster than even last year.

Melissa Klug:
Why do you think that is?

Cabri Carpenter:
I don’t know. Time has just compounded. I can’t even tell you what I have spent the majority of my time on.

Melissa Klug:
Oh, that’s a great— I don’t either. Like actual accomplishments.

Cabri Carpenter:
Yeah. If you were to say, “What are the 10 best things that you accomplished in 2025?” I don’t know.

Melissa Klug:
Well, I feel like you and I joke a lot—like if we’re texting—“What’s your goal this week?” Survival.

Cabri Carpenter:
Literally.

Melissa Klug:
Literally… what did you do this year? I made it.

Cabri Carpenter:
Well, I also see these people that are putting up crazy numbers in their business, or they’re like, “Oh hey, I’m making this crap for my child,” and I’m like… I do not even have kids. And I am already behind and don’t have time, and I don’t sleep enough, and I’m not taking care of myself the best that I should. Where do y’all get the time? Where do I go buy some from?

Melissa Klug:
I do have some people in my life who are doing all the things, and they do it flawlessly. They’re at the gym at five in the morning, and I look at those people and I want to be those people. I really do. My one friend that I’m particularly thinking of—I admire what she can do so much.

Cabri Carpenter:
Mm-hmm.

Melissa Klug:
But I’m like… I just don’t have it in me.

Cabri Carpenter:
No, I don’t either.

Melissa Klug:
I do think there are people that are particularly gifted at being… and by the way, this friend that I’m talking about—she also gets good sleep. So it’s not one of those things where she sleeps four hours a night. She is very regimented: “I go to bed early.” She even goes to bed early, which I am physically incapable of doing.

Cabri Carpenter:
My mom told me this many years ago, but she has an autoimmune disease, and so they’ve always called it “spoons.” Like you only have 10 spoons.

Melissa Klug:
Oh yeah, I’ve heard about that.

Cabri Carpenter:
For somebody with an autoimmune disease, brushing your teeth is one spoon, and getting dressed is one spoon—versus some people have more spoons. So for me… this is like a year where I’m like, “I just don’t think I had enough spoons this year.” Maybe next year, but I’m just running on fumes.

Melissa Klug:
I think my spoons got in the dishwasher and they bent, have holes in them, and then my kids stole a couple of the spoons… and yeah. I don’t have enough spoons.

Cabri Carpenter:
Yeah. This is where those conversations—like influencers—“We all have the same 24 hours a day…”

Melissa Klug:
Yeah, right. Beyoncé has the same 24 hours a day that I do. No.

Cabri Carpenter:
We don’t. Beyoncé has a chef and a driver and a house cleaner and all the other things.

Melissa Klug:
That’s what I was just about to say. One of my best friends—she’s very high up at her company. She’s a complete superstar, but she works with almost all men. And she said one day, “I realize what I need. I need a wife.”

Cabri Carpenter:
Mm-hmm.

Melissa Klug:
Because all these guys—very gender-role-y—all these guys have stay-at-home wives who do their whole life for them. Take care of the kids. Doesn’t matter if they have to travel constantly—she takes care of everything. Does the laundry. The shirts show up in the closet, fully laundered. And she goes, “All these guys are doing the same job as I am, but they don’t have any of the other things that I have to think about.”

Cabri Carpenter:
They don’t carry the mental load.

Melissa Klug:
They do not. Yep. None of them.

Cabri Carpenter:
That’s it. That’s the answer. 2025 was just a heavy mental-load year for everyone.

Melissa Klug:
Yeah. It really was. I said at the beginning of this podcast—if you’re watching this on YouTube—my office is an absolute trash pit. To be fair, I’m getting ready to go on a trip, so I have packages and all sorts of stuff. But I was like, “Oh no, I’m not gonna clean up my background,” because this is the whole point of what we’re doing. This is real life, and this year has felt a little bit messy.

Cabri Carpenter:
Yep. I think the same way that organizing clients ask organizers, “Oh, you must be so—your house is perfect. You must be so organized.” Well then you—as a mentor and coach—all the other organizers are looking up to you and “Oh, I’m running my business wrong,” or “I’m doing this…” Right. We’re sitting there talking about it, and we’re like, “Okay… also we’re doing these things wrong because we’re surviving. Barely.”

Melissa Klug:
Yeah. I think it’s important to talk about, because I do think there’s this perception. I was having this conversation with my daughter this week because I was encouraging her to take a break from social media—just delete it entirely off her phone. And I was talking about how we get these perceptions: “Everyone’s doing better than me.” And I go, “No, they’re not.” And I gave her a thousand examples of how I know that they’re not.

But we do project this. People think, “Oh, I must know more because I have a podcast. I must know more about doing business and I do everything perfectly.”

Cabri Carpenter:
Mm-hmm.

Melissa Klug:
No. I mess stuff up all the time. And it’s so funny—I look at you as someone who I’m like, “Man, she has got her act together. Totally.” She’s doing all these things. And I know that’s not… I mean, you and I talk about it. There are things that you and I have said, “Oh, we’re gonna do blah blah blah this week,” or “this month together in our business,” and then at the end of the month we’re like, “Oh man, we ran out of time.” That’s reality. No one is doing it perfectly.

Cabri Carpenter:
No. And true honesty/vulnerability: I came home this afternoon and I was just dog-beat exhausted. So I definitely laid down and took an hour-long nap. Could that time have been more productive elsewhere? Probably. Do I still have a mile-long to-do list? Yes. But my brain needed a reset.

Melissa Klug:
I think so. I did a podcast earlier this year with my friend Kielyn, and we talked about… she had said this to me in a personal conversation and I was like, “Hey, we need to podcast about this.” We talked about: why can’t we just do nothing? We feel guilty when we have an hour—we go, “Oh, well I should be doing blah blah blah…” Instead of just… before we started talking about this, you and I were talking about daydreaming or thinking, and we don’t give ourselves that time.

If I choose to take a nap—even if it’s a weekend when I don’t have anything going on—I feel guilty about it. And that is honestly crazy.

My mom asked me yesterday—she texted and she was like, “How’s your job?” And I’m just like, “Mom, it’s work.” Work is work is work, even if I love it, right? We all love what we do. We love our clients. We love the people that are around us. But I was really honest with her. I said, “Mom… it’s totally fine. Everything’s fine. But I’m really tired of… I’m tired of working.” And that is the truth. And if we’re not being honest about that… again, I love what I do, but it’s also okay to be like, “I am really, really tired.”

Cabri Carpenter:
You can love what you do and have passion for it, and still get burnout. Absolutely. And still be exhausted and need to set boundaries—with people in your personal life or business life—or boundaries with yourself. Honestly, the social media thing is… I probably need that. I probably just need to delete it off my phone and deal with it later on.

Melissa Klug:
Yeah. And the social media thing… there are times when I’ll be scrolling—even if it’s just fun, personal scrolling time—and I start to feel pressure about all the things that we just said. “Oh, I’m not growing my own broccoli in my backyard—man, I’m a loser.” I don’t have a garden. I’m not making my dog’s food. Whatever it is—there’s so much pressure on “I’m supposed to be doing this and this and this and this,” whether it’s in my business or my personal life, or being a mom or whatever. It’s a lot of pressure even when you’re just like, “Well, I just wanted to ding around my phone a little bit tonight.” It’s subtle pressure that you don’t realize you’re getting.

Cabri Carpenter:
Yeah. Anytime I catch myself randomly scrolling or wanting to take a nap—even if I am exhausted—I’m like, “I could be doing more. I could always be doing more. I could always be doing better.” It’s always that constant thought in my head.

Melissa Klug:
Have you had anything this year where you’re like… I’m not a big New Year’s resolution person, but I do at the beginning of the year go, “Oh, these are some things that I would like to do.” Before we started this, we were talking about reading, and I said, “I didn’t read as many books this year as I wanted to.” Do you have anything you regret that you did or didn’t do this year that you want to do differently next year?

Cabri Carpenter:
Regret? No. Not regret. This year has been amazing—even though it’s been busy, and I’ve had multiple points of the year where I feel like I have reached that point of burnout.

This is a me problem. I do love goals, and I do set New Year’s resolutions, and I pick my word of the year, and I do all the things. I can give myself the goal of “I wanna make half a million dollars.” I can give that goal easily. I can give the goal of “I wanna be consistent posting on social media.” We should have a 75% completion rate. I can set goals like that.

I have no earthly idea how to set a goal for health and wellness. Like those things that are important—self-care—not a single clue.

Am I gonna get sleep? Sometimes I get six hours of sleep and I feel great. Sometimes I get 10 hours of sleep and I feel like crap. So I’m like—those are things I don’t know how to quantify, and they don’t count in my brain as a goal because it’s feelings-based, emotions-based. If I’m having a bad day, everything in the world can go right—and I’m still having a bad day.

Melissa Klug:
You’re still miserable.

Cabri Carpenter:
Yeah. So I don’t know—that one’s hard for me because I have never been good at self-care-type goal setting.

Melissa Klug:
This is not a trite statement of “I put myself last,” but physically—health-wise—that is always the thing that goes to the bottom.

By the way, one of the things in this trash pile on my floor is a walking pad. And I said, “Oh, I have this walking pad. I’m gonna start doing… I’m gonna do standing desk.” I’ve turned it on one time. To be fair, I only got it like three weeks ago. But I can always find an excuse to put that last—and that theoretically should be the most important thing.

I’m not an organizer who goes on jobs every day, but I still need to take care of myself. It’s just easy for that to go to the bottom of the pile unless you have a crisis point—a health crisis or anything.

Cabri Carpenter:
And okay, so this is the competitive person in me: if I got myself a walking pad—especially one that tracked how many miles you’re walking—I would constantly make it a challenge. It wouldn’t be good enough for me to just say, “Hey, walk on the walking pad for an hour today.” It would suddenly become: “Oh, I walked two miles yesterday, now I need to walk two and a half miles, and then it has to be three miles.” It’s constantly in my head.

Even with books—reading books—my brain is like, “Oh, I would love to read 50 books this year.” And then suddenly it’s, “Oh no, not 50 fun fiction, nose-in-it kind of 50. They need to be financial. They need to be mindset. They have to have power behind them.” And I’m like, “Well, I just ruined all my fun in one fell swoop.”

Melissa Klug:
That goes back to the… you can’t ever just be still. I don’t mean you; I mean all of us. It’s really hard to be like, “I can just read a trashy romance novel if I want to.” Or I can reread Profit First and implement it… but I can also just be like, “I just wanna read a murder mystery. The end.”

Cabri Carpenter:
I recognize this about myself: I’m one of those people that will never be content. I know that sounds really bad, but I don’t want to be stagnant. I don’t want to be stale. I don’t want to become complacent. That piece of my brain is constantly pushing me and yearning for more.

And I think it’s great because sometimes that’s the part that’s triggered with other people, and I get to push them in good ways. So it’s not necessarily bad. But there’s this other side of my brain that I’m finally listening to.

It’s also: you can respond to that text message tomorrow. You can check emails in three days. If it’s an emergency, they’ll call. You can read a book. Everything else will be waiting for you tomorrow. The to-do list is still there. You can take a nap if you’re tired.

I finally have given myself a little bit of grace, and that probably would be a win for 2025. I haven’t turned off that other part of “go, go, go”—constantly competing with myself, always yearning for more.

Melissa Klug:
I’m introspective enough about myself to realize work is an important part of my life. I derive a lot of satisfaction, a lot of self-worth, out of my work—being successful is important to me, having people think I’m doing a good job is important to me, and doing valuable things. But I think that can go toxic very quickly—because then it is the “Oh gosh, you’re emailing me at 11 o’clock at night… oh my gosh, you’re working so hard.” That should not be a success metric.

Cabri Carpenter:
You don’t get a trophy for that.

Melissa Klug:
But our phones make it toxic because it’s always on. I get kind of panicky when I’m like, “If I put my phone down for two hours… what if I miss something really, really important?”

Cabri Carpenter:
What?

Melissa Klug:
I’m never missing anything important. I know it’s a stupid thought process, but it’s there. I see all those ads for that “brick” thing, and I’m like… I’ve thought about buying it. And then I go, “Or I could just shut my phone off, literally.” So I’m thinking about paying—let’s say it’s $100—when I could literally shut my phone off.

Cabri Carpenter:
Yeah. But we’re addicts and we like dopamine.

Melissa Klug:
Yeah.

Cabri Carpenter:
Dopamine—we derive it from our phone, and the people that are giving us attention and satisfaction. It’s deeper than just “turn your phone off.”

Melissa Klug:
For sure. But that is something I would like to tackle this year. I’ve done some digital detoxes. There’s a really good author—Cal Newport. He’s written two books that I really love. One is Deep Work, and one is… I think it’s just called Digital Detox. I’ll have to look it up.

A couple times I have done his digital detox pretty faithfully. And it’s a weird feeling. But then I’m like, “Okay, 20 years ago we didn’t have all of this.” What changed? We’re constantly connected, which makes us feel obligated to keep working at 11 o’clock at night—even when it’s not good for us.

Cabri Carpenter:
My brain operates like that. I can go without my phone for two hours and it doesn’t bother me. I do have moments when it does, in certain instances. But I cannot sit in quiet. I cannot sit and think. I can’t meditate. I need a to-do list. I need a voice recording going, because the minute my brain gets one ounce of nothingness, it’s suddenly like popcorn—ideas and thoughts and to-do lists and things I forgot to do, and all the things I need to buy at the grocery store. I can’t turn it off. It’s never quiet in my brain.

Melissa Klug:
My brain is never quiet either. I haven’t thought about this until right this second… but you’re younger than me, and lately I’ve been feeling like, “Man, I’m too tired to think of some of these things.” My brain still goes, but I’m like, “Whew, I’m too tired to do any of that.”

Twenty years ago, when I was your age, I think I would’ve been like, “I’m doing all the things.” I can feel it in the last couple years: I’m tired. I still have all the ideas, but executing the ideas is getting a lot harder.

And a lot of the people listening to this are in my age category and are struggling with the same thing—perimenopause and menopause and all the things. It really does feel like age is a big difference there too.

Cabri Carpenter:
I think it could be bigger than that. And the only reason I say that is because I still struggle with it pretty heavily—even with age differences. Hormones and being a woman… it’s a whole other thing. But I still very much struggle with it.

Melissa Klug:
Yeah. But also—20 years ago when I was your age—we didn’t have all the other variables. So we can’t do an apples-to-apples comparison.

I definitely feel like in the last few years I have not had the same amount of get-up-and-go that I used to.

Cabri Carpenter:
In my brain, I think I got my first cell phone in middle school. Facebook and Instagram were different then, but… I don’t know any different. And there’s also this part of me that’s like: now we’ve had 20-plus years of constant access, constant distraction, constant social—even if it’s online and you’re not visible or talking to somebody. What is that doing to our nervous systems, our brains, our psychology? It has to be changing. It’s bad. Something.

Melissa Klug:
I can tell you—it’s bad.

Cabri Carpenter:
As we’re talking about burnout and being exhausted and all the other things… that’s a big one that’s gonna come back around and get us.

Melissa Klug:
For sure. I think there’s room for people—if they want to—and I’m going to have to explore if this is something I want to do myself… but the slower-living concept. There are a lot of people thinking about that.

And when I’m on social media, I’m really attracted to… every once in a while I get served: “We decided to move to Alaska off-grid and we live nine hours from the nearest city.” And I’m like, “Man, that sounds great. Could I do that tomorrow?”

And I think there’s a part of that that goes: could I give myself a challenge in 2026? Could I go without social media for a year? Could I do it?

Cabri Carpenter:
You saying that just made me nervous. My nervous system— I just felt the rising panic.

Oh my God. Okay, but let’s talk about why you feel that way. I connect with so many people on social media—clients, organizers, extended family. It’s efficient because I can post one thing and hit all my categories, right? If I didn’t do that… what am I gonna do—mail you a letter and tell you about my life?

Melissa Klug:
We could be pen pals.

Cabri Carpenter:
Oh my gosh. Cabri, we could be pen pals. But I don’t wanna do that with the 100 or 150 people that I—

Melissa Klug:
I’m not doing that with you.

Cabri Carpenter:
And I do like to keep in contact and touch base with my closer relationships. But without social media… that’s why social media can be a good tool. But there’s another side that’s not healthy and not safe. So how do we get back to a good, balanced middle ground?

Melissa Klug:
When I think about my life—health and fitness, work, family, phones—my switches are on and off. I have never been good with moderation. Moderation is not something I understand.

Cabri Carpenter:
Hi, welcome to ADHD. We don’t… yeah. We don’t talk about that enough.

Melissa Klug:
Listen, as I’ve said eight million times: undiagnosed and untreated ADHD right here. By the way, maybe that should be my goal for 2026—go get a freaking ADHD diagnosis and prescription. It may change my entire life. I don’t know.

But yeah, it makes me nervous too—could I do it for a year? And then I think about the things I would miss. There’s a kid I used to babysit—he’s not a kid anymore, he’s a grown adult—but he is the most entertaining freaking person on Facebook. Funny memes—every day I’m like, “What has Brandon posted today?” It makes me legitimately happy.

So I’m like, I would miss Brandon. I have to find a middle ground. I have to find some moderation.

Cabri Carpenter:
Moderation— I keep coming back to balance. I don’t know what that looks like, and it probably varies from person to person.

Melissa Klug:
I’m not going to Alaska.

Cabri Carpenter:
The sun is way too bright for many months and then dark for many months—

Melissa Klug:
And then it’s not out at all for many months.

Cabri Carpenter:
That freaks me out a little bit. Because I like night and day. This podcast is titled “I Like Night and Day” by Cabri Carpenter. Please edit that out.

Melissa Klug:
I will not edit it out.

Cabri Carpenter:
But we have one side—people constantly comparing themselves and on social media all the time. That’s not healthy either. There has to be… what is balanced for you? If you could design a balanced—

Melissa Klug:
I like this question. I’m thinking my word of the year needs to be something like balance or moderation. I’m gonna have to think about that.

One thing I did successfully: I took Facebook off my phone and only used it on my laptop. That was very successful for me. The problem is, you can’t really do that with Instagram and TikTok.

So maybe it’s a good old… maybe it’s a good old-people purge too.

Cabri Carpenter:
That’s kind of what I was thinking. It sounds mean, but I feel like there’s a lot of stuff I see that I’m like, “Hmm… we don’t need that.”

Melissa Klug:
I did a little purge recently. I always call it “separation of church and state,” too. I have a hard time with… if we’re talking about work separation: the work I do is with people I genuinely like, and I do want to know about their lives. But also, if I see them, it makes me think “work” versus “personal.”

So I think I need to take it down to people I am genuinely in-person friends with, and I want to know what’s happening in their lives.

Cabri Carpenter:
This is gonna sound really bad. You’re gonna unfriend me, aren’t you?

Melissa Klug:
No, no, no. Oh my God—no.

Cabri Carpenter:
I just… there are so many organizers in the inspired organizer world. I know what their profile picture is, and I know their name. But don’t ask me where they’re located. Don’t ask me their business name. Don’t ask me those types of questions.

Anytime somebody pops in the group or on a Zoom and they’re like, “Hey, I need help with this,” I’m like, “Who are you? Where are you from? What do you do? What’s your thing?” Every single time.

Melissa Klug:
That doesn’t sound bad at all. And honestly, How to Summit is a great example. I would see people and be like, “I know them,” but I’d have to say, “I’m really sorry—can you remind me where you are again?” And I’d get it wrong. It’s not because I don’t know them—when you see someone in person, it’s different. And it’s very hard to keep everybody straight.

Cabri Carpenter:
Yeah. There’s a part of me that could make that a character flaw—but the other side is: I don’t have to know every single thing about everyone. It’s okay. My brain has a lot of other things going on.

Melissa Klug:
Have you seen those reaction videos where someone says something completely insane and the person’s like, “You know what? You can keep some things to yourself. You don’t need to tell us all of that.” I feel that way sometimes. I think we’ve gotten to this point where we feel like, “Oh, I need to know everything,” like the VIN number on their car or whatever. And I’m like, “No, I don’t.”

And also… why do I sometimes feel compelled to post on Instagram what I had for dinner? Who needs to know that?

Cabri Carpenter:
I don’t know.

Melissa Klug:
I don’t really post about my dinner, but…

Cabri Carpenter:
I probably don’t tell people enough, and then they’re asking me all these questions and I’m like, “Oh, that was very key information you should have known.”

Melissa Klug:
But it’s bothering me enough that I have to think about what I’m going to do next year. Because I am feeling pulled… when we originally started talking about this, we said we really want to talk about burnout. And I really have—there have been a few times this year where that’s the only word that comes to mind: I am fully and completely burned out. And if one more person asks me for something, I will lose my mind.

Cabri Carpenter:
I feel like I’m just closely adjacent enough to you that I feel your burnout. And I’m like, “What can we do to help?” Not in a bad way—if we need to kick you out of the Facebook group for a couple of days, I’m like, “That’s easy. We can fix that.” Sarah, Alli—we’re good to help. But I feel it and I’m like… I have to protect Melissa.

Melissa Klug:
That’s very kind. But I, yeah, but no, it’s, it’s like a me problem. ’Cause I do think all of these things are coming together. And by the way, you feel it too, right?

I feel like such a sense of obligation, and not in a bad way—in a good way. I want people’s businesses to be successful. And I want people to be happy with the career that they’ve chosen. And I want women to make a lot of money, and I want all— and so I feel like, oh my gosh, I have to make sure that I’m answering all the questions and doing all the things and making sure people know about the things we have that can help them and all that kind of stuff.

But we all, I think, feel that we, we really like genuinely helping people. And so… I go and like crawl into a hole for a month. That doesn’t help any— I’m not helping anyone if I don’t take care of myself. And same thing with you, and same thing. If you’re an organizer listening to this, if you’re feeling burned out, you’re not helping your clients.

If you have a team, you’re not helping your team members if you are doing all the things and feeling burned out either.

Cabri Carpenter:
Yeah. No. It’s just not, it’s not good for anybody all the way around.

Melissa Klug:
You’re not helping your family, you’re not helping yourself, you’re not helping anybody.

Cabri Carpenter:
No. Do you have any— ’cause I, I actually, as we’re talking about this, I have a couple things that have already popped into my brain.

Do you have any gut-feeling boundaries that you feel like going into 2026, you’re like, hmm, maybe rude, maybe mean, maybe hateful. Some people may not like it, but we probably need to establish this and make it known right now.

Melissa Klug:
Yeah, that’s a good question. I think so. I always say—yeah, again, I go back to my personal philosopher Taylor Swift, and I go back to, “It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem, it’s me.” And I do think that I have to exercise my own discipline about… I need to start shutting things down. I need to start saying I’m devoting a certain amount of time. And I also, a hundred percent, I have to take care of myself better, like physically. Yeah. I do not do a good job taking care of myself and I’m too old to not do that.

You can get away with it when you’re a little younger. You can’t get away with it, you know, at a certain point. And so I was—I think I just need to say the world will continue to spin on its axis if I’m not involved in everything all the time.

Cabri Carpenter:
Yeah, that’s a good one. But it’s—

Melissa Klug:
Me. It’s a me problem.

Cabri Carpenter:
Yeah.

Well, and I feel like—so I do this pretty often where I go through stints, and I would say it’s probably every third day. It’s kind of my, like, routine. Yeah. I will disappear outta the IO group and not respond. And then it’s like I will go and I’ll spend an hour and a half responding to everything. Yeah.

But for me, this isn’t brain surgery. Like I say this with my clients—like my own clients—like it’s not brain surgery. Yes. Your Google Business Profile may not be, you know, completely optimized, or you can’t post that base, or yes, maybe, you know, you have this issue with a client. And I’m like, me waiting another 48 hours may or may not be the difference. Like it could, but I doubt it, honestly.

Melissa Klug:
Well, I think we’ve all cultivated— I think this all goes back. It’s everything we’ve talked about. We have cultivated this spirit—I mean, and we, the broader we—mm-hmm—our society has cultivated this immediacy. I have to have— I can’t wait for anything. I need Amazon to be on my doorstep an hour after I order something. Mm-hmm. I need DoorDash to be at my door 20 minutes after I order my hamburger.

Cabri Carpenter:
Mm-hmm.

Melissa Klug:
We have this, I get an immediate answer.

Cabri Carpenter:
Mm-hmm.

Melissa Klug:
And as our good friend Carly used to say, organizing is never an emergency situation. Like a heart attack is an emergency situation. Organizing is not an emergency situation.

Our businesses are not an emergency situation. Yeah. If someone can’t figure out what their business name is, it does not have to be solved at 11 o’clock on a Thursday night.

And I think that that’s really the thing is—it’s boundaries around… I do not have to be personally responsible.

And by the way, this goes for anyone listening: you do not have to be personally responsible for getting back to a client if they text you at 11 o’clock at night.

One of my very dear organizing friends actually counted—she had a client, she hadn’t even gone to the client’s house yet. The client had texted her 200 times. Oh—200 texts. You know, short texts of, “Hey, I was thinking about this piece of furniture,” and “How many people are you gonna bring?” and “Do you bring gloves?” Do you— I mean, it’s just all these things.

And it was very stressful to her because she’s like, “Every time I open my phone, there’s something here.” Mm-hmm.

And so I think that we all need to dial down, like, our expectations for response.

Cabri Carpenter:
I have these like guidelines of expectation in my brain, but… I don’t think I’ve ever actually communicated that to anybody else. Yeah. And so I think that’s one of my things is I actually need to say, “You’re probably not gonna get an immediate response from me.”

Yeah, for sure. You can send me the message. It may sit there for a day or two until I have the bandwidth to answer it. Because now I do that, and when I don’t respond, I just feel like a jerk. But if I tell you that’s what I’m gonna do, then that’s not jerkish. That’s boundary. Yeah. That, that feels better.

Melissa Klug:
I also think just being honest and saying, I’m not a superhero. You’re not a superhero. You like— we all have people that hold us to that, or see us in that light.

Cabri Carpenter:
Mm-hmm.

Melissa Klug:
You are that person to clients, right. Your clients look at you and go, “Oh my gosh, this woman—they could do so many things that I can’t do.” Yeah. And so then they put you on a pedestal.

But you’re—we’re just regular people too who are struggling with the same things everyone else is struggling with and are tired and all the things. Yep.

And so I just think sometimes being honest about, yeah, we kind of messed up. I’m really sorry that I didn’t respond to your email for six weeks. I’m really sorry.

Cabri Carpenter:
I need to be better because—

Melissa Klug:
That’s for real. I have so many emails. If you’re listening to this and you have sent me an email, you’re like, “Man, she is so rude. She didn’t respond to me.” It is not personal. I can tell you that for a fact. It’s not personal. I messed up. I’ve got a thousand emails that I need to respond to.

That’s kind of just—that’s how it is, right?

Cabri Carpenter:
Yeah. This is, this is where that survival comes in—of 2025 was very much so a year of survival. Very much do feel like we have a couple weeks to kind of put some things in place—boundaries, strategies, routines, habits—whatever you wanna call it—so that maybe 2026 is not so survival-ish.

Melissa Klug:
Yeah, we—yeah. I don’t—yeah, survive. I don’t wanna survive. I would like to actually enjoy life.

Cabri Carpenter:
Maybe thrive, maybe a little bit of flourish, maybe a little bit—you know—just a little. Don’t get too crazy, but just a little. Yeah. A little something.

Melissa Klug:
Yeah. I’m definitely not gonna start sewing my own clothing and growing my own vegetables. That’s not something I’m gonna do. But I’m like, I would really like to just say it’s eight o’clock at night and I’m not gonna sit in front of my laptop. Yep. I’m going to sit on the couch and I’m gonna read a book.

Cabri Carpenter:
I think that is a totally healthy—or I’m gonna—

Melissa Klug:
Go to bed at 8:30. ’Cause that also, honestly, right now… that sounds great.

Cabri Carpenter:
That sounds absolutely fabulous. I’m really tired today, so—

Melissa Klug:
Do you know why I’m really tired today? Let me tell you, because last night at 12:30 in the morning, my brain was like, “I would like to catalog all the things that you need to do in the next 36 hours.” And my brain just exhaustively was going through that.

And so then I couldn’t go to sleep. And then I was like—you know when you do that thing where you’re like, “The alarm’s gonna go off at six, and if I don’t go to sleep, if I go to sleep right now, I’m only gonna sleep five and a half hours. Oh my gosh. Now I’m gonna sleep five hours and 10 minutes, and that’s not enough.”

And then your brain goes even further. Yep.

Cabri Carpenter:
Do you ever have built-in time to just think?

Melissa Klug:
Absolutely not. Yeah, I didn’t think so. Nope. Absolutely not.

Cabri Carpenter:
I do, I really think that is gonna be a thing for me in 2026. I don’t know how much or how often, or I don’t know exactly, but I just… I know how my brain works. I know how much, I think—I know how much, like—I just am heavy, heavy idea-creation type of person. Yeah. For myself and other people. I will send people messages and I’m like, “Hey, you can totally talk”—you sent me a color-coded spreadsheet the other day.

Melissa Klug:
I mean—by the way, it’s great, you guys, but yeah. It—but no, I don’t ever think—

Cabri Carpenter:
It’s, it’s a problem. Like I have too many ideas and, and it’s—you know—the ones that actually come outta my mouth in whatever fashion are a minor drop in the bucket in comparison to what’s constantly going on internally.

And so I just think having a little more time to think might give me a little bit more flexibility so that I don’t feel the pressure or the force—mm-hmm—or the weight of all the thoughts at 12:30 at night, whenever I should be sleeping, you know?

Melissa Klug:
Correct. I like this train of thought. We gotta keep it going.

Cabri Carpenter:
One of my mentors—she had a mentor that she kind of told us about, and she was like, she just takes one day a week that she blocks off her calendar. And that’s her day to think and strategize and plan. And I’m like, I could, I could probably spend a whole day doing just that. I, I don’t know if I would feel—I don’t know—accomplished after that day, but I have enough thoughts and I have enough things that probably do need some super brainpower. Yeah. It would be beneficial.

So maybe, maybe this is the start of just a couple times a week. Sit for 30 minutes and just think.

Melissa Klug:
Well, you really should read—since we’re talking about books—you— I’m gonna put it on my list that I need to reread Deep Work, the Cal Newport book. Mm-hmm. Because that’s a big thing that he talks about.

So the concept of deep work is you shut everything off—

Cabri Carpenter:
Mm-hmm.

Melissa Klug:
And all you do is go like super deep on a project and you single-task. You do not multitask.

And I think that’s another thing that I suffer from is I’m—I do the squirrel thing and I’m like, “Oh, well I’m gonna throw some music on my ears and then I’m gonna do this and I’m gonna—oh. And I forgot I need to do a load of laundry,” and whatever. I don’t single-task.

Cabri Carpenter:
Do you wanna know what just went through my brain as you’re saying, “You should read this book”? Yeah. Oh yeah, I can just read it. Well, we’re watching the game this week.

Melissa Klug:
Yeah. I’m gonna get an audiobook and then I’m gonna do it while I’m on the treadmill and then while I’m also responding to emails, I’ll just listen to it. But no—we completely missed the point. We have really gone off the rails of what the—

Cabri Carpenter:
Point of this whole conversation was. Oh, bless.

Melissa Klug:
We’re working on it. We’re aware. Okay. We’re at least aware for sure.

So, yeah, I think maybe my word of the year needs to be single-task. I dunno. I’m gonna have to, I’m gonna have to workshop what the word of the year is. But I do—for next year—I would like to have more happiness.

I have a good life. Like, I really—I have a good life and I have lovely people in my life and I have, you know, a lot—I’m very, very fortunate to have safety and security in a lot of things. And I’m like, I would like to be happier.

Cabri Carpenter:
Yeah. One of those kind of minimalist mindsets is like when the time comes and you die… like you can’t take all the things with you. No. And so I think if we apply that as business owners in, in the world, I also think that applies to it doesn’t make sense to have your own business if you are completely burned out and you don’t enjoy time with your family.

And it doesn’t matter how much money you made. It doesn’t matter what kind of impact you left or made like on this world, if you didn’t get to enjoy your life in the process. It was all for nothing.

Melissa Klug:
Yeah. So—well, someone who, you know, we just started the—and we will talk about this more in a couple weeks—but we started this new teams course and the community, and someone was introducing themselves in the community and she was talking about, “I have to do all the things for my team. I’m the shopper and I’m the scheduler and I do payroll and I do all…” And a couple people were like, “Oh my gosh, I got a virtual assistant and it changed my life.” Or, you know, “I have a personal friend who got a personal assistant and this woman has saved her bacon like a hundred times.”

And it could be as simple as that, right? Could be as simple as… we’re just all doing too many things, so we have to figure out how we can look to our community and get some help.

Yeah. ’Cause the whole point of a team is you’re getting someone else to be able to, to go do the organizing work, but you still have 200 pounds of work to do in the background and you might need even more help and mm-hmm. Sometimes we don’t feel like we can ask for that, so… yeah.

Cabri Carpenter:
Yeah. That’s all good stuff.

Melissa Klug:
Okay, so we’re gonna keep talking about this, ’cause I think it’s important.

Cabri Carpenter:
I agree. And I also think kind of in the vein of 2026—we’re wrapping up the end of the year. This is always kind of like, I don’t know, for everyone. Like we get a lull like that week of Christmas, essentially.

Melissa Klug:
For sure.

Cabri Carpenter:
And I just—that’s kind of always my week where I’m like, okay: what worked really well? What do we wanna carry into 2026? Yeah. What does that look like?

I would be interested if listeners of the podcast would be interested in like a goal-setting workshop. Ooh. Because—

Melissa Klug:
I set bad goals. I need a goal-setting workshop.

Cabri Carpenter:
Well, and I think that I—I mean, I don’t—I actually love goals and I do it every single year, but as we’ve talked about this, I realize I’m not good at self-care goals or like protecting boundary goals.

And so it’s like, how do you, how do you quantify that? How do you checklist that? How do you gold-star it to make sure that going into this next year that is something that is a high priority and doesn’t just keep getting shifted to the back burner?

Melissa Klug:
Yeah. No, I like that. And I do—I would love—I’m not going to teach a goal-setting seminar. I’m going to attend it because I need it.

I’m just—I’m really bad at setting goals. I do not—I just—even in my old corporate life where you had to set a bunch of goals and you had to do ’em, and there was like very regimented… and I just, I hated it so much.

And I had a job at one point that was strategic planning and that was like one of the—my least favorite things I’ve ever done. And I know there are people that thrive on that. I just don’t happen to be one of ’em. I’m more of a doer than a thinker.

But I also recognize how important it is. And I recognize that there are things that I’ve wanted to do—you know, there are milestones that I have wanted to do that I haven’t quite met.

And I’m like, the only way that you can do it is by setting goals and working toward, you know, what does that look like and how am I gonna get there and what are the steps to get there? And I’m not good at that.

Cabri Carpenter:
Yeah. Well, and I’m—I don’t like too, too strict of goals.

Melissa Klug:
Sure.

Cabri Carpenter:
Because then I’m like, you lose part of like where the magic happens. And if it’s—if I had followed all of the goals I had set forth in 2025, I don’t think I would’ve done half of the other cool shit that I got to do in my personal life.

Okay, sure—buying other businesses, things that I get to do in Pro Organizer Studio—like if I had followed my goal list to an absolute T, it would not have awarded some of the other things.

And so I’m like, yes, goals are great. And the concept—you have time for both. Yes. But you have to leave a little room for, for magic and opportunity and—I mean, I don’t know. It’s a very slippery slope if you look at it.

Melissa Klug:
Okay. That, that’s a good one though. Leaving room for magic. I like that. Yeah, because you have to like—leaving room just in general is probably what we’re trying to encapsulate is… yeah, you’ve got to leave room for things that you don’t anticipate. Mm-hmm.

Or, you know, the Mike Tyson quote: “Everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face.” Yeah. Which is one of my favorite quotes.

Cabri Carpenter:
I got punched in the face with good things 10 times this year. So—

Melissa Klug:
Sure. Absolutely. Why not? Or unexpected things. Things that you’re just like—I mean, grant— I’ll give a great example. When I got the opportunity to buy Pro Organizer Studio, that was—when I tell you it was out of the blue—and I’m like, that’s been like the biggest gift of my life. Right?

Cabri Carpenter:
Yeah.

Melissa Klug:
And I mean that very sincerely. And so, yeah, you gotta—you gotta leave, leave room to get punched in the face. That’s the name of the—

Cabri Carpenter:
Podcast. I’m gonna call it magic because I like magic better than getting punched in the face. Okay.

Melissa Klug:
But leave, leave some room for whatever. Yeah. Leave room for magic. Take whatever you need. I like that.

Hmm. That’s great. Awesome.

Well, this podcast today—we were gonna podcast about something else entirely and this was your idea and I like it so much better. I mean, we’re gonna do the other one too, ’cause it’s a good one, but this is the one that needed to be today. Yep.

Cabri Carpenter:
I agree. I love it.

Melissa Klug:
So—

Cabri Carpenter:
Thank you as always.

Melissa Klug:
Of course.

Cabri Carpenter:
You are fixing to take your trip, and so I need everybody to—you can email Melissa, but I’m gonna try and like hack in so that she doesn’t have to worry about it.

You have a—you have an email now?

Melissa Klug:
I do have an email, but I need your email so that you’re not checking your email.

Oh, you’re on vacation. Fair.

Cabri Carpenter:
All right. Messages still?

Melissa Klug:
Yeah. Everybody can still email, but I really don’t want Melissa checking emails, so no—maybe a week or two before you get a response.

Melissa Klug:
I’m going, you guys. I’m so excited.

Okay, so if you’re watching this on YouTube, I have a little baby Christmas tree behind me. I have a Christmas tree in my front room. I have a Christmas tree in my den. My daughter has a Christmas tree in her room. I have a lot of Christmas trees in my house. I love Christmas. It makes me really happy.

And I’m going to the Christmas markets in Europe and I am very excited about it. I’m gonna drink a lot of wine and I’m gonna eat a lot of cheese.

Instagram has been serving up nonstop Christmas market food. Like they, they just pour cheese—hot, scalding cheese—into bread and you just walk around with it. And then I’m like, I’m gonna get a thousand Christmas ornaments. And I’m very excited.

Cabri Carpenter:
I am low-key jealous, but I definitely think that you need this.

So I do. I also—I randomly landed on some TikTok that was like, you know, they do things differently. Like they have different nutrients in their food than we do in the United States.

Melissa Klug:
Oh yeah.

Cabri Carpenter:
And so like bread isn’t as bad for you. Correct. Doesn’t make you bloat and like all these things.

And so I’m like—

You should definitely load up on all of the good—

Melissa Klug:
Yeah, no, I'm going to, no, that is actually true. 'cause it's all about like things that are allowed here that are not allowed there and yeah. So anyway, bread bring it on.

Cabri Carpenter:

All the bread, all the cheese, all the wine, bread,

Melissa Klug:

cheese, wine. Absolutely. I'm gonna, I'm gonna eat it all, so I'll let you know how it goes.