Episode 326: The Real Reason You’re Overworked: You’re Doing the Wrong Work

You’re Not Overworked — You’re Doing the Wrong Work

Female emPOWERED Podcast with Christa Gurka

If you feel exhausted, behind, and busy all day but somehow not moving forward, this episode is for you.

In this episode of the Female emPOWERED Podcast, Christa Gurka breaks down the real reason so many boutique fitness, Pilates, and private-pay PT owners feel burned out — and it’s not because you’re lazy, bad at business, or not working hard enough.

You’re overworked because you’re doing work that no longer belongs to you.

This episode is a mindset shift and a practical wake-up call for owner-operators who are stuck in the weeds, micromanaging their teams, avoiding delegation, and confusing “busy” with actual progress.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• Why working harder isn’t the answer — and why working higher is
• The difference between operator work vs. true CEO work
• How micromanaging your team is quietly stalling your growth
• Why avoiding delegation trains your team not to think
• The hidden cost of being the bottleneck in your own business
• How “fake CEO work” (busywork) keeps you stuck
• Where boutique fitness and PT owners waste the most energy
• Why systems, structure, and financial clarity matter more than motivation
• The 5 core responsibilities of a CEO in a boutique service business
• How to reclaim 5–10 hours a week without working longer days

The 5 Core Responsibilities of a True CEO:

If you’re working outside of these five areas most of the time, that’s why you feel busy but not productive:

1. Vision & Direction – Where the business is going and why
2. Financial Oversight – Understanding revenue, profit, capacity, and pricing
3. Leadership – Right people, right seats, clear expectations
4. Systems & Structure – Designing processes (not running them)
5. Strategic Growth Decisions – When to hire, expand, cut, or say no

Answering emails, fixing schedule issues, running the front desk, and rescuing staff are not CEO work.

If This Sounds Like You…

• You’re still client-facing more than 50% of the time
• You approve every decision
• Staff come to you instead of following systems
• You “just do it yourself because it’s faster”
• You’re busy all day but unsure what actually moved the needle

…this episode will hit home.

Key Takeaway:

You don’t need another planner, another framework, or more hustle.

You need intentional structure, clearer delegation, and the courage to step out of the minutiae and into leadership — on purpose.

You don’t need to work harder.
 You need to work higher.

🎧 Listen now and start auditing where your time, energy, and focus are actually going — and what needs to change so your business can grow without burning you out.

If you want help reclaiming your time, building systems, and becoming the CEO your business actually needs, this episode is your first step.

Transcript

Christa Gurka | Fit Biz Strategies 0:51

Hello. They're beautiful people and welcome back to another episode of the Female Empowered Podcast. I'm your host, Christa Gurka. Today we're gonna talk about the real reason you're feeling overworked, and it's not'cause you're doing too much work. You're doing the wrong work. And to put it bluntly, you're focused on the wrong shit. All right, so what we're gonna talk about today is why we do that and how to keep. To get out of that pattern. So if you're someone that feels exhausted behind, like you're working harder than ever, but somehow you feel like you're running on a hamster wheel and not getting forward. This episode my friends, is for you. This is gonna be a little bit more mindset and. Ways to think about what you're doing in your business versus like, I will of course always give you actionable, tangible strategies, but it's gonna be a little bit more for you really to think about. Is that me? Is that why I do the things that I do? So I want to start by saying something that might sting a little bit, and to say, really, you're not overworked because your work is too big. Most of you. You're overworked because you're doing the wrong work. You're not overworked because you're not good enough at what you're doing. You're overworked because you're doing work that you're not trained to do and you're not supposed to be doing. That's why, and it's taking energy and bandwidth and capacity, whether that be emotionally or actually like. Skillset capacity, and it's making the things that are actually easy for you to do and the things that will move the needle in your business. Things that don't get done, alright. It shows up constantly in small businesses, especially owner operated businesses who are really, really good. Like most of us are really, really good at being physical therapists, at being Pilates instructors, yoga instructors, bar instructors, fitness professionals. You're not lazy. You're not behind, you're not bad at business. You're just doing operator work that no longer serves you and no longer should belong to you. That's the most important thing. It's. No long it's work that no longer should be on your plate and should belong to you. Okay? Once you, as the owner, as the founder, as the leader, can see that and can see when you're doing this and when you get back into this pattern, it's easier for you to change it if you don't recognize you're doing it. think about like when we have a patient, if a patient doesn't recognize that they're limping. They'll never stop limping if they don't recognize that. this is why habits are hard to break.'cause if you don't recognize you're biting your nails, it's really hard to stop biting your nails. So one of the things, the lie that we tell ourselves all the time that keeps us overworked is, oh, and I hear this all the time. I'm sure you've said it maybe this week, maybe this morning, you've said it. When things get easier, I will do that. I will delegate when I hire the right person. I will delegate when I have more people on my staff. I will be a better CEO when I get more money in the bank account. I will be able to hire that person when I, when things calm down a little bit like in the summer, I'll be able to do it. I can really be CEO in the summer. Okay, but what instead, what I really see from a lot of women out there, women, I talk to, women that are in our mentorship groups. Colleagues of mine and me, myself, for a long time I was an owner that was working 50, 60, 70 hours a week. And I don't mean like teaching classes, it's like all those little ticky tack things we do when we are in the middle of eating dinner and we're like, ah, fuck, I forgot to send that home exercise program. Oh shit. I was supposed to return that email to get the client to, schedule for tomorrow to get them off the wait list. all those little ticky tack things we do if we add them up could add up to 50, 60 hours a week. When we, as the owners are still teaching, treating, covering shifts, more than 50% of our. Time more than 50% of our day or our week, we're still direct client facing services. We're still approving every single decision that happens in the business. And this was me for so long. Why? Because I'm a control freak. I like things done the way that I want them to be done. And if you continue to hold onto that as a business, you can do that. You will also burn yourself out and you will stifle the growth of your business. So we all have choices. If you choose to operate your business that way, that's fine. That's fine. Okay. If it helps you to feel stable and calm your nervous system, just recognize that you're also gonna stifle the growth of your business, and it will be really hard to grow anything beyond you if you have to be in control of every single decision you are. Reactive instead of responsive. Okay. So instead of saying, instead of saying, Hmm, that person just resigned, that's gonna hit us a little bit. Okay? But They were great while they were here. We'll get through this. We've done this before. How are we gonna respond to this? Well, maybe the response is, wow, I recognize that like having one staff member that's responsible for 65% of our revenue is not sustainable and it's not a great feeling when they leave. So how about moving forward? We're gonna respond with nobody is more than 25 is is responsible for more than 25% of the revenue. Just like when you. Invest your money and how to create wealth. Diversify. Diversify. Diversify. Okay. Lastly, avoiding asking for help. There are many business owners that have great people on their team and they're like, oh yeah, I'll send that to you tomorrow. I'll do it tomorrow. I'm like, why are you doing it? Ask so and so to do it. Oh, I really wanna sit on this Google Ads training, but I don't have time. Ask one of your team members to do it. Ask one, ask the person that's helping you with social media. Maybe somebody wants to be involved in the marketing of your business. Have them sit on the challenge and then teach you. We don't have to be the ones doing all of the things. All right? If you know your team members are like, oh, we really wanna do this event, or this donation, or this kind of thing, fundraiser be like, great. Go ahead, plan it. Let me know what you come up with and, and we'll take it from there. Allow people to level up into being more empowered in your business. So ask for help. There's nothing wrong with asking for help. I know that's hard. I hated doing it. I would rather stab myself in the eye with a fork, then ask for help for before, but I recognize the only person that is hurting was myself. The only person. That is being hurt by you not asking for help is you, my dear you, you're the only person, okay? The fact that you're busy, I'm doing that in air quotes, busy all day, but not actually moving the needle in your business is a reality in its self-imposed, right? So busy does not equal progress. Busy does not equal productive. I know that you know this, but what you don't know is how to get out of this, and that's why I'm here to help you. I'm here to help you figure out how you can get out of this. So let's be very, very specific because where PT and Pilates owners waste the most energy I see is two places playing and micromanaging the front desk. And failing to ask for help. Okay, so how do you do this at the front desk? Now, there are times where I believe an owner, a founder, sitting at the front desk and taking phone calls and returning emails and talking to patients and clients coming in and coming out is really powerful because you can see where the holes are in your system. You can see what the work, what. Things need to be deleted in that process or delegated, or no longer serve that, that role. So once in a while, I think it's good. And when we're first starting out, certainly we're gonna do this right, because we're setting the tone, we're setting the culture, we're creating the SOPs. But as you get more along in your business, you shouldn't be a CEO who's making six figures a year, shouldn't be doing 20,$25 an hour tasks. It doesn't mean you don't cover if someone's out okay, but we're talking just in general, so it looks like you answering the phones or texts or having the app on your phone and being like, oh, I'll just re reply to this text. Or Jumping into Mind Body or Jane or Moments or Wallet and fixing the text tech issues when someone else can be accountable for that. Handling billing issues. Somebody can be trained to do that. Responding and taking all the customer complaints from the beginning, from the ground up. When you can empower your administrative team to do that, okay, and I know why you do this, you, you do this'cause you're like, oh, it's just faster if I do it myself, I know the workaround. It's harder. It takes me longer to teach someone to do it. I'll just do it myself. But what this does. Is in the long run, it trains your team not to think. It trains your team to say, oh, crystal likes it done a certain way. So I'm just gonna let her do it. Okay, I'll, I'll give you a perfect example. And I'm only laughing'cause I don't know if my husband listens to this podcast. Hopefully he doesn't. But, we are big people of like the whole like, make your bed every day. We're. Both of us for a number of reasons. We both like getting into like a nicely made bed at night, but he even more than. More than us. Like he makes it right when he gets out of bed. I make it, usually I get outta bed, I go to the bathroom, I brush my teeth, I get some coffee, I check my email, I take the dog out and then I come back and make my bed. But he also is like nurse ratchet. He makes like these hard corners and he pulls the sheet like so, it's like, it looks like a fricking hotel, but so sometimes when I know that he's home and he's gonna make the bed. I don't make the bed. Why? Because I've also recognized that when I do make the bed, he doesn't say anything to me. But when I do make the bed, I know he comes behind me and like remakes it in his fashion. So what does that teach me? That teaches me that like, he's gonna do it his own way anyway, so why bother? Why bother to do it now that you might be like, that's the stupidest example ever. But it has trained me to be like, he, he never makes me feel bad about it, but he, I can tell that he's remade the bed. He also does this with the dishwasher. He reloads the dishes after I do'em. So sometimes I'm like, well, he's gonna do it anyway, so I just might as well do them. So if you're doing this to your team, they're eventually gonna not do it. And then the cycle that happens, you're like, they're so lazy they don't do it. But no, you train them to be that way'cause you come behind them and redo their work and they don't like it. Okay. The other thing it does is it trains clients to bypass the system. So when clients come directly to you, especially if it's to your cell phone, then it trains them, oh, I'm just gonna reach out to, I'm just gonna reach out to Jen. It's easier for me to reach out to her. And, but you don't want that to happen in perpetuity. So like, train them to go to the front desk, be like, okay, great. Thanks for reaching out. But from, we are, we changed the process. We need everyone to go through the front desk. Okay. What happens when you do this is you easily become the bottleneck of your business and nothing can grow without your approval, which means you're only one person. And so growth stifles. Alright? The other thing with micromanaging and not asking for help, so micromanaging your team of instructors, your admin team, your clinician, okay? Is. So they call in and be like, oh, I can't do my schedule today, or, or something happened and you take responsibility. Don't worry, I'll figure it out. No, there should be a process for them to figure it out. When you allow instructors or clinicians to go into their schedule and just be like, oh, I'm gonna be off today. No, there is a process for that. It's really important that you set clear expectations. So that there's no conflict, so the process should be, if someone needs a sub, they don't reach out to you first. They reach out to the team and say, Hey, I can't make it to my six o'clock class. Who can cover for me? Then once they have that coverage, they reach out to you and be like, Hey, I can't make it today, but Jane's covering my class. It's all set. Right. Hold your team accountable. You don't wanna be an operating babysitter. That's not leadership. That's babysitting. Leadership is holding people accountable to do what you hired them to do and what you pay them to do. Leadership is having clear standards. That are understood by all leadership is having clear roles and guidelines and having clear accountability. And if people on your team don't like structure and don't like accountability, then they don't belong on your team. Okay. So that's where you have to make those decisions. So the next thing, and I, again, I'm laughing'cause I just posted a funny meme about this on my Instagram page today, but it's like what we do that's fake work, that's just distracting us from the real work that we're doing. Fake CEO work, as I like to call it, is redoing your website. When it doesn't need to be redone, right? Rewriting your Instagram captions over and over and over again, obsessing over fonts and colors, like things that are not necessarily gonna move the needle in your business right now. There's a time and place for all of that. There is absolutely, but oftentimes that's not necessarily gonna move the needle in your business, and so you're using that time to distract yourself. There have been so many times where I. Sit here in my office when I really have to get like a podcast done or something, and I'm like, I'm gonna clean out my desk. And sometimes it needs it, but that's not productive work. That's not moving the needle forward in my business. Okay? It's just distracting me.'cause what I don't wanna do is sit down and record a podcast, right? Things like that feel productive, but it avoids the real work. The real work are getting. Clear on your financials, making the right pricing decisions. Okay. Hiring decision decisions, systems and infrastructure. And some of that time, some of that stuff is boring and it's busy work, but you need it to get done. It's the same way we tell our patients. Pelvic tilts are really boring. But if you cannot disassociate your P spine from your pelvis, you cannot articulate into your spine. All the other stuff is for naught, you, you have to start with a foundation. You have to start with the basics. And this is where like building systems and SOPs are the basics and the foundation learning to understand your numbers. But we get distracted and we're like, eh, I don't wanna do that. And then it goes another month and we're like, yeah, I still don't understand my p and l. Or it goes another month and I haven't, still haven't built out that system, right? Because you have to build out a system and then you have to get everyone to follow it. So we're just focused on the wrong shit. Stop being focused on what Jane down the street is doing. Stop being focused on staring at her Instagram, being like, oh, she must be doing amazing. Well, first of all, you can't tell anything by Instagram and take the time that you are wasting staring at your competition and just focus on the stuff that's gonna move the needle in your business. Focus on the stuff that will make real change and real impact on your business. Okay. The core functions of A CEO. Especially specifically in boutique fitness and wellness, an owner operating boutique services business. Your job is not to be the chief everything officer. Your job is not to do everything. There are five, I believe, core functions that a leader, A CEO should be responsible. One, the vision and mission and direction. Where is the business going? What are we building towards? How are we going to get there? If you don't really define this and you don't have some guardrails about where you're going, you'll start to drift and be like, oh yeah, that's, that's cool. Let's do that thing. No, let's be clear. Let's be focused. Let's be driven. I want to get to this benchmark and these are the steps that are gonna get me there. Two. Financial oversight. Now, this is not bookkeeping and it might not even be owning the p and l, but if you know that you need to get to a certain revenue and a certain profit, you should be able to. Back into that and be like, we need to have this many visits at this price point and keep our expenses at this rate each and every day, each and every week, each and every month. You have to know your break even. You have to understand your capacity and your utilization in order to make these very specific and objectionable pricing strategies and pricing. Decisions, you really cannot delegate the responsibility of understanding those metrics. Three is leadership. Making sure that you have the right people in the right seats in your business, that you've articulated clear expectations for their role, and you are training them and you're holding them accountable rather than rescuing them. The job is to build other leaders on your team, not just be the hero for everybody. All right, good leaders build other leaders. Number four, systems and structures. You should be designing the customer experience. You should be designing how staff are onboarded and offboarded. We did an a episode about that not that long ago. You should be designing the processes, but not doing the processes. You design the processes and have people run the processes. You build the machine, but you don't necessarily have to operate the machine. And finally, strategic growth decisions. When to hire, when to add services, when to cut services, when to say no, when to let this person go. Growth without structure is chaos. Most of you have felt this. Maybe you're feeling it now. And what I'm here to tell you is that if you're working on more than those five core processes, that is why you feel like you're busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, but you don't feel productive. So a few episodes ago we talked about like a CEO audit. So I invite you to audit. What you're doing and how many of those things fall into the bucket of these five core processes that we just talked about? Five core foundations, vision and direction, financial oversight, leadership systems and structure, and strategic growth. Answering emails, answering phone calls is not part of that. If you're doing it now, that's fine. But what is the plan? What is the process? What is the goal to get you out of that seat and away from those tasks? Maybe it takes a year, maybe it takes two years, but have the goal, and each and every month, you're gonna be doing something that's gonna get you closer to that goal so you can do the things that only you can do in your business. And ideally, hopefully things that are gonna generate money in your business.'cause I hear so often, so, so, so often I would love to do that. I just don't have time. I can't take that on my plate right now. And oftentimes it's because we're spending too much time in the business and we haven't bet on ourselves to hire the right person to delegate, to hold those people accountable and say. Hey, I know we had our meeting, but I, my expectation is that you're gonna come to the meeting with all of these metrics and these scorecards completed and filled out, and then I want you to present me with the story of what those numbers mean. Teaching other people helps you, empowers you, empowers them, and ultimately empowers the whole team to move forward. It's how momentum gets started. Okay. Action creates clarity, and that's what you want. Stop worrying about what down the street is doing. They don't pay your bills. They don't pay your rent, okay? Don't make decisions based on other people. Focus and control the controllables. Ask for help and take action faster. Okay? You don't need another planner. I have literally thousands of them. I have four sitting at my desk right now. Okay. You don't need another planner. You don't necessarily need another framework. You need to do the work. I know. You know what you have to do. You know what you have to do. You need intentional structure that is gonna move you, your team, and your business. In the right direction, and it doesn't mean in the right direction. In 30 days, it means in the right direction for the next 12 months, 18 months, 24 months, 36 months. See yourself 3, 4, 5 years out. If that means you're a seven figure c, e, o, then already think, act, and behave like you're that seven figure CEO make decisions as if you were already that woman. All right. I want you to recognize you don't have to work harder. Most of the time, you need to work higher. You don't have to work harder, you need to work higher. You need to get yourself out of the minutiae, right? You're right. Now, you're in the middle of the forest. You can't see the forest through the trees. You need to pull yourself out. You need to look at your business from a 30,000 foot view. Stop worrying about the wrong shit that's not gonna move you and your business forward. This my friends, is how you become a CEO on purpose. So when you look back at all of your success and all of the things you've accomplished, you can say, I did that. I made the hard decisions, I took action, I did the work, and look what I created, and it's totally doable. All right. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I want you to learn how to reclaim five to 10 hours a week. Okay? I want you to learn how to give yourself more bandwidth to do the things and, and, and, and enjoy the things that are actually gonna move the needle in your business. So, take some time, look at your schedule, and really say to yourself. Am I really working too hard? Am I just working on the wrong things? And what are you gonna do to change that? You have the power. You have the power. All right, that's all I got for you today. I hope you enjoyed it. And until next time, my friends, bye for now.