The Rebalancing Act: How to Redefine Success Without Burning Out Part 1

Summary: In Part 1, Katie sits down with Carol Enneking, leadership advisor, keynote speaker and bestselling author of The Rebalancing Act, to explore what it really means to redefine success without burning out.

Carol shares her remarkable journey from high-profile corporate roles to accidental entrepreneurship, back to corporate after a surprise divorce, and back to entrepreneurship again and how each twist shaped her understanding of sustainable success. They dig into the invisible pressure entrepreneurs carry, the myth that doing everything yourself is strength, and why knowing your worth is the foundation of everything.

Carol introduces her powerful three-part framework: think, give up, and let go. A practical approach to reclaiming your time, your energy, and your sense of purpose.

Key Takeaways

→ Achievement without sustainability comes at a cost. The sooner you learn that, the less you pay for it later.

→ Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Stop spending your highest-value hours on low-value tasks that someone else could handle.

→ Know your worth and charge accordingly. When you are overly busy, that is often a sign you are undercharging.

→ Think, give up, let go. Think about where your time is really going. Give up the things that don't serve you. Let go of the need to control and do everything yourself.

→ Having it all does not equal doing it all. You cannot find fulfillment by trying to do everything at once.

→ Know your values first. When you are clear on your top five priorities, you know exactly what to say yes to and what to let go of.

→ Legacy is the most powerful word. Ask yourself how you want to be known when you leave this phase of life and start living backwards from that answer.

→ The entrepreneurial journey is rarely straight. Resilience is not about having a smooth path, it is about continuing to take the next purposeful step.

Where to find Carol

Website

Instagram

Facebook

Carol Enneking's LinkedIn

Book: The Rebalancing Act available on Amazon and other major retailers

Resources

• Website
• Free Mini Cogno Mondays
• Learn more about Cognomovement
• Try Cognomovement for yourself!
• Book a call with Katie

Credit: Tom Giovingo, Intro & Outro, Random Voice Guy, Professional ‘Cat‘ Herder

Mixed & Managed: JohnRavenscraft.com

Disclaimer: Katie is not a medical professional and she is not qualified to diagnose any conditions. The advice and information she gives is based on her own experience and research. It does not take the place of medical advice. Always consult a medical professional first before you try anything new.

Transcript

Katie Wrigley (00:00)
Welcome back to the Catapult Effect podcast. I am your host, Katie Wrigley. I have an amazing host or guest rather, joining me today, Carol Enneking So she is speaking about stuff that is near and dear to my heart, being able to redefine success without burning out. So Carol is a leadership advisor, keynote speaker, and the author of the bestselling book, The Rebalancing Act.

After building global talent strategy inside major organizations, she stepped into entrepreneurship and quickly learned Achievement without sustainability comes at a cost. Today, she helps founders and leaders redefine success in ways that support both impact and wellbeing.

Welcome to the Catapult Effect podcast, Carol. I'm so happy to have you with me today.

Carol Ennekinng (01:09)
Thank you.

Glad to be here.

Katie Wrigley (01:13)
So tell me a little bit about your corporate experience and what led you to step into the world of entrepreneur and do what you're doing now.

Carol Ennekinng (01:21)
Well, I would have to say that In general, many of the times that I jumped into something entrepreneurial, it was because of a change in my personal life that led to a change in my career. So I started my career in a,

really high profile role for a large company and I thought I'd work there forever. And then I got burned out and they wanted me to move and I didn't really want to move and I knew I needed to be starting a family. And so I took myself kind of off the fast track and went to work for a company doing learning and development, which I was passionate about. And I thought I would do that forever.

And then I like to call myself an accidental entrepreneur because after my first child was born, I made the decision to take myself out of the full-time corporate role I was in because my husband had a very high demanding, high stress demanding, lots of travel kind of job. And we just couldn't both be doing that and raising a family. And so I started working part-time and I thought that would just be

for a year or two. And I always like to say, I think the man upstairs had bigger plans for me than I had for myself because that lasted 18 years. And so I had a company, I did a lot of leadership development and people strategy for different companies. And I worked with over 150 different companies then. So I went from corporate to entrepreneur and then had a sudden jolt in my personal life. I went through a

surprise divorce and just one day found out he was having an affair, asked him to leave and filed for divorce four days later. So that happened kind of quickly and that changed my life a lot. I knew I needed some stability and I felt like I needed a regular paycheck. And the funny thing is if I had it all to do over again, I probably wouldn't have left my entrepreneurial venture, but I was afraid.

Katie Wrigley (03:21)
Mm.

Carol Ennekinng (03:21)
I was

afraid that I would maybe not always have a steady paycheck or have trouble getting health insurance, all those things that you think about when you're a single mom. And so I went back to the security of a paycheck. sold my company and I went to work for the company that bought it. It was a small company, but it kind of was my foray back into corporate America. Then I went to work for one of my clients and it was a Fortune 200 company. was

a large manufacturing organization and I stayed there for seven years. So I kind of bounced back and forth just based on situations in my personal life. And then I departed that role in 2023. And by the time I departed, I was a vice president over talent strategy and learning and development and also diversity. And so when I departed, I said, that's it, I'm writing a book. I'm going back to my entrepreneurial

roots and here I am. So it's been a road with a lot of twists and turns and I've had kind of one foot in the entrepreneurial world and one foot in the corporate world and found the one that works for me.

Katie Wrigley (04:31)
And thank you for sharing that. Like, I'm still feeling jolted at the jolt you got with that divorce, like, thrown in there, like, I'm so sorry that you had to go through that.

Carol Ennekinng (04:36)
Yeah, yeah. But

thank you. And it was awful. But you know what, it was the beginning of my rebalancing act and I found love again and I am in the most amazing marriage now and smile so much more than I ever did the first time around and life is good. you know, out of bad can come good if we stay the course and that's part of what I wrote about in the book.

Katie Wrigley (05:02)
yeah, 100%. And I love that you called that out because when we're in the middle of it, it can feel impossible sometimes to imagine that anything good could come from it. Pardon my French, but it can feel like a pile of shit sometimes. It's like, what do I do with this? Like, what the fuck? Yeah.

Carol Ennekinng (05:09)
Yes. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. And the only way out is through, you know, you've got to

go through it. You can't hit the fast forward button and just wish it would go away. It doesn't usually work that way. But if you can stay the course and keep taking that one purposeful step at a time, good will follow. So firmly believe that.

Katie Wrigley (05:36)
Yeah, and I

absolutely and sorry, I didn't mean to start talking over you, but the resilience, the level of resilience that you've demonstrated just by sharing your story with starting out in corporate and then entrepreneur, then back to corporate, then back to entrepreneur and really feeling like this is where you want to be. Like that is resilient. And that is a lot of times that is the life of the entrepreneur. It doesn't necessarily.

look straightforward. It's not like you jump away from one safety net and then you suddenly have a thriving business the next day. It's not that easy. And there's a lot of different

Carol Ennekinng (06:07)
Right. That's right.

Katie Wrigley (06:12)
ways that it can look like for different entrepreneurs depending on what resources you have, what support you have. That journey, like it looks different for everybody and no one talks about this.

Carol Ennekinng (06:18)
Yep.

No one does and not everybody's cut out to be an entrepreneur. And it's funny how you can look back and think that things were put in your life for reasons you didn't know at the time. But working in my second job, I worked for a company that's a PEO, a professional employer organization.

Katie Wrigley (06:27)
No, definitely not. Definitely not.

Carol Ennekinng (06:43)
In fact, I think they're the largest one out there. It used to be called Administaff, now it's Insperity. And it was founded to help entrepreneurs focus on their business and not have to worry about a lot of the administrative headaches with their people. So they do payroll, benefits, HR services, training, things like that. And I read that book, The E-Myth, seemingly because I was working for Administaff and I wanted to understand their sales process.

who they were selling to as small to medium sized businesses. But it ended up being such a great blueprint for me. Now, not to say I didn't learn lessons along the way. A lot of the lessons you learn when you're starting a business are learned the hard way when things don't work. And so I started one company and then along the way I started a second company related to that, sold them both as I mentioned. And now this time around it's like, okay, now I'm gonna do it the right way. Now I'm gonna do it.

the way that gets me to success the fastest. And I'm going to avoid the rabbit trails that take me off track. And I'm going to focus on the clients and the work that I want. But the hard thing is so many of us get derailed as entrepreneurs by all the minutiae, all the aspects of running a business. And when we can always be mindful of that and remember what it is we got in business to do and get help for the things that we

Katie Wrigley (07:58)
Hmm.

Carol Ennekinng (08:09)
aren't in business to do. Get help for the people stuff. Get help with taxes. Get help with legal stuff. Don't try to do it all yourself. And when you can do that, that's a huge step in the right direction. that kind of rebalancing is mentioned in my book, because part of the book is my own memoir. The other part is talking to 70 other women and some men about what leadership and what their journey has looked like for them through this working world of adulthood.

And you can do things the wrong way. You can mess up. You got to keep going though. But the more you can say, just because I can doesn't mean I should. The better you'll be. I mean, your mother used to say that to you all the time, right? Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Just because you can do your own taxes doesn't mean you should. Just because you can invoice and do bookings and all that doesn't mean you should.

Katie Wrigley (08:49)
Ooh, I like-

Yep.

Carol Ennekinng (09:03)
Because if you think about what generates income for your business, where is the best use of your time and your energy? It's probably not on creating an invoice. That's something somebody else can support you with. Exactly. Yeah. In that case, it's very on point. Not for me. And I'm thankful for the people who helped me. But it's a risk, you because you spend money.

Katie Wrigley (09:12)
Yeah.

No, not unless you're teaching people how to do accounting and bookkeeping. Business. Yeah. And that's our point. But not for me. Not for me either. Yes.

Carol Ennekinng (09:33)
And you're like, okay, well, I could do it myself. I should do it myself. And people, when they're trying to scale, they don't always think about the fact that, okay, now I've reached the limits of what I can productively spend time on, and there aren't enough hours in the day, and there's more to do than I can do. What do I need to focus on, and what do I need to get help for? And we wait until we're at like a breaking point before we do that. So this time I was bound and determined not to do that.

And so I was much more proactive about seeking support, getting mentors to help me set things up so that my business was scalable from the beginning instead of just reaching the breaking point and saying, what do I do now? And one of my friends told me a long time ago, she said, we don't often know our limits or our breaking points until we are there. It's like, yep.

Katie Wrigley (10:27)
100%. Yep. Yes, I agree with that wholeheartedly. And that's a perfect segue into what I wanted to talk about more deeply. part of what you're talking about is that ongoing pressure that every entrepreneur feels. And that pressure is like, maybe I don't have enough money coming in yet by however we define that, whether it's literal math, like I'm bringing in X and I owe X and they aren't lining up yet, or we don't feel like we have enough of a margin.

Carol Ennekinng (10:51)
Yeah.

Katie Wrigley (10:55)
And one of the things that was really helpful for me with that is figuring out like ultimately how many hours a week do I want to work? How many weeks out of the

Carol Ennekinng (11:03)
Yeah.

Katie Wrigley (11:04)
year? And figuring out what my hourly rate should be. And if it's going to take me longer to do that than what I can pay someone else to do and like my accountant, I will pay her every frigging year and I will pay my bookkeeper because I cannot do what they do in the time that they do it. It would cost me thousands of dollars in time.

if I were to do those things. But that pressure there, that is the thing that really pushes people and almost starts to give us tunnel vision. So why do think it is that so many entrepreneurs are carrying more pressure than they want to admit and they want to put up this facade that I'm doing everything and I'm doing great, I'm handling it like a boss, and there's probably a lot of truth to it, but they don't feel like they are. So where do think that's coming from, Carol?

Carol Ennekinng (11:43)
Yeah.

Well, I think it stems from several things. First of all, knowing your worth. Really knowing your worth, really knowing what rate you should be charging and charging enough. And you wouldn't believe how many entrepreneurs I'm always telling, raise your rates. When you're overly busy,

Katie Wrigley (11:56)
Mm.

Carol Ennekinng (12:08)
and you've got too much work, that's a good sign that you probably aren't charging enough. So there's that. I mean, there's that fundamental question. Do you know your worth? Do you know what you ought to be charging? And do you think about your time in those terms, just like you mentioned with the accounting? I know it would take me 20 hours to do what I pay them to do in three, something like that. So it's that knowing your worth. It's knowing when you need to scale.

Because yes, there are 24 hours in a day, but you don't want to 21 of them at work. You really don't. mean, yeah, people talk about, oh, you never sleep if you're an entrepreneur or whatever. No, balance is more important. And so I think that's a bigger thing too, is that drive, that drive, that ambition. It's wonderful, but when we give everything our energy, we don't have any reserves. And life is always going to throw us those curve balls.

Katie Wrigley (13:04)
Mm.

Carol Ennekinng (13:07)
So trying to do it all yourself and trying to be 100 % productive all the time will wear you out. And it's easy to say that it's harder to do it. It's harder. I've been an entrepreneur. I understand. The work never goes away. But I had to intentionally set boundaries for myself because I had a lot of terrible health challenges that

frankly resulted from me working too hard and being too much of a type A personality all those years and trying to raise kids and, and, and, and, and your health takes a toll and you're, I think there's a deficit there that you pay for, for years to come. You know, when you, when you deprive your body of what it needs. so knowing your worth and then practicing that you are worthy, meaning self care, timeouts.

Katie Wrigley (13:35)
Thanks watching.

Carol Ennekinng (13:58)
time for things that matter. I think the other thing is just prioritizing. I think that's a big factor for us because it can feel like everything is important. And maybe it is, but you don't get fulfillment by trying to do everything. Having it all does not equal doing it all. And so what is it that's most important now? Let go of five, 10, 20 years down the road, stop that

cycle of thinking, my gosh, if I do this now, what's going to happen next? What's going to happen next? Just take the next best step and grant yourself some grace and set realistic milestones. Because when you're constantly laying on the accelerator and flooring it, think about what that does to a car. You you can't just go for maximum acceleration all the time.

because it doesn't work. mean, a terrible crash will result or you'll burn out the engine, you'll run out of gas. mean, think of the metaphors there. So when you think about a car, like what works best in a car, optimal productivity, know when to lay down the accelerator, know when to let up on the accelerator, know when to hit the brakes, know when to take it in for an oil change or if it's you, a massage.

or a vacation or some time off. You know, do some preventive maintenance, practice some healthcare or self care because if you don't take care of yourself, you can't be what you want to be to everyone else in your world. And you're never going to see your business through because you probably aren't going to live long enough to see it. I mean, I hate to be so dramatic, but having come through breast cancer and facing other huge issues, you know, it is.

Katie Wrigley (15:47)
Yeah.

Carol Ennekinng (15:47)
Life is not promised and it's a very

uncertain world out there. So, so how are you going to make the most of what you have right now while also practicing some realistic boundary setting? I think that's what it's all about. And a lot of things play into that. A lot of our thought processes, our nervous system. I know you have specific expertise in that realm and you know, burning out isn't good for us. Just like it's not good for a car.

Katie Wrigley (16:17)
Yes, and I love that analogy. I'm going to use that a lot more, actually, because everybody can kind of understand that there. And one of my friends had said something to me, and I'm like, man, if only I'd had that goodie when I first started. I would still take the entrepreneurial journey that I did, but I would have done it very differently to allow myself more ease. But I didn't know better. But the thing that she said that really stuck with me is that everything is a construct of time.

Carol Ennekinng (16:22)
Yeah.

Yes. That's Yep.

Katie Wrigley (16:48)
When you have enough time, you can make the thing happen. So sometimes all you're doing as an entrepreneur is you're buying yourself more time, continue to do the thing. There will be phases of your journey where you are literally just buying time. And then you're gonna

build on it from there. But knowing that like, it doesn't have to look a certain way. Like I was working with someone on Friday and the idea of jumping.

full force into a business is just very overwhelming to her. It's like, okay, well, what is an overwhelming? Like, what about if this is your side hustle? And then like, I could immediately see the body start to relax. Like, what if this is just your side hustle that you worked on for however many hours a week? And then we identified other things for the phase that she's had of like, you know, like for instance, like just gaining more traction so people know what she's doing. She loves talking to people. Like,

Carol Ennekinng (17:18)
Yeah. Yeah.

Katie Wrigley (17:43)
You already love talking to people. Here's ways that you can start to strike up conversations with people on social media. Like this is how you can find those things in common is that like, what do you do? what do you do? Look at their profile. They're going to be telling you who they are and what they're interested in by their posts, by their pictures. Like they're letting you get to know them online. If there's something there that's interesting to you, now you've got some common ground you can reach out on and start to have that conversation. But

Carol Ennekinng (17:48)
Yeah. Yep.

Katie Wrigley (18:10)
I think a lot of times entrepreneurs have this very, and I know I did, had this very specific picture of what it needs to look like. And if it doesn't fit into that picture, we're like, no, it's not working. Not successful, not working. And then we start freaking out. We double down, we push harder, we exhaust ourselves. Like I haven't been here ever. And then we regroup when we get to that point, like, okay, something needs to change. Something needs to be different. And

Carol Ennekinng (18:22)
Yeah. Yeah.

Katie Wrigley (18:38)
One of the things that I understand from knowing you just a little bit, Carol, is that you talk about redefining success. And that's one of the ways that we can kind of take that burden, that pressure off of ourselves. So what are some ways that people can start to redefine success for themselves to let go of that pressure that really all of us arbitrarily just put on ourselves?

Carol Ennekinng (19:02)
Yeah, I think

it starts with taking time out. So I have three things I like to say people should do when when they feel like the pace is just a little too frantic and they need to slow it down is think, give up and let go. Okay, so let's start with think. So thinking involves taking yourself off the treadmill long enough to just think, look at

where you're spending your time. Look at the return you're getting for that investment of your time. Look at what you're spending less time on than you'd like to, or what you're spending more time on than you'd like to. And start looking at what adjustments you might need to be making. Now, giving up is it's not giving up in a bad way. I mean, I hate to give up, I hate to fail, but it's

Giving up trying to do everything. Give up the things that don't serve you. Give up the things that are low value. And start to learn to say no without guilt. Because you can't get it all by doing it all. And when you can say no to some things, it enables you to have a stronger yes on the things that matter. So giving up involves giving up some of the things that are taking your time.

Katie Wrigley (19:59)
Yes.

Carol Ennekinng (20:24)
And then letting go is different than giving up. People think it's similar, but it's actually different. And it's letting go of the need to control everything. Letting go of feeling like you've got to do it all yourself. So it's for those things that you don't want to give up, the things you want to keep doing, how can you do them differently? This all requires thought. But let me give you just some practical examples. So for me,

Working full time and then coming home and having to get a nice balanced meal on the table was very stressful sometimes. My daughter loved to cook. By the time she was 14, part of her extra allowance, which you everybody wants extra allowance, she would get extra allowance if she would cook two or three meals a week for our family. And they were way better than they would have been if I had done them. And so getting your

kids involved can help getting meal prep, deliveries, whatever it is, you know, give up trying to do things, do things that don't matter and then let go of trying to do it all yourself and let go of your preconceived notions about how things have to be done or go. There are so many life hacks out there that can help you with the things you are doing to make them easier to do. And maybe it wouldn't be exactly the way you would do it.

You know, let your son load the dishwasher. Maybe it won't get loaded totally precisely, but I the dishes will still get clean. Let your kids do their own laundry, things like that. I mean, that's just for people who have kids, but there are all kinds of hacks like that. But I think if you take it back even a step further before you start to think about how am I investing my time, you got to know what your priorities are. So I do have

free resource on my website that's called a Legacy Blueprint Workbook and it takes you through three basic things and it's a way to get some of that think time in. Okay, so if you take about 45 minutes and you go through it, it's going to ask you to clarify what your uppermost values are. What are the five things in this world that are most important to you? I did this in my 20s and even when I wasn't conscious of it in my subconscious mind, those priorities were helping drive my decisions.

Katie Wrigley (22:31)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Carol Ennekinng (22:45)
because

when you know what matters most, you know what to say yes to and what to say no to. So you need to know your uppermost values. It's also good to have lifetime goals. What are the things you want to accomplish? Where do you want your business to be in five years, 10 years, 20 years? It's great to have that as part of your blueprint, but you don't have to do it all today to get there. You decide what you're going to work on now, but at least you have documented out there where you'd like to go.

Katie Wrigley (22:50)
Make sense?

Carol Ennekinng (23:13)
So having your lifetime goals. But then the one word that I like to leave people with more than any other word is legacy. Because I want you to think about how do you want to be known when you leave this phase of life, when you leave this company, when you sell this company, when you leave wherever you are right now to go somewhere else. And it could be that you're leaving this world and it's your eulogy at your