Introduction
Shannon Donnelly (SD): Alrighty. Hello everyone, and welcome to the Fully Managed Podcast, the podcast where we discuss marketing and business tips to help assist you on your business journey. I’m your host, Shannon, Penji’s partnership coordinator, and I’m joined here today with a very special guest, Mila Debell from Break the Web. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Mila Debell (MD): Thank you, Shannon. I’m supposed to be here.
Mila’s Professional Journey and Burnout
SD: I really appreciate it. Could you start by introducing yourself? Maybe you do it differently than me, and tell the audience a little bit about yourself, maybe your professional journey. Anything that you think would be relevant to know.
MD: Yes, so well, I’m head of operations at Break the Web, SEO for D2C and brands, and my role is a little bit wider than the title, so I am now handling or responsible for finances, team satisfaction, client satisfaction, and operations as well. And a little bit about my background. So I have been, I started my career as a country marketer, maybe back in like 2000s, in our tech world that we all share. And then I started working at an agency at around, maybe in 2021, and I was a client account manager there. And then I went to head of marketing and finally decided to take a break. I think it was in 2021 or something like that.
SD: Mm-hmm.
MD: And then I took a little break because I was facing some burnout. And then I started freelancing and I decided to get a little away from marketing. And then I decided to go into operations and Break the Web was my first consulting client. And two weeks in and we started talking about me staying on with a role as full-time. And the rest is history. It’s been, I think I’m, yeah. And now in February is going to be one year with Break the Web and has been a fascinating journey.
SD: Oh, that’s incredible. Well, I’m happy that you like it there and that, you know, after that burnout, you were able to do something that you really enjoy. I know that that is very difficult. I completely understand the struggle of burnout. I had three jobs in college, and at the same time sometimes, and it is real. Burnout is a real thing. And it’s very, it’s troublesome, especially if you have like a very, a very strict work ethic because you kind of feel unfulfilled, but you also know that you need a break. So it’s very, it’s very difficult to grapple with.
MD: Yeah. It comes a time in which something that I, maybe something that I learned with that journey was that being a true professional, or at least what it means to me, involves being very self-aware about what you need and ask for it or get it in some form of way. So I guess that’s the, one of the learnings from burnout. But I guess in today’s era, I think that we are all a little bit ADHD, a little bit burned out. I don’t wanna use the terms that are not correct and formal from a psychological standpoint, but I feel like everyone knows what we’re talking about.
SD: It’s kind of hard to focus. A lot of people have very difficult times focusing lately. I think it’s increased a lot.
MD: Yeah. Comes with the job, I guess.
SD: I guess so, yeah. Using a computer all day is, yes. Your attention span gets hurt from that.
MD: That happens.
Lessons Learned from Marketing Career
SD: So do you think that that is the most important lesson that you’ve learned from your marketing career? Do you think there’s something else that you implement daily or that you make sure you’re holding yourself accountable for your team? Maybe.
MD: So, in terms of marketing related to marketing, I think one of the biggest lessons that I’ve learned is that it doesn’t matter if it’s B2B, e-commerce, corporate, or B2C or B2B, everything is human to human. So realizing that makes the marketing way easier, at least in my opinion. And then regarding the burnout experience or like my years dealing with the burnout and also handling head of marketing position, I learned, yeah, being self-aware is one of the traits of like a good professional, but also I think from that experience I was left with a lot of really, really good values. And then that I now translate to my personal life and also to our work life at Break the Web. We redefined our values as well last year. And a lot of that comes to kind of it revolves around self-awareness and ownership and challenging with care. So that was, that’s one of the things I learned from burnout. And then just to reprioritize and get some perspective, because I think at some point I was maybe a little too caught up on it and you kind of lose track a little bit of what’s important or you lose some perspective. And it took me some time and some work with therapists and coaches and like friends, and a lot of journaling to understand or like to reset my priorities and start operating from that standpoint, let’s say.
SD: I definitely understand. I think journaling is so helpful. I would hope that more professionals would instill that into their lifestyle. I think that to just put your emotions on paper is so weirdly helpful. I don’t understand really why. I think your brain is so good at cycling and kind of catastrophizing, whereas when you put something on paper, it makes it so much easier to deal with sometimes. And definitely not even things as simple as planning out something, whereas like you can say that in your head and acknowledge it and maybe you have a good memory and you’ll remember exactly what you’re supposed to do. But I think that having a plan on paper is super helpful for anyone to do, even if there’s someone who is very organized in their brain. I think it’s just something that, it also makes it easier to understand if you have to explain it to someone else. Putting it on paper can make it more simple. I think that it’s just a really great, I agree for that, that that’s a very great way of people resetting and understanding their thoughts. And I think that’s just as important to instill in the business world as it is in your everyday lifestyle.
MD: Yes, absolutely. And I think it’s very easy to miss the early signs, or the early indicators of burnout. The, I think the most relevant ones are energy levels and then engagement. And then there was one more. I don’t, I don’t remember which one it was, but I do remember that after this episode, I started asking myself like on a daily basis, was I productive this week? Did I have a lot of energy? Did I feel like I could cope? Like how was my stress, how were my stress levels? Can I manage or did I feel overwhelmed? And so that’s something that we are also translating into a weekly poll on Slack to every team member so that we can keep an eye on those things. And maybe yeah, detect it early on and do something about it because it sometimes can happen that you hit the wall and that’s it. Your brain just cannot move forward with work related stuff, and it’s very, it is very overwhelming.
Supporting Team Members and Communication Strategies
SD: Yeah. No, and it’s very considerate for you to instill that in your team as well, because I think that’s a wonderful thing to gauge where they’re at, at all times. Because if you have, you know, a bad week for stats or whatever you use to, whatever metric you use to tell how good your team is doing at what they’re doing. I think that to be able to see how they are emotionally, because people say, don’t bring, you know, your personal life to work or whatever, but your emotions are your emotions no matter what point of life you’re in. And to be able to understand where your team is at, and maybe, you know, stats weren’t so good that week, but a lot of team members had a bad week or whatever it may be, is like, you know, that they’re not doing this because they, you know, aren’t capable of it, or that they’re doing it like they’re not doing as good as they normally do because. It’s just sometimes it’s a bad week. And to be able to gauge that is really lovely because, you know, you’re acknowledging that these, your team are people first and foremost, but also that they’re not doing poorly or not as good as normal because of other circumstances, or maybe just, you know, I don’t know. Sometimes you just have a bad day and it has nothing to do with anything that even happened. It’s just, you know, and you know that you have to change something long term if it’s like a regular problem, like in the workload or whatever it may be.
MD: Yeah, absolutely. The idea is to be monitoring this, uh, we cover a week and then if we see that these levels, levels of stress or levels of low energy or low engagement are sustained, then we would have to talk to the person. But sometimes I think even the exercise of asking yourself that makes it come up to the surface because otherwise you might be like very caught up in tasks and deadlines and whatnot and you don’t even notice.
SD: Mm-hmm.
MD: How you are. So I think the exercise of asking yourself or having this tool to ask you makes it even more relevant and it helps to your self-awareness. And yeah, I don’t believe in the, it is just not possible to separate the personal life from the work life’s that we are not in a severance episode.
SD: I was just about to say that. Right.
MD: So yeah, of course everything will impact and there are some, right now we thankfully have some tools like Oliva Health, for example, that are like basically mental health insurance in which you can like talk to other people, to therapists or coaches. I remember heavily using that benefit from my previous employer and it was, I wish more and more companies would offer that as a benefit and it’s for sure on our goals for this year. That’s.
SD: Yeah, I love knowing that agency work specifically, I think can be very stressful because a lot of times it’s about growth and, you know, having that on your back is frightening. On top of it, I think that it’s, I feel like many people in agency work are wearers of many hats and they’re doing a lot of different things that maybe aren’t under their job position umbrella. And to be able to monitor how you’re doing during that time and also have resources to be able to help when you’re doing poorly is really important. I also think that, if you value that, I think that you’re going to have better work done for your company, your clients are gonna be happier. Absolutely. Knowing that, and I think that people don’t prioritize that enough because they don’t think it’s worth it. Or, you know, people are gonna work for a paycheck or whatever it may be, but they’re going to produce their best quality work when they have their best quality of life. And I think that people don’t understand that or like they refuse to acknowledge it a lot of the time.
MD: I just don’t get it. Like, even more in an, in an agency where I. When you step into a managerial role and you start managing people, you no longer work for you. You just work for your people. So I guess we do have, we are very aligned in this, in this concept, in this vision or this understanding of what servant leadership means. And I think that is the best thing that you can, at least from my perspective. It is one of the key things. If the team is well, then I think that we can achieve whatever. So, so yeah, I hope that,
SD: Oh, no, I definitely agree with that and I, I think that what I, I think this is a really helpful topic to talk about, and I’m happy that it’s, it’s a more unique topic than I usually talk about. A lot of times it’s very business marketing related. And this is, but I, I’m happy that we’re talking about this because I do think that this is, I wish that it wasn’t forward thinking. I wish that this was the norm, but unfortunately it isn’t. And I hope that, you know, people do watch this and, you know, think, oh wow, you know, maybe that is important, because it’s.
MD: Please do.
SD: Yeah, please. It’s extremely important. And when you value your team and the work that they do, you know, should make sure that they’re being treated correctly. I, I like make human beings like how you would wanna be treated. And I think that, you know, we’re taught that from a very young age to treat people how you wanna be treated. But then somehow we get in the business world and it’s not in practice often. So I think that it’s really lovely to hear that you guys are instilling that and act actively have goals to do it even better. Because that really shows that, you know, you truly value your team and, you know, everything that they do. Not only, you know, outside of work, but also in work. So that’s really lovely. So thank you for sharing that as well and the importance of it.
MD: Sure.
SD: I’m going to change topics a little bit. But, so, you have been in marketing previously and now being head of operations, is there anything that you have translated from your other roles that have been very helpful in this role specifically? To knowing what the next step is in leading them there. I guess that so being.
MD: No, no, no, you’re perfect. Fine.
SD: So being head of operations, how are you able to manage your team to not only make sure that they are effectively doing their work, but also that they’re effectively communicating? Because I know that that is a very difficult struggle that everyone has is like having teams actually communicating what they’re doing and not kind of being separated and isolated.
MD: Yes, yes. That’s a great question because, I think everyone at the team would agree. We had a very different Break the Web in January 2024. And we have, it has radically changed now in January, 2025.
SD: Congratulations.
MD: Yes, that’s when you started. Thank you. Teamwork, team. Teamwork for sure. And one of the problems, I think at some point, you know, we do an ENPS survey for all the in-house team members. And at some point, results were all being like 10 on everything. And like, not a lot of feedback, you know. So I started, instead of doing that, I schedule like quarterly, 15 minute, uh, uh, sorry, 30 minute, interviews with all the, the, the team, with every team member. And then they started, you know, when you have a natural conversation with people, they start talking and sharing their struggles. One of the struggles was, people not knowing what the other, what the others were doing, which is a common problem. And one of the things that we started doing was, first of all, when every team have their team meetings, we require them to do a recap to share with the rest of the team. So we are informed on that over Slack. And then we started having sort of like a weekly standup with that is, with the entire team, all in-house team. But we are not a lot, we are 10. Or give or take. Channels of communication for different, for different purposes. So you know where to, where to go to if you need anything.
SD: Yeah, I think that there’s, it’s nice to know that you have clear forms of communication, not only that are scheduled, which I think is very helpful. I think it’s very jarring sometimes when you’re like, you get a message that’s like, can you get on a meeting now? I think it’s to plan it out, is very helpful. And especially when it’s a routine thing. I think a lot of people tend to get frazzled when something’s new in their routine. So to have it happen regularly is really effective, I’m sure. And being able to have all these channels that are for very specific things that are organized, I think is a great strategy in order to communicate because everyone knows where everything is at all times if they need it. I think it’s also, it probably takes a load off certain positions. Shoulders because you’re able to get feedback or information from a specific place rather than asking them or whatever it may be. So having things organized I think is very important in that way.
MD: Yeah. Resourcefulness is something important for us, of course, for any small team because you cannot be available all the time. And we work in various different time zones, so we are not online at the same time, all of us. So yeah, I guess that combined with SOPs and having a clear ClickUp structure, knowing who is the owner of what, to be able to go directly to them. Yeah, I think all those things combined work in progress, of course.
SD: Yeah. If anyone has tackled this forever, please contact me and let me know. I would like to have a talk, but yeah, trying to minimize the friction in making sure that everyone is, stays in the loop and understands.
MD: Yeah. No, it’s, it’s, it’s, I think that it’s important for you to say that it’s a work in progress too, because I think that it always is, honestly. I don’t think there’s a perfect way of doing anything, especially. Communicating is difficult for all people, even if there’s a very clear form of doing it. I think it’s a barrier between humans sometimes because even though it bridges the gap, I think everyone does it differently. And so it’s very difficult to have a uniform way of doing it in which, you know, it’s happening optimally. Even more if you add that we have different cultures. It’s very, I didn’t think it was going to be like that, but you start working on it and closely with people from different cultures and it is palpable that we have different ways of understanding things. Since I live in Europe, I might be, I’ve been told I’m very assertive and sometimes like a little direct, very blunt. And I had some people from the US telling me, Hey, maybe you can like soften up your message, you know, like say between the lines. And I’m like, okay, why would I do that? Yeah. And the, and the other day we have a new team member and she was being onboarded and it was a very busy day. And then I was just replying very assertively or succinct, you know, like getting things done. And then at some point I was like, Hmm, I’m gonna send a voice note. She might think I’m being mean. I was like, hey, by the way, all is good. I’m sorry if I’m being blunt or assertive or whatever. Everything is good. I’m just like in getting things done mode and you’re like, oh, I really appreciate the voice note, because this is also a thing, you know, sometimes you need to choose the channel. Yeah. Sometimes you need to adapt to the context. And to avoid people misinterpreting or like, uh, try having to read between the lines, which for me is completely ineffective. But, yeah, what might be clear for me might not be clear for someone else. And that is also something that you need to work with. Voice notes or videos as well is nice to, yeah.
SD: No, that’s a really, I, I love that you acknowledge that too, because I, I, I understand as someone who’s anxious all the time, I do read between the lines way too often, and I’m constantly worried that someone’s mad at me even though I’m doing my work. Right. I, I am always worried, especially if someone’s blunt, specifically, I’m like, oh my God, they’re mad at me because, or whatever reason. And something that is super helpful with that is usually I assume, but usually it’s my boss that I’m scared is mad at me. And if it’s anyone else, I mean, they don’t have the authority to fire me, so I’m not really worried if they’re mad, I’m just kidding. But usually, if he’s not understanding something or whatever, he just calls me or he’s like, can you jump on a call real quick? Yes. And it’s so helpful because especially with misunderstandings, like some things can seem very clear to you when you’re sending it out, but then it’s not clear to a team member or the person that you’re contacting. And I think that’s so helpful because there is, like that even if you seem like you’re doing something simply, there is always communication barriers of how people speak and different ways in which they interpret things. So I think the voice memo thing is really lovely that you do that too. I’d probably think you were mad at me too.
MD: Because I think at least you can just, you have some more social cues, like the tone and the pace and like what words you’re using. I think it’s, it’s different.
SD: Yeah. It’s, and it makes sense too, because you see it as being direct, and to the point, but then someone else can be like, scared.
MD: Yes, yes, I know. It’s, and it’s, it’s just, it’s just a common, you know, it’s just something that happens with life and communicating with others. So it’s not even, but it’s, it’s, it’s lovely that you acknowledge that and try to remedy it so that, you know, your team members might not be a little afraid that you’re mad at them or they’re not doing their jobs effectively.
SD: Yeah, no, it’s like the introduction. How do you like to be managed? And I’m like, by the way, this is how I am. You won’t have to read between the lines account to you directly, if anything.
MD: Mm-hmm. I don’t use sarcasm and that’s it.
SD: The manual of instructions.
MD: It, it’s really lovely though that you’re able to acknowledge that, you know, it’s not, it’s not a fault, it’s just a, you know, different communication styles. So it’s, it’s nice that you acknowledge that. Um, you know, your, your team needs different things sometimes depending on, or depending how they communicate. So it’s, I think that makes a, I think that makes a good leader because it’s not like, okay, this is my way and this is the only way. And it’s, it’s good to, uh, you know, squash any nervousness as soon as possible.
SD: I mean.
MD: I think it’s the role of the manager to adapt to and like, not everyone will need to be managed in the same way. That is just, it is obvious, but it’s not that clear on how to approach it. I have some people that I can just, where we jump into our one-on-ones is just a, Hey, how you been? And bouncing ideas off of each other. And that’s it. And I say, this is the outcome that we need, and you figure it out and that’s perfect. There are some more people that I need to, that I need to lead the way. For which I need to lead the way or that I need a little bit more like check-ins or, you know, different approaches. Some people need a little bit more encouragement, and some others just can be okay on their own. And as long as you don’t bother them, they will come to you. So I think it’s just, it is, it is the duty, in my opinion, of the manager. To understand how the, your direct report needs to be managed and what, what they need and when.
SD: Mm-hmm.
MD: And how to deliver that because it is not like the tone and the topics and the words. Are for sure not the same with any of my drug reports. And that is, that is our role I think.
SD: Yeah, no, I definitely agree and I think that is a very wholesome note to end on ’cause we were a little over time, but that means it was a really great conversation and I, I genuinely really appreciate you talking on these topics. ‘Cause I think a lot of them are, again, as I said earlier, not the norm. And I hope that it can be. I heavily believe in everything that you’re doing, and I am happy that you have even more goals in the future to get even better at doing this because it seems like you really value your team members and how you work with them effectively. And, you know, I, I think that’s a great thing and I think that is how, you know, a business prospers. So I, I appreciate you coming on and telling me about this as well.
MD: Thank you. Thank you so much for sure. Something that we value all of us at Break the Web, team is first. And that is how you get, that is how you get a great output, great product and how that is how you keep your team happy. Your clients are going to be happy for sure.
SD: Mm-hmm. Easier said than done. Yes, of course. It’s a work in progress. Always, always working in progress. Thank you so much.
MD: Thank you so much for the invitation. I had a great time. And yeah, we would love to chat, with anyone or even continue this conversation somewhere else. And thank you so much again for the time and attention and for inviting me.
SD: Of course. Thank you so much for joining me. This was absolutely lovely. I learned a lot and I am very excited for this to get out there and hopefully people will watch it and think, hey. Maybe I should do that too.
MD: Nice. Let’s do it.
SD: Thank you so much again, and everyone watching or listening, thank you so much. I hope you have a lovely day and I hope that your boss implements things in which seems he cares about you too. Thank you. Have a good day.
MD: Thank you all. Bye.
