How My Burn Out Can Help You

It’s been a fascinating couple of months. If you’ve been able to sink into the wide range of emotions something like this can bring up, you may be starting to feel like we’ve been given the opportunity to reset like we’ve never been given before. Priorities are changing for everyone. I know for me and my friends, there’s a focus on slowing down. Connecting more. Connecting more deeply to ourselves, to our purpose, to our families, to our beloved friends. A focus on having enough, but not too much. A focus on creating and expressing. A focus on living deeply. I don’t know one person that wants to do post-quarantine life the same way they did life before the pandemic. I’m sure this looks different for all of us but I’m sure you feel it on some level.

In today’s episode I want to capitalize on that feeling of transformation but acknowledge that although you may want to show up to life differently, you may not know how. And there’s a danger that it might feel easier to push all that inspiration away and go back to the way things were.

A similar transformation occurred for me in my mid-late twenties. I landed a killer job working for a super cool company with fun, smart leaders. They were growing rapidly and needed someone young and willing to do anything to run point. I threw myself into it. I didn’t have kids or a serious relationship so it was easy for me to work around the clock and travel anywhere they needed me to be. It was exciting and our efforts were paying off in really big ways. Those results were my sole focus for 4 years. I was getting everything done and I was making life easier for the rest of the team but if you looked behind the curtain, I was a mess. I wasn’t focused on HOW I was getting things done so that meant I was literally working around the clock. 

We were making it up as we went so there was an unavoidable element of messiness that I could have expected but I was taking it to a whole new level. By the time I started to see ways to improve my efficiency, it was too late. I was totally burned out. I had a premature mid-life crisis, left my job and started teaching yoga and thai massage. You can imagine how transformative that was.

Although yoga is still a large part of my life, I eventually found my way back to a desk. In hindsight, the job that took me down is still one of the best jobs I’ve had. I loved the vision, the product, the people I got to work with and the relationships I built. I haven’t found anything like it since. 

While I don’t regret my choices, I did give a long, hard look at how to avoid walking away from something so good ever again. As a result, I’ve spent the last 8 years automating me and my teams out of jobs. I jump on anything I see that can be automated, any process that’s clunky, involves too many steps or leaves too much room for error or creates too many customer touch points. At the end of that tunnel usually sits a way to make more money with the same resources.

Once you decide to transform from the mindset of:

It’s supposed to be this hard.

Busy is my purpose

It’s not that bad, I can handle it.

You’re business and your life will flourish. You know your business better than anyone so if you give it a good look, you’ll see the same things. Or you might be on the burn out edge and don’t have the energy to see it. If that’s that case you may need help to find your way there but I guarantee you WILL flourish. 

One of my first consulting clients was an ER physician. She had been trained in so many ways to be precise and efficient. Lives were literally at stake if she wasn’t. She had a really profitable side hustle but even with her years of training, she had a hard time seeing where she was losing time in her other business. After working together, her revenue grew and she reclaimed 35% of her time.

You can absolutely have the life you want, that you’ve been dreaming of. 

Every two weeks, we share tools and suggestions for running a well-oiled machine. You can sign up to get those by visiting:

www.clutchbusinesses.com/start-here

and you’ll get a free audio training to get things started. 

If you need fast-acting relief, you can set up time to talk with us about the opportunities that exist in your business at:

www.clutchbusinesses.com/schedule-meeting

Our process involves less than 3 hours of your time. We gather data from you, find solutions and with your thumbs up, we fully implement everything so you can see results immediately.

Please remember I believe in you and your business.