Video Transcript
00:02
Welcome back to Callahan’s Corners where you ask the
00:05
questions. We have some live right here on Facebook. Well,
00:08
got a really good question. Was answered or asked in a Facebook
00:11
group about owner or business owner burnout. Um so, I’m going
00:15
to open up my phone here and actually read the question. So,
00:19
um it was it a uh contractor’s group. So, this is applicable
00:23
to any service business but the the question itself kind of hit
00:26
home because I’ve been here several times. Uh so, how do
00:28
you deal with burnout? I’m finding it harder and harder to
00:31
get out of bed each and get to work Coming off the winter
00:34
season. I’m always excited and ready to work but by July,
00:37
that’s all gone. I’d start, I’ve still got another 3 months
00:41
of mowing to do. So, it’s interesting. Um Anthony here
00:45
made a comment and I don’t disagree with Anthony’s comment
00:48
but I’m going to kind of give you the four maybe five things
00:51
that I recommend to avoid owner burnout and how to actually go
00:55
in and get over this hump. Um so after scaling two seven
00:59
figure businesses, trust me, I’ve been here more than a few
01:02
times. Um so, there’s certain things that I’ve learned on my
01:05
own as well as having mentors and going and doing some
01:08
research. I’m going to break this down for you but uh
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Anthony’s response, I I guess I don’t totally disagree with
01:13
this. He says, it’s because you’re stagnant in your comfort
01:16
zone. Do something crazy like expand your company to a point
01:19
where you can work on the business instead of work in it.
01:21
Well, uh II think before you go to expand that business when
01:27
you’re burned out, that’s not going to be the ultimate
01:29
answer. Because I’ve done that. We’ve gone out and we’ve gone
01:32
out and grown by fifty or 100% um year after year and simple
01:36
growth and just doing that isn’t going to stop the
01:40
burnout. Actually, sometimes that will accelerate the
01:42
burnout um especially if you don’t have the right key people
01:45
on your team or processes or systems. So, the first thing
01:49
I’m looking at here is building a team. We need to build a team
01:53
to delegate. So, I don’t know Um if John’s question here, if
01:57
he is an owner operator, if he has a team a small team but I
02:02
guess it really doesn’t matter where you’re at. If you’re a
02:05
solo entrepreneur or a company that owns multi-million burnout
02:09
for the owner is a real thing. So, the first thing I’m going
02:12
to think about is building a team. Now, if you’re a solo
02:16
entrepreneur in the field, doing everything you may think
02:17
about, well, Mike, how would I build a team? Well, if you’re
02:21
not building an internal team that you are utilizing a field,
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we’re in the office, I’m going to recommend building a team of
02:28
virtual assistants. So, going in and getting a bunch of
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people to take some of the things off your plate that you
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just are going to cause burnout or you’ll never get to if
02:35
you’re burned out. So, that would be handling a virtual
02:39
assistant like a pink collars or hiring a CPA, and a
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financial accountant to make sure that these certain things
02:45
are being taken care of. The the bill, the scheduling, Um so
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on a high level, that’s what we’re talking about. Building a
02:51
team that can support you but really that’s not going to help
02:53
the burnout. So, what I’m going to recommend is for simple
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things that you can do immediately to Alleviate
03:00
owner’s burnout. The first one is going in and literally
03:03
blocking out your schedule. So, if you are not using G Suite
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for business, I recommend getting G Suite for business.
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It’s going to be able to get you a web-based domain Email.
03:11
So, Mike at Simple Growth Systems.com um but it’s going
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to give you better email deliverability but what also G
03:18
Suite for Business is going to do is get you access to AG
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Suite calendar. So, whether you have one person on your team
03:25
just being you or 100 people on your team, you can have access
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to these calendars of your team members but what I’m going to
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recommend just for today’s talk is blocking out certain things
03:35
in your day throughout the week that are for you. So, you may
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block out time to get your **** done. You may be blocking out
03:42
time for equipment maintenance. You may be blocking out time to
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go over your financials. Whatever those things are but
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within those blocks, we need to block out time for you to
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either work or relax or reset and we also need to block in
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some time for you just literally to do nothing but
04:00
focus on the strategy and the vision of the business because
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that time, whether you’re reading or out for a walk or
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whatever that is, that can be just as important, if not more
04:10
important than actually going out in the field or managing
04:12
the guys and girls in the field doing the work. So, we need to
04:14
go out and block your schedule. So, um tip number one is block
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your schedule in G Suite um for business blocks or if you’re
04:23
using another calendar program, we need to block out the time
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you’re working in the business on the business Most
04:28
importantly, in the time that you’re resetting from the
04:31
business, you gotta guard those blocks uh with your life or if
04:34
your admin is there, those blocks are not to be touched in
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unless absolutely needed and it has to have prior approval but
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I’m in my schedule. I’ve got times on Tuesday, Thursday
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where I block out strategically. So, I am not
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getting burned out Next step number two is no matter the
04:51
size of the business, we need to figure out how to go in and
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spend a little time upfront, how to organize the business,
04:57
and then automate the business and eventually, we can use that
05:00
system to go out and dominate your market but the main thing
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is we want to go in and organize all the systems and
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processes. The three main areas we want to look at right off
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the bat are our sales and marketing systems. So,
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basically, sales systems, we want to automate and organize
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our employee system. So, employee recruiting, training,
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and onboarding and then the third is have something I call
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repetitive tasks All the daily, weekly, monthly coeur d’alene
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annually things. So, burnout will happen when you having
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these repetitive tasks and use the business owner have to go
05:31
out and tell everybody what to do. So, it’s time to handle the
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accounts receivable. It’s a time to go out and sharpen the
05:37
lawn mower blades. It’s time to do equipment maintenance. It’s
05:40
time to do the estimate and if you as the business owner have
05:43
to tell everybody what to do, when to do it, how to do it,
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and if it’s not getting done, you have to follow back up.
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That is going to be a key source of burnout and
05:51
frustration. So, what we want to do is block our schedule and
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step number two is and then automate our sales. employee
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and repetitive task systems. So, all the mundane and
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repetitive things that are burning you out right now will
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come to an end or get significantly better Next
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thing, tip number three is we want to go in and within
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blocking that schedule. If you don’t have someone to do this
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for you but a virtual assistant would be a great option or your
06:20
internal office staff is we want to track our KPIs, our key
06:23
performance indicators, and Tip number three, you might say,
06:27
well, Mike, that’s adding more work to my plate. Why would I
06:29
want to do that? I’m I’m worried about burnout. Well, a
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lot of times burnout and frustration is having the lack
06:35
of in your business and knowing what’s going on. So, is it cash
06:40
flow? Is it the amount of jobs? Is it cancellation not knowing
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what’s going on can lead to frustration and burnouts? We
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want a clear picture of our key performance indicators. So, the
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main things that I’m going to be looking at are going in is
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how many clients do we have How many clients have cancelled and
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what are our net new clients. So, we’re looking at client
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acquisition and retention and satisfaction all in one KP.
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Second one is going to be financial KPIs. So, account
07:10
receivable and accounts payable. We need to go in and
07:12
build a budget and we need to track at least on a weekly
07:15
basis how much people owe us. How much is current, How much
07:19
is past due from one to 30 days? thirty-one to 6061 to
07:23
ninety, and ninety plus. So, we’ve got our KP. We’ve got our
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financial money. KPIs. So, people start owing us money and
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things start spinning out of control That’s going to cause
07:33
burnout and stress. So, you want to have an idea on that as
07:35
well and then your third KP, I’m going to leave that open
07:38
for you. Um there’s a lot of things you can do but I
07:41
recommend only three main drivers that we’re focusing on.
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So, what it depending on what point of your business, what’s
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going to drive you strategically to the next step
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where you want to go um but sales and customer retention is
07:55
probably definitely be one in financials as a second. The
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third, you’re going to figure out what that is um and I’ve
08:00
got some ideas around that but I’m going to leave that one
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open up to you. What is the main thing that’s stressing you
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out? You want clarity on to avoid that burnout Now, we
08:09
block the schedule. We’ve organized and automated it and
08:12
we’ve tracked the KPIs that are going to give you clarity. So,
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the next thing logically is we need to take a freaking
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vacation. Sounds crazy. How do we take a vacation in the
08:23
middle of the season? Well, I will tell you whether it’s a
08:26
long weekend. I’m recommending a whole week if you can do it,
08:28
if you’re not in the field still doing the work, we to go
08:31
out and block out a vacation and I will tell you that some
08:34
of the biggest wins in my business have come when I’ve
08:38
actually disconnected from the business for five to 7 days or
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10 days um because once you reset as a business owner, even
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if you’re sitting by the pool, having a cocktail, the mind
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starts working but what you can do and you’re you start
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thinking about the strategic things, the strategy, and the
08:55
visionand that’s what a business owner is supposed to
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You set the vision and you set the strategy and hire a
09:01
team to implement it. Whether it’s subcontractors, internal
09:03
employees, virtual assistants but your job as a business
09:07
owner is to set the vision and the strategy to that vision but
09:10
if we’re in the grind day to day burned out, it’s not going
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to happen. So, yes, I suggest you take at least a three,
09:17
probably a full week vacation if we can and block it out and
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right here, I’m telling you right now, this phone will be
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the detriment of that vacation. So, when I used to go on
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vacation in the early days before I became disciplined and
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build a team that could fully run the business is I literally
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took my phone. If we’re going to a hotel and locked it in the
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safe and literally and once I put it in there, I actually had
09:42
my wife put the code in there so, I wasn’t tempted to do it
09:44
with the keypad and I could not get into that safe unless it
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was an emergency and if there was an emergency, my crew
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leader and the guy running the company had my wife’s cellphone
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and he would call her directly but that forced me to
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disconnect. So, the thing is if you can afford to do it for
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that blacked out time, whether it’s an hour, hour and a half,
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do it throughout the week. Disconnect from the phone and
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use that strategy or that break to really disconnect and focus
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on the strategy of your vision or have a mental reset um but
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without doing such, you will burn out and you continue to
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burn out. So, the main idea here is the top four things we
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need to block our our schedule to protect ourselves and block
10:24
our schedule for the things that have to get done so we
10:26
know when they’re going to get done and it’s not stressful
10:29
We’re going to organize and automate. We’re going to look
10:31
at our KPIs. That’s going to be our our customer numbers, our
10:34
sales retention, and cancellations. Second, KPI is
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going to be our financials. Third one is going to be
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whatever you decide to go strategically to grow to that
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business, to the next level, that clarity um to be able to
10:46
see everything on a daily and weekly basis is going to make
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you less stressed. Um we’re going to hopefully start eating
10:51
healthy and working out. I’m preaching to the choir here.
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I’m trying to get back in the gym a little bit Um in the
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fourth is take a vacation 3 days if you can. at a minimum,
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I’m recommending seven to 10 days. Take your cellphone, put
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it in the hotel safe, and do not answer that phone unless
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it’s emergency and if you have a friend or a spouse with you
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or girlfriend, have that phone number, their phone given to
11:14
whoever’s in charge and they call only if it’s an emergency.
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That way, you are not tempted to start checking your Email
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and you’re not returning phone calls and you’re not getting
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back into. that because what you’ll find a lot of times is
11:26
when you get back is you’re actually the bottle of growth.
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You’re you’re actually implement. You’re hindering the
11:31
growth of your business and you trying to micromanage
11:34
everything is really causing all the stress and burnout. So,
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I will tell you after scaling two seven figure businesses,
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these are just a few of the takeaways but if the business
11:42
owner is not going to take care of themselves and take time to
11:45
themselves and focus on the strategy and vision and focus
11:49
on blocking the schedule going out and automating the
11:52
business. So, what should happen always happen without
11:54
them. The KPIs, key performance indicators, and taking you’ll
11:59
be stuck in a perpetual state of in and out of burnout in the
12:02
final closing thought here is if you are burned out or you
12:05
feel burned out, coming in, reset now because the biggest
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issue and especially in a seasonal service business is
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that you’re fixed in general ministry of overhead. Your
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expenses are all being recovered from March or
12:17
February depending where you’re at in the country up through
12:20
the end of November to December. what you’re going to
12:23
see is the end of September beginning of October, you’ve
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recovered of those fixed costs. So, your cost of doing
12:30
business, your overhead is already recovered. So, anything
12:32
you can push and drive extra profitable sales at the end of
12:36
the year and Q four our bottom line profits and just like this
12:40
gentleman’s question, he’s burned out. So, by the time you
12:43
get to get to the fall, you foot off the gas pedal and
12:45
you’ve literally lost out on the majority of the profits.
12:49
you’re going to make all the profits you could make. So, I
12:51
want to see you go out and break some comments on this
12:54
whether it’s live recorded, get a hold of you, calendars. Block
12:57
your schedule. I want you to organize and automate it. I
13:00
want you to check your KPIs, or clarity. So, there’s less
13:02
stress and I I want you to take a vacation and if you’re
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watching this recorded, if you haven’t taken a vacation,
13:08
commit to yourself, write down. Hey, Mike. I’m doing a 4 week
13:11
vacation or I’m doing a week vacation. I’m doing it a long
13:13
weekend and let’s hear about it. I want to see publicly
13:17
commit to taking some time off to reset and put the phone in
13:20
the hotel safe wherever you’re going and let your team have a
13:24
contact that’s with you. if it’s an emergency, We’ll see
13:26
you again at Callahan’s Corner. Great question. We’ll see you
13:28
again tomorrow. Callahan’s Corner US Questions. We have
13:31
some live right here on