Episode 13# Getting past burnout
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[00:00:00] Hey, welcome back to the Retail Initiative Podcast. I'm thankful you're here. Can I just say, if you are enjoying this, this podcast, could you leave a review? Let us know what you think? And honestly, that is one of the best ways that we can connect with other retailers and make an impact and their life.
[00:00:17] But today what I want to talk about is something a little bit personal and I wanna talk about burnout and specifically how to get away from it and, you know, share some of my story in it. So, About a year ago, I was just over my business. I don't know if you've ever been in that space. I just, I wanted nothing to do with it and everything just felt like a chore.
[00:00:42] Marketing I, something I love, I was like, I don't wanna touch it. Sales, something I love. I didn't, I hated getting on calls, uh, team meetings, like all this stuff just. Was draining all of my energy, and I realized, I was like, I, I think I'm just burnt out and I [00:01:00] wanna, I want to quit. And I won't lie, like it crossed my mind of like, do I just shut this thing down and do something else?
[00:01:07] Is that the solution? And for you, maybe sometimes that, maybe that is the right answer, but I, in hindsight, like that wasn't the right thing. And luckily that's not what I did. And so I wanna share what I did and what I've seen work in some other people. That has helped them escape burnout. Like if you aren't excited about your business, try some of these things.
[00:01:29] Cause I think they're effective. So the first thing above anything else is don't rush to an answer. I think a lot of times we hate the in between. We hate ambiguity. We hate not knowing the next step, and sometimes that it's okay to not know the next step. It's okay to not know what the next thing is going to look like and just go through the motions for a brief season and don't worry about advancing so much.
[00:01:58] It's okay to pull back a little [00:02:00] bit and not rush getting answers. And that leads to the next part that I think is necessary and it's to get away from it. And I don't mean like take a month off, two months off. I mean take a vacation. And maybe you can't do a full vacation, but any amount of time off, away from the business, don't read business books.
[00:02:21] Don't plan for the business. Try your best to not even think about it. Like when I, when I went on vacation a few weeks ago, I deleted Gmail, slack, Basecamp, all the apps that I would've checked, I just deleted them from my phone. I didn't want to be be on them at all. Get away from it for a little, for a brief period.
[00:02:41] And the interesting thing that happens here is when we rest our brain behind the scenes is like connecting things that it otherwise wouldn't connect. Like did you know Lin Manuel Miranda was burned out and went on vacation and he got the entire idea for Hamilton on a vacation in a [00:03:00] pool? This is the same reason why you get ideas in the shower, you aren't thinking about it and your brain is processing things that you aren't even thinking about.
[00:03:08] And that's like taking you to those conclusions that you need. The, the phrase sometimes to speed up you have to slow down, could not be more true. And so sometimes the easiest thing to do to solve a problem is to stop thinking about the problem and rest is one of the best ways to do that. And some of you need like a real vacation.
[00:03:30] You need to take a month off. You need to take as much time as you possibly can, even if it hurts. You need to pull away from it because otherwise it's going to kill your team. It's gonna kill your business. And I would much rather hurt for a month, but do well in the long run than just try to suffer through it.
[00:03:49] So if you're feeling that the first thing to do is to pull away from it, and I do this at two levels and I haven't been good about this forever. This has really been something over the last year that I've [00:04:00] worked on. Is one bigger pulling away, like this is vacations where you purposely. Get away from the business.
[00:04:07] This could be a long weekend or like a full week or whatever. Um, and find an a activity that's restful for you. And look, I realize like I have kids and when I go on vacation, I know that vacations are not vacations, but I'm still away from it and I'm not thinking about it. I'm focused on other things in environments that are a lot more fun.
[00:04:26] And sometimes this is staycations or whatever. That's what my wife and I are doing this weekend, is like, we booked all the fun. My, the kids are with grandparents and so we booked all the fun stuff in Houston that we would never otherwise do. So rest and get away from it in longer, in, in increments. And then micro like.
[00:04:44] What are small things that you can do to pull away from it? Uh, like for me as like where my wife and I are members of this like club, it's not a country club. It's, I can't even explain it, what it is. It's in Houston. It's owned by Mattress Mac, if you've heard of him. Um, [00:05:00] but it's like a Zoom meets a gym, meets a family park, meets a water park, all this stuff.
[00:05:05] And I check my kids into childcare and I lay by the pool. And I read, and I don't even read business books half the time. I read like biographies and nerdy stuff. And those small moments sometimes just help my brain get past like the overwhelm that I'm thinking. And so again, bigger pulling away and like bigger increments.
[00:05:24] And then just making time for rest where you can, because let's be real, most of our lives don't have room for trips all the time, but we can pull away on a Saturday afternoon. We can take an early Friday off or take Monday morning off and just let yourself go for a walk and enjoy the morning and don't check your email.
[00:05:44] The next thing I did read, build, try to build back curiosity, like don't obsess over. What thing are we going to do next? What marketing tactic? Do we do next? Just build curiosity around like, Hey, I wonder what strategies are [00:06:00] working right now. And books and podcasts and webinars and all those things can be so helpful there.
[00:06:07] And I, I was able to build back a curiosity and a fascination with marketing and I got excited about it again. And I think one of the biggest things that led to that was I was reading and I wasn't worried about immediately turning around and implementing. And look, you might be in the opposite scenario.
[00:06:23] A lot of us are readers and we never implement, and I've been in that, that space. But I had the opposite problem I could read and I only wanted to implement what I was reading, and I had to kind of break that for a little bit and just learn. And that helped me get past my burnout. And then the third thing that I did was I, I had to get excited about the business.
[00:06:45] And when I'm working like two feet in front of me, I can't. Like that was so hard to just look at what's the next month, what's gonna get more leads? What's gonna do this thing right now? Instead, I had to think like, okay, what is the business that I could be excited [00:07:00] about? And so I opened up a Google doc and I wrote out these two scenarios and I wrote them five years in the future.
[00:07:07] And so I was like, look, today is, you know, July 1st, 2027, and this is what's taking place. Or Right, I guess I wrote that a year ago, so now it'd be 2028. Um, but what is taking place? And I wrote out these scenarios and I talked about what does my team culture look like? What impact are we making in with who?
[00:07:28] Who are we working with and what type of services are we doing? And are we doing products or what, what things are we doing? And I wrote out these two scenarios and I could get excited about both of them. And by having a vision, a okay, this is where I can head in that thing. I can get excited about. And if you can get excited about that, you can start to reverse engineer and say, okay, what do I need to do today to get to that?
[00:07:54] Because if we're just operating two feet in front of us, it's so challenging to ever [00:08:00] move towards something we can be excited about. And so for me, I mean, these were simple visions. You know, one, I. But in both cases, the, the team culture was unbelievable and our impact was massive. And in one, we kind of kept doing what we're doing now and we stay small on purpose, and we just get so selective on who we work with.
[00:08:18] And the second scenario was really building out this full deal where we're like, yes, we have the design and development strategy that we do now, but we're adding in. Like full service marketing and then we have courses and all these other pieces and I was like, oh my gosh. Like that would be incredible.
[00:08:35] But so would the other, and you know what? Like since then and I just moved forward saying, Hey, both of these are good. And I know that some of my next steps lead to either one and so I can keep moving forward. But I've since then gotten clarity on which one it is. And when I got clarity, it was not while I was thinking about it.
[00:08:54] It was leaving vacations when I had pulled away. So that's my encouragement for you. [00:09:00] I, if your burnout, if you're not excited about your business anymore, is one, like pull away from it. Don't obsess over getting an answer. Just let yourself focus on something else. Second, if you, if you leave and you're like, okay, I can, I, I think.
[00:09:15] I think this could work. Then try to get excited again by just learning and reading and getting back into it, but without obsessing over implementation. And then third is, is to spell out a vision that you can get excited about the impact that you're making, what you're doing. And don't obsess over money here.
[00:09:32] Money's only a part of it, but what does your life look like? And I saw something where I was like, my life can look like this and I love it. And so now I'm excited about my business again. And I think that if you can do some of these things, I think you can as well. So I hope this is encouraging. This subject's hard, but it's important and a lot of us need to be talking about it.
[00:09:52] So if this was encouraging for you, leave a review or shoot me a DM at retail. Josh, I would love to hear from you. So I'll see you next week.
