How to avoid burnout as an entrepreneur – so this is something that I’ve, will say, evolved through, learned through, understood. Because early on, when it was just me as the only coach at WinRate Consulting, I was doing 10-12 hour days of straight back to back coaching calls. And there’s a difference between exhaustion and burnout. I want to start with that. Some days you’re just exhausted. You’ve just poured out, you’ve given all you’ve got. You didn’t get a lot of sleep, maybe drank too much the night before. You’re just exhausted. I don’t think that’s burnout. That’s just, “I’m done with today.”
Burnout, I think, happens when you start to start be disgusted and you stop enjoying the machine you built, the business that you built. Because even on some days when you’re just like, when you first started your company, there were probably days that you were absolutely exhausted, but you were still excited to go back tomorrow. You were still enjoying it, you were still excited about it, it was still this new thing. Burnout happens, I think, when you stop enjoying the business that you built.
So I don’t want to confuse exhaustion with burnout, because there are days you’re going to be exhausted as an entrepreneur. There’s no way around that. There’s long days. There’s a lot of people that are grabbing at your attention, energy. You have clients, vendors, customers, employees, family, friends, whatever. You got a whole bunch of people pulling at you. And ultimately you’re going to feel like you’re letting them all down because you can’t give anybody your full attention when you want to, and that’s exhaustion. That’s going to happen. Don’t avoid that. There’s no easy button to avoid the hard work. Building a company is hard. There are days you’re going to be exhausted.
Burnout, and specifically burnout, is when you start to hate the business that you built. And trust me, this happens to people. That happens and it’s your fault. And I’m going to say this because I love you and I care about you, but burnout is your fault. What leads to burnout, and how to avoid or maybe even come back from burnout, is you built a machine the wrong way. You piecemealed it, you band-aided it, you duct taped it together. You didn’t make intentional decisions. You don’t have a clear vision of where you want to go. You don’t have clear core values. You don’t have a structure around your business. You don’t have SOPs. So every day is different. That leads to burnout.
Exhaustion, normal. Long, hard days. That’s how you feel like you’ve earned it, you deserve it, you’ve built it, you did it. That’s exhaustion. Burnout happens when you are just physically, every single day, doing something different. You don’t know why you’re doing it. You don’t know how to do it today. Your employees, the turnover is bad, the culture is bad, the attitude is bad, the communication is bad. So you start not looking forward to going to work because you know it’s not built as good as it could be.
So one of the best ways to avoid burnout is to take the time to build systems, processes, structure, culture, core values, a clear mission, a clear vision, a clear understanding of what we’re doing and how we’re doing it and what success looks like for us. If you can’t answer that right now, what is the mission of your company? What is the vision of where you’re going next? What are the core values that judge it? If you don’t know how to do that, I just released a video in the last couple of months or so about how to create core values for your business. If we want to link that somewhere right here, edit team, something like this, but I’m not going to get deep into that.
But if you can’t answer those three questions, burnout is either already happening or is inevitable. Because every day you’re going to show up to work and you’re going to be reactive to your environment, not proactive. You’re going to show up today and say, “I’m going to work as hard as I can. I’m going to come back tomorrow and I’m going to do it again.” That is not a good way to run your business. You want to be more proactive. You want to make more intentional decisions.
So right now, if you’re feeling burnt out, I would stop. I would send everybody home for like a week. Just tell your customers, tell your employees, “Look, I need to get control of this because I’m not enjoying it anymore. And if I’m not enjoying it, I either am or will be burnt out and the whole ship will sink.” So that’s the hard decision to make as an entrepreneur sometimes. Sometimes you need to stop and pivot aggressively.
Ideally, you catch it before that happens, but realistically, you have to stop and pivot aggressively, which means I’m going to stop. I’m going to figure out what we’re doing. I’m going to figure out why we’re doing. I’m going to figure out how we’re going to do it. I’m going to figure out when we’re going to do it. I’m going to figure out what core values, what’s going to judge the success of our team? How are we going to hold people accountable? How are we going to reprimand? How are we going to promote? How are we going to hire? You need to develop those SOPs before you can take another step forward.
Because most people, and I’ve proven this in the coaching calls, I’m pointing my computer because I do all my coaching calls virtually, once I can teach you how to develop those SOPs, we’ll say systems and strategies, you will start to enjoy your business again and the burnout will go away. You will still have exhaustive days, because that’s just part of growing a business. You can’t avoid that. But you can avoid the burnout or even come back from burnout.
Because if you’re going into work tomorrow, as an owner, and you don’t want to be around your employees, you don’t like the way your customers are being treated, you don’t like the way your processes are, you got paperwork all over the office, you have employees that show up late or don’t care, you have vendors that don’t do what they say they’re going to do, you have bills that are passed due, credit cards that are maxed out, you have a wife that’s up your ass because you’re never home, you have kids that don’t even like you anymore, I’d fucking hate my life too. I would feel burnt out because I would feel like I’m not winning anywhere.
But you can solve each of those problems, and I’m telling you this from experience. People pay me a whole lot of money for me to help them solve those problems. So for you to avoid burnout, start to solve some of those things proactively. Start to hire more intentionally, start to set SOPs in place so there’s consistency to the work environment, start holding people accountable to the standards. Develop the standards, the core values, the way that things need to be done. Hold people accountable to that. Make sure that you’re setting the standard. You’re showing up on time, you’re doing what’s right. The team will typically fall in place or they can get off the ship. Start to develop time management skills around what needs your time and when, and hold yourself accountable to that, including time for your family and your kids.
Develop more of a mental health routine. Don’t drink as much, work out, drink enough water. Even guys like Ryan and I, which most people look at and say, “These guys are pretty in control,” we have each dealt with either on the verge or had burnout because we didn’t have the right team, we didn’t have the right people in place. We cycled through employees for a period of time. Like in 2021, I hired and fired 10 people. Literally, between ACS and WinRate, I made some hires, they didn’t work out. I know Ryan went through that too at one point and made some hires, didn’t work out. That can lead to frustration, that can lead to exhaustion, but it can lead to burnout as well.
This might be actually the point. Sometimes business owners forget they are fully in control of what does and doesn’t happen in their ecosystem. They start to become reactive to their employees, reactive to their clients, reactive to their vendors, and they start to build a business that is not what they wanted it to be, but they feel like they have to do it that way. You can decide what your business looks like. You can decide what your SOPs look like. You can decide what your daily routine looks like. You can make that decision.
But ultimately, if you want to avoid burnout, have systems in place, have consistency in place, have standards in place, have accountability in place, have a set understanding of what your ideal client looks like. Because I guarantee, right now, if you’re burnt out, it’s because you don’t even like the customers you’re working with anymore. Because you’re chasing money or you’re chasing this or your service is dog shit, so good customers don’t even want to do business with you anymore. Maybe you have so many bad reviews, the only customers you can get are the customers no one else wants. Yeah, that’s going to lead to some burnout too.
So start to build a plan, build an image, decide what you want it to look like and how you want it to run, and then don’t stop till you build that. And stop allowing the standard to be minimized or digress back because you don’t have employees that are willing to live up to it. Hold them to that standard or replace them.
Not firing fast enough will lead to burnout maybe faster than anything, because you just can’t feel like you win. You feel like you did a good job, you feel like you poured into them, you feel like you trained them, you feel like you held them accountable, you feel like you did everything they needed. You can’t even get them to show up on time. You can’t get them to stop smoking in customers homes. You can’t get them to stop showing up drunk or high. That’s your fault. Because you don’t get them to stop doing that, you fucking fire them and you hire somebody that’s better, because your interview process should be based around the standards and the values and the mission of the company.
So there’s a whole lot that goes into that. I’m not expecting you to take this video and change your life. But I would tell you right now, make a list of everything you don’t like about your company. It could be the employees, the customers, the processes, the consistency, the culture, the communication, the price point, the content, the client satisfaction, whatever it is. Make a list of everything you don’t like about your company and then start making changes to shorten that list.
If you don’t do that, even if that list doesn’t expand, at some point you just won’t want to go to work anymore because you’re tired of what you built. And you are in control. Stop being reactive. Stop being, we’ll say, subdued by your audience, aka your customer base, your client base, your employee base, making you feel like you have to do things a certain way. If it doesn’t live up to who you want to be or what you want to be known for, take massive action to fix that. Fire three people tomorrow. I promise you, the rest of people in your company, the rest of your employees will thank you for making that hard decision, and they’ll start working harder to backfill the need.
But ultimately, as long as you keep building something that you don’t want, eventually you’ll be burnt out and you will not feel like you’re winning fast or winning often.
Take care of yourself. Step into the unknown and take a risk. It’s ok to take a breather. You can do this!
