Hello everyone and welcome back to Building Billions, I'm Natalie Dawson and today we're diving deep into the ever-relevant topic of burnout.
As entrepreneurs, we're constantly juggling the demands of our business with our personal lives, striving to find that elusive balance. I’ll share my personal strategies on how to integrate work and life seamlessly, the importance of prioritizing projects that truly excite you, and why saying 'no' can be your best defense against burnout.
Join me as I discuss how I've navigated these challenges while growing a business from zero to generating over $150 million in revenue. I will go over how to maintain your health without stressing over perfection, and the power of humor to lighten the load during tough times.
Whether you're feeling overwhelmed or just looking for ways to optimize your energy and enthusiasm, this episode is packed with insights to help you thrive without burning out. Let’s build and scale remarkable businesses together, while enjoying every step of the journey. Tune in and let’s get started!
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Let's talk about burnout. This is an incredibly popular topic inside the entrepreneurial community, where there's difficulty and confusion and frustration around how do you create a business that you love that's successful while also having your life feel fulfilled? And this idea of burnout, when something is not going well and things are overwhelming and you're stressed out and you're frustrated, it might start to feel like you're getting burnt out. I will never forget when Grant Cardone was in a conference a few years ago, and he said this quote that forever changed my perspective on this topic of burnout. He said, you can't burn out. You are not a candle. I really like this as a framework because if you don't think and never believe that you can burn out, you're going to make choices that are different and are in accordance with sustaining your output, sustaining where you want to go, sustaining what you do every single day. Because if you didn't think that you could burn out, you're not going to burn out. So what are the things that I specifically do? While over the past five years, alongside my husband and the cartoons, going from zero in revenue to creating a company with hundreds of employees, with over $150 million in revenue that we will generate just this year. Now, don't get me wrong. There are moments of overwhelm, but I never think of myself as, oh, I'm feeling burnt out because I put these things in place that allow me to just integrate my work and my life. The first one would be I integrate my work in my life. You'll notice I'm sitting here in my home right now. I'm not at the office. I'm in my sweatpants. I don't know if you can see this. I'm not that flexible. I'm literally in my sweatpants because I'm integrating my work and my life, and I don't put these constraints on myself inside our business that I have to be somebody I'm not. I'm good with my team seeing me and my sweatpants. I'm good with them being in my house and things not being all put together all the time. When you feel burnt out, you might want to ask yourself this question. Do you feel like you're having to be somebody that you're not? When I feel like I'm having to be this, like, perfect version of Natalie that fits in this box, yeah, that can be exhausting, because I'm not being myself. But if you are being yourself and you're setting that example for your team and you're creating that environment in your business, you are going to get further and you're not going to feel like you have to pretend or put on some facade. That's exhausting. You're just being you. The second thing that I do in our business to avoid burnout is I choose to work on projects that are exciting to me. This weekend, there's a weekend. We don't have an event, so what am I going to do tomorrow? I'm going to record the audiobook for my new book that's coming out called Start the Work. This audiobook is something that's exciting to me. I loved getting to write this book. I was passionate about writing this book. It was something that I recognized over the next ten years. I was going to be so proud of myself for actually finishing, so I don't feel burnt out that I have to go record my audiobook. What a gift. And a cool thing that today Natalie, at 31 years old, gets to go do this. If you would have told me that I got to do this ten years ago and that this is what my career would look like, I would be over the moon. I wouldn't have believed you that I would be on my second book already. And so you have to choose projects that you are actually interested in, that you feel are making an impact and furthering you in getting to where you want to go. Speaking of, if you want to order my new book, you should go to Carter ventures.com/start the work. It is amazing. I put blood, sweat and tears. Well, I don't know that I put blood in and I really didn't sweat that much while writing it. And I don't remember crying, but I did put a lot of effort and hard work into the book. And if you're interested in growing and scaling, it has the best tactics. But back to burnout. The next thing that I prioritize is my health. I work out almost every single day, and I choose to eat things that make me feel good, but I also don't beat myself up if I'm not perfect in those areas. That's how you feel burnt out. You beat yourself up and you're frustrated and you're mad at yourself for maybe not being the perfect expectation that you have of yourself. So I try to eat healthy most days, but if I decide that I want to have cake for two meals in one day, which might have happened just a few weeks ago, I'm not stressed about it. I'm just going to eat cake for two meals in a row. Who cares? Don't feel like you just have to put yourself in this confinement where you're setting all of these systems up for yourself, and you feel trapped in the decisions that you have to make every single day. Yes, ideally, you're making great decisions on behalf of you, your body, your business, and the people who depend on you. But if you aren't perfect, that is okay. The expectation is always so much worse than what reality really is. It is not that big of a deal. If you do not perfectly take care of yourself and do self care all the time, do what works for you, where you feel like you are empowered by the decisions that you make each and every day. One thing that changed everything for me as it related to burnout is saying no. I say no so often the majority of the time I'm saying no. If you want to get lunch with me, no. If you want to go get dinner with me, no. If you want to go see a movie, nope. Not going to happen. I'm not interested in doing things that don't interest me. And oftentimes as business owners, especially if you're starting out or you're just getting going, you're having to break the habits and break the routines that you've been in in the past. And you've likely had more time in the past than you do today. By saying no to things that are not getting you closer to your goals.
You are.
Freeing yourself of the burnout. You're freeing yourself of the expectation that your family members put on you. Your friends might put on you. Complete strangers might put on you. You're just saying no, this is not the right time for me now. One of my hacks for this is if I'm going to say no to somebody, I'm going to say, oh, you know, this is a season for me where I'm just not doing those types of things. Maybe it's going shopping with friends or going out to lunch, or having dinner with family a couple times a week. You're in a season of sacrifice and you share that with the people that are asking you to spend time with them. And then if you're out of the season of sacrifice and you want to go spend time with those people, go for it. But if at that point you still don't want to spend time with those people and they are not helpful to you and they are not supportive of you, and they're not getting you closer to where you want to go, you can still say no. Just because somebody asks you for something doesn't mean that you have to actually do it. And this is one of the most effective strategies for not having to deal with burnout. If you're really struggling with burnout in this particular moment, one of the hacks that I used to use that helped me significantly was watching something that was funny. Brian and I went through a really stressful time a few years ago, and there was nothing that we could talk about. There was no person that we could go to dinner with that wouldn't just pull us back to this place of stress and friction and anxiety. So instead of having conversations, we started watching the TV show Impractical Jokers. And for 30 minutes every night, he and I would just laugh hysterically and take our minds off of the thing that was stressful. Because at that moment, at 9:00 at night, you're not doing anything productive to solve the problem. So we loved watching Impractical Jokers. It got us through this really stressful period. And still today we learned something from that, which is when things are stressful and they're difficult, you can still make time to laugh. There are still things in life that are funny that you can joke about, that you can be playful with. And just yesterday there was something that came up that was a little bit difficult to handle, and he walked in and we did this whole funny skit about how it's ridiculous that everybody is just like clapping when they see Brandon, and everyone gets so excited to see Brandon. And yet most of the time he's like all grumpy. And so we did this little skit and we laughed about it, and we totally took the stress and pressure out of the moment of the surrounding circumstances. So if you're dealing with burnout right now, maybe you just need to find a way to laugh and to bring people into your environment who allow you to have a good laugh. I truly believe that there is a way to build and scale a remarkable business without feeling the stress and pressure and bringing that burnout feeling into everything else that you do. You can make very distinct choices to help you enjoy the process, to help you experience it in its fullest. Learn from those moments. Appreciate the moments when things aren't so stressful, so that when you do go into seasons that are challenging, you have those positive moments that you can reflect on and say, oh, it was worth it to go through that thing back then, because I got out of it and was able to create this. So now I'm just going through one of those seasons again. But it will end. I will get out of it, and it's not forever. As long as you can keep that mindset in place, you will be successful.