3 Ways I Avoid Burnout in Home Service

This time of year is when I see a lot of home service business owners burn out. I want to talk about what you can do to prevent it, and hopefully if you're in the middle of burnout, get through it. It is not a function of you being perfect. You will have moments in your entrepreneurial journey where you want to quit and where psychologically you'll feel tapped out. If you notice, a lot of the people that call into the confession booth or I do turnaround shows for that are struggling, a lot of times it is Once you hit that $800,000, $900,000, $1 million in annual revenue, you start to feel the psychological stress building up and burnout is nearly inevitable for the vast majority of people. This is why less than 10% of home service businesses will build a million-dollar business is because the amount of psychological stress you'll have to go through and not quit in the meantime in order to get there. The reason that so many people, 99% of people, are not going to build the business that you are trying to achieve. Like, I wanna build this size of business and it's gotta make this much in profit and it's gonna— in order to get there, you will have to overcome what 99% of people are not able to. Psychological stress is a feature and not a bug of a bigger business. We talk about the 3 different stages of stress as you grow your business. First is physical stress. You're out in the field getting the work done. Second is financial stress because now you hire people and your gross margins start to sink 'cause you have labor costs and wages and more insurance and more trucks and more equipment and shop space. and all the expenses. And then the third part of stress as you begin to grow the business becomes psychological. And the volume and intensity of the problems that you are going to face only increase the bigger the business gets. It shifts from an occasional once a month bad online review to happening where every single week you're letting someone down because you've got 20, 30, 40, 50 people out on the road every single day working for your, for your customers. It goes from a bad review to a lawsuit. And then from a lawsuit to someone threatening you, a partner or an employee. And then it starts to trickle into your personal life because you're so stressed out of your mind that when you go home, it starts to affect your wife, your family, your kids, and even your physical life. You start all of a sudden overeating. The weekend you're lethargic, you don't feel productive, then you start to drink. These are all habits that start to get picked up as a result of this thing that we call burnout. And so, I want to first address the fact that it is a feature and not a bug. The psychological stress you're feeling of a bigger business happens as you grow because now you feel less in control of every problem in the business. In the past, if there was a complaint from a customer, you go out and fix it. In the past, if there was a problem with a flat tire, you go out and fix it. And when you were that person out in the field, the labor doing the work, you only dreamed of one day someone else being able to solve those problems. But then once you get there, you realize that you feel this sense of loss of power because you are no longer the one that solves the problem and you're relying on other people. And inevitably, because they're human, they will at some point let you down. And so during times of burnout, little bumps that usually you just like no problem get over suddenly feel like a huge deal. This is all many times a downstream effect of this label that we have called burnout. I wanna give you a couple things that have helped me get through these moments. It is not a function of never having them again. It's a function of how do I deal with them when they will inevitably come, because with growth of your business, you will add new skills, new people, and new customers. And with all 3 of those, I will likely come to a place where I am letting people down, I am letting customers down, I don't have enough money, and there'll be times of stress in the business. With growth, stress is just a necessary byproduct. And stress can obviously be a bad thing. It can cause people to want to quit. It can cause people to do dumb stuff. It can cause people to blow up at employees or at family members and do permanent damage during a time that is otherwise a short-term problem. And so what I encourage you to do when you're burning out is put a lock and key on long-term decision-making. Because very rarely will you think clearly during a season of time when you're burnt out. This means making decisions around relationships, decisions around long-term business decisions. Be very careful how you conduct yourself as a leader in front of your team, 'cause what you say might be a one-off statement, but it could damage the entire organization if said incorrectly, if you say it at the wrong time, if you say it with anger. These are things that happen when we're burnt out but have a long-term side effect. And it will absolutely keep your business small if you cannot manage your emotions during these times. And I understand that it is very difficult. And it's not that you will ever be immune from burnout. It is you will have to deal with new levels and types of stress as the business grows. And these things have helped me. The first one is diet. Now, before you're like, well, you're going to certain type of diet. No. I just want you to track everything that goes in your mouth. Because if you cannot control this motion— because none of you are being force-fed, none of us are being force-fed. And so if you cannot take control of this basic thing, you will feel out of control in many other aspects of life. This is something that I have locked in 100% of my schedule because it's— I want to take it off the table. The whole sense of burnout is that you feel out of control. You feel like circumstances, people, customers, employees, family, competition, the market— you feel like everyone's against you and you're out of control, and that causes anxiety. One of the ways to be able to combat that is to get in control of the things that are controllable in the moment. Because in the moment, it doesn't feel like anything's in control. But what you can do is just track whatever you're eating. I don't care if you're on Carnivore, paleo, keto, Mediterranean, I don't, I don't care. I just want you to track it. I don't care if that means just documenting in your Notes app or getting an actual app like MacroFactor or one of the other 100 ways of tracking your calories. Just track it. That's all I ask. Second thing I want you to be able to take control of is your body. This comes in the form of working out. And again, I don't really care what type of workout you're going to do. I just want you to sweat and I want you to lift something really heavy. If this sounds like you and you think you'd benefit from a group of other entrepreneurs that are all trying to become better leaders and hold you accountable to do the same in your business, I'd love to invite you to Home Service Boardroom. It's a group of million-plus dollar business owners all the way up to $30 million a year that are all just trying to become better leaders. Better community members. And really the first part of that is health. And so that's why the very first 30-day challenge in Home Service Boardroom revolves around diet, exercise, and we keep each other accountable to make sure that we're making those positive changes inside of our lifestyle. And so if that's of interest to you, down in the description, you can actually try it out for 7 days for free, check out some of the recorded calls and see if it'd be a good fit, or you can book a call direct with myself and we'll talk about your business, where you're currently at, and whether or not Home Service Boardroom makes sense for you. Click the link down in the description. And so you can sweat in a matter of 10 minutes doing burpees or jumping jacks or squats, like air squats, or pushups. When it comes to lifting heavy things, I just want you to do it. I don't care if it is a shoulder press, a bench press, if it is a squat, if it is weighted lunges, I don't care, just lift something really heavy. It helps shock your nervous system and it gets you back in control of something. You have control of your body. And being able to demonstrate this gives you confidence as you feel like you are out of control, like your life, your business, your finances are out of control. It allows you to have some structure that you can control, which is I can track what I eat, I can control what goes into my mouth, and I can control the fact that for 30 minutes I am going to exercise. Dan Martell says, tame the body, tame the mind. In other words, if I can tame my body and I can control it and tell it to do certain things, it tends to allow my mind to relax and prove to myself that I can take control of certain elements of my life, including lifting heavy things, doing hard things, and then hopefully increasing the threshold that I'm able to endure of pain when it comes to the stress in the business. I don't really care what exercise you do. I just want you to do it for 30 days, 30 minutes per day. Okay? The third thing I want you to do, and that is little things. What I mean by that is recognizing that not everything in your life is bad. And this is very hard to do when it does feel like everything is crumbling around you. Whether it be a relationship or the business or an employee or a partnership or customers or a service or equipment's going down. But you gotta realize that not everything is bad, and there, there are elements of your life that things are going well. You are holding an iPhone. You are watching this right now on a device that the vast majority of the people in the world can't afford. You slept in a bed last night. You got in the shower, and when you turned on the water, it was clean water. There wasn't cockroaches coming out of the bottom of the sewage. The fact that last night while you were sleeping, Your laptop was being charged, you have power. There are little things that you can be thankful for, and especially once you get out of like the first 10 or 15 that pop in your mind, it actually gets really difficult. But forcing yourself, forcing yourself to realize there are little things in your life that are positive, and then intentionally finding those things throughout your day, you start to train your mind to look for the positive. And here's the thing, it's not going to be easy at the beginning, 'cause everything right now feels negative. Feels like it's out against you. The vendor, the dealer, the employee, the customer—everyone's out to get you. And so the only way to retrain your mind into back back into thinking more positive thoughts is to force it to start finding and identifying small things that are positive. And it's really small stuff. Like man, I am thankful that I have the legs to be able to walk and get this job done today. I am thankful that I can hear right now, and despite Me not wearing ear protection all throughout the first few years of growing my business. I can hear just fine. I'm thankful for that. Because here's the thing. When you're stressed out, when you're burnt out, your brain is trained to find the stress and then attack it. But you can't, we are not built to stay in a state of flight or fight 24/7. And this is why you feel that anxious, can't sleep, That just like, that tension inside is you're not built for that. Most of the time back in the day, that served us well, which is I'm sleeping underneath a tree and there's a bear. The first thing is cortisol and like the shot of adrenaline going through my veins so I can jump up and run after the bear, the threat, the stress. If that feels like it's happening every hour of the day, eventually that's when you burn out. Yeah. What is a useful mechanism for us to deal with it, which is stressor, fight, go after it. But when that's constantly every single day, and this is the reason most people give up and why most people should not be entrepreneurs, is because it is not a normal function to every single day have problem after problem, problem after problem. Some people can endure that for a month or a few months or a year or 2, but when it happens for 5 years, 10 years, and you're growing the business and there's more stress, more problems, higher intensity, Bigger mistakes, bigger lawsuits, massive errors that cost you thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars. We're not really built for that. We're built for short-term stressors that we go attack. But when that's constantly happening, that's what leads to burnout. And so these are 3 things that I have done to ensure that I can get through a period of burnout. It still happens to me. There are still times I do not want to get out of bed. Still times I do not want to do the work that's in front of me, the times I do not want to look at my phone because I know it's blowing up with problems, times that people are saying things and doing things that make me mad, but I can't say anything about it because I've got to control myself. And in those moments, you will feel burnt out. I will feel burnt out. These are 3 things that are very small that help me get through those moments, and that is tracking what I'm eating, making sure I can control the 2 feet between this table and my mouth. Controlling my body, working out, taming the body so I can tame the mind. You know, do it for at least 30 minutes every single day. He's like, what? Well, you need a rest day. Look, when you're out in the field working 7 days a week, you were working out 8 to 10 hours a day. And so a lot of times when you hit a million plus and you start getting out of the field, you start losing this part is when you start gaining 40, 50 pounds, having unhealthy habits, and all of a sudden you realize you haven't been in the gym. And I just do it 7 days a week, so there's no negotiation as to which day is a rest day. Like, I'm just doing it every day. It's like, that's not healthy. You're cannibalizing your muscle. It's hypertrophy. It's not going to help you gain muscle. I just want to do it every single day. So I'm not negotiating which— is it Monday? Is it Sunday? Do I take Saturday off? Just do it every single day. And then finding the little things that despite all the chaos around you, you start training your mind to pick up on the little stuff that is going right. Because for all of us, anyone watching this, There's something good going on. There is. Like, the device in your hand is worth more than what some people make in a year. And so I had this huge privilege when I went to Africa to get a reset on what things in life really required to be happy and satisfied. Seeing orphans and people in clinics that had nothing— their family didn't want them, their parents didn't want them, they were hurting and in pain— and still being able to be happy because I got them bubbles, because I got them a soccer ball. Which over there was like $1, $0.50 that I would spend on a soccer ball and it would keep them busy the entire day, all daylight, 12, 14 hours, the kids out in orphanage for $1. And for all of us that hold this in our hand, we have 1,000 of those right there. We have clean water. Very few of the people watching this or listening to this went hungry this morning. Like, we got to be thankful for these small little things and identify them because otherwise we're trained to look at the negative. Because in the past, that has served us well. Attack and defend. When in reality, if that's your constant mantra, you'll just constantly start fighting everything and you'll get stressed out and you'll burn out. Versus realizing that this is a feature and not a bug of entrepreneurship. But I will have to train my brain to look for positive things, things that are going right, things that are going well. If I do that, I will probably be a better leader for my team and it will inevitably probably fix the problems that I've Are showing up. 'Cause I'll be the better leader, a better leader for my team. They will probably start fixing problems before it even gets on my plate because I've not been the reactive person that says dumb stuff in the heat of the moment. Or when they're— I do feel burnt out, I'm not going to make permanent damage to a short-term problem that's in the business.