IAM2260 – Essential Strategies for Entrepreneurs to Conquer Burnout

Gresham Harkless discusses the critical issue of burnout, particularly among entrepreneurs and business owners.

He shares his experiences with burnout, describing it as a state of prolonged stress that leads to feelings of overwhelm and fatigue.

Gresham emphasizes that burnout isn’t just about needing rest; it can take a significant toll over time.

He also shares strategies to help prevent and manage burnout, such as Setting clear boundaries, Delegating tasks, and Prioritizing self-care.

Furthermore, Gresh highlights the importance of addressing burnout openly and encourages to take proactive steps for their well-being.

Related Links:

• iam1051-certified-virtual-speaker-helps-people-manage-burnout
• what-is-grief-burnout-mental-health

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Transcription:

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Gresham Harkless Teaser 00:00

But when you do reach that burnout, you usually, I've heard it described as hitting a wall. When you hit that wall, you can't continue to move on.

It's not you need to sleep for a little bit, you need to rest for a little bit, you need to eat some of the right things and you feel better.

It's actually something that can take hold of you for a long period of time. Michael in the episode actually defined it as prolonged stress. He said burnout is prolonged stress. It leads to feelings of overwhelm and fatigue.

Intro 00:28

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:56

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast, and this is a special episode. And this episode is not going to be one of the exciting things that we need to talk about, but it's a very necessary thing.

And it's going to be about this word called burnout. So the reason I want to bring up burnout up today is because I feel like I've at least been feeling a little bit more of the beginning stages of that.

And I felt like it was only right to bring that up because I think that is a conversation that's not talked about enough.

I think especially as a CEO, entrepreneur, business owner, whatever title we might give ourselves is that we're constantly on. Even when we're not on, sometimes we're on.

We're thinking about what to do, what not to do, we're managing people, we're managing clients and customers. There's so many different things that are involved.

And actually have a little bit of a cold, largely because I think that was something that I have done that has gotten, and affected a little bit of my health.

So needless to say, like a lot has kind of happened in our lives. And I think as a result of that, I ended up leaning more into my morning routine.

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My morning routine also consisted of making sure that I worked out more and did those things.

But while I also did that, I started a new business venture that I've been talking about a little bit around, franchise brokering, but also we brought on 2 team members as well too.

So all this happened probably within 30, maybe 45, 60 days or so. So needless to say, I felt that burnout this past weekend actually.

And I felt that where I started to feel like the sickness, the actual cold that I had in my body, but then it led to like actually a lot of exhaustion.

I think that exhaustion was just because of that burnout. Now, is this a severe burnout? I don't think so. I just think it's just kind of a reminder to make sure that you are putting your oxygen mask on, that you are making sure that you're filling up your cup.

So one of the things that I wanted to do was to talk a little bit more around that, but also give you some ideas on some things that you can do if you are experiencing that burnout.

Now, I think sometimes for people that are extremely driven type A people, sometimes it's hard to always be ahead of yourself, but I think having that, those routines, the morning routines, the working out, things like that can sometimes help.

I think for me, it's definitely been a help. I think what has happened is just a lot of things have happened all at the same time.

And you can't always usually control all the things that are happening, but you try to make sure that you have that consistency so that you can kind of lean on.

So for me, that was a really big thing. My morning routine, I call it my star time and is one of those big ways that I've been able to kind of lean into that so that I can be more effective and efficient.

So that I can make sure that I'm filling up my cup sometimes even before that happens, but that's been a huge thing.

But what I want you to do is also check out episode number 1051 of our podcast. We'll have the link in the show notes as well too, had Michael Levitt on the show.

And we talked a lot around his experience with burnout, which was a lot, well, not even a lot, it's insanely more severe, where we're talking about hospital need and operation, all those things.

But I think if we don't pay attention to those things that are happening at an early stage, we end up finding ourselves in this place where we literally cannot continue to move forward.

We're literally stuck. I think when you're truly, I guess, 100% burnout, I feel like I'm experiencing mild burnout or a little bit of burnout are the beginning stages of it.

But when you do reach that burnout, you usually, I've heard it described as hitting a wall. When you hit that wall, you can't continue to move on.

It's not, you need to sleep for a little bit, you need to rest for a little bit, you need to eat some of the right things and you feel better.

It's actually something that can take hold of you for a long period of time. Michael in the episode actually defined it as prolonged stress. He said burnout is prolonged stress. It leads to feelings of overwhelm and fatigue.

And I think one of the things that really stuck with me and why I wanted to talk about this was because he said, even in the show, that often in order to kind of fight some of the burnout you might be feeling, most people don't necessarily need to go to the hospital.

They don't need to do huge things. Sometimes it's just really locking into certain things. One of the things that I see, and I'm gonna go through 8 things that you can do fairly quickly to make sure that you are paying attention to the likelihood that you might be experiencing burnout.

So you want to do this, I think, even before you are experiencing burnout, because I think burnout comes a lot from stress.

So it's making sure that you are paying attention to that. So with that being said, number 1 is, first of all, you got to recognize it. You really want to identify what the signs of burnout could be.

Emotional exhaustion, detachment, decreased performance. I myself read a lot about around how you kind of lose somebody and losing somebody can lead you to that type of fatigue because it takes so much of emotional strain out of your life.

So from our dog, Star, to my grandma, those things that are, they take a lot out of you emotionally.

So I think that's probably where you don't want to necessarily pile more on to what you're doing.

And I think that's part of the thing that I did. But according to the World Health Organization, burnout is a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.

So entrepreneurs are prone to that because we're constantly working long hours. We're usually using limited support.

And that can kind of lead to that fatigue as well too. So that's one of the really big things that can kind of lead to fatigue, lead to burnout.

For me, I think a lot of it happened around like losing loved ones in our family. And I'm looking up exactly what it was called. There's a certain type of bereavement burnout, I believe, and there's a whole case where grief burnout.

So you can have grief burnout as well too. From what little I read about it, it's not the same as

burnout, but it can have very much so similar symptoms.

So with grief burnout, you end up having fatigue, aches and pains, shortness of breath, headaches, forgetfulness, and ability to focus, digestive issues.

And I'm going to put a link in the show notes as well, too, about that. But just remember that you can't forget about the human aspect of life.

And a lot of times when we try to skip over or jump over that human part of life, we end up forgetting that we're actually human.

So it's so important to do that because when we try to run our businesses and do those things, losing sight of that can kind of be to our detriment and to the organization's detriment.

So we have to make sure we're taking care of that. The number 2 thing is setting boundaries.

Entrepreneurs often struggle with drawing the line between work and personal life. Make sure that you set clear boundaries to avoid overwork, which can be a major cause of that.

The Harvard Business Review emphasizes the importance of setting boundaries to maintain mental health, especially for leaders who feel obligated to always be available.

That is something that I, especially with new people on the team, you always want to be available to make sure that they're going to be set up for success as much as possible, but you have to set those boundaries to make sure that you are creating that atmosphere for people to ultimately succeed.

The next thing is delegating tasks. A major contributor to burnout is the inability to delegate tasks.

Many business owners try to do everything themselves, which increases stress levels. Gallup research shows that entrepreneurs who delegate are more likely to grow their business and have burnout levels.

One of the things kind of tied in to 2 and 3 is I remember somebody saying the quote where no is a full sentence.

Once you start to step into that and understand that, then that helps you to kind of set those boundaries, but also delegate those things that are going to be essential to you.

One of the things that I remember talking with the coach when I was, I think going on vacation, while building the business, is they said that it's really awesome that you get to go on vacation while you're building your business.

And as much as you might feel sometimes guilt around that, it's actually a good sign of a quality in a well-built business because you're able to step away. It's actually a business that is beyond you.

And I think as entrepreneurs and business owners, sometimes we have that, we feel like it's like a baby.

We feel like it's almost a part of us and our extension of us. We have to hold and cultivate, but we're not seeing that it has grown up.

That baby that you want to hold and rock and give milk to and all those things is 6 foot 2. And I'm just joking by saying that but a lot of that means that the things that you were doing before you don't need to do now.

So you really have to understand the importance of that so number 4 prioritizing self-care it includes your exercise your nutrition making sure you get enough sleep one of the things that I also ran into this past week was that I was not sleeping enough because I was trying to get more things done.

Rather than trying to be more effective and efficient, I was actually trying to decrease my sleep so that I could get those things done and I was going to potentially catch up.

But again, it caught up with my health. So sleep was one of those things that I'm always kind of like on the edge of getting maybe around 6 hours or so, which I could usually get away with getting about 6 hours and I can usually feel pretty good.

But the problem is that if I stay up a little bit later, that ends up cutting down my opportunity to get as much sleep.

So that was one of the big things. So Stanford University says that exercise and mindfulness techniques, such as meditation, can significantly reduce stress levels and improve overall well-being.

Making self-care a priority can increase resilience, stress, and improve productivity. The next thing is gonna be your support system.

One of the big things that happens with entrepreneurial burnout is we feel isolated, especially when I talked about that grief burnout.

That's another one of the big things that people experience as well too. So entrepreneurs, we feel that we have to navigate our business strategies, our business challenges by ourselves.

But having that support system ends up being like a little bit more, a little bit of everything.

According to Forbes, having a mentor, joining a peer group, much needed emotional support and advice allows you to be able to build that, to know that you're not by yourself and you can lean on other people.

And frankly, one of the things that I've really taken from the podcast is that there's not new challenges that are under the sun.

So often when we talk about those challenges, we talk to people, it ends up opening up those opportunities to have that support system.

And it's actually that vulnerability that actually connects us a lot more. Not that everything's all sunshine, rainbows, and gumdrops.

It actually is that when we have the struggles, things that we're going through, and we talk about it, that actually is that opportunity to connect a little bit more.

So I think that's one of the really big things. Next thing is adopting time management strategies.

When you really, frankly, time management, but also just planning as a whole can lead to overwhelm.

There's pomodoro technique, there's time blocking. All these effectively help you to break work into manageable chunks with some breaks in between.

Make sure that you add those breaks in between because one of the things that I am notorious for doing is like, okay, I have an extra 15 minutes.

Well, I could take 5 of those 15 minutes and I can get a little bit more work done. Maybe I'll take 10 minutes or maybe I'll just take 5.

So I ended up not prioritizing the recharging. And that's something that you really want to make sure that you're doing.

So this will help you to reduce stress, increase your focus as well too. But I think one of the big things, especially when seismic things happen or when you're going through, we often can lose sight of our why ultimately what's fueling us more than anything else.

And as two of the podcasts that I actually recorded today, we talked a lot around the why and how important that is because your why can ultimately be your fuel.

But it's only your fuel if you are pouring it into your engine until you are, if you are paying attention to what that why is.

Because I think one of the, one of the things that happens is we start a lot of times our organization business with our why, but it doesn't end up being the thing that constantly is fueling our engine.

It can change, it can evolve. We can sometimes mis-gauge on what our engine actually needs.

So it's so important to do that. Simon Sinek talks around how important that is of understanding your personal values, your goals, and how that ties into your purpose and your motivation.

So make sure that you know your why, but also make sure that you're constantly checking in with your why.

One of the really phenomenal episodes that I have that should be going live later on in November, I believe, is gonna talk a little bit more around that.

We talk a lot around engagement and how employee engagement and how important that is.

So that's gonna be one of those things that's gonna be really important that you're able to kind of tap into that and understand exactly what that is.

I think it's gonna be episode number 22. It's gonna be either, I think 73 or 4, I believe.

So that's gonna be one of those episodes that you really wanna pay attention to because it talks so much around how important it is to make sure that you are tapping into your why, tapping into those things.

And I think that not enough leaders, not only we don't do it for ourselves, but we also don't do it for the people that are on our team.

So Kent Lewis, who was a previous guest on our show, he talked a lot around that. So that's gonna be on the episode as well too, which I thought it was really powerful to kind of make sure that we're doing that as leaders as well.

And last but not least, give professional help. Sometimes you just need professional help.

The cognitive behavioral therapy has proven to be an effective way for treating burnout by helping individuals reframe negative thought patterns.

A mental health professional can offer valuable coping mechanisms tailored to an individual's situation.

One of the things that we often forget is that the thing that served us to get to where we want to be and where we are right now may not be the thing that can get us to that next level.

So it's going to require us to rewire, reframe, and change who we are. Sometimes it's very hard to do that without having outside perspectives or insight.

Of course, professional health is a huge thing if we're talking about deep health things rather than just adding this into your morning routine.

So it's sometimes hard to know when that is the case. And I think that's where seeking professional help ends up being a really big thing.

So with that being said, I hope you all are staying healthy, happy, and fulfilled as much as you can.

Please continue to go through these 8 different aspects in these pieces so that you continue to kind of level up within your organization, but know that you have to take care of yourself in order to do that.

So burnout is something that is real and it's something that needs to be talked about definitely a lot more.

So check out some of the resources in the show notes and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day and please let us know if there's anything we can do to help.

Outro 16:21

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast powered by CBNation and Blue16 media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and everywhere you listen to podcasts. Subscribe and leave us a 5 star rating. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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