Episode 323: Dread Going Back To Work

What if you could step out of the day-to-day and see your business from a whole new perspective? Welcome to Above the Business, where we empower you to rise above the daily grind and embrace a higher way of business ownership. It's time to build your business by design.

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Hey everyone. Well, hopefully January and 2024 has gotten off to a great start for you. Hopefully all of the goals and objectives that you set out in December, you already started to get some momentum on those things, and you are excited about this year. So I was texting with a friend of mine right the week, uh, very first week of January, and I won't share who it is, but he is a business owner, and we were discussing, uh, college football actually. And, uh, I said, how was your break? And he said it was good. Dread going back to work. And I posted this, I went and ended up writing this, uh, for our community with our members. And so I thought I would share it with all of you because the timing of this, when this episode drops mid-January or so, I think may resonate, seem to resonate with our community. So I thought I'd share it with all of you on the podcast. And my very first thought was, dang, That sucks that he feels that way, but it really doesn't have to be that way. But the truth is, I felt that way many times before myself. I own the business. I got to choose what I wanted to do. That's why I actually got into the business to begin with, is because I wanted the freedom. I wanted the freedom and the flexibility. Maybe you've heard people say you want the freedom to do what you want, when you want, with who you want, and have the money to do so. But, but for a long time, anything, everything else could have been, um, it couldn't have been more different than that experience. You know, whenever I would take a break, if you could call it that, and get away from work, it was just because I was so frustrated. I wanted to get away from it all. I would come back from a vacation and instead of being excited and looking forward to stepping back into the arena, so to speak, that feeling of dread, that feeling of, ah, man, I just don't really want to go into the office. I don't really want to do the work on Monday. I didn't love what I was doing. I was frustrated, at times overwhelmed. And just felt like everyone around me, people on my team that I of course hired, um, was just making mistakes constantly. And who do you think's fault was that? Well, it was mine, of course. So why would I want to walk back into that? And matter of fact, it wasn't even just vacations. A lot of times that feeling of dread would set in on Sunday evenings. And instead of, you know, we now talk, and I'm going to talk in a few episodes coming up about Sunday night planning. And instead of being excited, taking, you know, Friday afternoon and Saturday and then Sunday morning off and being able to kind of rest and recharge and rejuvenate, instead of using Sunday night to be excited about the week. Coming up, I would just honestly dread week after week after week. And a lot of times I sat down to think about the goals and the things that I wanted to accomplish. I was just frustrated. I was frustrated. And so I would often have this quitting fantasy. Yeah, you know, the one that you've probably had before yourself, the one where you kind of throw your hands up and say, I'm just done with this crap. I can go make more money, just as much money as I'm making now, working for someone else. Why bang my head against the wall and be frustrated all the time? And in a lot of cases, again, make less money than I would have made if I was going to get a W-2 job. Well, it was just simply that it was a fantasy. And it was one that would go away as quickly as it would come. But eventually I truly did have enough of feeling that way. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I get to design this thing. And the reality is, is the business had not been designed. Everything was defaulted. It just defaulted that way. If I was frustrated with The team, it defaulted. There was no process. There was no structure in place to then build the team that I wanted. There was no process and structure in place to develop the team. There was no structure and process to even cultivate the culture. And so everywhere I looked, I, all I saw was problems. And so if you feel that way, I've been there before too. And so if you're some of the people that have, you know, your culture is fantastic and maybe you've never felt this way, well, I envy you. The majority of my clients and the people that I've talked to, business owners, have at some point felt this way where they just don't want to walk into it. They're not happy. They're not fulfilled. They're not satisfied with the progress or maybe in in some cases the lack thereof, that their business is making. And so for those of you that haven't felt this way, that's amazing. This episode obviously would not relate, you know, to you. But I think for most of us, we've had that feeling at some point. And I hate to quote a Taylor Swift song. I've never done a— quoted a Taylor Swift song on the podcast. Oh boy, people are going to give me a hard time about this one. And I may mess this lyric up, but she says something to the effect of, I'm the problem, it's me. And maybe this episode actually should have been called I'm the Problem, It's Me instead of Dread. That would have been a catchier title, I think, right, for this episode. But I don't think I can go there. And so once I realized that I was the problem, I also then began to see that I too was the solution to that. And that first change that had to happen— and there's a lot with this, but the first change had to happen inside internally. It had to happen inside me. And I will sometimes talk about, or at least mention, some mindset stuff and I'm really cautious to be careful about going into that area because sometimes mindset things can kind of be woo-woo, but there really was this shift that I began to make and to begin to see myself as the architect of the business and to start to see, well, if that's how everything is, then I can make the shift for me personally. And that starts with me internally and how I see myself. And so I initially had seen myself and labeled myself as a failure and et cetera. And that wasn't good, very good self-talk. And so when I began to kind of see myself as instead of being the rainmaker of the business and everything ran through me, but I more importantly began to see myself as the architect. I began to kind of notice and pay attention that I could then design the business in the way that I wanted it to, because when I looked around, None of that was, was how I wanted it to be. But the reality was, is everything about how I wanted it to be lived in my head and I never got it out into, onto paper or into a document of any kind. And so therefore nothing was being built because everything kind of resided in me and hence why everything had to run through me. There was no operating system for the business. There were no assets. The intellectual property resided in my head and in the head of the team members, but there was no uniform way of how we do things, and there was never a, a way of beginning to improve. And so when I look back on it, it was a tremendous amount of hard work, but the journey first started internally with me. And so ultimately, now I was, as I was sharing with some people when I took about 11 days over Christmas and I quote, jumped back in the saddle. I can absolutely tell you I was so excited. I was itching to get back in the saddle. I was itching to get back in the arena because I love the process of actually doing the thing of, of, of, of doing business or practicing business. And so, but it wasn't always that way. And so if that was you and, or this sounds like you, you felt this way, maybe even felt this way the last couple of weeks, I understand. You can begin first to see yourself as the architect of your business. You can begin to be the one who does the work, who designs creates a blueprint for what you want that business to look like, and then designs the plan to make it happen, and then goes out, does the work, and executes on that plan. That's where it starts. But it all starts internally inside of you. It starts with a vision. So what is your vision for your business? We call that a blueprint— 3-year, 1-year, 90-day. You've heard me talk about that before. But what's the big vision that you have for your business? It starts there and it starts with you being able to see what it is that you want to, as the architect, design into your business, not by default. In just a few days after this episode releases, this is dropping on Friday the 19th, January the 19th. On Tuesday, January the 23rd, we're hosting a kickoff event. This kickoff event is going to be all about creating the momentum into your business. I'd love to work with you and for you to, to join us. Go to abovethebusiness.co. You'll see the information there about the January kickoff event. Would love to have you join us. We're going to be doing and picking up the work that we did for many of you that attended the annual back in December. Creating your objectives for the year. We're going to be building on that, going from December and connecting to January, creating momentum, and even touching on some of the things that I just touched on in this podcast. What does it actually look like a little bit deeper to begin to see yourself as the architect? One, what does that exactly mean? And then how do you go about actually designing not just the business, but also you. What about your personal operating system? I just spent, uh, the last 2 episodes talking about some of the things that we're going to address— unintentional, uh, consumption of content, etc. And so I think a lot of momentum starts with you first, and then it translates and trickles down to the business. Would love to see you there. Go to abovethebusiness.com. Until next episode, lead well.