Dealing with Burnout: Brandon Falcon

This is The Chris Project, where we discuss mental wellness, self-awareness, and mindset with entrepreneurs and experts. Set your perceived ideas and biases aside and let's go on our journey for yourself, for your family, for the world.

Welcome to another episode of The Chris Project. I am your host, Christian Brim. Joining me today is Brandon Falcon of Falconix. Welcome, Brandon.

Hey, thanks for having me.

Absolutely. So why don't you give the listeners an idea of who Brandon is and maybe what brought him to this point in his life?

Yeah, definitely. Well, the fun part of that is I think, at least for myself, I'm very self-aware and Brandon's always learning, Brandon. But yeah, so business owner, founder of my own company, kind of fell on that right out of high school and kind of just realized I liked helping people. Didn't really know what that looked like at the time. So I've had many iterations over the years, like most 18-year-olds straight out of high school. Grew up half my life, half my adult life as homeschooler. So from that, I feel like I learned a lot of important elements of being self-aware, learning just kind of where you fit into the world, not necessarily going through a formalized structure that I think a lot of the schooling system had. So that kind of opened up my adult world later on that there might be superpowers in some of this. Yes. Fast forward a little bit more into more of the adult life. Um, avid traveler. Uh, my wife and I travel 6 months out of the year RVing across the country. I've been to every, every state in the continental United States, been to Mexico, been to half of Canada. Um, avid traveler, avid outdoorsman. Um, wow, let's see, there's a plethora. Um, love cooking, love exploring. No children, not yet, not yet, but absolutely love kids. You said kill them. Um, I'm not sure what that is. I might I have not nugget children yet. No children yet. At some point or enough, but yeah.

Very good. And your company Falconix is—

Falconix, you got it.

A marketing agency, correct?

Yep. Yep. We started in the marketing agency world. I think anyone that's technically inclined, I feel like always starts there of some sort. Started in web design, quickly realized that was not for me, not something I enjoyed. Moved into small business marketing, enjoyed it, loved helping the small businesses, realized it was a lot of, a lot of stuff to carry other people's baggage too, and kept refining it and growing it. And fast forward to more modern day, we, even though we fall under a marketing agency, I don't really even want to consider that anymore. We, we built something called Empathic Residence Marketing. We use a deep empathy and understanding of actual people's decision-making factors or why they do what they do, um, and help guide them to problems our clients solve, um, without ever pushing sales. We don't believe in sales. We believe in actual genuine connection and rapport. And if you happen to have a good solution then and solves their problem, people are gonna wanna buy it. You don't have to sell them it. Um, so a lot of of empathy-focused marketing.

I think you coined a new phrase. I haven't heard that one yet. You might want to jump on the copyright, get a trademark out there. Empathy-focused marketing. So that's intriguing because I have another podcast called The Profitable Creative where we discuss creative industries, of which marketing is one. And I've had lots of marketers on, and I, uh, have now, uh, coined the phrase, uh, crackhead energy marketing, uh, which is— is— I love it— which is about like 99% of what I see out there. Uh, it sounds like maybe, uh, I've already forgotten it. Something empathy marketing.

Deep empathic resonance marketing. We call it EMR.

Okay. Empathic resonance marketing sounds like the exact opposite of crackhead marketing.

You named it. Okay. I've been that guy. I'm high energy. Younger me was a lot more, um, having both ADHD and dyslexic— or being dyslexic, um, my brain runs really quickly and all over the place. And, and yeah, I know exactly who you're talking about because I was that guy for many years.

Well, and it's not even really about the individuals, it's just, it, it's, it's, uh, it actually makes sense in the sense that, um, there's an element of marketing that is like crack. It gives you a quick fix. It gives you some feedback loop that makes you feel good, but it's not sustainable. And it, at the end of the day, may or may not, probably not, really push you towards your long-term goal.

Right?

Yeah. And so that's kind of why I named it that. But I'm curious. You know, just your brief description of your background, what led you to this empathic resonance marketing model?

Burnout. So like I mentioned, so I've been in this space for about 14 years, running my own company for 12. I started in the white labeling space. If you have any familiarity, obviously, in marketing, which obviously you do. Um, we worked for several Fortune 500 agencies, white labeling our organic and paid social services for those companies. Um, at any one moment at that time, we were doing 200 clients at any given moment. Um, it was a bit overwhelming. Um, but, uh, I enjoyed it. I enjoy helping people. And, and that's kind of was my initial understanding was like, I thought because I liked helping people and I understood technology, I understood high-level marketing, that that was where I was meant to be. And until honestly, around COVID time, when the world started breaking down and we were losing clients left and right, and again, no fault, it was just the fact that the world was just shutting down. I started realizing that, hey, this might not be the model for me. And I didn't know where to go, where to look. And honestly, burnout was a little bit happening. And around the same time, I was like, literally the day that my state, Florida, went into lockdown was the day I was supposed to get married to my wife. And that blew up on us. And I just felt like a lot of things were just falling apart simultaneously. Decided to— we kind of had all this wedding money, we got back on insurance, and we're like, you know what, if we can't do anything else, let's go do one thing we both love is national parks and like just nature. Rented an RV for weeks on end and went exploring around the country. I'm like, this is— this brings me true happiness. This brings me joy and happiness. So crazy enough, all this boiled down to asking myself and literally just writing it down: what makes me happy? What am I good at doing? And I just made a list of literally everything I could possibly think of, and I just started circling the things I could see common denominators. And then that's when I started to decide, during about 2021 at this point, what I actually wanted to do going forward. And from what I liked doing and what I was good at doing, I narrowed what my company was going to do that I wanted to do until the day I died. That was my belief, and it still is to this day. I want to do it because I feel like if I genuinely enjoy it and it brings value to the world and it helps others, then I will never have a burnout again. And that was kind of like that shifting moment.

Yeah, I think your Your journey doesn't sound much different than mine or a lot of the ones that I've heard, that when you start a business, there's— for entrepreneurs, there's always excitement in the launch and the building and the growth. The entrepreneur usually loses interest whenever it gets into the running, managing, part of it. I know in my case, it definitely came to the point where I walked away from my business after, I don't know, 15, 16 years because I was burnt out and I didn't like dealing with employees. I didn't like dealing with customers. I just my passion was gone, that passion to help people. And, um, I— what I realized was that I, I had to change in order for the business to go further. And, um, that's a that work to grow myself was in a lot of ways harder than starting the business. And I understand where people get to a point and they just say, I'm sick of it, I'm done with it, and either sell it, walk away, or just kind of let it run. Like, they'll go find something else to do, and sometimes that's productive and Sometimes that's not. So, yeah, your story resonates with me. Resonate. So I still didn't get the answer I wanted. So what specifically led you to create the empathetic resonating Resonate.

But you got it. You were close. Yeah, you got it. From that, I realized that was one of— I call it superpower internally. That's what we call it. I realized that was one of my superpowers is that I was able to connect with people in genuine ways. And I know it sounds corny kind of at first when you just high-level it, but I realized that that was missing in the world of technology, that everybody was wanting to get quick sales, quick transaction, like you were saying, the crackhead type. Crackhead energy. Yeah, exactly, crackhead energy marketing approach. I'm like, this isn't sustainable. It's not genuine. It doesn't actually make me happy. It feels just very transactional. I'm controlling a number for a product that I don't actually control or I might not even believe in completely. Maybe there is this motive behind it that I just can't stand on in my own conscience. That's more so what led me there. From that list of breaking down what I like doing, what I'm good at doing and such, I identified that I can find the best traits in people that I feel that others can see value in. And that's partly what EMR is, is we would drill down the unique characteristics in typically very complex or technical companies, software, really B2B software companies is what we love working in. But we realized that those super complex technical ones, there's still typically a handful of people, a founder, and even a lot of them are salespeople that genuinely love the product for a bunch of obvious reasons that no one else understands. It's not properly represented anywhere. And once I could identify it and I could identify who could benefit from that, it's game on. It's a marketer's dream. So we went from very broad, what we called shotgun approaches, to just trying to shoot everyone in the masses to, to what we now call is like a, like a sniper, uh, uh, uh, strategy where we're handpicking 200, 300 people a month that we know for a fact has a, a, a social profile or, or, or a profile that would match with who from our company or our client's company to that individual well emotionally. Um, as well as we can solve a problem they have because again, we pinpointed them for, we know you match someone we've already worked with. And we just pair them up. And, and again, I found that kind of a couple years back that that was kind of a superpower of mine, is, is I understood it, I saw it, I saw how to systematize it, and that's what I did.

I love that. So what, what do you think would have happened had COVID not happened? Like, yeah, where do you think that ended?

Yeah, I think it forced not only me but a lot of people to reconsider where they want to be, their priorities. Allowed us to kind of slow down for a little bit and kind of not be so caught up in the rat race. And I think a lot of people will be further along in burnout or giving up on things. I mean, the end result, I feel like, always is kind of inevitable. We're all going to burn one way or another. We were forced to slow down, but either by our own choice or outside forces. But at least for me, that gave me time to do a reset and not dwell in the world of burning around me, but rather How am I going to come through this? How will I succeed beyond this? How will I bring value to the world and others beyond me that brings me satisfaction in what I do? And revolutionary for my business. And I think a lot of others that took that time to do self-development, like you mentioned too, I think it was just a perfect timing.

Yeah, but you didn't ask the question. What would have been the endgame if COVID hadn't happened? To you?

Burnout, but potentially burnout, but with question being what if that actually would have been— I don't know yet. I, I don't think I'll ever know. Would that be continue to maintain where I was at and, and killing myself slowly because of it? Um, I, I think at least for myself personally, um, and maybe a lot of others, I mean, I was— I consume a lot of caffeine to keep the energy up, that, that crackhead energy and stuff like that. And I mean, we know what that kind of energy and something like that does to you long term. Um, health-wise and beyond. Um, and I think it's— it was very positive because it happened in my personal life.

You didn't have some of these feelings, or at least at the conscious level, that you were burning out?

Yeah, I wasn't aware because I was moving so quickly. I felt like—

yeah, yeah. And, and I, I— one of the things that I've struggled with with myself is, you know, a lot of the characteristics that we have that make us entrepreneurs and make us successful initially can, at a certain point in the business, become liabilities. And, you know, the fact that those character traits and skills or dispositions served us well and helped us be successful, you know, it's a known quantity, right? It's hard to let those things go. The biggest one I had, which is I'm very persistent or stubborn, depending upon how you want to define it. Like, you know, it's not— When you start putting labels on it, it puts it in context and it's either a positive or negative. But this characteristic of mine is neither positive nor negative. It just is what I am. And I had a real hard time of letting go of the rope when it was time for me to let go of the rope. Like you— are not being successful in this role in the company, you've got to let somebody else do it. Um, and it was strange because it's not that I hadn't turned other aspects of the business over to, uh, to others and been comfortable with it. So it really wasn't like this fear of delegation or not having control. It was I didn't want to give up. Like, I, I, I— it felt like quitting, right? Like that I couldn't, I couldn't solve this. Um, and you know, that, that was a, a big one for me to overcome.

I can relate. I can totally understand that. Yeah, that's a, that's a hard one. Like you were mentioning with the personal development and really that internal dialogue that you kind of have to steer and push through, um, push through. And yeah, absolutely can resonate with that.

Well, I, I tell this story to people and they kind of look at me askance, but it's an example of this personality trait. I decided, uh, I guess during COVID I decided I was going to, uh, get my private pilot's license. And it was something that I'd wanted to do since I was a teenager. And, um, I, I was coming back on one of my cross-country solos, and, uh, I hit some turbulence. And I remember saying to myself, I mean, it was just, it was like, get me the fuck off this ride. Like, I do not want to be on this plane anymore. But then you realize, well, you're the only one that can put it down. So, you know, buckle up and get it done. And I remember saying to myself, I'm never flying again. I'm going to get this plane on the ground and I'm never flying again. And I proceeded after I landed to finish my flight training, knowing that I didn't like to fly and had no intention of flying.

Right?

But I couldn't quit. I just, I could not walk away from it. And it's almost a pathology, like, you know, what, why, why would you continue spending money, spending time doing something you don't want to do just because you don't quit? That, I mean, you know, it still doesn't make sense to me.

Yep. Oh, I totally get that. Yeah, that, that internal voice of saying, that is not who I am, I don't quit. And, and I think it's the understanding, like you said, through, uh, evolving as a, as a person and growing yourself, just identifying that, hey, quitting doesn't necessarily mean I'm not good at it, or don't lie, it just probably means maybe this is not for me in this specific arena. Uh, and I think that's a thing that a lot of us have had to come, come to terms with, and enhancing the areas that you're strong at and realizing, like you said, uh, the areas that, that aren't for you necessarily anymore and doubling down on the ones that work.

Yeah, I mean, to me, I can still hear my high school coaches saying, you know, like, quitting is a habit. Like, you quit, it just gets easier to quit. And that resonated with me because that's kind of like, you know, who I was. But I— yeah, I think— I think the most important thing that I learned from that was not just that specific attribute about me, was that we all have these beliefs, right? And virtually all of these beliefs have been given to us through experience and from others. You come out of the womb, you don't know anything, you don't believe anything. So, you know, a lot of A lot of it comes from your parents and your siblings. But you have these beliefs about everything. And the ability to separate your action from your belief, like, I'm doing this because subconsciously, I believe XYZ, to be able to pull that XYZ up into your conscience and say, this is the reason why I'm doing this. This is the reason why I'm acting this way, saying this, you know, whatever. And it doesn't have to be negative. I mean, it could be positive, but like holding that in your mind and say, okay, I believe this. And then saying, okay, can I set that belief aside? To do something different, you know? And it's absolutely possible, but you have to be willing to dig that out of the darkness of your subconscious, reflect on why you're behaving the way you're behaving, and ask those questions, which most people don't want to do that work.

Yep. Gotta be okay with that outcome.

Do you have a similar experience.

Yeah, I absolutely agree with the methodology. I'm trying to think of an actual experience or moment that was pivotal like that. Man, there's quite a few that pop to mind quickly, but I'm trying to think of what actually resonates.

Which one you can let your wife hear.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Let's share it with the public. So having— maybe it's a different analogy. Matt, it works, but I'm just trying to think, does it have the same outcome? But I want to point towards some of this remote experiences we've done where we started exploring and traveling. And like I said, that's kind of where I really found myself further, was where I threw myself out in the middle of nowhere, being We've traveled so much in a lot of these different remote places. Again, national parks is our favorite place. One idea specifically comes to mind. We spent a lot of time in Glacier National Park in Montana, if you know where that is. Super remote, farthest parts out there. Never been. Yeah, super remote. Most beautiful waters, mountains you'd ever imagine. And the beauty of it there is you are not the alpha out there, as much as you want to be. Everything around you is is capable of killing you with minimal effort. So, it's a little humbling. Mm-hmm. But, one of the things I enjoyed was when we go out there and we do some of these longer hikes and explorations like that, I think these are tens of miles in the middle of nowhere and there's no one coming to get you. There's no one else around. I can recall being injured out there and being 15+ miles out. And realizing that there's no one able to come get me from where I'm at, um, that I have to get myself kind of out of here.

And, and were you by yourself?

Luckily I was not, I was with my wife. But okay, this was one of the few times— this was actually the very first— this— I'm sorry, the second year, second year that we had done it, uh, and I had went lighter on preparation, um, and I did not bring— I got lazy, the best way to put it, is like I was in a hurry, I was impatient, um to an extent, wife was a little delayed in the day, so we were getting going later. Um, and I didn't do all my checks that I normally do. I'm very usually pretty particular. This has to happen, this has to happen. I have to prepare for everything. And, and got out there, got injured far out. It was late, sun setting, and, and I, if I recall correctly— someone can double-check me on this— but pretty sure it was something like 3 grizzly bears are in every square mile of the entire national park at all times. And you're talking 1,000-pound animals that don't care, um, and hungry. And I remember thinking, I was like, okay, I put us in a worse situation because I rushed. I let something outside influence me, um, just being in a hurry and impatient, etc. And thinking that I don't have a choice, I have to get myself out of here, uh, and I can't also send my wife forward because something could happen to her, etc., etc. And long story short, from that, I knew I wasn't going to stop doing it. So I was trying to see how that relates to, to your flight one, but I knew I enjoyed doing it, but I promised myself at that moment that just like I mentioned the characteristics of just, I don't quit on things. This is a situation I can't quit because someone else depends on me. And I would never put myself in this situation again. And from that point forward, obviously, positively, I'm here. It worked out. You made it. But from that point forward, I had contingencies on contingencies on contingencies prepared that I wasn't gonna ever allow that to happen 'cause that was within my reason. I can prepare myself. I can understand myself and I can understand the situations around me to the best of my ability and prepare for all of those. Again, trying to make sure it ties back in the fullest extent, but the non-quitting personality, I took that, identified why I felt that way. I felt probably like most that I didn't want to fail because I might let people down around me. I wanted to make sure I never did that again, so I used that as an opportunity to say, "Hey, I will prepare and not skip a beat ever on these types of things. And then I took a lot of that energy and replicated that to my business. What do I absolutely need? You know, hiking, you don't want to carry everything, but you want to be prepared. What do I need to be prepared? What do I need to make sure I'm successful no matter what? And what gets me to the outcome, period, no questions asked? And that was kind of the mentality I brought into it. And yes, it took a lot of understanding of like what was causing these fears beyond just life and death if something decided to attack me. But, a lot of it was just personal beliefs that I had put on myself that I thought everything else was more important, time was more important than preparing and actually keeping life supported.

Yeah. No, I like to tell my team, there are no accounting emergencies. We're not dealing with life or death. And it's interesting when you put yourself in that crucible of life and death, the clarity that that brings to mind. Yep. And you can't replicate it. You know, we read a lot as our leadership team, we kind of have a book club and Currently we're reading Jocko Willink's Leadership Strategies and Tactics. And of course, he's a former Navy SEAL and all of his experiences are from a military perspective. But the reason why I like reading that type of stuff is because it is the crucible that has tested those things, right? Yep. There's no squishiness when people are shooting at you. And it's literally life and death. And I think that getting yourself out of the business periodically, I think 6 months out of the year is fantastic. But I'm assuming you're working some.

Yeah.

But this idea to step away from the business is where you really have the space to learn about yourself. Because you don't— when you're in it, you don't have the bandwidth to devote to developing any skills or learning anything else because your full energy is on the task at hand, right? So, it's kind of like you got to go away and practice, if you will.

Yeah. I love that analogy. You're absolutely right. And I agree. I resonate with a lot of the— Military-style books because of those absolutes like you mentioned. It's life and death. There's no gray in the middle. If you make a mistake, you might be risking yourself and potentially others and beyond, I mean, a nation as a whole depending on what you're doing. I actually recall the book as well. I did it as an audiobook a little while back. But absolutely agree with you on the thought process of it. I think a lot of us as business owners get caught up in that noise and that things are way more significant than they are. And we feel it's almost life and death when in all reality, like you mentioned, probably is not. No, no.

Yeah, it feels the same. It feels the same, right? But, but it's not the same.

Yeah. Yep. And getting that reality of being something out of the norm, like hiking, mountain biking, jumping out of the sky, doesn't matter. I think a lot of people can resonate in that space of saying, I have nothing else that distracts me. I have to, like you mentioned, the task at hand is the most important thing at the moment. And there's a kind of a peace that you can only find in that moment. And yeah, that's, that is why I take that time to develop those skills, develop that internal dialogue and who, who's here between, between the skin and bones, obviously. And like you said, obviously working, working along the way. But yes, that's, that's exactly the goal is I usually come back and like, okay, this is what I'm going to focus on today on this adventure and this hike. And I want to think through this and then come back and then continue on with it the next time.

And yeah, it's really empowering. Yeah, you have to have a rhythm. I mean, life has a rhythm. The universe has a rhythm, right? There's things that just exist and you're part of. When you just grind, grind, grind in business, you're not acknowledging the rhythm. And the rhythm is, is that there should be a pause. And there should be a time of rest and reflection, whether that's on a weekly basis or a quarterly basis or whatever. But you've got to have that space to do that reflection. And thinking, well, I, I recently took back up woodworking, and I, I'm not a woodworker. Uh, I, 10 years ago or so, I was looking for a butcher block, uh, for my kitchen, and I couldn't find anything that was worth buying, so I just decided to make my own. And, uh, last December my daughter bought a house, and I'm like, I'll make her a butcher block like I had, only I didn't go back and do what I'd done before. I picked out a new plan. And I mean, it has completely kicked my ass. I have screwed it up so many ways, except that I haven't screwed it up that I couldn't fix it. But my point is, it forces me to be comfortable with something that I'm not good at, which is a personality trait of mine that I'm like, if I'm not good at it, I don't want to do it. And that's not good. You know, it's not a— that type of perfectionism is unhealthy. And so I forced myself into this situation where I'm doing something I'm not good at. I'm not skilled or experienced. But, you know, yeah, there's frustration. I mean, like, I blew up a couple of weekends ago, and my wife was like, what? I thought you chopped off a limb with a power tool. I mean, like, no, I just screwed up. And, you know, I had to sit there and think, like, why am I letting this upset me so much? Right? But then at times, I'll have these complete Zen moments where it's like time stops. And, you know, but my— I guess my point is, is the exercise, putting myself in a situation that I don't normally do, shows me things more clearly than if I am doing things that I routinely do.

Do you see the crossover a lot of times? At least that's something I notice is like a lot of these I would consider at times mundane tasks or activities or projects like this, like you're mentioning, is something out of the norm, which I find myself in regularly as well, is when I learn something new. Do you see the crossover in different parts of your life where it's almost empowering and solves problems in other places? I find that regularly, I feel like.

Yes, yes. You know, I think like this project, I had to get a lot of new power tools. I did not realize that I did not have what I needed. And what— the way that translated over was, you know, like, you have to make sure that you have all of the resources you need to be able to accomplish it. And you may not know what the resources are when you start out. Like, you may have to learn along the way and then you have to make a choice. Are you going to— are you going to dedicate and commit to getting the additional resources to make it successful? Or are you still going to try and do it without the proper resources and fail? I also have learned, like, there aren't a lot of unfixable mistakes, right?

Yep.

I mean, you know, they're costly mistakes, but nothing, you know, unless we're building a rocket or we're in the military, like, you know, there's nothing that's critical. Like you screw up something, it's not the end.

Yep, totally agree with you on that. I think it's just like you said, kind of coming to that piece of it's fixable, it's adjustable, recognizing when you're getting upset and being able to either take a break and come back to it or like recognizing that, hey, this is just a passing moment, this is just a flare-up in Is something else bothering me? And I think as we evolve and develop, it helps.

Well, yeah. And I guess I would add that lesson. Like, when I blew up and I was reflecting on it, it was like, I'm putting pressure on myself. I got upset because I had an end goal for that day. Like, I want to have this much of the project done at the end. And I was pushing myself towards the end, and I was tired, and I screwed up. And so it's, it's like, you know, what, why, why put false, uh, requirements on yourself? Like, you know, you make up these ideas that you need to be this far along or this at this stage of the game in life, or, you know, and, and it's like, says who? Like, what, why?

Yeah. Yep, I totally resonate with that. We get in our own heads a lot of times and just slowing down, taking that break. And I mean, like you mentioned, the ultimate goal, it feels like at times, especially with us that want to strive for perfection, it feels like at times taking that break, slowing down, that's how you actually do it. It's small, gradual, 1% movements, but it's consistent movements. It's growth versus getting caught up. And like you mentioned, you can make a mistake and guess what? Now you have to go back 2, 3 steps. Because of that. By just taking a break, you can keep that momentum. And that's something I've had to come to terms with, but actually be really empowering to realize that about yourself, that, oh wow, if I just didn't let my, my head, my emotions get the best of me, I can slow down and keep making momentum. Um, slow, but it's working.

Yeah. Uh, Jim Collins, I think it was, um, I think it was Good to Great. I think it was the sequel to that. He talked about the Arctic Explorer, and I don't remember his name or if you've read the book, but there were two Arctic explorers trying to get to the North Pole in the 19th century. And the guy that made it— the other team froze to death. But the team that made it was very consistent in their incremental journey. They were going to go X miles a day, no more, no less. And so, like, when the weather was good, they'd want to push on, but they stopped. And then they had the reserves of energy to go push when the weather was bad to get to that daily goal. But it was more about that consistency and smaller steps trumps the leaps.

Yep. There's a bit of beauty that comes with that, again, the self-control required to say, I'm the type of person to switch that dialogue and said that I'm the type of person that I show up every single day. I'm not perfect every single day. I'm not going to make exponential growth every single day and, like you said, jump ahead. But if I'm not doing that, what's the— you can look at it negatively and think, oh, I could have done more and I didn't. Or you can look at it and say, I didn't burn myself out for a future day that I might need these resources. And it's just a different way of thinking through it and coming to terms with it. I am the type of person that shows up every day and does what I said I'm going to do, period. Right. It's all it has to be. Yeah, I love that thought process.

I just reread The War of Art. I think the author's name. Yeah. Um, and he, he was talking about his routine, and, you know, like, he, he might work only 4 hours But he showed up and he did the work every day. And it's like, and when he's done, he's done and he can put it, put it aside and say, just to your point, like, could I have gone further? Maybe. But that I was at the end, like I had given what I could today and I'm, and I'm okay with that.

Yep. Yeah. For me, that's been one that literally that book, which I absolutely love that you reference, that is one of the things that I've realized as well. I found that pattern was that that perfectionist side wants to always seep out. And I also recognize that that's what causes things like burnout or rash decisions that end up blowing up in your face and things like that. And those slow, steady, steady wins every single day was more impactful to what I did than anything else. Just being okay with that with myself and giving myself that peace, um, was really powerful. It's kind of an art you have to kind of learn.

Yeah. Like, when I blew up a couple of weekends ago on the woodworking project, I had cut the notch in the wrong end of the post. Oh, no. And my immediate thought was, I've got to rebuild this whole post. I didn't. And that was my reaction. And that's why I got upset. And I was also heaping, like, how could you be so stupid? Like, I mean, that's— it just seemed dumb to me that I had made that mistake. Right? And thinking about it, if I could have not reacted and just fast-forwarded to the contemplative state of like, okay, what can I do to fix this? And I came up with a pretty simple solution. I mean, it wasn't rocket science. I came up with it, for God's sake. But, you know, to me, it's like when I have those emotional reactions, when I get upset about something, and I used to, when I was younger, I would get upset a lot more frequently than I do now. Like, I don't remember having a blow-up like that in, I mean, at least a year. I really don't remember the last time I had. And so, you know, when you feel those feelings and those reactions, you need to pay attention to them, because they're telling you something about yourself. It is not normal to scream at a piece of wood, right? Like, it— It's not normal. There's something else going on, right? Um, so, you know, if any of you out there are, are struggling with your emotions, you know, tune into them. Don't, don't, don't suppress them. Lean into it. Like, okay, why am I feeling this way?

Yeah, I absolutely agree.

Well, I'm glad you agree with me. Brendan, how do people find out more about you or Falconix?

Yeah, absolutely. You can find me basically on any social channels under Brandon Falcon. Very simple there. Falconix, same concept. You can visit any— you can visit our website falconix.com or any of our social channels. We're readily available and like to communicate on there. Like I said, like how you hear me communicate now and the friendliness, our entire staff embodies that. We are people first and a business second. And yeah, would love to communicate in the emotional realms of business if that's something that someone's interested in. Feel free to reach out and let's conversate.

Yeah, every time you say your, your name, I want to hear this screeching falcon sound. Like, I need to— maybe I'll work this into the edits and put it in.

I would love that.

Yes, that would be good. Listeners, we'll have those links in the show notes. If you like what you heard, please share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast, rate the podcast. Until then, remember, you are not alone.