063: On Burnout and Business Intuition with Azul Terronez of Authors Who Lead

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This is your time. How can we earn twice as much in half the time with joy and ease while serving the highest good? That is our guiding question here at the Freetime Cafe, your home for heart based business. I'm your host, Jenny Blake. Join me for conversations with authors, friends and fellow business owners as we explore ways to free your mind, touch time and team to do your best work. Now onto today's show.

Started with just Steve and I, my husband in this business. And then we added one person and then another. And systems become infinitely more important when you add one person but you add a team of 10, which is what's going on now. There has to be processes, otherwise you're creating a job that you actually now live in. Like now I'm an employee with three jobs in my own business and that's really challenging. So when you start talking about this idea of the free time framework and really, really I thought the first thing that came to mind was those four horsemen of the ambition apocalypse that you describe in your book. Tell us about that. Tell us about why there's horsemen in our business. This idea that sounds so promising can really bring us a negative result.

Yes. So these, I call them the four horsemen of the business Ambition apocalypse. Money, power, fame. And those are pretty common known vices. Overly striving for money, power or fame. And then I added control because I think that as business owners, sometimes it's our need to control everything that prevents us from delegating and getting out of the weeds. You mentioned that you have 10 team members. Now I would love to know, are any of them full time? Are all of them full time? What's your setup?

So we built our business around the idea that families should be able to operate. This is before the pandemic was happening where I would say the majority of our team is women, like 95% of them. The majority of them are moms and the majority of them have other clients. So what we wanted to do is we wanted to feel like this. When they were with us, they felt like they were full, like they were full time. Even if that was only five hours a week. They were a contributing member with that much value, and yet they didn't have to work any amount of hours they didn't want. So we had to create systems that allowed them to work as little or as much as they wanted, within reason. So that's how we built it. So we never added a teammate on that isn't willing to accept the fact that this is your life and your family comes first. And what you choose to do, how much you choose to work is up to you. And yet there are things that get done.

Yeah. So you and I have a really similar setup because I say that nobody in my business works full time, including me. I don't actually want somebody working 40 hours a week for my business. I don't want to work 40 hours a week. And I have about five or six extended team members just like you that might work five hours a week, but they're specialists at what they do. And when you were talking about the importance of systems, I know some people feel allergic to that word systems and even software. But the thing is, as soon as there's more than one person, the owner, you have to get things out of your head. And even if you are the owner and everything still lives in your head, nobody can help you. And then when you do start building a team, it's so easy to become the bottleneck. And they're very. Without having systems and structure and documentation in place. I mean, there are just very practical things that kind of go wrong if someone leaves or they're out of office or they get sick. No one knows where to step in. Nobody knows how to do their work. You end up training team members and repeating yourself as the owner constantly. If there's turnover on your team, you have to go through all the same stuff again because you haven't documented your onboarding or systems or how to run things. And then another thing I found. This was only a couple years into building out my team. I became the chief questions answerer. I was grateful to be delegating, but I was getting so frustrated by all the interruptions of my team asking me questions. And I realized even there, we need to document, because I don't want people to just hit a roadblock and then come ask me for help. And then I. I would answer everyone's questions and feel grateful that at least I wasn't the one doing the work. But there came a point, too, where I had to say, stop letting me be the bottleneck. I need you to make recommendations rather than ask questions.

Right no, that's a good point. And I think I would rather them say I did this and me go, awesome next time. Let's try this versus now. What do you want me to do again? Cause I've had team members where it's. That's been the challenge where they're waiting for me to tell them what to do. I'm like, I don't know what you should be doing, to be honest. And I don't want to know what you're doing in a regular basis unless you need me to know or need my input. And that's a powerful thing. It is terrifying. So Steve and I made the conscious choice that we're only going to work Tuesday through Thursday. So we don't take calls on Fridays or Mondays unless we want to. And I don't start my day before 10 unless I want to. And I'm done by by five or six every day. So I wanted four day weekends every week because I don't want to work for a job that I retire from. So you're. When I was reading your book, I'm like, oh my gosh, she's speaking my language. This is exactly why we have systems, why I love Monday even I'm not a detail oriented person. Monday saves us time and saves us effort. So let's talk about this. Who are you thinking of in your mind? Like the avatar, the ideal reader when you were crafting and designing this book.

The problems that came to me would be these small, I call them heart based business owners, as I know you are business owners beset by the burdensome bees. So they're getting bored of their business, they are bottlenecked and worse, they're burnt out or they're kind of buried in bureaucracy. So there's a fourth one. Either there's too much infrastructure and they just feel weighed down by their business. They're getting burnt out because they're doing too much. The boredom sometimes, you know how we are, us creative typ. Like we don't like getting stuck in the same thing for too long. So that can strike. And I was really writing this to somebody who. They don't want to work alone. They know that working alone is too much pressure actually. And as Michael Gerber says in E Myth, then you haven't created a business, you've created a job. However, they don't want to manage big teams. They don't want the infrastructure of 10 full time employees or 20. They don't have these visions of growing at all costs. It's not just about the money. I really wrote this for somebody who, just like you described time and presence and meaningful work and connecting with the right community takes precedence over the money alone or the success markers alone. And it's not to knock people who are all about building the biggest possible business or getting venture funding or who are just obsessed with making millions and millions of dollars. I'd also don't pin that against any of the principles I talk about in free time, but they're I consider free timers. We're not just high net worth, we're high net freedom that we will often turn down clients or even community members that are not a fit rather than do it just for the money. And we will also make decisions about our business, like we wouldn't pay to advertise on a platform that we don't believe their value system is the right one for the planet. So there are these decisions that we will make that prioritize our time and our freedom and our happiness and joy over purely money and success. And that's really who this book is for.

And I thought of the word empire building when you just mentioned that there's some sort of sense that you talked about like that's their mission, like building an empire. And I think Seth Godin talks about this quite a bit. You know, your success can be measured in lots of ways and your happiness can get a tie to it. The problem with success is that if it's built on always building, you're never going to have enough because you have to keep building to have enough, even if you achieve whatever the thing is. And so I think your book is a breath of fresh air for people realizing that you can be super successful, be wealthy, because there's nothing wrong with wealth. Loss is an exchange of energy for something lovely you've given to the world. But also you don't have to hate your job or burn out. Tell us about a time and you do talk about in the book and it's really beautiful where you, you started to feel the burnout. And so why this book is partially probably for you before it is for anyone else.

Yeah, I mean I've hit burnout so many times in my career. There must be some kind of personality type of those of us that are very driven and passionate about our work. I almost feel like that passion. It of course it's like there's a fire within a fire to create things. And that fire can sometimes burn too brightly and burn too hot and lead to burnout. And I am now at this point in my career, how old am I 38 years old. I'm not convinced that I can avoid burnout altogether. Sometimes I think that we like, it feels good to go all out and all in on projects or certain phases of business building, but. But then it's just so important to build in the time for rest, whether that's four day weekends or I've started blocking out two months a year where I don't schedule anything. And you asked about a specific moment of burnout for me, one of the ones I just, I do describe in the introduction. Oh my goodness. I booked this client. It was a corporate client and it was a dream client, innovative, wonderful to work with. And they, they wanted to book me for almost $100,000 of business, which mostly was speaking engagements, flying around the delivering workshops. And I knew that it had a good chance that if those went well, they might want to license the material, which then is the most joyful revenue. Because I don't even show up for it. They just take the pivot concepts and teach it internally. Well, I signed on the dotted line with this client. Normally I take a 50% deposit to start work. In this case I didn't. It was a huge company, there was a lot of bureaucracy and my contact just said, oh, I don't have too much control over this.

Well, there I went, flying around the world, delivering all these trainings, running my business, counting on this money. Like, this was a big check for me. This was a lot of money. This was significant. And I needed this money to pay for the business for the next few months that I was so focused on this project. And when it was four and five months later and that money still hadn't arrived, I became so angry at myself and I just thought, I have no one to blame but myself. I'm exhausted. I'm so tired of looking at the bank accounts and building up the credit cards and not having the money and not knowing how I'm going to pay my team. And.

I just became very, like, angry again. Angry at myself that I was too lax.

Of starting the work before I got this deposit, but also relying so heavily on one client and realizing that I hadn't built up big enough recurring revenue to make this client's check bonus money, not necessary money. And that is really what launched this, what I called JB 3.0, the Renaissance. It was this time of really digging in and really trying to do better in my business, of creating sustainable recurring revenue and the systems and the team to support it so that I would not find myself in this position again.

I love that and, you know, it's really easy to get caught up in the bigger is better kind of mode. Wow, this is a big client. This is a big opportunity. In fact, I was just talking to my Steve and our mentor, Pat Flynn today. He goes, because there's a big opportunity coming up here for a huge publishing client that would put us on the map as publishers, because it's huge. But what I realized is he's like, and if it doesn't happen, it's okay. I'm like, that's right. It is okay. We're not hanging our hat on this or we serve lots of people and we're building a community of amazing authors. And.

Yeah, just don't try to get ahead of yourself. And, you know, you wish for something and then it steals away your happiness. I love what I do. I find complete joy in it. And the team people we've hired do what we don't love. They love what they do. So that's great.

And we're helping them because we're inspiring them to grow in their own way. So this is just like if at all Steve and I talk, if we had all went away, we can survive living this well with just a couple of private clients. If we didn't pay a team, I'd be fine. We'd be fine. There's no harm here. One of the things you mentioned, and I want you to talk about this more because it was really fascinating in the book because I really prescribed to it, which is you talked about this notion of business intuition and I want you to talk about that and how does it work? Because I think people sometimes may be intuitive person in their life, but then they go to business and they switch that thing off or they don't think it's right. Tell us about business intuition and why it matters.

We'll be right back just after this. Cuando entras a Burlington Encuentras Precios increibles irregalos Geniales El social.

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This potential huge client that you described, my intuitive take on clients and whether they enroll or not is that it's always perfect. That if they choose not to work with you, it's perfect. And that must be for the highest Good. And that has always helped me sort of flow with who's coming in, who's coming out, not being attached to anything. I don't do one on one coaching anymore. But when I used to have those sales sales calls, when I used to have those get to know you calls before signing someone on, I would genuinely say I am not attached to us working together or not. My goal on this call is to get you the resources you need and no rush, no pressure. You will know if and when you want to do coaching with me and otherwise I'm happy to point you in the right direction. And I really meant that. And so part of this has multiple parts. One part of intuitive business building and business operating I think is unsubscribing from any tactics out there that don't resonate, that feel like sandpaper to your soul. So what I just described with my coaching sales process, I don't want to create false scarcity. I don't want to rush the person when they say, oh, I need to talk this over with my partner. I, I don't want to say, well let's game plan, let's strategize or like have some, these people will teach like methods to make sure they don't go talk to their partner first and they sign with you right then and there. So for one intuition of when something seems off, don't do it. It doesn't matter who's advising you to do this, it doesn't matter what's popular in the industry that you work in. Just don't do it. In my mind, it's not worth it. And it will come across as inauthentic and out of integrity. And that will also lead to its own form of burnout. The second piece of it is, I can't tell you asul how many times I've read in business books, don't trust your intuition. It's all about the data, it's all about the metrics, it's all about, you know, just these very kind of rigid left brain approaches. And I agree. Data and experiments and a B tests, it's all good. But my intuition has helped me at every single stage of my career. And the more I listen, the more helpful it is. And I would not be able to take the risks that I do. The financial investments, going all in on whatever my next big book idea is. I could not do that without my intuition, without listening to the little voice that when I pluck a crazy idea out of the sky says yes, that one, that's the one. Go for it and for me, intuition is the only thing that is going to keep me going. When everyone else is telling me no, whether it's big publishers or agents or any part of, let's talk about specifically the book publishing process. People are going to tell you no, people are going to give you one star reviews. People are going to not like the work. And the only thing that keeps me going is this intuitive feeling that I know what's right and I know when I'm onto something. And so I just don't agree that it's only about the numbers and the metrics. And I think that especially for those of us who do lean on our intuition in other areas of life and we're used to sort of building that as a skill and a real asset, I think it can make you a brilliant business owner. And you might make decisions that no spreadsheet would ever tell you to do, but they become the best decisions you could possibly make.

100%. And I tell this to people who ask me questions like, well, how did you decide to build your business like this? Like, how did you know this is what you're going to do? I go, I didn't, I didn't know at all. It was Pat Flynn that said, hey, would you help me coach my book? That started this whole process. I didn't have a sales page, a website. This is what I did. But I trusted my intuition on how I show up. And people use this word a lot or this phrase, you know, your network is your net worth. But I find fewer and fewer people really invest in it. Like it's like, like they would in marketing, like, or ad spend. I was like, I invest in it all the time. I will fly to Toronto for, if you invite me for a cookie because it, my intuition says this is the right thing to do. It if I try to make it a reason for.

Would wash out. But my intuition says this is. And you know what? It always pans out every time. And, and I tell people, look, here's the example. We, we're thinking ourselves. When I was thinking of reading your book, I was thinking we think of ourselves as separate from nature. And that's why intuition seems so off. But when you realize you're a part of it, like, no, we're, we're in it. We're like birds. We're like animals. You know, if you watch them, they follow their intuition. They're not like, okay, I got this stored up over here. I got this, you know, I got my refrigerator. No, they just, they follow their instincts you know, and I think the most, I don't know who told me about this, but the, the, the huge tsunami that happened in Thailand, maybe it's, I don't know, 15 years ago, it could have been longer, that killed thousands of people, no animals were harmed. They all had intuition several days ahead to just move away from the water and go somewhere else. They just followed it, that no one told them, you know, what if you don't leave, this is the tide will rise. No, they follow. We have that too. And I think your book just reaffirmed it in business. I need to trust it more. And so I want to thank you for that. And you talked about something else that I wanted to talk to you about, which is you called revenue, ease and joy to create this free time sort of moment. How has that changed the way you work?

I think sometimes people might hear a conversation like this one and think that these ideas are mutually exclusive. If I want to have free time, then I'm going to earn less money. And the question that drives me is, well, the guiding question of my business the last 10 years is how can I earn twice as much in half the time with ease and joy while serving the highest good? Each piece of that is important to me. When I was leaving Google in 2011, I was so afraid, what if I go broke? And I kept asking myself over and over, what if I go broke? Even those of your authors who are going to non traditional publishing, it's like, what if this doesn't work? What if I invest all this money and I go broke? So for me, in order to counter that fear, I needed to ask myself, what if I earn more? What if I earn twice as much in half the time? And that's not a precise statement, it's just an ongoing inquiry. Then I added with ease and joy because you're right, it's too easy to get burned out going for that. Like, oh, the best systems and the best business. And then the final piece, while serving the highest good, as you described how you think about your team, it's like, what's in the highest good? Not just for the owner or the author, for your team, for your community, for your clients, for the broader world. And to let that, along with our intuition, guide decision making. So this Venn diagram has three circles. Revenue, ease and joy. And I encourage every business owner to look for what are the services that you offer and even the types of clients that you serve that are at that intersection of revenue, ease and joy. I think what's so powerful of the example you gave of Pat Flynn when he showed up at your door. First of all, there's your intuition magneting you two together and saying, oh, I don't know who this is, but this is really compelling. And Pat is such a leader in our whole space, but that he was helping you identify this sweet spot where by doing book coaching, it's at this intersection of revenue. It might, if I'm guessing it feels easeful. And it's not that it's always easy, but it feels easeful and it's joyful. So as business owners, we can edit. Even as authors, even in the writing process, if what you're writing doesn't fit at the intersection of these three things, you can reconsider. And I just encourage everybody to ask this as a broad open ended question, hold it as an ongoing inquiry and don't worry if the answer doesn't come right away. But at least instead of always thinking about the worst case scenarios, be asking, how can I optimize for revenue? Ease and joy.

This is a beautiful book for people who want to learn how to do this in their own life. Because people ask me, well, how do you only work Tuesday through Thursday? How does that work? I go, first of all, it was a decision that wouldn't it be great if. And what would happen to my business? What, it shrink? No, it's doubled. That's the thing with less work.

And then I look forward to Mondays too, a lot of the time because there's no meetings. I also don't do meetings on Monday or Friday or before 10am and it's so freeing. And you can work on big creative projects or new revenue streams. Like it's exciting the things that I've gotten done on Mondays just because I didn't let other people fill my calendar by default because nobody's trying to be obnoxious. But if they ask to schedule a meeting at 7am on a Monday, it's so nice to have that boundary set. Like, no, I don't do that. Unless you're Pat Flynn. We'll say yes. We'll say yes to Pat.

Yeah. You know what's interesting is that people like pattern our biggest champions, like, oh, you don't meet Mondays. Well, let's not do that. Let's meet. Like, when do we meet? Like they're moving their schedule to meet.

Right.

My expectation.

And then they go, oh, that's so inspiring. I don't want to have. Why do I have meetings on Monday? I love when I see people's very creative autoresponders. My friend Dave Crenshaw over the holidays. His responder said, I'm creating a creative oasis away from work and with my family for the next month. And I was like, oh, I just feel calmer reading about your, your oasis away from email.

It's beautiful. But what it, what it does is it gives me more space to be. I tell I coach a lot of creatives who, some of them are writers, some are not. And I say the way to create more success is to not do more, is to be more. Be more of who you are supposed to be in this world. Don't try to do more. If you effort your way to success, you'll burn out and be unhappy. But if you be yourself, you'll be like Betty White. Just be. And it's a beautiful way to exist. You don't have to ever worry about what the next thing will be because you're the most blessed animal on this earth creature. And you don't think that you don't deserve to be joyful flowers. Look how gorgeous they are. They don't do that. They don't like, I'm gonna do a flower. No, they just be. And I'm a flower. Isn't that cool? Or I'm, you know, a blade of grass. So I think I really love this revenue with ease and joy in the free time framework. This has been a great conversation, Jenny. I've loved getting to know you and as well learning how connected we are in the world outside of books, with many wonderful friends. If you're there out there listening and you're thinking, you know what? I've been thinking about a book for a while. I just don't know what to do. Reach out. Go to authorsholead.com look at what we offer. Listen to the podcast episodes where authors have come on and talk about their book because you can learn valuable lessons from so many people here and we appreciate anybody who's willing to take the risk and put themselves out there in a book. It takes tremendous courage. And Jenny, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you so much for having me. Azul, what a delight. And listeners, thank you so much for being here.

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