Avoiding Burnout: What Entrepreneur Season Are You In?

What is your season and where are you and what are the things that you should modify that maybe have changed over the years because our expectations of ourselves and what we can do in business and chasing the what is enough and hopefully fulfilling what it's enough for yourself sooner than later, or at least understanding that you're on the path is going to bring you so much clarity, so much solace. You're going to be able to sleep at night better. You're just gonna feel better. Hey, I'm Joe Fear and welcome to the Hustle and Flow Chart podcast. This is where we talk all about building businesses so they give you the freedom and fuel for your life. I'm not here to help you build a billion dollar business, but I am here to help you create a business with systems that work for you so you can make more money than you need just by working part time. You know, I was a chronic hustle mode kind of guy and I want to share my experiences and mentors I've met along the way to help you reframe things to be the most effective as an entrepreneur. I wish I had this guidance and insight when I was younger. So that's what I'm doing here for you. Please share and enjoy.

Oh, hello there. I am back again with another solo episode and this time I want to talk about the seasons of our lives of your life. Do you know what season you're in right now? Have you ever thought of this concept? This is a concept that I don't know what the first time I remember listening or hearing this concept. I remember Ryan Dice posted something about, about seasons of Lives and I don't know if it was a tweet or a Facebook post, but, you know, it had me thinking about what does that mean for one? And also which one am I in and what do I do once I know what season of my life I'm in? And why the hell does it even matter in the first place? So seasons of a person's life, this is the reason I want to bring this up now, is in this whole theme of knowing what's enough for you and what you should be and want to be doing in your business that then fuels the rest of your life to a point where you feel like you're not being overwhelmed, you're not burning out, you keep your momentum high and people are receiving value from you. You continue to create. And as we progress through life, you know, I'm 37 right now. I've gone through many seasons of my life. Now that I look back upon it. And I have a lot of seasons, God willing, knocking on all the wood right now. I have a lot more seasons ahead of me. And man, a lot of things have happened over these years and guaranteed for you as well as you reflect as you probably have, and with this frame of mind of seasons of our lives and understanding that each stage, each season has, you know, that has unique things that are going down. And we're learning so much in each phase. We're almost like a totally different person at each. There was some quote and I don't know the quote I don't have in front of me because I'm just speaking from my mind with a little bit of notes. But we are born. Someone said we're born like our parents, like we are. We're basically our parents because we're, we're raised by them. We're obviously born from our mothers, but then our childhood, we're raised in a way where they are conditioning us. However we were conditioned as, as kids through our childhood phase, you know, this first phase of our lives season is that's, that's really our parents. I mean, let's be honest, a lot of the stuff that we, we have done, a lot of our beliefs, the ways that we think and carry ourselves and acted, a lot of that came from how our parents treated us and raised us as kids. For better or for worse, it is what it is. And a lot of that carries over into later stages of our lives, but a lot of it doesn't. But at the same time, you know, so this quote, back to the quote, we're born like our parents, but we die in the ways that we think. You know, our beliefs or our actions basically have carried us to this as another person. We're a different person by the point we die and we've gone through different phases of our lives. Assuming that we die, we end up dying after multiple, you know, seasons of our lives or phases. And, you know, I want to be super clear here, and this isn't a morbid thing or anything, but, you know, we're all going to die. That's not a bad thing. It's just natural going to happen. Big deal. So, you know, it's, it's, it's okay. And knowing that we have a finite amount of time on this planet, we should make the most of each season of our life and know who we are for one, like now and then we can look back on what, what we have done through previous seasons of our lives. You know, what they are, what they were, what they Meant what we learned, who we were, like, who we hung out with, all the different things and things that that mattered. Like, what are we taking these little clues and things that are in our character from previous seasons of our lives, and how have we carried that over into who we are right now, knowing that right now in the present, this is how we can take action and make a difference of whatever we want in life. Because the future seasons of our lives are going to be from what actions we take right now. And of course, as entrepreneurs and business owners, we can make a lot of decisions every single day. And those decisions not only affect us in our. Like, we might be selfish people, and that's okay, not judging, but at the same time, we gotta realize that the decisions we make right now in our business affect other people. We're serving other people. That's why we make money, we get paid. Because the value we're putting out into the world is a result of the actions we're taking in this current season of our life, no matter what season we're in. You could be a child listening to this podcast. I. Highly unlikely, because I know my demographics, you know, but, yeah, most are more in the 30s and up to 50s and a little higher, so that. That would. I would call more middle age. So, like, if we're. We're talking about the different seasons or stages in people's lives, just as, like, a general overview, you have a childhood, you have adolescence. You know, childhood is, you know, like I was saying, very early days of school and whatnot, hanging out with your parents, you have adolescence. That's the phase where, you know, we're starting to break out from our parents. They're starting to think for ourselves. And a lot of the belief system is gonna get shaken up. We're gonna get input from our friends. We're gonna look outside of our family unit and start to think for ourselves, for better or for worse. No, but it's okay. Like, that's where we start to learn, get in trouble and then we learn. But we also establish a lot of beliefs that then continue to carry on. And it's up to us to shape those things into constructive beliefs that I'm sure are still showing up in our actions right now. And I know have for myself, and these are there that I love, and certain things I don't love so much that I'm working on them all. So then, you know, we have childhood, we have adolescence, we have young adulthood. And that's. That's like getting out of high school, college, university, and maybe Starting a career, kind of those early, early days, you know, this is the phase where I did start in business. It was, I would call it young adulthood. That was, you know, while I was still in university and college. This is when Matt and I started our blogs back in the day while I was working for his parents shutter company here in San Diego. And I learned a ton. And that was where I started learning more professionally and learning the value that I can provide in this world. So, you know, I wasn't just back in childhood where I was learning from my parents and all that stuff. I wasn't an adolescent anymore where I was causing trouble and having fun and playing music and bands and not really caring about what I'm going to do when I get older, but kind of carrying a little bit, wondering, but learning all at the same time and learning how to carry myself. But then young adulthood, you know, that's, that's the phase where I started to really, okay, I gotta, I gotta button my stuff up a little bit because I gotta pay the bills now. You know, I got my own, my own might be living with my parents. I did for a little bit, but then, you know, I moved out, had girlfriends and then soon I got married pretty young too. That put on a whole new layer of commit or, you know, responsibilities, obviously commitment too, in that young adulthood. So moving on, we have middle age and I'm going to call that 30s to 50, something like that, 60s. I don't know how long we're all going to live these days, the average. But we're getting older, I believe so, you know, the middle age, a lot of happiness, a lot happens there and I'd say that's where most of us are in business, at least in the thick of business. This is where we're starting companies up. This is where we are. We're really making these tough decisions in business. We're going for it. It's our biggest earning years of our business where really put the focus in on creating a livelihood that's great for us and our families. And we start to think about some bigger things, you know, implications of how we spend our time and what we're doing. And we also have a ton more commitments in life and things like kids show up in a lot of our lives. And that's what I want to talk a lot more about on this podcast as we continue on. I'm going to bring in all walks of lives in terms of guests and people who we haven't really done in the past so much or have chatted with Because I want to get different perspectives. People who are parents, who are working as their own business, maybe just, just showing more of the outside perspective of not just business. But hey, let's think about what's happening outside of business in all of our lives. We have other conditions and elements that are affecting how we do our work in our businesses. And it doesn't make sense to ignore these factors outside of business. And that's why I'm talking about the seasons of our lives is because there's all these different factors that are affecting how we show up and how we provide value to others via our business, depending on what phase we're in or what stage we're in. And obviously the stages are kind of the same here, these categories. And then of course, after middle age, we have old age. That's where a lot of us are probably retiring, where we're selling our businesses, or maybe we're not. But I would, I would gather that we're probably not taking as many risks. There's just other things happening. You might even have more time where you're just like, you have enough money or whatever buffer where you are taking more risk. That's cool too. But broad, broad spectrum here we're probably not because we're slowing down. We're, we're not going to be as go getter to start up new things all the time because we're thinking of the later phases of our lives. I haven't gotten there yet. I don't want to rush it, but those are the phases. Those are kind of like the general phases. Childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, middle age and then older age. I'm going to speak more to the middle age, at least for a second here. Like for myself, there's a lot of decisions I've had to make differently because of the commitments in my life. Like for instance, I have family. I have quite a bit of extended family here through being married to my lovely wife Heather. So there's, there's that, there's other factors. It's not just me. Like back in the day, it just felt like it was me and I could go for it. Even though I got married young, like I was saying. So I always kind of had a lot of, you know, family around me. But family affects things. And then what do you know with family? Typically families grow. I had a kid and yeah, my kid's three years old now. That was a massive shift in my seasons, season of my life as a, as a middle age or I guess young, I'd be middle aged. I guess when I had my kid, but a lot of us even have them in young adulthood. Whatever. The fact is, having a kid, hey, if you have a kid, you know how much of a difference your life, like, changes in an instant. Your time changes, your focus changes, the fact that your brain is just wired differently. You have way less sleep. So, I mean, you have to prioritize your lives differently and think about what truly matters. You. You stop thinking about just you and you start to think outside of you. And, and maybe you don't. I can't project to you, but at least this is how I felt. And I feel like a lot of parents do. But, yeah, like, priorities will change, so taking risk will probably lessen. So before kids and all these different commitments, before a wife, before girlfriends, and like, if you're single, you probably don't have much overhead or a lot of commitments to others. Not saying you don't, but you don't have nearly as many, let's be honest. And you know what? There's a lot of entrepreneurs that never have kids. I didn't think we would have a lot of, or any kids because we had a lot of struggles even having one. And we continue to have struggles trying to have another one. Real talk. And I think a lot of us have those same struggles, if we admit it or not. And I know that's the fact for a lot of my friends in business, but the fact is, if you don't have a kid or multiple kids and you have a business, let's be honest, you got a lot more time, you have a lot less responsibilities on your hands. So that means that you can, you can lean into your work or lean into something else as this season of your life and give it way more than someone could who does have kids and all these other commitments and overhead in their lives on their business overhead, but life overhead. And I'm not just talking about money. I'm talking about time, sleep over. I mean, there's so many different elements. Your health suffers. A lot of folks, you know, just stop caring for themselves and their bodies, their diets suffer, and all that's gonna hit our business in another way, you know, in some way. So again, just understanding that all of us, and this goes for like, you know, when we're looking outside of ourselves at social media or some other business, maybe some influencer, some other podcaster who doesn't have kids or doesn't have the responsibilities. And I'm not shaming or nothing like that, because again, I. There's, there's a benefit to both Sides. But the point is don't compare yourself to someone else. And like in your season, to their season, we're not all made the same. We all have different circumstances. What I want you to do is really understand what is your season and where are you and what are the things that you should modify that maybe have changed over the years because our expectations of ourselves and what we can do in business and chasing the what is enough and hopefully for fulfilling what it's enough for yourself sooner than later, or at least understanding that you're on the path is going to bring you so much clarity, so much solace. You're going to be able to sleep at night better, you're just going to feel better. And you know, kids are just, it's a massive factor. So, you know, that's, that's just real talk. That's how I'm thinking a lot of the times I don't feel like a lot of folks who are on social media or influencers giving you all these strategies or teaching you programs, training programs are telling you things like this. They're just focused on the business and the business only. So keep in mind that there's a lot of factors to all this and seasons of life. So another, another thing for me and I'm just going to kind of use my experiences but extrapolate a little bit for yourself, for you and so you can hopefully relate. So another season of my life as I've been in young adult slash middle age is I lost my dad, lost him to suicide of all things. That was about three years ago at the time of this record. And if you go back in the archives, he died in October 2019, which was about 20ish days before I had my daughter. The birth of my daughter and that sucked. And the timing's even worse because it was this weird, you know, confusion. Point of, you know, I just lost my father, but then I just gained a kid, you know, 20ish days later. I, I don't know. You know, that's nothing I would ever wish on anyone. And that's a whole different thing. I did go into depth on that and some previous. So if you look back, point is, you know, back in October 2019 or even night, maybe November, maybe a little after, I believe it was Matt and I had a therapy session. That's what we call those things where it's him and I on the mic and you can, you can go hear my thoughts around that. I've obviously I have some different clarity around that now and time has changed. Three years Later, I've learned a lot, but during that phase of my life, I wasn't functioning well. I didn't get shit done. I couldn't think clear. I was in a fog. I was in a total like not tailspin, but I was just in a fog and trying to figure out what the hell just happened. You know, what do I do, how do I support myself, but also I still need to support my family. And holy crap, now I have a kid. It was a lot. So luckily Heather did so much for myself and to help with estate stuff and all the stuff that it's what I've always dreaded and it sucked. But not to make this show about that. It's. The point is we all lose people in our lives. Loved ones, our family, our friends. I lost friends. Actually that, that following year I lost one of my best friends. And boom, another death, another point of confusion. Someone that was right around my age and I grew up with. And point is, we're all, we all lose people, we all lose our parents eventually and it's going to happen. And like I said, death, it's got to happen and it's okay. But the point is we got to prepare ourselves and somehow know what to do with that season of our lives. Sometimes it might be a little. Feel a little longer than others. Obviously losing a parent, especially when it's tragic and unexpected, it's. It's really tough and it creates a lot of confusion in different ways that we approach life. And of course business can suffer. Luckily there during that time I had Matt as my business partner and he was able to hold up a lot of the things that I couldn't. Luckily I had had my wife still do and she supported a lot of things there. But man, if I was just doing that solo, it would have. It would have forced me to do a lot of different things and I don't know how. But point is, that season of my life, I had to make some big changes in my business, in my life. I had to change my expectations of things. It derailed a lot of things that I had planned for myself, projects and whatever it might be. It affected stuff. So again, understanding and putting expectations on things, I think that's a big thing here to keep in mind to check our expectations during certain seasons of our lives and reprioritize another one that I want to kind of end on. Another season for me at least was last year. 2022 is this whole like shifting of a business. So as entrepreneurs, a lot of us will, we'll shift our businesses we might, we might move to a different industry like Matt and I did. We also brought in another partner. We had Randy, AKA Buffalo Crypto Buffalo. He was a partner of ours. And that was a different season because we went into a whole different direction. For better or for worse, that was a whole different thing. You know, I reprioritized so many things in my life, again, for better, for worse. And that it just, it created a whole different dream of things that took me away from being enough. But again it, it had me re look at stuff in a way that affected people and things outside of me. And that includes you as a listener. You know, it affected my business, it affected Matt and I's business and what I was bringing home, energy I brought home. That was a whole season of shifting businesses and having partners. And at the same time it was a season of me realizing that there needed to be a change. It was a season, I would say, of this growth of like a wake up call. I can't keep changing and switching tasks. I can't burn it out. I can't do that kind of business. It was a startup business in a phase where I had a 2/3 year old. I mean, I didn't want to be in a business that felt like a grind, grind, grind all the time. Business in an emerging industry that was exciting, but at the same time it wasn't a fit for my season that I was in at that time. And you know, maybe If I was 10 years younger it would have been a totally different scenario, but the industry didn't even exist 10 years before that, so it's impossible. But the point is, you know, doing a startup company at that phase of my life at 36 years old wasn't a fit. I just didn't reflect and look at that season in my life. And unfortunately I paid the consequences. And it's okay, I don't regret it, but at the same time I'm learning from it. So there's, there's certain phases and like all this, I don't know how this will resonate with you, but I want you to reflect on, on the different phases of our lives that we all go through. And each of these will change the different priorities, the different go. It'll affect the decisions and strategies for your business. And getting really clear with where you're at right now will should allow you to reprioritize things and set some goals that are going to allow you to make clear and better decisions that make you feel enough and whole and not burn out. And remember that each stage of our lives. Each of these phases, they're going to present different challenges, but they're also going to give you different opportunities. So, you know, always be open and honest with yourself, because when you are and when you know who you are, then you're actually going to be able to be receptive to those opportunities so you can follow through. And I think that's the big thing. If we're not following through, this is something for myself. This is where momentum ceases, and I feel like it adds even more pressure on us because it's like the what if start to happen or you start to potentially burn some connections and bridges that you once had because your. Your priority priorities are all out of whack. The being open to these opportunities in the right moment, you know that that's going to allow you to say yes or no to something and say it with confidence and knowing in your full being that you're doing the right thing or not. So really, going back to you can handle any kind of challenge if you are synced up and aligned with the season of your life. So you can then show up as the best entrepreneur that you are. So I just want to wrap this up by saying this is something that we all deal with. We all go through seasons of our lives. None of them are good or bad. They just are. It's our lives. We don't need to, like, think too hard about the meaning behind them because we're all getting older and we're all learning, hopefully. And hopefully we do the right thing with these lessons and know that everyone is different. Every single one of us have a unique set of these combined experiences from previous phases of our lives. And we have different elements of our business, different industries, circumstances, opportunities, and challenges. A lot of us share similar things. So just know that we should be understanding of where we're at so we can make clearer choices. Prioritize yourselves, create those goals, and then surround yourself with people that can support you. And I'm here for you, of course. And that's why I'm making these episodes in this podcast, Hustle and Flowchart. Again, the vision of let's figure out what's enough for ourselves in business. And, you know, because this might not be the sexiest topic, but I sure as hell think this is the most important one that's going to keep us in movement in, in. In this momentum so we can continue to give the best value to the people that are following along with us. So I appreciate you following along with me, Joe Fear. That's me. And this show and I hope that you continue to do so. And, and yeah, I. This is just really fun to share these things with you and expect a lot more. I hope that you go Visit Hustle and Flowchart.com go join the email list. I want to hear from you and any feedback. Go leave a rating review. You'll probably hear it again at the end of this episode. But I, I honestly mean it when we are. This is a movement that I want to happen and if you feel like there's someone in your life that should hear this, another entrepreneur is probably who it would be. But whoever, just go share it with them. Go send this episode or whatever episode because I genuinely think the more people hear this, the better everyone will start being. I mean, I don't know a better way to say it, but I feel like there is a shift happening and a lot of us don't understand what. What is going on. But this is something that we, we need is. Is understanding ourselves and then others around us. So please share and enjoy. So thank you for listening. I appreciate you. Until next time. Peace. All right. All right. That's what I got for you today. And remember, it's not all about living to work. It's all about working to live if you need to do the work. But you know, work can be fun and it should be feeling for your life. So if you enjoyed what you just heard, if you got some nuggets of wisdom that you want to share or you're just noodling on right now, please go tell others. The way that people find this show and how you can help others get their aha moments is through word of mouth. So if it is telling your friend, telling your family, send an email to your list, writing a review or whatever it might be. Everything helps. So thank you so much for listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast and I, you hope, will see you next time.