From Burnout to Breakthrough: Mastering the Art of Entrepreneurial Pacing with Joe Fier

We're never going to stop unless we are deliberate about taking these micro breaks and using those as a way every single day, multiple times. I mean honestly, as many as you can to recharge, to refocus and being deliberate, like map them out time, block them into your day.

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So now's the time to close more deals and get on track. Make Q1 your best yet. Explore the new HubSpot Sales Hub and AI tools like Chat Spot at HubSpot.com sales hey, what's happening? Joe Fear here, another episode of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. And this time around I'm fresh, kind of fresh from a vacation I took for a week, a week away from my business, a week away from checking email, being in the middle of everything, even slack messages from my team. I was kind of a ghost and I think they appreciated that, you know. So at the end of the day, I took a week away, went over to Kauai with my family over in Hawaii and it was epic. You know, it's my wife, it was my two daughters, one of them is three months old, another four and a half. So you know, it was a little gamble on how that would go as, you know, flying the six plus hours it took to get there and back and then jumping all around, it was incredible. And I had a lot of breakthroughs and I want to share some of these with you. And, and there was the thing that stands out to me. I was over in Hanalei, it's on the north part of Kauai, beautiful part if you ever get get out there. Hanalei Bay in the town of Hanalei this place is called Slow Yourself Down. That's the name of the store, and it's basically a store that just sells a bunch of swag. With that on there, Slow Yourself Down. And I loved it. I think it was towards the end of the trip that we actually found this place. I ended up just buying. I wanted to buy everything in the store, but I couldn't get myself to do it. I bought some stickers. Bunch of stickers. So nice reminders for me to see things in certain places, like, slapped one in my water bottle. Just little reminders. And it got me really thinking about, I mean, the episode I put out a couple weeks ago right before I left, talking about intentional slowing down and building buffers and pacing. But also now coming back from this trip, I was able to successfully detach myself for a week in a business that is very high touch. It's very digital. I could take this laptop anywhere I go in the world and be attached and ready to record an episode, even if I wanted to. Different background, but that doesn't matter. I would be able to be tapped in anywhere. And a lot of us have that freedom. But also, it's ball and chain, let's be honest. It's something that allows or maybe, you know, has our mind switched on at all points. You know, even this watch. I'm wearing, the Apple watch, you know, every. All these devices, everything's synced up these days. And just imagine what that's doing to your. Your mind. I mean, you're literally on all the time. Unless you take the deliberate approach to slow down and embrace pacing and slowing yourself down. There is a difference. When I came back, even though I wasn't well rested, I mean, mind you, I was traveling with two young kids, and it wasn't like we went crazy and did all these amazing adventures or sat on beaches all the time. Like, honestly, it was slow. I had to purposely take everything slow there. I'm one to want to go hike, you know, my wife and go explore, go to Beaches, do crazy stuff and go out and snorkel and wanted to wind a surf and learn all that. I was meeting people out there, but I paused, and I didn't. I didn't have that FOMO in my mind of, like, oh, I got to get it all done. Like. And I feel like a lot of us, we take that mindset into business or an opportunity that shows up, we say, yes, we're quick to commit. We're quick to not see what that ripple effect can look like for not only our business, but like, you know, where our energy is being sapped and how that can take away from our physical, our emotional, you know, our mental states, and ultimately could lead to burnout, could lead to all whole bunch of stuff we've talked about that can trickle into a bad place. And there's a lot of proactive steps we can take. And that's what I want to talk about here, where you can legitimately master the art of slowing down and pacing for yourself in your business. Because a lot of us have this thinking that that can happen one day. Like, I'm going to build this thing where one day I could step away and, you know, sit on the beach and relax. Well, that's a fallacy. You're not going to want to sit on the beach and get fed fat and ugly and not ugly, but like, well, you probably would because you'd be burnt all the time, sipping margaritas and, you know, just not doing anything. Like, we're not made for that. We're. We're animals. We're driven animals as entrepreneurs legitimately. And I believe that. So the mind's not going to slow down, but we can definitely be intentional and take these proactive steps to slow ourselves down so we can prevent that energy being sapped from our physical state, the emotional state, mental state, and then show up better. And remember that everything we're doing is a marathon. I mean, life is. It's long, it's short. However you want to frame it, we create that. But at the end of the day, it's a marathon. We're not sprinting. You know, even if we feel like there's a deadline, it's a marathon. And if we're not seeing it that way, then we're quick to react. We're not deciding, we're allowing other things to kind of SAP that or make that decision for us. So a few things I want to talk about here that are actionable for you, that has worked for me not only in this trip or like prepping for it or even after, but just in general to be proactive in terms of pacing. It was Tina Marie. I had her on the podcast early last year, maybe about this time last year. And I highly recommend listening to that. We'll link it in the show notes. And she is an incredible at pacing. She talks all about pacing. That's what she tells all of her clients or coaching clients. And people pay her really good money for that. So a few of the things that come to mind here is it's straight up a time audit, like start to implement A way where you're. You're legitimately tracking your time for at least the key activities and identifying and figuring out what are the. What are the things that you end up doing and being brutally honest. You know, like, we talk about time tracking. I had Dan Martel on here, and he talked about tracking your time in terms of, you know, figuring out your earnings. You know, James Schramko talks about that as well. He's another one I got to have back on. It's been. It's been too long. So, you know, tracking these things, these habits, you know, things that you do throughout the day. I'm not just talking entrepreneurial business stuff, but, like, figure out a way. And I think for me, it's pen and paper. Like the tools, the tracking tools, the apps and all that stuff, I feel like they get buried. I get overwhelmed and I forget to even turn them on. But when I have something and I always have a notebook in front of me and I've actually started to place something on my wall where it's taped on the wall where I'm tracking everything, it's the activities, it's my habits, it's the things I'm doing. And I might not always remember in the moment, but I'll audit. And because it's right in front of me in my notebook as well, I kind of, like track in both places. So I always am able to capture that. Pen and paper is the key. And I'll go back and put a time to it, you know, like a rough time or duration of how long I took for that activity or that habit, that thing that I was doing. And again, I'm thinking of personal stuff I'm doing. I can look at my calendar is another way to audit this. But also, you know, just throughout my day, checking emails, looking at messages, you know, pontificating on something that took way too long or even going on a walk. Like, it could be great stuff. It could be kind of like, oh, wow, I shouldn't have done that. Being brutally honest and knowing what you're doing and actually tracking that stuff, then you can do a full and true honest audit of yourself. I mean, who else is going to be honest to yourself? You know, it's up to you. It's up to me. And I think that's a big breakthrough is to slow down enough to say, like, what the hell am I really doing? Like, what's that awareness of the now? Because whatever you're doing now usually isn't going to be the thing that gets you to where you want to go, whatever that vision is for yourself, that North Star or, you know, the goals that you're setting for yourself, you likely or probably guarantee. I think I'll go on a limb and say that I guarantee you're going to have to change some stuff that you're doing right now. So auditing that list, doing a time audit, specifically on these habits. You know, spend a couple weeks doing this and get brutally honest. Start seeing these patterns and then figure out what are these things that you got to adjust to align with where you want to go. So definitely doing that as a step one to figure out where you're at right now, you know, that's you got to do it. And it's been said before in so many ways, but with this framing of burning out and eliminating unproductive habits and activities that you're kind of just mindlessly doing, a lot of us have those things. We all have those things. Let's be honest. It's time to cut those things out and be very intentional. I'm gonna pause this really fast and shout out another podcast that's on the HubSpot podcast network, the audio destination for business professionals. This one's a podcast hosted by someone I've followed for years. I've read his books. His name is Donald Miller, and he hosts the podcast podcast called Business Made Simple. The whole premise there with that show is that it helps take the mystery out of growing your business. And one of the recent episodes is one with Alex Hermosi, someone else I followed for years now. And it's all about talking about the uncertainties that we're living in right now in 2024 and beyond. But how we can take our business and shore it up. There's actually four principles Alex shares and Don gets into it as well, so definitely recommend checking that out. So go listen to Business Made simple, hosted by Donald Miller. Wherever you get your podcasts. Are you juggling multiple tools to run your online business? Well, thankfully, there is a better way, and it's called Kartra. So with Kartra, boosting your income has never been easier. And that's because it's the ultimate all in one platform for online success, offering every tool you need to grow your business. So imagine building pages, funnels, courses, autoresponders, and checkouts all in one place and all for one affordable price. So the best part about Kartra is that you can automate just about everything. So it's like having a team of experts working around the clock to help you earn more. Now's the time to streamline and scale your business, visit hustleandflowchart.com Kartra for a free 30 day trial. That's hustle. Hustleandflowchart.com K A R T R A and that leads us into the next thing. And I've talked about this before and next week I'll be bringing on two buddies of mine who are. I've had them on individually on the podcast, but now I. We did this like this roundtable discussion, the three of us and Trevor Turnbull and Mike Prince, and they head up Extremely Conscious. This is the men's group. It's really like a small group of us that have come together to really lift each other up and be accountable with what we do with ourselves every single day. And these are the microhabits. These are the micro things that we do. So I'm bringing them on to talk about a lot of this stuff. And definitely, if you're interested, check out Extremely Conscious dot com. They have great resources and a Facebook group that's catered to men, but there's a women's thing in the works as well. But for now, if you're a man and if you wanted to dive down and join that group, you can do it. Anyone can go on there and there's some cool guides to check out at Extremely conscious. Com. But this next point here is goes into tracking, like, what are the microhabits, the things that you can now start to replace, you know, those unproductive habits from step one or think number one. I just talked about how do we be intentional now and replace those things with activities that will start to align where you want to go. And you know, I had a previous episode or two. I've talked about my microhabits and the things that I track and I don't do it as much the intentional tracking, but you know, things like getting enough sleep. I don't always do that, but at least I'm intentional about it. And I aim for it. A seven hour, you know, sleep, drinking enough water, walking enough, you know, I track everything and my wife and I are always, we're taking calls on walks now instead of standing behind the screen all the time, like, that's a switch and something. I just did it today with someone. Stacey Lauren, when you had a call, I was like, hey, let's get away from the zoom, zoom fatigue and let's go on a walk together virtually, you know, and it's all through the phone. I think there's a lot of power in that. So think about how to shift these things that you might just be doing and sapping all your energy and go do something else with it. You know, figure out a break from that. Move your body, do squats, do push ups, you know, have, have a certain number that you're trying to reach every single day. There's a lot of these things back to the physical, emotional and mental. What are the habits and the things that you can do? I guess the third point are creating these micro breaks for yourself. Like figuring out intentionally. And this goes again into, you know, auditing yourself and auditing your time. And how do you create these pauses, these moments of pacing throughout your day where you can step away from your work, you can step away from the doing of things and go outside and lay down, like find a patch of grass and bask in the sun and feel phenomenal. That's one of the things I love doing the most and I don't do it enough. Another thing is playing with my dog in the backyard or my kids, I mean, just like literally just being silly, having fun, freeing my mind from the to dos and all this never ending, you know, commitments that we all have as adults. I mean as, as just driven people. That's endless. And we're never going to stop unless we are deliberate about taking these micro breaks and using those as a way every single day, multiple times. I mean, honestly, as many as you can obviously still get stuff done, but use them to recharge, to refocus and being deliberate, like map them out, time block them into your day. And I talked about time blocking on that episode a couple weeks ago. You know, a couple tools I love to do. I did it today as well, is I took a quick 20, is 25 minutes. I think yoga, nidra or NSDR. I turn on my headphones, I find a quiet place for 15 to 25 minutes or so. And depending on the video. And what it does is it takes me on this like edge of sleeping, but it's being, it's kind of like the subliminal kind of state where I'm just like floating feeling and I drift off, but it's not a total, like I'm snoozing, drooling, you know, it's a way to quickly recharge and recalibrate things. Just like in a, in an instant. It's wild. So like that's one of my favorite micro breaks is to do that. I literally did it this morning and because I wasn't feeling supercharged up, woke up really early, I was like, you know what? I'm going to knock this out for 20 minutes. I felt great. So I highly recommend something like Yoga Nidra or something like that. Going on walks, take your calls outside away from screens is just a recharge in itself. Just think about what it's doing to your eyes. You're getting sun, you're seeing distance. Like, there's a lot of science behind this about how your eyes work. And just like literally you'll, you'll think differently. So those are breaks that you can do. And then, you know all of this. I think a big thing you can do is to create a toolkit for yourself. Like what are a whole bunch of things that you can start to establish in your day and like almost have. I don't know if it's a checklist. For me it's, it's the checklist. It's that kind of microhabit list. But I also have, you know, lists and YouTube. I have videos I tend to go to often, like breath work videos. I think of these as like my resilience toolkit. Like, what are the things I can just go to and know when I'm feeling low in energy? I can do something like these Breath with Sandy videos and look for like a, you know, an energy video. That's like eight minutes. Boom, I got eight minutes. We all got eight minutes. Or I'll do a Wim hof breath video and I'll go outside and do, you know, again, ten minutes or so. And boom, I got more energy now. Like, that's going to bring my physical, emotional and mental state, like better. Nsdr, like I said, could be doing Sally up, Sally down, going on walks, you know, playing. I think playing is a big one that us as adults, we tend to forget. And when we start to play more and incorporate that, that's literally pausing. That's self care. Those are that stress management. Like all these things will make you more resilient. And there was, it was actually, I'll reference this too. This is the Nvidia CEO. There was a video he put out. I think he was talking to the Stanford graduates this year. I think it was just from the other week. And he, he said something about mental health and this. He believes that that's the wrong approach. Like feeling that, oh, this is a mental health thing or like, I got to address my mental health or these things. And I don't know my take on it so far, but he basically says instead of mental health and almost like, almost like giving it a thing of its own power, it's to take your own power and turn it into how do we build mental resilience? And I would take it as far as like, how about emotional resilience, physical resilience? Like, how are you going to build resilience when shit hits the fuck fan in your life, in your business? You know, an unexpected call happens, someone sick, someone died. I mean like I've lost a lot of people in the last five years. I feel like I've built a big strong muscle of resilience in the emotional state of things and knowing how to navigate tough stuff. And I'm not just patting myself on the back because I wouldn't want that. But you know, I've learned a lot of what keeps me in the game and having kids. You know, like there's a lot of things I can kind of point to and be like, wow, I'm still standing and I'm still happy and I'm still showing up doing the work, even though I might not feel like it. The resilience piece is key. So figuring out what are the things that will keep you in the game physically, emotionally, mentally and what's that toolkit like? Start to build out these things and make them obvious because it's the times when you're feeling in the dumps, when you're feeling burnt out, overloaded, not taking these micro breaks and pauses and pacing. I feel like that's the toughest time to remember what to do. Like you just get in the zone so much. You get in this flow and maybe not in a good way of just the doing, you know, and you forget about these things, these activities you can do for yourself. Literally just going outside sometimes is so tough. Or for me, I like to carry a kettlebell around a lot. I'm like this crazy guy around the neighborhood now carrying a 35 pound kettlebell. Hopefully that goes to my 55 pretty soon. And I'm like carrying it up and down hills and listening to podcasts or walking with my, with my daughter. I did that last night, it was awesome. And like just little things like that. Like I don't know, I'm working out, I'm getting outside, I'm communicating, I'm chat and I'm having fun. It's kind of silly, it's kind of weird, you know, someone drives by holding a kettlebell, basically a big cannonball walking down the street. Like who does that? So I don't know. All these little things I feel like shake me out of the normal doing. So there are things I have in my toolkit and at the end of the day we got to celebrate ourselves. So I'll end it on this, is that we got to celebrate the progress and the successes and even the failures. I would take it there as well, because a lot of us don't like to recognize the dumps that we've been in. The low, low, low points where we felt like it was super dark and we didn't have anything. We didn't have a way out, didn't know a way out. But, you know, somehow we did. We found it out. You know, we found out how to get out of there. And again, goes into resilience and reminding ourselves we can do this. You know, like we could do this. You're not alone. And knowing to celebrate all this, celebrate that progress because that's growth. Celebrate the successes and know that, you know, it doesn't matter how small it is, you gotta. It's all about maintaining that momentum and that motivation to keep moving. And again, it's a marathon, not a sprint. It's. It's all about that perspective, that shift that you can make for yourself. And I feel like this is how. It's the clarity and this. It's what's worked for me. It's what's worked with a lot of people, entrepreneurs that I hang out with. I've taking a lot of notes and this is where, you know, Mike and Trevor, I'll have them on next week. We talk a lot about this stuff. So, you know, I'm a big proponent of get out of this burnout mindset, this, this feeling of hustle and grind all the time and turn into more of this pacing, the flow and the being side of things. So I hope that this episode gives you some ideas on how you can master this, this thought of pacing and integrate it not only in your business, in the now, and not wait for the future when you have this dream of doing it someday. Like, integrate all of this right now because it'll make you a better entrepreneur. You'll be more successful, make more money, be happier and all that. And you'll be a better human. You'll show up better in all aspects of life. So curious to hear if I left anything out. If there's anything that you would recommend that works for you, put it in the comments in YouTube. And if you're not on YouTube, please go look up my name, Joe Fear. J O E F I E R are you could find me there. I'm making more videos, I'm doing more shorts. Please consider subscribing there as well. I definitely appreciate all of that if you're listening on the podcast, go, hit subscribe, leave a review, a rating. I would love to see that. And leave your thoughts, honest thoughts. I want to hear what you think here. And you know what? I love dropping it. But my email is joe@hustleandflowchart.com Send me your thoughts. I would love to hear. I love to connect with you. All right. So until next time, thank you.