Why Most Entrepreneurs Are Slowly Killing Themselves

My daughter's boyfriend worked as an intern for Elon last semester, and he noticed that Elon slept there very often, was running around each day, kind of trying to step into different kinds of meetings and give his input and do some things. Elon went to do some problem solving, talked all about things that he wanted to do to fix the major problem on one of the products. And when Elon left, my daughter's boyfriend said, how are we going to do this all? And the team of engineers, about six engineers, said, we aren't. We're not going to do what Elon's talking about because we've been working on this problem for years. Elon has been working on it for a month. He doesn't really know what he's talking about. That's a good example of what a burned out entrepreneur can look like. It's, it's like he might not even be realizing that he is burned out. And yet the results of it are apparent all over the organization.

Elon Musk was arguably perceived as the most successful entrepreneur in recent times. Rich, brilliant, famous, and attracted the best talent to his companies. Books were even written about his secrets of success and amazing leadership. And entrepreneurs were doing their best to emulate him. But then he burned out and everything went to hell. From there. Elon represents the modern day entrepreneurial peril. Success equals go big, go fast, give your all, demand even more, but don't burn out, because then you lose it all. The percentage of entrepreneurs that face burnout is growing and growing fast. Why? Because the world is changing even faster and many entrepreneurs lack the endurance it takes to keep changing with it. It's not enough these days to achieve initial success. The real success is sustaining it over the long run. Burnout takes down successful entrepreneurs with alarming speed and has become a massive problem. Yet there are answers. And that's why I'm so excited when Annie Hyman Pratt agreed to share her wisdom with us in this 10 minute talk. For the last two decades, Annie's been helping fast growing entrepreneurial companies develop strategic, proactive, unified teams that fully operate the business so that entrepreneurs can work on business strategy and innovation while also having the freedom they desire. Plus, she's developed many tools that help entrepreneurs overcome burnout by helping them develop the emotional endurance necessary to keep maintaining high performance, both personally and professionally. One of the best ways to understand these principles is for you to hear the stories of two burned out entrepreneurs, which will be part of her message, I promise you. Neither one of these entrepreneurs is as famous as Elon Musk. Yet they were superstars in their own business. Annie's title is the Cure for Entrepreneurial Burnout. Please help me welcome Annie Hyman Pratt. Thank you.

Okay. Okay. So I'm super happy to be talking with you today about entrepreneurial burnout. And at the end of this talk, you are going to know, first of all, what's really behind entrepreneurial burnout. You're also going to know how emotional endurance works to counteract that burnout. You're going to have a four step process to build your own emotional endurance. And I hope that you're going to feel very relieved and empowered and maybe a little less burnt out at the end of this talk. And I also want to start with giving a little bit of context about Elon Musk and me saying that he's burned out. He is definitely struggling with some burnout. I think people know that he's had plenty of missteps lately. Yeah. Okay. My daughter's boyfriend worked as an intern for Elon last semester. And he was working with the engineering team in the office that Elon was in. And he noticed that Elon slept there very often, was running around each day, kind of trying to step into different kinds of meetings and give his input and do some things. So at one point they had a meeting with my, you know, with my daughter's boyfriend and with the engineers. And Elon went to do some problem solving, talked all about things that he wanted to do to fix the major problem on one of the products. And when Elon left, my daughter's boyfriend said, how are we going to do this all? And the team of engineers, about six engineers, said, we aren't. We're not going to do what Elon's talking about because we've been working on this problem for years. Elon has been working on it for a month. He doesn't really know what he's talking about.

So.

So we're just going to take the meeting and then we're going to keep going along with what we're doing now because he's going to forget about it anyways. So that's a good example of what a burned out entrepreneur can look like. It's like he might not even be realizing that he is burned out. And yet the results of it are apparent all over the organization. Make sense? Okay, great.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description, or you can wait till the end of this video or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

So I do still think entrepreneurs are superheroes, including Elon. And I think he's going to get his stuff back together for sure. And you create and manifest the amazing things. Here we go. Yeah, and you live a superhero life, right? One full of financial freedom, and you have the impact you want want to have, and you have the growth and success and all of that is awesome until you encounter your kryptonite. Entrepreneurial kryptonite is doing it all. So doing it all just absolutely leads to burnout. So what really causes burnout, though? Honestly, you've got a lot of stuff going on. So most successful entrepreneurs like you, you already have a clear, compelling vision. You learn and move super fast. You've got systems and processes. Most of you have leaders and team. Everyone here is incredibly committed and you even have lots of support. Why then, since you've got all this stuff around you, why do entrepreneurs rely on their solo superpowers even with all that in place? Right? Systems and processes, you've got people who will do things for you. But at the end of the day, when entrepreneurs are encountering any kind of stress or want to make sure things succeed, they tend to go back to their solo powers. Because this is how you got successful. This is how you got here, by taking control, using a lot of authority, by having a crazy amount of focus, right? Being excellent decision makers. Who trusts himself the most in the company to make decisions? Yeah, most of us, right? But those solo superpowers stop working and especially because the world is changing crazy fast. So if you keep using your solo superpowers, you literally can't keep up. There's just too much coming at you all the time. So your new superpowers are going to be based in teams who can handle change. So whole name of the game is being able to change. Okay, so that doesn't seem so hard, right? We all hear about needing to change and we'll just learn and change, right? Like that's what we entrepreneurs do. We can change. But here's the thing. Humans are not emotionally built to respond to change well. Change is perceived as dangerous. And when we're under threat, we react automatically in a fight flight or flight freeze manner. Right? And humans are threat detecting machines. We see when we're under threat, whenever humans are interacting, we're gauging unconsciously. Is this person, you know for me or are they going to Throw me under the bus. Am I safe here? Do I, you know, should I share vulnerably? You're gauging all kinds of things. We know that an eye roll, we know what an eye roll means, we know what crossed arms means. And when we're feeling under threat, our automatic systems just kick in. And they kick in constantly. So we gotta learn to regulate those emotions. And regulating emotions is a learned behavior. Emotions kick in automatically and these self protective behaviors are all emotional responses. When you're in this lower loop, this self protective loop, you're not effective and these behaviors are hardwired. This is Coco, she had a kitten, ripped a sink out of the wall, was worried she was going to be in trouble with her trainer and so she blamed it on the kitten. So these behaviors, how we react as old as time. So what does it have to do with burnout? Change is threatening. So we do become self protective and emotionally reactive, which is the opposite of what you need to succeed. So the burnout formula is really constant change. With self protection and reactions. You get terrible decision making. The cure is to get in the emotional endurance and bring people in with you. So the constant stress destroys success and change really is the new normal. So how you interact with change and team is the most important element of your performance today. It's a skill that I call emotional endurance. And emotional endurance. The process has four steps. The first step is to clarify what you want. This is going to be your guiding post, anchor in the outcome that you're going for. What are you trying to achieve? Why does it matter? The second part is to recognize reality. What's really going on here? Call out the facts, accept that you can't change the past, it just is what it is. And step three is to really own your part. You have a part to play in getting a different result right. And own your reactions. This is where you can be vulnerable. You can talk about how you're actually feeling. Own the positive impact you really want to have. Bring that to the equation. And you do have a part. So the third part is releasing judgment of self, of others, of the situation. You don't know what's ultimately good or bad or right or wrong. That's super important. When you are holding judgment, you are automatically in an emotional place. You're automatically sensitive to what's right, what's wrong, and that completely limits your perspective. Make sense and apply compassion for being human. This is hard. Working in business is actually really hard. This is emotional endurance. It is this upper loop. We don't need to Learn how to do the lower loop. But we've got to learn to regulate our emotions. Going to talk about two entrepreneurs quickly. The first entrepreneur I worked with, he was an introverted creative mastermind in an entertainment company. And as he had a big industry shift, he was doing more and more and trying to save his company client by client. Eventually he burned out and he couldn't even interact with his team. He couldn't interact with his board and they lost the company. So I worked with another company also in entertainment and had a burned out executive who was tired of trying to keep expenses down for years and years, really not having good success at getting those profits up. But instead of disconnecting from his team, disconnecting from the people that can help him, he actually worked harder to be good with change, to be able to see endure the discomfort of what was happening in his business. And when he could endure the discomfort, then he was really able to hear the oops, hear the great things, hear the best advice that's going on around him. And with that, he was able to turn around the company in the third year. They had a lot of profits and this company is being sold now from the edge of bankruptcy. Really. So my big message here is don't be a solo superhero. Get emotional endurance and definitely transform your business and transform your life.

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