Prevent Burnout by Knowing Your Priorities with Erika Davis

Anita, on the show, we're talking about mental health, and I'm pumped for this. Let's flip it from kind of what it is to what are some of the things that you have learned or seen to help prevent burnout and recover from burnout?

Burnout a lot of times comes not necessarily from working too hard, but from putting yourself in a situation where you're working really hard at things that aren't important to you and you don't find meaning in those things anymore. When you feel like you've pushed as hard as you can with output, think about input. Like, what are you reading? What are you listening to? Like, how are you getting new ideas so you're not just banging your head against a brick wall again and again and again? Like, how are you feeling Excited to get just some new, fresh energy in the day?

I can't remember if it was a post that triggered it or you wrote something. I'm like, I need her on the show. We're talking about mental health, and I'm pumped for this. And so I'm gonna start here. Like, why is this so important to you? Right? To one, obviously writing about it, but you're spending your nights, your weekends, and learning how to address this as well. So talk to me a little bit, like, why this is so important to you as a topic.

Yeah, I think. Yeah. For the last four years, I've been spending nights and weekends on this, so. So obviously I'm pretty invested. But I think, you know, personally, I used to be one of those people that would say something like, you know, I'm a logical person, not an emotional person, which I've said before meant to me like, I'm better than you if you're struggling. Like, I think I. It was always a sense of PR for me that I could just sort of white knuckle my way through anything, and that eventually caught up with me. And I really struggled. Being someone who puts my work ethic and just, you know, my ability to really persevere, that's like, one of the things I like most about myself. And so if I were struggling mentally, it would really. I would feel very weak. And eventually I just burned out really hard. And therapy really helped me. And so I said, hey, I want to be close to this. Regardless of what I end up doing in my career, I really want to be not only educated and I want to go through this process of getting to be a licensed therapist. I want to do that for my own growth, but also I want to be close to that work my whole Life. Because I think it's important for me. And I know so many other people in sales especially, who were very similar to me, who are really hard workers, who thought that, oh, if I'm struggling, it's my problem that I need to fix. Which we can go into that. I'd love to talk about that. So just, you know, my own need, first and foremost, really. But second, just a desire to be close to this work and to. To spread it as much as I can.

And I mean, there's so much we can unpack even just from that first answer there, right around burnout, this white knuckle type mindset of, like, I just have to go through it. Because so often in sales, right, we tell people they need to be gritty, gotta be gritty to be in sales. But then in a lot of ways, what we're telling people is that literally to grit is like to hold on to for longer than you should or to hold on to through hard times. So let's first talk about the idea around burnout, because I think this is a topic that, again, is getting brought up more and more. But let's flip it from kind of what it is to what are some of the things that you have learned or seen to help prevent burnout and recover from burnout? Because there's the two sides of it. It's like, how do we prevent it from happening? But then we all get to that place. What do we do when we get there?

Yeah, I think for, you know, I can use my own example and speak for my own experience, and then I can talk more generally. But I think something that I always really struggled with was, you know, I would say a lot to my own therapist. You know, my work ethic is really important to me. Like, if I. Because I used to think that recovering from burnout and taking care of my mental health meant that I shouldn't work as hard or that I shouldn't want to be the best at what I do and I shouldn't strive for greatness. And so I would think that if I were to, quote, unquote, recover from my burnout or take care of my mental health, it meant that I couldn't still like those things about myself and that I would have to just sort of, you know, settle for being mediocre, you know, whatever I would tell myself. And so I think it really comes down to understanding what's important to you. I think burnout a lot of times comes not necessarily from working too hard, but from putting yourself in a situation where you're working really hard at things that aren't important to you, and you don't find meaning in those things anymore. So I think getting really honest about what's important to you and letting the other things kind of go, Prioritizing what's important and letting those other things go has been really helpful for me in understanding, like, if I only have this amount of energy, am I going to put that, and how am I going to accept that I'm not going to be able to give 100% to every single thing.

And so how. How do you help separate that in sales? Right. Because what's important to a lot of us in sales is hitting the number that is important to me. That. Because that's going to pay my livelihood, it's going to pay my bills, it allows me to live. Right.

Yeah.

So do you have, I guess, recommendations on how to separate from that? Because also, too, like, I talk about this a lot with my own teams is like the, like, money is not a motivator for most people. Money is not important to most people, but what money provides is important to a lot of people. So how do you recommend disconnecting? Because I worry some people would listen and go, like, all right, so you're telling me to not care about hitting my number. Yeah, so break that one down for me a little bit.

Yeah, I was. I was that person. So I can totally, you know, and I think, you know, I would feel a little bit like a liar if I didn't just say, like, you know, I think. I think I'm still figuring this out. Right. I think there's still times in my role now where I experience burnout. One of the things that has changed fundamentally in me is the belief in what I need to do when I'm approaching burnout. Right. So I used to think that when I was approaching burnout, what I needed to do is just double down and just run into the fire harder. And now, now I fundamentally believe that, you know, hey, if I've already worked 10 hours today and my impulse is to work four more, what I really need to do is go to spin class, call a friend, and go to bed at 8:30, you know what I mean? Instead of staying up until 11 and working. And I think that for me, it's taken me a couple of times of going way past my threshold with burnout to realize that running myself into the ground is not actually going to make me more effective. So it's really about believing and knowing what recharges your batteries. So that that's kind of the first thing with. With hitting your number and all of that. Like, I get that, too. I'm still in a revenue position and I'm responsible for, you know, revenue at our. Org and managing a sales team and all of that. So I get that. I've been an SDR and an ae, so I totally understand that. One of the things that I always tell my reps is when you feel like you're running really hard and you're trying to do a lot of output, right, There's a lot of emphasis in sales on activity, right? Make this many calls, do this many emails. I think about when you feel like you've pushed as hard as you can with output, think about input. Like, what are you reading? What are you listening to? How are you getting new ideas so you're not just banging your head against a brick wall again and again and again? How are you feeling? Excited? Because when you prospecting, let's say, on LinkedIn, for example, like, if I were to have written posts and I was in the mindset of, like, oh, I have to publish this content on LinkedIn, and I was publishing it with no energy, you never would have contacted me to be on this podcast. But because when I was publishing on LinkedIn, like, my energy, like, I was excited, I wanted to share, I was really enjoying what I was doing. It attracts people who are interested, and that's the same when you're prospecting. So I think, you know, how are you getting input? Whether that's, you know, asking your manager for another call, whether that's asking a teammate to get their eyes on a new script, or some emails that you're writing asking for input, reading something new, listening to something new, seeking out new perspectives and new information, it does recharge you and it's making you better at the same time. So that's something really actionable that I think sales reps could do more of to get just some new, fresh energy in the day.