Ep #27: Female Entrepreneurial Burnout

Hey, everyone. I'm Chris Plackey, and this is how to Lead for Female entrepreneurs and Founders. Because the best way to grow a business is to grow the person who's running it. Let's go ahead and get started.

Hey, there. How are you, gorgeous? Welcome. I'm so glad you're here. Today we're going to talk about burnout, entrepreneurial burnout, and especially, especially female entrepreneurial.

Burnout because it's so common, and I really want to talk about why it's so common and then give you some ideas on what you can do for yourself. Because if you're anything like any of us, you have. If you're not feeling burnt out right now, you have, and I want to help you avoid it and then also kind of work yourself through it if you are really sort of at that point of just total exhaustion and kind of hate everybody.

Which is. It's just as normal, like, welcome. Welcome to being an entrepreneur.

I hope you're so happy with me that my sound is better. Oh, my goodness. My last interview with Eleanor was so amazing, and I just love her to pieces, and I was so mad at myself. My stupid mic was broken, and, oh, she sounded amazing, which, frankly, is the most important thing to me. But I. Gosh, I'm so mad at myself. My. My sound was icky. So I hope you hung in there with me to listen to the gems that were on that podcast, because, you know, technology happens. You're welcome.

For that fabulous listening experience. And thank you to Sharon, who is always my fabulous podcast producer, Sharon Towsley. She does her magic with what I give her, and hopefully, Sharon, you're happy with me now. This is much better. I tested it, like, four times to make sure my new mic is working well. The other thing I wanted to talk to you all about before I get into the content is I love hearing from you. I'm an extrovert, if you haven't figured that out. So even while I'm sitting in here in my office all alone, I'm just pretending that you're on the other side of the desk with me. I have some coffee. Do you have your coffee? You might be in your car or maybe you're walking through the streets of London. I like to fantasize about where you are when you're listening to me. Or you could be just driving down some freeway in the middle of the US I have no idea. But, hi, we're having a chat, but I really like to hear back from you. Right. The thing about a podcast is it's A pretty one sided relationship and I want to know you. So I'm going to give you an invitation. I'm going to invite you to write a review for my podcast. I know, right? How lovely of me to invite you to do that. If you've never written a podcast review, it could be a little intimidating just to figure it out. But if you're on your app and you're in itunes on your app looking at this podcast, if you go to the main page of the podcast and you scroll down, you'll see a little thing where there's a bunch of stars. If you feel like this is a five star podcast, give it the five stars. And then there's a little link there that says write a review. So click on that, then write your words and then do a screenshot. And then do me a favor, come on over to Instagram and put that screenshot of your review on your story or in your feed and make sure you tag me. I'm Hrissplacky coach. You have to follow me first in order to tag me. But then you can go to hrisplackycoach. There's a lot of directions, see if you can do it. If you do that and then I see you, I'm so excited, then I'll know who you are. And B, I will send you all of my most favoriteist books that I've read over the years that I believe have really culminated the way that I think about what I do, whether it's as a woman, as a human, as a mother, and also as a woman who runs her own business and a coach. So I have compiled a list. I think it's about almost 20 books and it's so interesting. I was putting the list together, just sitting on my iPhone, writing them all out on my notes as I was on a walk. And then I came home and looked at my bookshelf and sure enough I cleared all my books out about two months ago, but I kept all of the ones I love and there they all are. So these are ones that really stick in my brain as having had an impact at different times in my life. So some of them you'll find were written a while ago and some I think a couple are pretty new. So these have been my teachers and I believe as a leader you have to always be cultivating your brain and really allowing your mind to chew on new insights and new thoughts. I not only do, I think it's part of your own growth and fun and good for you. I do think it's a responsibility as a leader to be outside of yourself enough to learn and grow and get new ideas and bring something back to the business and to the team. So go to itunes, scroll down, hit five stars, post a review, take a screenshot, go to Instagram, follow Chris Plackey, coach, and then tag me in a story with the screenshot and I will send you the book list. Right. I will DM it to you. Okay. So I'm super excited. I'd love more opportunity to connect with each one of you. So I'm really hoping you will do that. Take a little time. It'll probably take you about four minutes. So I know you're busy. So appreciate you thinking of me when you're not in your car driving. Please don't do it now while you're driving. Okay, let's talk about burnout. So part of the process of working with me is I invite you to schedule an appointment. It's a 20 minute consult and then as a part of that, you have to fill out an application. Because I do work with a very select profile of female entrepreneur in my program. And.

So one of the benefits as well of that process is I'm learning so much about each one of you. Even if you don't end up hiring me, I learned a tremendous amount about you and the challenges that you're facing through that process. And burnout is obviously a really big problem. And I think I've told you this a few times. So many of the women when I meet them are at that crossroads. It's like a point where there's three options and it seems to be the only three that my clients see. And one is to get the heck out. Right. You get to a point when you are hiring people in your business and the people part just isn't. It's not moving. And it's so frustrating as an entrepreneur because you have so much you want to do and you know you can't do it yourself. And yet you've got, and you've got to get it done through these people, but they're not helping. It's exhausting. Maybe I'm speaking from experience. Right. And so you're just right. So that. So the considerations are, I'm just going to get out. I'm going to close this thing down. I'll sell it for parts. I'm out. Right. The other one is literally to find somebody to buy so you start entertaining notions of selling your company. Right. Of course. I just want to give you a little caveat. If, if you can't manage this thing, and the people aren't delivering results. It's kind of hard to sell without you there because that means it's still really relying on you or you want someone else to run it for you. You're on the hunt for that perfect CEO, general manager person. Just someone else is going to run it. It's not going to be me, because I'm going to be over here drinking margaritas in Hawaii. Right? Not so much. Okay. So that is really where I meet a lot of my clients. And there's this common belief that there's just nothing else that can be done. And so believing that is just perpetuating your misery. So where does this burnout come from? So it comes from, first of all, we have to recognize that our body follows our brain.

So if you are literally feeling tired, exhausted, lethargic, if your body hurts, if you have ailments, if you are sensitive and impatient, you also might be perimenopausal. Most of my clients are in a certain age window. Not all, but there's a lot of us. But you're also likely experiencing the symptoms of burnout. But the reason that that's happening is not because of your business. Okay? This is so important for all of us to remember. We want the problem to be our business. It's our business. It's our team, it's our client. It's the amount of revenue we have, it's the amount of revenue we don't have. It's the issues with our technology. And we blame how we feel, this exhaustion. Burnout. Want to run away from it all on that thing, the business.

But burnout comes from your brain. The symptoms in your body, the symptoms in your life are coming from your brain.

Not the business. Okay? And if that's the first time you've heard something like that, I know you're in your car arguing with me. If you are arguing with me on the subway, people will think you're crazy. Although maybe that's not uncommon. I know you want to argue with me. I know you want it to be the thing. So as soon as you get the new employees, as soon as you get them on track, as soon as you get more revenue, you won't feel burnt out. No lie.

It's a lie that you are believing, and it is perpetuating your burnout. So we have to stop that immediately for your own sake. Okay? So this is why I find that so many of my clients, right, I transitioned, and I work with small groups of female entrepreneurs. And there's a Very strategic reason for that. And the strategic reason for that is I was finding all of my clients are sort of in this spot. And when we do one on one coaching, they show up to the one on one call and they just kind of show up and throw up. And they want to nurture their reasons for why things aren't working and they want to nurture their reasons for burnout.

And then what? It's miraculous. When I put people in a room together and there's five of you talking, guess what happens now? What happens is, you see. Oh, that's interesting. She thinks that. Oh, I'm curious about why she thinks that. Oh, she thinks the same way I do. And you start to realize this isn't just a you thing. This is a thing that a lot of entrepreneurs go through. You are not alone. You are not the super special snoop. You know, snowflake.

Burnout is very common, but it's not common because of the business. It's common because of the thoughts that entrepreneurs have about their business.

So I'd love to get you in a little quiet room together where we can realize, like, oh, I see this in someone else versus just coming up into an environment where you just nurture it. And so what happens though, for a lot of female entrepreneurs is they go and they participate in a lot of other groups. They go meet with a lot of other female entrepreneurs. All y' all do is validate how. Yes. How legitimate your burnout is. Oh, me too, right? You guys know what I'm talking about. That is not what I do. So it's a different environment when you work with me. We don't indulge that. There is nothing valuable about it ever.

There is nothing valuable about indulging the reasons why you don't like your business. You can't get it figured out. It's too hard. All that is doing is perpetuating your exhaustion and your burnout. Trust me, we gotta nip that in the bud first. So if that's where you are and you've been there for a while, I also know you need help with that. You've gotta stay away from the other people who agree with you. Even your family members. People like the people think they're helping you, Right. When they say, oh, that must be very hard. Oh, I can see how difficult that is for you. Oh, right. You're so brave to work this with your own business. Right. I'm being a little dramatic, but you know what I'm talking about. So a, your body follows your brain. What are you indulging in your mind. What do you spin on? And stop it immediately. If you've never watched it, some of you will not know who Bob Newhart is. I, of course, love Bob Newhart. But if you. If you just Google Bob Newhart Stop it video, it was made several years ago. It's hysterical. And ever since I've seen it, I think I've watched it 45 times. I just always have his voice in my head. Stop it. You'll know what I'm talking about. If you go watch the video. It's nine minutes or so, and it's worth every minute of your time. I strongly recommend it. Okay. Other causes of burnout, lack of decisions. You have too many decisions left unmade. Look at your desk right now. Look at your car right now. Look at your home right now. Everything that's just sitting somewhere that doesn't have a place is a decision that wasn't made. Where does it go? Right. I used to have a coach that I worked with. She's one of my mentors. She's amazing. Her name's Vicki Merrill, and she had a thing that she taught all of us. This was years ago, like 2003. Do it, dump it, delegate it. Right? I'm either going to handle it right now, I'm going to dump it and put it in the trash, or I'm going to give it to somebody else right now. So just look around. Like, I could tell you right now, I'm looking at my desk and I can see, oh, look, there's a pair of earrings I took off yesterday that I didn't put away. And there's a couple markers that I used on a flip chart that I didn't put back in the flip chart drawer. Right. I could see it. Those are decisions that were not made. And when I look at them, it adds to my burnout. It's a fatigue thing. It creates fatigue. So I want you today to make a list of all the decisions you have not made. And we're going to get those made by the end of this week. Mark it on your calendar. All of this will be decided. I don't care if it's whether or not you should invest $5 million in a new facility or create a partnership with another person or get married or get divorced or.

Take that trip or not. You need to make these decisions, sister. Stop it.

Nurturing, lack of deciding or confusion is exhausting because your brain is just on constant spiral. Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. It doesn't resolve. And then we carry it with us. You with me. I know you are. I know you know what I'm talking about. Okay? You're overworking in unproductive effort.

So one of the women in my group just asked me this. I don't understand what's happening. I go in, I have all these things I know I need to get done. And then I get to the office and I do all this other stuff that's not really stuff I could do. Other people could do all that stuff. And then I come back and it's like, oh, crap. All the stuff I needed to do isn't done yet. And that's the stuff I have to do.

How many of you are doing that? And then what you do is you get mad at the stuff that you did or you get mad at the people you know, like, I can't believe I had to do this. I can't believe I had to go work with customers. I should be doing this in the back. Okay? But you made the choice to go do that. So you have to be really honest with yourself. Why are you doing that? And you've got to really get honest. Why are you reading your email instead of meeting with your team? Why are you fussing around on your website instead of calling new potential clients? Why.

That resistance? It's like, attention, right? I want you to think about that. It's attention.

Is causing you misery.

Because your one half of your brain is like, don't do that. You know, you need to do this. The other half is like, no, no, no, no. We gotta fix the website.

Why are you doing it? You have a reason. It's not happening to you. And do not tell me if I were gonna talk to you right now and you tell me, I don't have anybody else. No, that's not true.

What's true is you haven't invested the time to hire somebody else and get them prepared and ramp them up. Why?

Don't be surprised if your answer is something like, it's hard. I don't know how. I'm not sure I'm doing it. Right.

Right. But that tension fosters your burnout. Stop it immediately. I know that if you're on the floor, burnt out, I'm willing to bet you money you don't have a job description for yourself. What is your job?

I'm willing to bet it doesn't exist. Your job is whatever you feel like that day. And, oh, whatever your area of expertise is. You don't have direction.

What are your goals? I can't. I honestly am. Always. And yet I don't Know why? Completely kerfuffled about how all of you who are running seven figure businesses, if I ask you what your goal is for the next month, you don't know.

What?

How do you not know?

How do you not have direction? How do you function if you don't have a target?

Right? Do you have a goal? Is it clear? And do you have a job to achieve that goal? You, not everybody else in your company, just you.

When you don't have that, it's like a rudder. And so what? That leads me to my next issue for burnout is boundaries and lack of them. You're overly available to everybody. Everybody has access to you. Everybody comes in and out of your office, literally or figuratively. If you have a physical building, there's always people in there. Hey, do you have a minute? Can I have a quick second? You're running meetings that don't have agendas that aren't clear, they're too long, they're indulgent, they're not. They're not defined with an outcome. If you, if you run a virtual business, you've got Slack and email and instant message and text, and everybody's always.

On you.

This is a kind of strong podcast, isn't it? I'm a little lit up. Maybe it's the coffee.

Stop it. Boundaries. What's your schedule? When do people have access to you? What is your job? How do you create time for when you have to do what you have to do that's going to contribute to the long term production of the business, not the short term. I got to get it done. Stuff. That's the stuff we hire people for.

Okay? I hope you hear me. Do you love me still? I'm getting a little tough with you. It's the Frank day. We're gonna have that. And the last thing is buffering. This is gonna be the one that you're gonna least want to hear. But I must say it. Y' all entrepreneur types. A lot of us entrepreneur types use our business.

To avoid feeling anything.

You have trouble in your marriage.

You start working. You work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work. Because if I'm too busy working, guess what I don't have time to think about. You're having challenges with your weight. You're having challenges in a relationship with your kid. You're challenging challenges with your relationship with your family member outside of your immediate family.

You don't want to feel something, you start working. Some people eat Oreos, some people smoke cigarette shop, some people work.

But what's funny about work is it's so socially acceptable, right? Oh, I'm so busy. Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't have time to do to that thing. I was just busy working. Oh, I'm so sorry, honey. I didn't have time to go to dinner and have a date with you and have sex with you because I'm just so busy. I'm so distracted with work. Oh, sorry, honey. Oh, child. I'm so sorry, honey. I don't. I didn't have time to come to your school thing. I'm just so busy.

No, you're not.

You're choosing it.

And you're choosing that for a reason. And you know, it's. I say to my clients all the time, you've got to be honest with yourself here. Why? It doesn't mean that your answer is shameful. That's the problem. We don't want to look at the answer. Maybe the answer is, yeah, I am so busy. And I do avoid all of the time with my husband because I'm not happy.

In my marriage.

And I'm afraid to really notice that because I don't want to not be happy in my marriage. What do I do then? And we work on that.

I need to do this because if I, if I don't stop working, I'm going to eat and I don't want to gain weight.

Well, how about we just look at what's happening inside of your brain that makes you think that you have to avoid versus just what if we could just know that there's food in the pantry and not eat against our will?

Right? And for some of you, working has been a buffer for so long. Staying busy, you don't know the difference anymore. Like, who are you if you're not working?

And that's scary in and of itself. I had to ask my coach about six months ago. She's like, you don't really take any time for self care. And I honestly, I finally just got really vulnerable with her and I said, I don't even know what that means. Can you make me a list?

What is self care? Is that like a bath?

What does that mean? Because she was right. I don't do. I have had to practice self care and I'm still kind of suck at it. I'm going to tell you the truth. This is a, this is a serious one for me. I'm working on it. And what is self care that doesn't involve, you know, half of a chocolate cake? Right.

So here's the thing. All of Us experience burnout because all of us have brains. And to the extent that we don't notice our own thinking, we will continue to experience physical and emotional exhaustion, which then means we want out. We think it's the circumstance. And in this case, as an entrepreneur, a lot of you take it and think it's the business's fault. If I could just get out of the business, I would feel better. And I just promise you that is just not true.

So how about we just deal with it?

Let's just tell the truth. Instead of saying, oh my gosh, I'm so burnt out, we say, yeah, oh my gosh, I have so much thought, so many thoughts in my brain that are affecting how I feel right now and I'd like to work on them.

Right. I'm not making decisions. I'm focusing on things that feel easy instead of doing the things that are hard. I don't have a job description and I don't have goals. I don't set boundaries with my team and I'm completely available at all times and I'm using my company and my work to avoid something and I'm buffering. Just tell the truth, which one is it? And then if you need help working through it, there's nothing wrong with you either because we all do. I honestly don't know how I could function. My girlfriend, Brooke Castillo, who is also my mentor, who is also my coach.

I don't know how I would survive without her. She called me the other day at 6:30 in the morning. I was sitting in front of my desktop working on ConvertKit, trying to figure out a funnel, and I was about to throw my 26 inch Mac through the window and she called me and she said, I just knew that I needed to come rescue you from your brain. I could tell you have spent far too long in there by yourself. I'm here to help you.

I'm a coach, you guys. I need coaching all the time. I coach myself and then I ask for it. You are not. There's nothing wrong here. But what will make you crazy is if you don't get the help you need, you get support and it's available.

You listen to me all the time. I'm right here. I'll help you. Let's go. Right. All right. I'm so glad today was a longer podcast, but I think it was worth it. Have an amazing day. And when you're ready, I'm here dying to meet you and work with you. When you're ready.

Hey, don't miss a thing. Make sure you join my community@chrisplackie.com Connect Once you join, you'll get all the information on exclusive and private experiences that I'm offering to my clients. I can't wait to see you there.

Sam.