MBA2649 How I Beat Burnout & Get Excited Again

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I'm your host Omar Zenholm, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday to help you start, grow and scale your business. Let's start with this. Burnout isn't the result of doing too much. All right? It's a big misconception. A lot of people think that I'm burnt out because I'm just doing too much work. It's actually the result of doing too much without purpose, without support or rest. Right? I've been there. And think about it. There are times in your life when you couldn't do enough work. Like you were so hungry you would work long hours and you were so excited you couldn't wait to get up in the morning and get at it again. So doing too much or doing a lot is not really like the recipe for burnout. It's really doing a lot without purpose, support, or rest. When I was building Webinar Ninja, my software company, there was a time when I was working 14 hour days. I'm not joking. It was crazy, right? We were growing, our customers were happy, revenue was really strong. But personally, I was wrecked. I wasn't lazy. I don't even know how to be lazy, but I was more disconnected. Disconnection is the real killer, when you no longer emotionally are attached to what you're doing, what you're building, what you're creating, it becomes mechanical, really, and eventually you start to feel miserable. There are three types of burnout that I believe are quite distinct. And we need to identify what kind of burnout you're going through so that we can solve it. Number one, the overwork burnout. This one's obvious. This is when you have too many tasks and not enough rest, right? This is when you're working a lot, you're not really loving every moment, and your energy levels are just in the basement because you're just not resting enough. Right? The solution, in my opinion, is you need to start cutting the tasks on your plate. You need to start delegating those tasks or even automate them with some tools. And this is actually a good wake up call, because if everything depends on you, your business can't grow anyway. You're going to hit a plateau. So this is actually a blessing in disguise. The second type of burnout is creative burnout. This one is actually quite subtle. I've been very attuned to it recently, actually. It's when you've been outputting for too long without any kind of inspirational input. So you might know somebody like that, runs a podcast for the last 10 years to help people grow their business and publishes three episodes a week, Right? Yours truly. So I'm very, very attuned to this type of burnout. I actually catch it before it happens. So what's the solution here? When you're creatively burnt out? This is when you don't have enough actual content or inspiration that you're putting into your brain. This doesn't mean you have to stop doing what you're doing. It just means you need to start enriching yourself with some good stuff. What kind of good stuff? Like reading new books, watching inspiring interviews, traveling, going to see the world, even locally, right? Traveling locally, going to the art museum and taking a look at some paintings. I can't tell you how many times I have felt a little bit of creative burnout. I would go to my local art museum and see a Rembrandt or see a Picasso, and all of a sudden I'm just lost in that painting and I'm inspired to create something great. Another good one is just surround yourself with interesting creators and not just business people. Okay? You can surround yourself with musicians, with actors, with people that are expressing themselves in different ways. Third type of burnout, Identity burnout. This is the deepest one of all the burnouts. It's when you start asking yourself, is this even what I want anymore? It doesn't mean your business is bad. It means your relationship with your business has changed. This one requires a realignment, so to speak, not a full pivot. And we're gonna talk about that next. So how do we do that? How do we reignite that excitement again in our business? First thing, return to your why. But you might need to update it. Your original motivation for starting your business might not excite you anymore. Okay. And that's okay. It's fine. Don't beat yourself up for it. You've grown. You've changed. Maybe you started to make $5,000 a month, and you've done that. Now what? I definitely remember when I started my entrepreneurial career. That was kind of my big dream. I'm going to make $5,000 a month. That'd be incredible. To be able to make what's kind of equivalent to my salary at the time. Running my own business, doing my own thing. But once you hit that level, what's your motivation? What's getting you excited? Okay. Okay. You have to update your motivation. You gotta update your why. You gotta update the reason why you're doing the work. Okay? So now I wanna work four days a week, for example. That could be your next why. I wanna work four days a week, have three day weekends, every single weekend, but still have the business grow. Maybe for you, what will get you motivated is impact. Maybe like, all right, I have 200 customers. That's incredible. But I wanna impact more people. A thousand people. That's my goal. If I can hit a thousand people, I can really feel like I'm making an impact. Or. Or maybe you're like, I want to build a business that's a weld oil machine. A business that runs without me, that I could just step away, go on holiday for three months, and the thing still runs and grows and makes me money. The point I'm making here is that you might need to find a new mission, right? A new goal, a new why.

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Number two, rebuild your calendar around Joy. I learned this little tip from Ali Abdaal in his book Feel Good Productivity. That's what it's called. Look at your week. Okay? Look at your week on the calendar and ask yourself what tasks give me energy? And then also ask what tasks drain me, Right? For me, recording this podcast gives me life. It gives me a chance to feel like I'm helping other people and that really makes me feel good. But long winded meetings, no thanks. I really don't like long meetings. So I actually have one scheduled meeting with my team every single week. That's 30 minutes short. And I know that once I do it, I'm done for the week. You should try to set a goal for yourself to spend 80% of your time doing things that only you can do and that you enjoy. And if you don't do this intentionally, burnout will creep its head in, right? It will bite you in the rear end and it will just come up without you noticing. Now, I know you might be saying, Omar, 80% of doing things I enjoy. What about all the other stuff I have to do and I have to sludge through? Well, that might be a goal for you. Now that might be something that you got to work towards, that like only 20% of the stuff that you do are things that you kind of don't really love. And if it's more than 20% right now, work towards that. Earn more money, make more sales, grow your business so that you can delegate. You can hire people to do the stuff that you don't enjoy. Or obviously you can use tools, automation, or you might make some hard decisions. Just cut those things out if they're not really helping your bottom line. Number three, change the scene. Literally. Okay, this is is a huge hack that has helped me through some tough times of burnout. This one is super simple. Your environment matters. It matters to a degree that is shocking in my opinion. You know why I love traveling so much is because it allows me to change my environment and get new inspiration, new Environments force new perspectives and new perspectives get you new ideas, get you creative, get you infusing that creativity into your work and it shakes you out of your autopilot. Now if you can't travel right now, that's totally fine. I couldn't travel at a period of my entrepreneurial career. And what I did is something that is not radical. I just moved into a co working space. Okay. I joined a startup kind of co working space here in Sydney called Fish Burners and I got myself a desk. Nicole and I sat together with two desks and. And it just got me out of my home office. It changed the environment. Just try this for a week. Even going to a co working space, you might be inspired. You might realize, oh, wow, I don't have the same problems that other businesses are talking about around me. I'm pretty good at a few things that other people are pretty weak at. You get some perspective, you start to realize things are actually not that bad. If you don't want to go to co working space, no problem. Got another idea that I did that was incredible. Great idea, which is just change where you have lunch. Okay? So I used to always just have lunch at home. I changed it up. I started to just go and have lunch outside, go to a restaurant or I just had the lunch I normally have at home, put it in a bag and walk to the park and ate it at the park. Just change your environment. You might be inspired just by the nature that's around. You don't want to do any of those things or you can't rearrange your office, change it up, move the desk that's here over there. You know, change your lighting, change what's on the walls, you know, reconfigure things so it feels like you're in a new space. Want to feel adventurous but really can't travel overseas. No worries. Do a working weekend in a new city, right? And a neighboring city to you that maybe driving distance. Or you could take the train or the bus and just work over the weekend in a new place. And with new restaurants and new places to have lunch and new places for you to get inspiration, little things actually make a big effect. Number four, I hope you're still with me because this one is game changing. Just get a quick win, okay? Burnout often comes from stagnation. You're not seeing results. Sometimes you just need a W under your belt, right? Just to feel like you're getting some sort of momentum. So create a small short challenge for yourself with a clear win like this is a win for me. For example, maybe you say to yourself, I'm going to create and launch a new lead magnet in the next 48 hours. Put it out in the world. I'm going to get some new leads with a new lead magnet. Maybe you're going to say to yourself, I'm going to send 10 personalized emails to some warm leads that I have right now, making them an offer. Notice that I'm not making this super complicated. I'm saying I'm going to send 10 personalized emails and I'm going to, you know, shoot for seven replies and three sales. No, the goal is the win is if I complete this task. 10 personalized emails to warm leads with an offer, right? Another example. I'm going to record five YouTube shorts this week. If I record these shorts and I put them out there, it's a win. And wins kill burnout. I'm telling you, sometimes you just need to win. So we talked about a lot today. I did mention identity burnout, and I want to go a little deeper into that. So I'm going to share a story from my own life, my own personal experience. I built a software company called Webinar Ninja for 10 years, built it to 30,000 users, sold it to Proprofs. We got acquired recently last year, and. And I had to start over, right? I had this kind of identity burnout, right? I was a webinar guy for a very long time, and now I'm not. I have nothing to do with the company anymore because it got acquired. So I had to ask myself, what would I have to do if I had to start over? And in a way, I am starting over. And that's how I decided to rebuild the $100 MBA. Now, the podcast has been going on for over 10 years, but I wanted to re infuse the Hundred MBA brand. I want to bring it back to life. I felt like it needed more attention now that it has my full att and I reimagined what it could be, what I wanted it to be. So we redesigned the program from scratch, rebuilt the whole membership area from zero. We just created it from the ground up. We updated the messaging, the branding. We got experts at design to work with us. We refocused our newsletter. We shot every video all over again, updating the content and making sure it's timeless. I got back to teaching live, even did some webinars. And I just decided, okay, I'm going to make this my masterpiece. This is going to be my focus now. This is going to be My motivation. Suddenly I felt motivated. I felt like I want to work on something special, like the $100 MBA again. Sometimes you're going to feel a little stuck. It's not about quitting, it's about reconnecting with your business. You know, sometimes you're going to feel a little stuck, right? And it's fine. Just means you need to readjust the direction slightly to feel alive again. So if you're burnt out, please don't see it as weakness, okay? See it as a signal, as a warning, A signal that you're currently working in a way that's not serving you. You need a reboot. It's not your entire life here, but at the same time, it's a significant part of your life and you should be enjoying what you're doing. Don't suffer silently. Adjust, reconnect. And give yourself the gift of rediscovering your passion, your spark. Because when you're excited again, your team feels it, your customers feel it, and the results follow. At least that's been my experience. Thanks so much for being a listener, a subscriber of the hundred Dollar MBA show. It means a ton to us that you're part of this community. The fact that you're listening to this podcast now, at the end of the podcast, you made it this far. It means you're a doer. It means that you are an action taker. And I have something for you. If you want to continue to learn from me and you want to go a little bit deeper, you may want to join my three Things newsletter. It's called Three Things because I share three things with you every single week. It's absolutely free. Let me tell you what it's all about. The first thing I share with you out of those three things is something to think about, to change your mindset, to improve your mindset as a professional, as an entrepreneur, as a builder. The second thing I give you every week is something to do so you're getting better every single week by taking action. And number three, something to learn so that you're skilling up and becoming something new every single week. Just go to 100- MBA-NET and sign up for any of our free guides and you'll get our newsletter automatically. Thanks for hanging out with me. I'll see you in the next episode. Take care.

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