In this solo video, Leila Hormozi addresses business leaders who feel anxious, stretched, or on the brink of burnout. Drawing from a recent personal panic‑attack episode, she explains how the illusion of total control leads leaders to become the "glue" that holds every problem together, which inevitably causes them to break. Hormozi advises stepping back, reprioritizing tasks, and deliberately letting minor "fires" (e.g., garbage‑can or window fires) burn instead of trying to extinguish every issue. She stresses that true leadership is about building a sustainable business, not building oneself into the business, and that exposing operational holes requires intentional disengagement. Hormozi also challenges the habit of self‑criticism, urging leaders to replace negative self‑talk with proactive problem‑solving and to manage the emotional narrative around business challenges. The video concludes with three practical tweaks—prioritize fires, expose holes, and shift mindset—to prevent burnout and maintain mental health while running a business.
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What is up? This video is for anyone who runs a business, leads a department in a business, is a leader of business who's prone to feeling anxious, stretched, overwhelmed, etc. This video is for you, and it is just from my personal experience. And so if you feel like you are stretched, overwhelmed, or about to pop, watch this video. So I want to share this because it's really top of mind. I actually literally just got out of the gym from doing leg day, but it was on my mind the entire time I was in there because It was a conversation I had on my executive meeting today with one of my executives who, you know, I just kind of checked in at the end of the call and I'm like, hey, how are you doing? How's everything going? Like, how are you feeling? You know, I'm trying to get a vibe because I kind of sensed a little bit of stress. And she kind of alluded to the fact that, you know, she's overwhelmed with stuff. And she said something that I have thought so many times myself, and it just made me think of an experience I want to share with you guys in a moment. She said, you know, I just feel like I don't know where to jump in and where not to because I feel like if I'm in involved in all these things, then these problems wouldn't have occurred. And I was like, I had had this thought actually just like 2 weeks ago where I was like, wow, if I was involved in everything, there would literally be no problems, or at least no perceived problems, because I would have quote-unquote control of the situation, or at least I would give myself illusion of control over the situation. Because I was having a hard time as I've just stepped back even more in a few of the companies, and I was thinking to myself, like, I just feel like if I was in there, everything would be fine. And then I realized it wouldn't. There would still be problems. I would just feel like I had control over the problems. And so that's what I shared with her. I said, of course you would feel as if there were no problems because you would feel like you had control over them, which makes it then not a problem, right? Because humans like predictability and control. And so when we don't have that, that's when we feel like it's a problem, right? Because we can't clearly understand what's happening. We want to be able to predict situations because it means there's no threat, right? We can't predict them because we're not involved enough. We feel there's a threat. The reason I feel really strongly about sharing this, uh, with everyone here is because I know if you run anxious, if you're like— consider yourself to be a high performer, if you like to be very involved and you feel guilty when you're not, right? And that is my issue, is that I have always, until recently, uh, in the last year, wanted to be involved in everything. And it takes a lot of constraint for me not to because my instant urge is always to involve myself more when there are problems. And this is what actually happens, is that if you decide that everything will break if you are not involved, then guess what breaks? You freaking break, right? And so that's actually what happens. It's like, you're like, oh, I want this system to stay glued together. I'll just be the glue. I'll just stretch myself across the whole freaking thing, right? And then you break eventually, and probably pretty quickly. And I've seen this happen so many times. It's happened to me, and I actually thought it would never happen to me. Until last year. And I remember that I had 4 events coming up. I was running 2 of them, attending another 2, and they were all back to back. And I had 11 meetings that day. And then we went out to dinner late that night, and I didn't get home till late. And I had a ton of stuff to do in the morning, and I couldn't sleep. And I was literally— felt myself all of a sudden. It felt like I was having a heart attack, and I was having a panic attack. And I was like, oh shit, what? And then I was like, I was like, what the heck is going on? Like, I'm hardcore. Stuff doesn't happen to me like this. Like, I can handle stress. And then I was like, my body's just not having it now. And that is what happened. And that's what really woke me up to realize, like, I've just been creating my— I've been making myself the glue, right? And so when I heard her say that, I got on high alert because I'm like, I don't want you to go there. Because what happens is that when you make yourself the glue and you're the thing that eventually breaks, is that— but you know what happens before you break is you build up resentment, right? And that's what usually happens to people. And it's a big reason why leaders quit or why leaders decide they don't wanna run their business or why leaders resent their business. It's because they stretch themselves so far, they have nothing left to give, right? And so then eventually they break, right? And so that's what happened to me. And instead of saying, I'm gonna like say, F all this stuff, I was like, okay, rationally, let's look at the situation. There's probably just a few small changes I need to make. And that's why I suggested to her, I said, you know, let's just look at your list, let's just reprioritize, and we might have to just say fuck it to a couple things and like let them burn. There's a big analogy I like to use, or a small amount, whatever, which is just like, is it a living room fire, garbage can fire, window fire, right? And so I'm like, all right, we've got garbage can fires, let's just let them burn. I don't even care, right? Because if we don't let them burn, you will break, right? And so this is now how I've learned to do things for myself, is I have learned to let the little fires burn And that was what I was also advising her to do. And I think this is really important because oftentimes business itself, the tactics, that's not what's hard. What's hard is everything that goes on between your ears. And that's the shit that people don't want to talk about. The shit that is actually relevant on a day-to-day basis is how we deal with our emotions around business, right? Like, it's not a problem if someone quits. What is a problem is how you think about someone quitting, what you make it mean, all the emotions around the meaning that you create about it., right? It's the same with anything else. And if you convince yourself that your business needs you and that your job is to be at the— be an absolute— not even servant, because servant is one thing, but slave to your business, right? To just roll yourself out and always succumb to whatever the business needs, then eventually you will resent the business or you will break. One or the other will come first. And so if you're listening to this video and that sounds like something that you can relate to, which I would guess a good amount of people probably can, then I would say remember this, right? One is look at what you have to do and decide what fires you're gonna let burn. It's very uncomfortable at first, but in the long run, you'll be much more comfortable because you will not feel like you're going to explode. The second thing is that you want to remember this: if you are involved in everything, you do not have a business, right? And what most people do is that they involve themselves in everything to prevent problems from happening, to prevent things from breaking, to prevent problems from arising, to prevent holes, right? But the entire point of being a CEO or a leader is to build a business, not to build yourself into a business. Okay? To build a business, not to build yourself into a business. And so in order to build a business properly, you must expose the holes. How are you going to know what the weak links are if you're in there every day always compensating? It's not sustainable. And so that's the second thing, is that You are disserving your business in the long run if you overstretch and overcompensate with yourself to make the business run. It will not be a business. Try and sell that thing. They're just going to buy you. Okay. And then the last part is this, which is if you do run anxious, you feel like you're a high performer, you feel like this is something that you're dealing with. The last thing that you need is to beat yourself up. And that is what a lot of people do. And here's what I realized. And my really good friend Trevor Cashey talks about this, and he mentioned it like a year and a half ago to me in a conversation, which completely changed my mindset around it, which is like I used to beat myself up a lot about things, and I thought that was why I was really good at doing a lot of stuff, like great in fitness, business, marriage, etc. And then I realized that all the time I spent beating myself up, I could have just spent that time being productive about the solution, right? So instead of all these thoughts that are like, you suck, this should be better, I can't believe your business looks like this, there's so many holes, I could have just swapped that with, okay, let's take a look at these holes. Let me go have a conversation. Let me go do this. Let me find a mentor. Let me look for a coach. Right? It's being proactive rather than indulging in those negative emotions that for some reason, maybe you've taught yourself at one point or another that that's what drives you and that's what makes you a high performer. It's not true. I would challenge that thought. And so I hope you found that useful. It's something I feel really passionate about because I just— I personally never want anyone on my team to burn out for that reason or get to the point where they have like a full-on panic attack like I did and then have to like really look at everything you're doing and audit their whole life. I think that often it's just a few small tweaks like I just mentioned, those 3 tweaks that can help you, and it can completely change how you run your day-to-day and how you feel about your business. So if you like that, go ahead, hit subscribe. Hopefully I'll see you in the next one.
