Scaling Secrets: From Personal Burnout to Operational Security

When you own something and then you're either handing it off or bringing in people to do it, you are creating a very clear process and potentially systems and other things for things to be done in the way you want them repeatedly. And not only for those people, but for anyone new entering the organization. And so processes are also really important for scale and also really important for operational security and redundancy, that if somebody leaves, they don't leave with all that knowledge.

And now we don't know how to do that part of the business.

Today on a special Speakeasy Mastermind podcast edition, we're going back to the vault to tackle a challenge every ambitious founder eventually faces: the silent killer of growth—burnout. We've pulled the two most impactful discussions on scaling without losing your sanity. You'll hear from Joy Houston on the pivotal moment she realized success wasn't enough if it cost her her health. And also Alex Snyder on the critical difference between true delegation and just abdication. Whether you're feeling the weight of the grind or you're preparing to scale your team, this is your blueprint for building a business that thrives while you do the same. Let's head inside the Speakeasy Mastermind. Was there a moment that you were sort of burnt out? Like, you know, you help a lot of professionals break from the burnout they have. Like, were you burnt out and you found something? Like, how did you get to that point yourself?

Yes, yes, yes. I won't mention any names, but I was working for a very highly regarded wellness professional. And as you know, being a part of their marketing adventures, I remember that we had just come off a win that was damn near adding a million dollars to the bottom line. And at the post, you know, I feel like there needs to be, you know, after the campaign was done, you know, everybody meets. Okay, what did we like doing? What did doing, what can we take into the next campaign before you sort of get on the next mission. And the whole sort of assessment of what, what had happened in the campaign and the success that we had created was damn near stepped over and like, what are we doing next kind of vibes, you know. And I immediately had this sense of like, oh my gosh, you know, like it almost felt a little bit like, what, when is it ever enough, you know what I mean. Can we take at least 5 minutes and like celebrate the win and take the extractions and learn so that we ever, you know, so that we're always improving our systems and the team is really enjoying the process. And there was something in that moment about the, I mean, it felt honestly like a little bit of a lack of gratitude, a little bit of caring that the team enjoyed the process of making a win at that level for the brand. And that was the time that I just kind of went home and was like, Wait a second. Like, all of what I'm doing, you know, is accessible for way more people than just these really big name clients with big budgets. And as the universe would have it, right, because we always get these interesting signs and interesting things that are happening. I was helping another one of my clients, Dr. Sarah Gottfried, with the Hormone Reset Diet campaign. Right. And I had been interviewing all these people who Sarah had gotten amazing results for. And one of the women was talking about her hormone disruption. And she said to me, Joy, I feel like I need to wear one of those white jackets that tie in the back because the emotions that I'm having don't feel like my own. Like I logically know that thing that happened, let's say between her and her husband was like a 1. I should have reacted on a scale of 1 out of 10, but I reacted like a 15. And I know that's not me. And as she's telling me the story, I'm thinking to myself, oh my God, that is how I feel some days. And other things she was sharing, like her eyebrows slowly disappearing on the outside, all these things that she were saying. I was like, that's me. And so I talked to Sarah and she was like, you need to get a functional medicine doctor locally. So I did. And by the way, it was not Sarah who I had this problem with. Sarah's amazing to work with. So I found a local doctor and she helped me with my hormones. She turned it around really quickly. And at my follow-up appointment, I could tell she just looked bad. She was like bags under her eyes. She looked like she was gonna cry. And that's when I asked her like, Hey girl, like, I feel like you saved my life, my marriage, my sanity. Like, do you mind if I ask you, is everything cool? You know? And you know, like many of us women will do, if we're holding it all together and someone says, what's going on? Then you start crying, right? So like the waterworks started happening. And I said, she shared with me like, man, I'm so good at what I do. I know that I'm so good at what I do. I'm born to do this. But I don't know how the hell to get customers in the door. I don't know how the hell to help more people. And it was on that day that meeting went awry and I just felt shitty about what was going on with one of my high-end one-on-one clients. And so it was like the, those two things happening at the same time made me say, I need to democratize access to the knowledge that I have for marketing and health business strategy. And I need to make it available to all of the hometown health practitioners just like her, you know, and I need to make this available to everybody. And that's when I came home to Travis and I said, hey, I want to change the game, let's do something different. And he's like, babe, if you believe you need to do that, let's do it and let's give it a go and let's see if hometown health heroes everywhere are even willing to do that kind of work. And it started honestly, Eric, as a test, like, let's just see, let's just play and see if providing that to more practitioners would be of interest. And then it was. And, you know, as soon as we got that to be over a million dollar offer, we were like, let's go, you know, let's make this available to everybody.

Of course, obviously in this case, that whole seed in the back is now the level of appreciation is at a whole different level now. Now it's just like, wow.

Yeah, because you have some people who like, you could add $100,000, $200,000, $300,000 with a little marketing initiative and they're okay, what's next? You know, as compared to, you you get an extra 50 grand into a hometown health practitioner's office that's been struggling, you are getting flowers and text messages. And you know what I'm like, they're crying, they're literally crying happy tears, not because they're sad, but they're like, I never thought this would happen for me kind of vibes. And when you have a whole community of people like that, like, of course, like, I jump out of bed to serve them every morning because it makes my heart like sing to do that, you know.

I love it. Welcome to Inside the Speakeasy Mastermind Podcast, the private room where today's sharpest founders, innovators, and renegade thinkers come to trade the ideas that move industries. This show is brought to you by HighLevel, the AI-driven business operating system trusted by over 2 million businesses to help automate, scale, and create real leverage. HighLevel isn't just a tool, it's the engine behind some of the most agile and high-performing teams on the planet. If you're ready to streamline everything, amplify your reach, and actually build a business that works for you, you're in the right place. Visit www.gohighlevel.com/speakeasy-mastermind-promo to get an exclusive 30-day trial for being a listener of the Inside the Speakeasy podcast. Enjoy the show. You know, what's something that would you say a lot of people that you work with get wrong about the delegation or trust of things?

Yeah, I think there's a spectrum that people tend to live in the extremes. And the first one being just holding onto everything and micromanaging or not delegating. And the other extreme is abdication. And abdication is not delegation. Just giving someone a task and, or a responsibility or whatever, and then setting them free isn't delegation. That's abdication. That's, you know, this is now your job. Bye. Right. Every job I ever got, I came in and firefought and had to figure it out. And like, fair enough, fine. Yeah. But it's suboptimal. I'm sure I would've performed better in the first 3 to 6 months if someone had actually been able to train me.

Right. You manage and there's, there's the A players that figure it out. But I mean, that's, that was luck that they had you on the team.

Yeah. Yeah. So finding, understanding what delegation is, understanding like the way to match, you know, people's capabilities and delegation. And then how you delegate, it's just basically like tapering off, right? But if you either don't instinctually know how to break something down or don't go and find like a brief or structure that you can use to create this like repeatable, this is how we delegate and things like that. And we spoke about earlier, or SOPs, that's a great way, right? When you always something and then you're either handing it off or bringing in people to do it, you have them take copious notes while you walk them through how you do it and you dump your brain into them, and then they structure it, and then it becomes a document that not only they follow to do it the way you want it, and if you bring experts, you may want them to do it the way it should be done, and you don't really care how the sausage is made. That's fine. Right. But in this case, you are creating a very clear process and potentially systems and other things for things to be done in the way you want them repeatedly. And not only for those people, but for anyone new entering the organization. And so processes are also really important for scale and also really important for operational security and redundancy, that if somebody leaves, they don't leave with all that knowledge and now we don't know how to do that part of the business.

So tell us about Thrive Week on a personal side, why you love it and share, do share. Yeah, totally.

Okay. So first of all, credit where credit is due. This comes from Nick Peterson who wrote a book called Bumpers. You can get it on Amazon if you wanna find it. It's a tiny little book, but I'll give you the nutshell about it. I found out about this process. I mentioned Laurel Portier, who's amazing in the Facebook ad space, especially if you wanna learn how to run your own ads when you're getting started. So I was working with her and she had this last week of the month where she just didn't show up. There were no calls, no nothing. And I was like, oh, this is really interesting. And she set it up as, well, this is your time to go do what I taught you to do. Basically like, okay, I can only teach you so much. If you don't implement, then you're not gonna get the results anyway. So it was queued up in a way that I was like, oh, that's really genius. And I was scared shitless, but I was determined to try it with our community. Like, are they gonna have a heart attack? Is everybody gonna quit? Are they all gonna leave? Yeah. You know what I mean? And so we implemented it slowly. So we started like, you know, there's so many weeks in a month. We started by taking off the last Friday. Then Thursday, then Wednesday, and before you know it, the whole last week of the month, we do not deliver. So we deliver fulfillment in our Mastermind and any of our group programs. We deliver week 1, 2, and 3, and then the last week— sometimes there's 5 weeks in a month, so sometimes it's 2 weeks off at the end of the month— we do not deliver. They go, they implement, and they love it. Okay, not only do they feel like they get stuff done and get caught up so they never waste their investment in us because it's a fire hose of good information around here because we're keeping people like, okay, this ad's firing on all cylinders, this process is all, oh, we just did this with our EAs. We're constantly giving them all the nuggets that we find in our business, in our private client businesses. So it can be like a fire hose. So that time off, they reported back to me, that gap gives me the time to feel like I'm not wasting my investment in being in this community because I always have a little bit of time to catch up and implement. And if I didn't have that, I would feel bowled over by everything that you give me and I would feel like I was wasting too much of it. So those last week or week, two weeks of the month, that's when Travis and I take our vacations. That's when we sometimes, like, if we need to film a new product or if I need to write another book or whatever, like we take that time, we see it in the whole calendar year. We know exactly when it's coming and that's how we stay really passionate about what we do. We don't We don't want to burn ourselves out so bad that we don't love working for our people.

You just heard from Joy Houston and Alex Snyder. If you want to dive deeper into their full stories, we've linked both original episodes in the show notes. And that's a wrap from the Speakeasy Podcast. If something sparked for you, don't keep it to yourself. Share it, review it, and pass it to the one person who needs to hear this right now. Want in on the real mastermind? Tap the link in the show notes to apply. Until next time, keep scaling, stay sharp, and don't be the smartest one in the room.