Feeling Burnt out? Do these things NOW

Are you feeling burnt out running your business? Well, it doesn't have to be that way. In this video, I'm going to show you five things you can do today to start making things easier. Now, if you've not come across me before, my name's Paul. I'm an accountant, CFO, entrepreneur and I've got over 25 years of experience in helping businesses to grow profitably. Not only that, I've also run three businesses of my own. So believe me when I say I know how difficult it can be as an entrepreneur, how lonely it can feel, and how easy it is to get burnt out if you're not careful. Which is exactly why I put this video together.

Well, before we get to the details, I'd like to do you one quick favor and click the subscribe button, because I'd love to be able to share new content with you every week. I put out regular business information that hopefully you can use to help your business to grow profitably and give you the life that you really want.

Right, let’s talk about burnout in business. I can tell you one thing. I've worked with hundreds of businesses over the years, and pretty much every single entrepreneur goes through this at some time or other. So believe me, you're not alone. So let's just take a minute to think about how this happens. What are the signs? How do you know you're burnt out?

Well, it might sound like an obvious question, but actually burnout is very different from just feeling tired. It's when you get past the tired phase and things just get a bit more extreme. You might be feeling that the demands of your job, your day to day activities are just too much for you.

Perhaps the business needs more than you can give. You might feel like a slave to the business; that you're working for the business, rather than the business working for you. Which is why you went into business in the first place, right? Perhaps you feel a lack of support from your family or friends or people around you, or perhaps you feel that you're out of control, you don't know what you're doing. I have to tell you one thing. That feeling of not knowing what you're doing is something that, again, all entrepreneurs feel. The other key sign of feeling burned out is that you're not just tired, but you're tired all the time.

You might feel like your whole life is work. You feel chained to the desk or the workshop or whatever it happens to be. You don't have any work life balance. You know, the business is taking up so much of your life.

You probably started your business because you wanted a work life balance. You wanted something which potentially meant you could be working less, that you'd have more money and more time to enjoy life and the things important to you personally. And quite often as businesses grow, if we're not careful, it's that work life balance which is one of the first things that goes. And it can make us feel really low. 

I'm very, very aware of this. It's happened to me personally a couple of times over the years. I'm thinking particularly about the first business I ran. I had a retail store on the south coast of England. It was my first business. Prior to that, I'd been working as an employee for a rather large company and when I started out it was a real struggle to get the business going. And actually, the the harder I worked, the longer the hours, the higher the stress. 

Even when I wasn't there, I was mentally there. I couldn't switch off. And even though my family was very supportive, respectfully, they weren't in the same position as me so they didn't really understand the pressure that I felt under, even though, to be honest, it was me putting myself under most of that pressure. So this is something which is really, really personal to me.

So, I've got five tips that worked for me that I want to share with you. But before I do, do leave me some comments below. I'd love to know if you’ve ever felt like this. If you've ever been in a position where you've felt burnt out and if so, what did you do about it? Have you got some tips you can share with the rest of us? Because we’d all love to learn from you too.

Okay. So five tips - Here we go. Tip number one to combat burnout is to just stop. That's really, really important. It’s common to feel overwhelmed, consumed with the day to day. But what you have to do if you want to break that spiral, you have to take a step back. Have a look at everything that you're doing on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, all of those tasks and just work out which of those tasks do you really need to be doing? Which ones are adding value?

Typically it’s human nature to focus on things that are urgent but not necessarily important. So it's well worth taking time just to stop, assess what you're doing, work out which tasks are adding value,which tasks do you enjoy doing and which ones do you hate. That's also really important because you're in the business not just to make money, but to feel fulfilled. 

That brings me on to step two. Once you've stopped and assessed what you're doing, what’s adding value and whether or not those tasks make you happy, you need to make a short term plan, focusing on what you want to achieve in the short term with your business.

I'm not saying you have to plan to double your sales or get 20 new clients or anything like that. We're looking for small, tangible objectives that you feel you can achieve in the next two or three months. Okay. And that's what we're going to then use as our point of focus in terms of everything that we do for the next two or three months.

Once you've got that point of focus right, I want you to go back to the list of all the tasks that we just assessed in the first step and work out how those tasks relate to that goal. Which tasks can you stop doing? Which ones do you have to continue doing? Which ones can you pass to somebody else to do?  And are there one or two things that you should start doing that would replace a couple of things that you stop? Now, the aim here is to try and reduce what you're doing in total, but focus on only doing the things that directly relate to achieving that objective.

And you'll have to be ruthless because it can be a bit uncomfortable to stop doing things, but when we say stop, it’s not necessarily stop, stop. It could be you stop doing some tasks daily and do them weekly or fortnightly instead.  Also, you’ll need to relinquish some control. Perhaps you can give some other things to other people, too.

Once you’ve done this exercise, I promise you you're going to feel so much better. Now, step three isn't so much something to do, but it is a change in mindset. And that is I want you to let go of perfectionism. Now, I'm not saying that whatever you do can be sloppy work, but what I am saying is, in my experience, as entrepreneurs, we tend to be perfectionists.

Of course we want to do the best we can. We're putting something out there in the world that reflects upon us so there’s a natural pressure to make sure everything is perfect. But the reality is nothing will ever be perfect.

And most of what we're doing in business is about trial and error and learning. And so what's much more important is actually achieving progress towards those goals that we just talked about over perfection. So do the best you can, but don't spend forever on things; remember you just need to be making progress. And when you do make progress, celebrate that. All progress in business is great. It really is. Even if you do something and it's not working and you decide to stop it, that's still progress because you've learned something and you've ruled that out and you're not going to do that again.

Okay, That's point number three, point number four. I want you to look after yourself, prioritize yourself and enforce boundaries. And what I mean by that is start saying no to people. Just do things which are the right thing for you and the business, particularly focusing on those short term goals that we just talked about and don't do anything else that is going to distract you from that.

It's hard saying no to people because most people don't like to disappoint other people, but it's really, really important. It's important for your business and important for your sanity. So therefore, you have to start saying ‘no’ to people where things aren't critical and be protective of your time. 

That brings me to point number five. Your time is really important. When I say your time, I'm actually talking more about your free time, your personal time, rather than your business time. And if you don't ringfence that time for you, protect your free time at all costs, you're never going to have a business that is going to make you happy. 

In business, yes we need to work hard, so how is this going to work in practice? Well, it may be that you need to work on the weekend, so say to yourself ‘okay, I'm going to block out Saturday afternoon for work but will keep the rest of the weekend for me. And in the week, stop work at a certain time each day and you make sure you stick to it. Don't let work creep. Your personal time should be your priority. 

I hope those were helpful even though they’re quite simple. There's no real rocket science there, but trust me, they really, really work. And I'd really love you to give it a try. And also, I'd love to hear from you. Try those things and leave me some comments below.

Have you tried something else which you think others could benefit from? Let us know because we'd really love to hear from you. And, as usual I've taken those five points and I've put them into a free fact sheet, which you can download below and work through them in your own time.

And also before I go, I also have another free factsheet, which I’d really like you to download, and it's all about turbocharging your cash flow in your business and doing so without selling a penny more.

So if that's interesting as well, click the link below and download it. And if you've not done so as yet, as I mentioned earlier, please subscribe because I'm posting new content every week and I'd love to be able to share that with you. Well, thanks very much for listening. I appreciate your time and I look forward to seeing you in the next video.