Here is what you need to do if running your company has you burned out and ready to walk away…
Are you feeling burned out? Are you tired? Worn out? Stressed? Wouldn’t mind walking away from it all and doing something completely different?
The reason you’re burned out is because you’ve been doing the same thing for way too long, or you’re working on things that you shouldn’t be working on. What I mean by that is, way too many guys and gals that are building companies, get stuck doing the same thing over and over and over again, and they don’t bring in anybody behind them to take stuff off their plate.
They get stuck doing the same thing, and then they grind down. They wear out. They get bored. They get worn out because, after you do something for long enough, and you keep telling yourself year after year the story that, “This year will be better. This year we’ll grow. This year we’ll have more money. This year we’ll get out of debt. This year we’ll get more clients. This year … whatever.” It doesn’t happen, and you have to go execute the exact same set of daily activities that you’ve been doing for the last five years. You wear down and you burn out. Ultimately, you’ll give away your company for virtually nothing.
The only solution is to hire people to start filling in and taking things off your plate. In the last couple videos I’ve talked about this. This has sort of been a theme. You’ve got to get stuff off your plate, and you can start with the activities that are not that expensive to hire out. Just get some stuff off your plate. You’ll find a little bit of freedom to have a little bit more success to find a little bit of peace of mind. It will give you confidence and courage to hire more people. Or, the individual maybe that you did hire, let’s say they were only part-time, to give them full-time work.
The only solution is to grow. I’ve seen multiple people post on YouTube, saying, “I don’t want a big business. Employees suck. It’s not a good industry. You can’t grow it.” I can go down the list. There will be people that make negative comments about some of the stuff I say, having to do with growing or getting bigger. But, I’m telling you if you don’t do it you will be miserable in ten years. You will be working harder than a lot of people that just went and got a job. You might be making a little bit more money, but I guarantee you won’t be happy in life.
The way to not burn out, the way to be happier, the way to feel more successful, the way to have more confidence, the way to be proud of what you’ve built and accomplished is to build something a little bit bigger. You don’t have to go to five million. You don’t have to go to three million. You don’t have to go to ten million, but it needs to be a little bigger. It absolutely needs to be you not doing all the work in the field.
If you decide that, “Hey, I want to work in the field, somewhat, I don’t want that big business.” Fine. But, it can’t be one crew. It’s really got to be multiple crews where you’re sort of out there in the fields, overseeing things. But, you cannot be the person doing the work. If you’re in your 20’s and 30’s, and even 40’s and you’re totally cool with doing the work and you are loving it…great! But, there will come a day that you don’t love that anymore. You’re kind of grinding down, wearing down, you’re tired, and if you have waited that long to figure out how to build a bigger business, you’ve only got a couple options.
You continue to grind down and, ultimately, have no retirement, or you go get a job somewhere, or you reinvent yourself at 40, and that’s not very exciting. The way I ended up in the lawn care business was I bought my business, it was like $50,000 worth of revenue, from a guy that was about 60-years-old that had been mowing lawns his entire life. He was done. He really had nothing, but he could not mow any further. He was sick. He was a smoker, and it was starting to get to him, and he just physically could no longer do it.
This was a guy that never got out of the field, and now, he had nothing. He sold his business for $7,000 to me, including his truck and his mower and his trailer. He walked away from it all with nothing after 30 years of being in the business. That’s mind boggling. Avoid the burnout. If you’re feeling it, know that there is a solution. That solution is to start getting some stuff off your plate and moving up the ranks in your business to doing new and different tasks … but not being the guy doing the work in the field.
