Learn. Share. Evolve…

0:00:06 Today I want to tackle the important topic of burnout. What it is, what it isn’t, how to prevent
0:00:12 it, and how to get past it if you find yourself in a state of burnout. So first of all, what is
0:00:18 burnout? Burnout is a state of emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion caused by prolonged or
0:00:23 excessive stress. It’s not just fatigue, it’s not just being tired, it’s an actual syndrome that can
0:00:29 significantly impact your personal and your work life. Symptoms include feeling emotionally drained,
0:00:36 feeling detached from work, and feeling a reduced sense of personal accomplishment. So to me, what
0:00:43 separates burnout from merely being tired is there’s this sense of underlying hopelessness and
0:00:48 maybe helplessness with burnout when you’re in a really challenging period and you’ve been there
0:00:54 for some time and there’s still no light at the end of the tunnel. I think we can all toughen up for a
0:00:59 period of time, but how long is sustainable is maybe the root of the issue. And when the advice
0:01:05 is, well, if you’re going through hell, keep going. When does it make sense to ask, well, wait a minute,
0:01:11 I think I missed my exit. Or maybe it’s time for a U-turn or a different strategy. And at the same time,
0:01:16 you also know that without struggle, there’s no progress, right? That’s Frederick Douglass from
0:01:21 150 plus years ago. There was an essay, there was a blog post back in the good old dehiss of blogging
0:01:27 from Corbett Barr, where he wrote that everybody wants the big muscles, but nobody wants to lift
0:01:32 the heavy weights. You can’t expect the result without putting in the work, but how much is too
0:01:39 much? There is, or there was for a certain period of time, this glamorizing of startup or hustle culture,
0:01:44 rise and grind, death before decaf, I can sleep when I’m dead. And I think we’ve moved beyond that,
0:01:50 recognizing that’s neither healthy nor sustainable. In this episode, I want to share some strategies that
0:01:55 have worked for me and a side hustle show guests over the years, both in terms of your day job and
0:02:00 your side hustle in preventing and overcoming burnout, should it happen to you. And one question
0:02:05 that came up when prepping for this was, well, is burnout a new thing? And we never used to hear
0:02:11 about this. So, and when I hear young people in, I’m going to young, say young as in like my generation
0:02:16 and younger, I consider myself a millennial. My gut reaction, when I hear younger people talking about
0:02:20 burnout, it’s not usually positive. Like you’re 23, how could you possibly be burned out? Do you even know
0:02:27 what work is? It’s usually my gut reaction, you know, tough times make tough people. Sometimes you got to
0:02:31 suck it up. This is what hard work is supposed to feel like. That’s why they call it work. You better get
0:02:36 used to it. And it’s hard to imagine assembly line workers from a hundred years ago or coal miners or
0:02:42 World War II Marines, like at least ever publicly complaining about burnout. Look, this is life. It
0:02:48 is what it is. I got a job to do. I’m going to do it. But I also have to imagine those workers and
0:02:55 miners and soldiers felt the symptoms of burnout or battle fatigue. And they have forever for generations,
0:03:00 even if they didn’t call it that, even if they didn’t dare voice their condition. The term burnout was
0:03:06 first coined by psychologist Herbert Reudenberger in the 1970s. So it’s a relatively new diagnosis,
0:03:11 but the causes certainly aren’t anything new. So it’s more than just feeling tired, more than just
0:03:16 feeling stressed and demotivated. It’s an actual clinical diagnosis with some real symptoms and
0:03:22 consequences. And I’m not a therapist, nor do I play one on the internet. So while I want to share some
0:03:27 strategies and ideas for you, if you’re dealing with burnout, I would absolutely recommend getting a
0:03:31 professional opinion. We’ve had better help as a sponsor of the show in the past, and there are
0:03:36 other resources as well. So like most syndromes and conditions, perhaps the best way to beat burnout
0:03:42 is to avoid it in the first place. So starting under the umbrella of prevention, prevention is the best
0:03:48 medicine. Strategy number one is to find your why. In the words of Luke Bryan from the country song,
0:03:51 do what you love, but call it work. There’s another line from Nietzsche. He says,
0:03:58 he who has a why to live can bear almost any how, right? How long are we willing to struggle? If we
0:04:01 have a strong enough why, we’re going to be able to work through that. And when it comes to side
0:04:06 hustles, most people say they want a side hustle to make extra money, but extra money is just a tool.
0:04:11 Why do you want the extra money? What will that extra income afford you? If it’s just extra money to
0:04:16 pad your savings, I’m not sure that’s going to be motivation enough when the road inevitably gets
0:04:22 harder. My typical recommendation is to go five whys deep to try and find your true deep-seated
0:04:27 motivation. And if you haven’t gone through it, a couple of prominent guests have recommended
0:04:33 this perfect average day exercise, projecting out three, four, five years. In five years,
0:04:38 what’s your perfect average Tuesday? This is Jamie Masters from episode 345.
0:04:42 So I used to also think the visioning was super, super woo-woo. And then I started interviewing
0:04:47 millionaires and it came up over and over and over and over again. So I started looking up the science
0:04:52 behind it. It is ridiculous because I used to avoid it. So I’m so grateful that you actually took the
0:04:57 time because even if it’s just knowing that you’re on the same page, it’s huge. But science is now coming
0:05:01 to fruition about the visioning side. So don’t knock it till you try it, people. Just so you know,
0:05:07 I’m a convert. I completely agree with it now too. But being able to know, one of the reasons why we have
0:05:12 you do the perfect day is not only so that way you can get clarity on it, but also to see how close
0:05:16 you are. This is the thing that was really cool is going, hey, you know what? There’s a couple small
0:05:20 tweaks that I can do on my perfect day that would actually make my perfect day right now. And it doesn’t
0:05:24 have to be in five years from now. There’s small things that you could be doing.
0:05:30 If the five-year-in-the-future version of you eats healthier, start eating healthier now. If the five-year-in-the-future
0:05:34 version of you rides their bike to work, start riding your bike to work now. I think you’ll find there
0:05:40 are little opportunities to start living your vision today. And maybe not full 24 hours, but it’s
0:05:45 a spectrum, right? I think we all would love to be in 100% control of our calendar 100% of the time,
0:05:51 but that doesn’t align with the constraints of our reality. Instead, what we can do is start carving
0:05:57 out 15 minutes here, a half hour there, and then use that time to start moving us closer to our vision,
0:06:03 to start living out our why. I remember a time when adult coloring books were super, super popular,
0:06:08 top 100 bestsellers on Amazon popular, and they were promoted as a stress reliever.
0:06:12 And I remember thinking, look, if you’ve got time to do an adult coloring book, you’re clearly not that
0:06:19 stressed. Because there have certainly been days or weeks on a few different occasions when it didn’t
0:06:24 even feel like I had time to breathe. Every waking moment was filled with work and obligations and
0:06:30 demands, and it is super stressful. I think the first time I experienced this was painting houses in
0:06:35 college, maybe bit off a little more than I could chew, maybe had a few too many projects going on
0:06:41 at once, and a few too many fires to put out. But those were some really long days. One of the
0:06:46 things that has helped me since then, and I wish I had the practice at the time, was just a nightly
0:06:52 gratitude and progress tracker. This is part of my nightly shutdown routine. This is strategy number
0:06:58 two in this episode. The first was to do this find your why or this visioning exercise. But strategy
0:07:03 number two is this nightly shutdown routine with gratitude and progress tracking. These days,
0:07:07 I use my own three-question journal for this. The third question is, what are my top priorities for
0:07:12 tomorrow? That way I can wake up and tackle those before going into reactive mode. But I find this
0:07:18 super helpful as an evening shutdown routine, recognizing tomorrow’s another day. Whatever
0:07:23 is stressing me out probably isn’t life-threatening. Hopefully isn’t life-threatening. Taking stock of what I
0:07:27 did get done, right? Maybe you didn’t check off the entire to-do list, but I did chip away at it. I got
0:07:31 something done. What am I grateful for, right? It’s not all bad. There’s certainly some good things
0:07:35 happening in my life. And then making a brief plan. How am I going to win tomorrow? What are my top
0:07:39 priorities for the next day? Really important practice for me and definitely one I recommend
0:07:45 in helping prevent burnout and possibly dealing with it if you’re in the middle of it. So that is strategy
0:07:50 number two. Number three is to build some sustainable systems, building a manageable
0:07:56 schedule and system. So we’ve talked about the importance of finding your why. You can go five
0:08:01 whys deep. You’re armed with your five-year future vision projection of your perfect average day.
0:08:07 You’ve got a positive nightly shutdown routine that includes a reflection and appreciation of
0:08:12 the work that you did do, the progress that you made, and what you have to be grateful for that day,
0:08:17 and your top priorities for the next day to move you closer to your goals. The next thing when it
0:08:23 comes to preventing burnout in the first place is to build some systems and guardrails around your time
0:08:29 and your work that feel sustainable. I think most of what makes you successful as a product reviewer
0:08:35 has remained constant. You have to, it’s work. You have to put in the time. You have to be fairly
0:08:40 consistent. There were a lot of people who started around the same time I did who worked really hard for
0:08:48 six months, made 500 videos, made $20,000, $30,000 off that, but then just burnt out. And so I think
0:08:55 the best advice I can give anyone now is set manageable goals, you know, do five videos a week,
0:09:01 but do that consistently over a period of several months. And then it starts to compound. And if you’re
0:09:07 only making pennies in the beginning, just know it’s a numbers game. And, you know, it might not be my,
0:09:13 my best product review. I did a review in my first year. I was about six months in and, and I was
0:09:18 starting to figure out what things sold better and what was trending. And I found something that popped
0:09:25 off and it made me $17,000. And I have not had that kind of success since them. However, that product
0:09:31 still makes me a few hundred dollars every single month. And if I had only done my first 400 videos,
0:09:36 I never would have had that product. And so it’s just being consistent, looking for different things
0:09:39 and improving over time, as far as your product selection.
0:09:44 That was Tyler Christensen from episode 656. Make sure to go check that one out. If you want to learn
0:09:49 more about the Amazon influencer side hustle, upload little product review videos to Amazon and make
0:09:54 some sales commission on that. But it’s this tortoise versus the hare. It’s slow and steady and consistent.
0:10:00 Let your efforts start to stack and compound in a way that is sustainable to you. But this call to
0:10:06 find a consistent volume of work, a steady pace that you can maintain was echoed by Shelley Marmer in
0:10:13 episode 573. Everyone’s schedule is going to be different. I always tell people like, you can’t just
0:10:19 like think you can crank out 18 articles a week forever. Like it’s not sustainable, right? So don’t burn
0:10:26 yourself out. If your limit is one every two weeks, and you can do one really, really, really good blog
0:10:33 every two weeks, then that’s where you’re at right now. And it accumulates. I didn’t start at 180. I
0:10:41 started at zero like everyone else. But eventually it just compounds. So know where your sweet spot is,
0:10:46 know what’s actually sustainable for you. That’s not going to burn you out. Because if you get burnt out,
0:10:52 you don’t make it to 180. You don’t make it to four. So be real with yourself. Know what you can do.
0:10:57 One of the most important strategies to prevent burnout and protect your mental health is to avoid
0:11:02 the comparison trap. Of course, I think you can take inspiration from others and should take
0:11:07 inspiration from others. But constantly playing the comparison game is a recipe for dissatisfaction,
0:11:11 right? In the suburbs, it’s the keeping up with the Joneses game. But John Acuff said,
0:11:16 don’t compare your beginning to somebody else’s middle comparison is the thief of joy. If someone
0:11:21 else in your niche has way more customers or followers or subscribers than you, there’s a couple
0:11:25 ways to look at it. You could say, well, shoot, they’ve already taken up all the market share.
0:11:29 Or you could say, look, that’s great. Look at all the market validation work they’ve already done. I know
0:11:34 the idea is proven now. Now I just need to get more people paying attention to me. This was in the book,
0:11:41 The Gap and the Gain, as well, which I think is a Ben Hardy book, where the author contends that we
0:11:46 spend most of our time in the gap, comparing our results to our ambitious goals or the results of
0:11:53 other people and dwelling on our inadequacies instead of living in the gain, which is to recognize and
0:11:57 celebrate how far you’ve already come. Look at the progress we made when I was a competitive swimmer.
0:12:02 It would be easy to get discouraged because I definitely wasn’t winning races and that would be
0:12:08 the gap mentality. But the gain mentality allowed me to get excited about shaving time off my own
0:12:13 personal bests and trying to get better every meet. So when it comes to burnout, prevention is probably
0:12:17 the best medicine. But what happens when you’re already starting to feel it, either in your day job
0:12:21 or in your business? We’ve got some interesting strategies from Side Hustle Show guests coming up
0:12:28 right after this. For such an important channel like Found, the software powering this important
0:12:33 channel was super outdated and clunky. We wanted to make it delightful and make it very easy for
0:12:40 businesses to connect with their customers through voice and text. That’s Darina Kulia, co-founder of
0:12:45 our sponsor, OpenPhone. Trusted by more than 60,000 customers, this is the number one business phone
0:12:51 system that streamlines and scales your customer communications. I like to think of it like a centralized hub
0:12:57 to receive and respond to calls and texts in your business. And I asked Darina about who’s typically
0:13:03 signing up for this kind of service. We definitely have a lot of folks who come to us and their personal
0:13:09 cell phone has become their company phone number and they’ve hired a team or they’re starting to scale
0:13:14 their business and they just find themselves as a business owner, as a founder, being the bottleneck.
0:13:22 So we see that all the time. And then we also see folks much further along where they’re using some
0:13:27 legacy complicated tools that are just not really made for how communication happens these days.
0:13:35 We also just recently launched Sona, which is our voice AI agent that can handle any missed calls.
0:13:40 If you have clients calling outside of business hours, instead of them going to voicemail,
0:13:48 it can go into Sona, which is capable to handle any replies and can also take a message. So you are
0:13:52 capturing that lead information. And it’s like, and it’s a robot, like it responds like on the fly
0:13:59 with some pre-programmed responses. It does such a great job. This way they can handle questions 24-7.
0:14:05 Now here’s a scenario for you. So let’s say I’ve committed to a certain business phone number and I’ve
0:14:11 distributed flyers. It’s printed on my business cards. It is on my local business listings on
0:14:17 directories throughout the internet. Like what’s the process to now have that ring open phone system
0:14:18 versus the current system?
0:14:24 Totally. So we see this all the time. This process is called phone number porting. We port numbers
0:14:31 from all kinds of carriers. So basically no matter what provider you’re using, we can take that number
0:14:36 and move it over to open phone. It is free. We handle the whole thing. And if you want to try
0:14:41 out open phone, we have a free trial. You can try it out, see how you like it. And if you like it,
0:14:45 you can then decide to port your existing number over and we handle the whole process.
0:14:51 Now, open phone has automatic AI call summaries, so you don’t have to worry about taking notes while
0:14:56 you’re on the call. But another cool feature is what Darina called AI call tagging, basically allowing
0:15:03 you to quickly filter for the calls that were sales objections or customer complaints or requests for a
0:15:08 discount. So you can review those and see what worked, what didn’t and train team members on the
0:15:14 most effective tactics and language in those cases. And it’s all in the name of building a better, faster
0:15:15 and friendlier customer experience.
0:15:21 I want all open phone customers to have five stars only right now. Open phone is offering side hustle
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0:15:40 with another service, open phone will port it over at no extra charge. Open phone, no missed calls,
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0:16:53 Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. So far, we’ve been covering ways to prevent burnout
0:16:59 through finding your why, tracking your progress, building sustainable systems, and avoiding the
0:17:03 comparison trap. Another super important factor is taking care of your physical health because it plays
0:17:09 a huge role in your mental health. That means not neglecting your sleep, your diet, or your exercise
0:17:13 because it can be a slippery slope. Like Brian Johnson would say, you got to take care of your
0:17:17 fundamentals, your fundies, if you want to give yourself a fighting chance of showing up as your
0:17:22 best self. And of course, it’s easier said than done because when you’re super stressed, it’s also
0:17:28 when you’re most likely to make poor food choices, to sacrifice sleep, to skip your workout. But be conscious
0:17:33 about it and see if getting back to basics, getting back to good physical health habits doesn’t help the
0:17:39 mental load as well. Now, I want to shift into how some entrepreneurs have dealt with burnout on the
0:17:45 job to see if any of their strategies might make sense for you. First up is Heather Johnson, a hospital
0:17:51 worker who had dabbled in Etsy without a lot of success. And then January, I started posting designs.
0:17:55 I told myself, and I remember I actually wrote down on a piece of paper, I was like,
0:18:06 action plan to make six figures in 2021. But I wrote in that notebook, you know, post three to five
0:18:14 listings a day, every day for January and February. And my goal was to create a high volume listing store
0:18:20 because that’s what a lot of the YouTube gurus were saying at that time is high volume listing stores
0:18:27 are what get you more views, more visits on Etsy. And that’s how you can bring in the Etsy algorithm.
0:18:31 So I started posting like a mad woman.
0:18:35 Before long, Heather was earning thousands of dollars a month from her Etsy shop. And she shares
0:18:41 some of her strategies in episode 520, if you want to go back and check that one out. But a couple
0:18:46 things stood out to me from that episode. First was she didn’t initially have the goal to make it a
0:18:52 full time thing. She called it a must needed distraction from her healthcare work. And then
0:18:57 set the intention of consistency, three to five listings a day, every day for two months. That
0:19:01 consistent action is how you get in the reps, how you get better at your craft, even if you don’t see
0:19:07 results right away, even if you’re just doing it as a positive distraction from a potentially draining
0:19:13 day job. And bonus points here, it started as a creative outlet, like I’m going to do these designs.
0:19:18 This was something I enjoy doing in my youth. I think she mentioned being an artist or being really
0:19:23 interested in art when she was younger. And here was a way to do that as a distraction from her day
0:19:30 job and build a consistent habit with it. Now, the next clip has got to be one of the most powerful and
0:19:34 most memorable lines from 12 plus years on the show. And you’re going to know it when you hear it.
0:19:41 This is my episode with Saw L, episode 359. At this point of the interview, he’s been working
0:19:48 nine months on his side hustle insurance website, and he’s made something like $100. What kept you going
0:19:55 during this nine months before seeing any sort of monetization revenue coming in on the other side?
0:20:01 And even after that, it’s like the amount of effort relative to the payoff still seems very
0:20:09 unbalanced. Yeah. So what kept me going was my fear. I was afraid to stay where I was.
0:20:14 That’s the biggest thing for me. I’m one of those people where if I start getting afraid to stay where
0:20:21 I am, that fear is scarier to me than the fear of trying to get somewhere else. That alone just drove
0:20:29 me 100% to say, hey, no stopping. If I could sit up for 16 hours and my whole day I spoke to one person
0:20:35 and I could sell them a $35 life insurance policy that they may or may not get approved for, if I could
0:20:41 do that, I could sit up and write content all day. There’s no problem. I had 125 people at FinCon
0:20:48 commit to letting me do a guest post or a podcast or something. That’s the type of drive I have.
0:20:52 Yeah. I mean, that’s how this interview came about. I was like, this is a crazy story. Yes,
0:20:56 totally. And we’ll link to all the money pages that you want. You won’t even charge you.
0:21:01 Perfect. I appreciate it. So that was one of the drivers. And then the second thing was that it’s a
0:21:07 very lucrative space. As an insurance agent, I was still making $100,000 a year. I just hated the time.
0:21:13 It took a lot of work for me to make that $100,000 a year. And so that mindset of, okay,
0:21:18 well, I’m going to do all this work and I’m not going to make anything right now. That’s okay. I’ll
0:21:22 just keep doing both until one pans off. And once I made that first commission check, I was like,
0:21:27 oh, they send the check. Okay, great. This is real now. Yeah. Right. It’s real, right? Like,
0:21:32 okay, I see online, I have $120 coming, but we’ll see when I get that check and that check comes.
0:21:36 So yeah, it’s like that process. And once I saw it, I said, oh, I can replicate this.
0:21:41 Did you catch it? I was afraid to stay where I was. Another guest to put it like this. If I don’t
0:21:46 do something, if I don’t take action, tomorrow’s going to look like today. And I think it’s easy
0:21:51 to get caught up in the idea that somehow something is going to change on its own. And so we keep
0:21:56 waiting and waiting, but nothing happens until you make it happen. That’s why make something happen
0:22:01 has been the signed up on the show, probably from almost the very beginning. Now, I like how both
0:22:06 Heather and Saw were comfortable putting in the time and the effort in the limited time
0:22:11 that they had without seeing immediate financial results because they were learning, they were laying
0:22:18 the foundation for a side hustle they believed in. It was this balance of persistence plus patience,
0:22:23 especially in Saw’s case. When you’re afraid to stay where you are, if that five-year vision is
0:22:29 terrifying, you figure out the next steps. Dan from Tropical MBA calls it the corner office test.
0:22:34 If you eventually rise the ranks on your current path, you keep climbing that ladder and you
0:22:40 eventually take your boss’s job, you get the corner office. Is that a win? And if not, you’re going
0:22:45 to want to stop climbing that ladder. Stop climbing the ladder you’re on and looking to start building
0:22:51 your own ladder. Now, Heather and Saw took a longer term view. Another somewhat common path for side
0:22:58 hustlers is a shorter term sprint to the finish line. This definitely isn’t particularly healthy or
0:23:02 sustainable, but it can work under the right circumstances, especially if your side hustle
0:23:07 already has some traction. Here’s a snippet from my conversation with Rachel Peterson when she was
0:23:12 building her social media marketing side hustle. Now, the next bit of this challenge is delivering
0:23:18 the goods while still working that eight to five. So there’s selling strategy and selling hands-on,
0:23:23 like tactile. I will be posting on Facebook for you. I will be creating your Instagram images and
0:23:26 stuff. Is that the kind of work that you signed yourself up for?
0:23:34 Yep, exactly. I did content curation and creation and posting and strategy and all of that. And as soon
0:23:39 as I started signing clients, I realized, okay, I’m going to be hustling pretty hard here. And the moment
0:23:45 I signed all of those clients, I realized that I was very close to making the same amount of money as my
0:23:52 nine to five. So I just stepped into high gear. I said, this is a sprint. This is not a marathon. And if I hustle
0:23:59 really, really hard for just a short amount of time, I’ll be out of my nine to five and I’ll have 40 to 50 extra
0:24:01 hours per week to focus on this.
0:24:07 This sounds like a pretty intense period. This is the eight month drowning period or what time are we talking about?
0:24:11 Let’s see, that was eight months ago till six months ago.
0:24:12 You have two young kids at home.
0:24:18 Oh, I’m sorry. It was three months ago. So yes, I have two young kids. So I did not get a lot of sleep
0:24:25 during that time. It was only five months, but that time flew by and I felt like I was kind of a zombie,
0:24:30 but I just had this goal in mind of leaving. It was all I wanted. And I, there was this image I had in my
0:24:35 head of bringing my daughter to school this fall for her first year of school and picking her up from
0:24:42 school. And that was what I kept focusing on. And now she starts school this month and I’ll be ready
0:24:44 for it. It’s a weird feeling.
0:24:49 Yeah. Now you have that, like you said, that extra 40, 50 hours a week to dedicate to the business.
0:24:54 And if you were used to doing it in a quarter of the time, you got all this time in the world now.
0:25:00 Yes. So you asked what it felt like to be doing all of that client work while still trying to find
0:25:04 clients, while still working in my nine to five. It kind of felt like I was drowning while holding a
0:25:08 laptop over my head, trying not to get the keyboard wet.
0:25:11 Yeah. That’s, that’s kind of the challenge, but it’s interesting. I mean,
0:25:15 hey, it’s side hustle nation. Like we’re used to the hard work, but at the same time,
0:25:19 I think a lot of people would try and ramp that up a little bit slower to avoid that like drowning
0:25:23 period, but to each their own. Hey, you got out, you got out in record time.
0:25:27 You got it. And I don’t recommend that process for anyone unless you can handle
0:25:33 a ton for a short amount of time. And you enjoy doing things very quickly and seeing results right
0:25:39 away. That is strategy number eight, this short-term sprint strategy, if it makes sense for you. If you
0:25:43 can see that light at the end of the tunnel, maybe a sprint is in order. William Wadsworth had a similar
0:25:48 line. He said, if you’re bored walking up the hill, try running up it. Maybe speed can be a secret
0:25:55 weapon. And if I’m running away from something I hate, like a toxic job or an angry bear, I can probably
0:26:00 sprint longer and harder than I normally could. But every sprint has to have an end point. And if you
0:26:04 don’t have a specific direction and milestone to know when you’ve made it, I would hesitate to
0:26:11 recommend that strategy. One interesting twist on Rachel’s sprint strategy was Drew Ackerman’s idea
0:26:16 of setting somewhat arbitrary quit dates for his side hustle. Here’s how he explained it.
0:26:23 Hey, this is Drew Ackerman. I make Sleep With Me podcast, a podcast that helps grownups fall asleep,
0:26:30 a little bit like a goofy friend telling you a bedtime story. I started the show in 2013 just as
0:26:36 something as an experiment of like, how come there aren’t silly bedtime stories for grownups? And would
0:26:42 anybody listen? Would the idea even work? And one of the most effective things for me was setting
0:26:48 quit dates where I was like, okay, I would have a meeting every few months and say, do I want to keep
0:26:53 making this podcast or not? And usually it was like, oh, of course I want to, you know, there’s a few
0:26:59 people listening or it helps these people fall asleep. But in between those quit dates, it really
0:27:05 helps not silence my internal critic or the other parts of me that are kind of obstacles a lot of
0:27:10 times for getting stuff done. But it helped me say, hey, well, let’s just keep working on this until the
0:27:14 next quit date. Because I just have this internal critic that’s like, oh, let’s, this is a bad idea.
0:27:20 This isn’t working. This isn’t successful. And I would give my critic full voice at those meetings.
0:27:25 But in between the meetings, I’d say, hey, can we just save this for the next meeting? And that really
0:27:32 helped me keep the podcast going over, I think like three years is really where it started to finally
0:27:38 gain momentum. The second thing I did was talk to my listeners about sharing the podcast and just ask
0:27:43 them, hey, if you get value out of the show, just share your honest experience with that. And letting
0:27:48 them know how incredibly powerful word of mouth is, because I don’t think everybody knows that.
0:27:54 And then thanking people when they did share the show. And so that’s where a lot of growth happened.
0:28:01 And then after making the show for about four years or so, maybe three years, I started a Patreon.
0:28:15 I tested out a merchant podcast, merchandise, affiliates, sponsors. And in 2017, so I started the podcast in 2013 and 2017, I would say the podcast became my side hustle.
0:28:26 And I slowly started to use up my vacation at my day job and started to cut back my hours at my day job from full time to three quarter time to eventually half time.
0:28:40 And then in 2018, I was able to leave my day job as a librarian and work on my podcast to full time in between Patreon, merchandise, sponsorships, and a few other things like affiliates and stuff like that.
0:28:51 I’m able to do the podcast as a full time job, pay for health insurance, put some money aside for retirement, very similar to what I would expect if I was like looking for a job.
0:29:05 I’ve also been able to build up an emergency fund, a personal emergency fund and a business emergency fund, because a lot of my goals around finances with the podcast are making sure the podcast is sustainable and high quality and delivered on a regular basis.
0:29:10 But it started as something almost like a hobby, an experiment that I just kept going.
0:29:15 I kept working at it and trying to make it a little bit better each time.
0:29:22 Now, a couple of things here. I love Drew’s example of scaling slowly back at his day job as the podcast grew.
0:29:26 Doesn’t have to be all or nothing. And I love the idea of setting a quit date.
0:29:32 90 days in the future, six months in the future helps you avoid the day to day decision fatigue of whether or not you should keep going.
0:29:41 And I imagine had Drew come to one of those quit date meetings with himself, by the way, just him, and found he no longer enjoyed doing the show.
0:29:46 It wasn’t seeing enough traction. He would have had the discipline to say, I’m going to retire this project.
0:29:49 I’m going to see if there’s another side hustle that makes more sense.
0:29:53 So that’s strategy number nine. Put a quit date on your calendar.
0:29:55 I do this for all kinds of side hustle experiments.
0:30:01 Hey, we’re going to test out a new content strategy. We’re going to give it 90 to 120 days.
0:30:04 We’re going to see what kind of results or return on investment it generates.
0:30:08 And we’re not going to question it in the meantime, we’re just going to collect the data.
0:30:14 We’re going to reevaluate it then and see if it makes sense to keep going, to pour some fuel on it or to pull the plug.
0:30:18 Now, let’s say you’re running your business and the stress is mounting.
0:30:21 There aren’t enough hours in the day. What can you do about it?
0:30:24 I’ve got some suggestions for you coming up right after this.
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0:32:36 Hiring, Indeed, is all you need.
0:32:41 In my original Side Hustle, my online shoe business,
0:32:46 there would be times I would crank away on that site 10, 12 plus hours a day,
0:32:50 maybe even more when Brynn was out of town, maybe 14 hours a day.
0:32:52 Sometimes it was pretty tedious work.
0:32:55 Not quite data entry, but definitely not rocket science either.
0:32:59 The challenge that I felt was like every hour I didn’t work,
0:33:03 it felt like it was costing me money, especially during the busy season of Q4.
0:33:06 I was problem aware, as they say.
0:33:12 I knew I should probably get some help, but I had all the usual hangups of not knowing how it would work,
0:33:15 payment-wise, or cost-wise, or tax-wise.
0:33:19 I was afraid that any assistant I brought on would, like, steal my ideas.
0:33:21 I didn’t have the time to train anyone.
0:33:23 All the usual excuses.
0:33:28 It was 100% a case of being too busy chopping down trees to sharpen the saw,
0:33:31 which is why strategy number 10 is to hire some help.
0:33:36 And even though the website itself had leverage, it could make sales when I wasn’t working,
0:33:39 I still felt like I needed to work on it all the time.
0:33:44 When I finally hired my first assistant, it was a huge shift.
0:33:46 And that’s not to say everything was perfect right out of the gate.
0:33:52 There was a kind of a one-step-back-before-taking-two-steps-forward kind of thing,
0:33:55 where it took some time to vet and interview candidates.
0:33:59 It took some time to document processes that, up until then, had only existed in my head.
0:34:01 It took some time for training.
0:34:06 And no, they weren’t as fast or as, quote-unquote, good as me at these tasks.
0:34:11 But after that, after bringing on this person, this first assistant, something magical happened.
0:34:15 And that magic was work getting done when I wasn’t working.
0:34:17 That was a big unlock.
0:34:20 And yes, it cost some money, which was another one of my hangups.
0:34:22 I could just do it myself, was always my excuse.
0:34:26 But it was well worth having some breathing room in my day
0:34:30 and not feeling like I had to keep grinding 10, 12, 14, 16 hours a day.
0:34:34 Now, to get started down the delegation path, if you’ve never done it before,
0:34:37 my recommendation is to start with a time audit.
0:34:42 This is tracking for a couple weeks what you’re actually spending your time on.
0:34:47 And if you’re anything like me, you might find that you’ve got a lot of hours spent
0:34:55 on relatively low-level administrative or repetitive tasks that, with a little guidance,
0:35:00 a little documentation, a little training, an assistant or another hire could reasonably
0:35:01 take off your plate.
0:35:04 And there’s a couple different flavors of outsourcing.
0:35:08 The first, which I just described, is when you take something you’re already doing
0:35:10 and hire somebody to do it for you.
0:35:16 The second is perhaps a little more advanced, and that’s to hire for the stuff you don’t know
0:35:16 how to do.
0:35:22 Here’s John Jonas from onlinejobs.ph and Nate Hirsch from our episode on hiring
0:35:26 your first virtual assistant, describing those critical hires.
0:35:33 So what I tell most people today for like, when do you know, is when’s the time to hire someone?
0:35:37 Because for me, at the time, it was like, dude, I don’t want to do this.
0:35:39 I don’t want to do this thing that I’m doing.
0:35:41 I hate this.
0:35:42 So I had to try and find help.
0:35:47 What I’ll tell most people is, if there is something that you’re doing that you could
0:35:52 potentially teach someone else, doesn’t matter how much work it takes you to teach someone
0:35:54 else, it’s time to hire someone else.
0:35:57 It’s time to hire someone else to do it.
0:36:01 Because if it takes you a month to teach them how to do it, after that, you’ll never have
0:36:02 to do that thing again.
0:36:05 If you’ve hired correctly, you’ll never have to do it again.
0:36:10 And that is the only way that I know of that you can buy time.
0:36:15 Yeah, it’s kind of this saw sharpening moment where you have to take, again, you’re already
0:36:19 pressed for time, you’re already busy and say, well, now I’m going to take time away from
0:36:24 doing that thing to train somebody else to do it in the hopes of never having to do it
0:36:24 again.
0:36:26 Like, it’s going to take me this time up front.
0:36:28 It’s this investment in your future.
0:36:29 The only way to buy time.
0:36:31 Nate, anything to add on that?
0:36:32 Like, for when is it time to hire?
0:36:34 There’s really two schools of thoughts.
0:36:38 I mean, the first one is exactly what John said, when it’s all these things that are just
0:36:40 piling up that are taking on your time.
0:36:44 And the only way to get your time back is to pass those tasks off to someone else.
0:36:48 And how do you get five hours in your week back, 10 hours in your week back, whatever
0:36:48 it is.
0:36:54 The flip side of it is, I think the average entrepreneur is only good at one to three things,
0:36:55 their core competency.
0:36:58 Maybe you’re good at sales, you’re good at content or whatever it is.
0:37:02 And as you get farther and farther away from your core competency, sure, you could take a
0:37:07 six-month course to become a Facebook ad guru, but you can’t do that with every single part
0:37:08 of your business.
0:37:12 So at some point, you have to hire people who are better at doing things than you are.
0:37:14 And it could even be the small stuff.
0:37:16 I mean, take the bookkeeping, for example.
0:37:21 I wasn’t necessarily great at just transferring information and making sure everything’s accurate
0:37:22 and double-checking it.
0:37:24 I mean, that was very tedious for me.
0:37:26 That’s probably not my core strength.
0:37:28 So I take someone else and I put them in it.
0:37:32 And not only are they doing the job, but they’re doing it better than I could have done.
0:37:37 So I think that was a big eye-opener for me as well, when I would give someone a task
0:37:41 and maybe not right away, but eventually they would do something even better than I could.
0:37:42 And that’s very liberating.
0:37:44 And it makes you want to delegate.
0:37:50 It almost makes you want to be a lazy entrepreneur, so to speak, really just toning in on what are
0:37:50 you the best at?
0:37:52 What helps you scale your business?
0:37:59 Definitely a worthwhile episode to check out in full if you find yourself as the bottleneck
0:38:00 in your business.
0:38:06 It’s episode 343 in your archives, and I know we’ve re-aired it at least once as a Greatest
0:38:06 Hits episode.
0:38:11 And I’ve used several different sites to connect with assistants over the years, from John’s
0:38:17 OnlineJobs.ph, to Upwork and Fiverr, to more specialty services, and even our sponsor Indeed.
0:38:23 But the key is to define the role, to set clear expectations and rip off that band-aid.
0:38:25 You can’t expect to do everything on your own.
0:38:26 It’s no wonder you’re burnt out.
0:38:28 Chris Ducker calls it superhero syndrome.
0:38:31 But so if you want to go fast, go alone, like the old proverb.
0:38:33 If you want to go far, go together.
0:38:34 Get some help.
0:38:37 Really grateful for the team I have in place and all the work they do to get these episodes
0:38:38 ready for you every week.
0:38:43 For any given episode, there are four or five team members all doing their part.
0:38:48 Stuff I used to do all on my own, starting out, but slowly chipping away at the tasks where
0:38:50 I’m not adding much value.
0:38:55 Now, as your business grows, you might find yourself kind of out of your league, or what
0:38:57 made it fun early on is no longer the case.
0:39:03 When I chatted with Justin Tan from Video Husky, he took a really interesting approach in essentially
0:39:05 outsourcing himself as the CEO.
0:39:07 I was quite burnt out.
0:39:13 I think the back-to-back crises made me realize that, number one, I did not enjoy management.
0:39:18 I’m not really somebody cut out to ensure the day-to-day and the week-to-week, everything
0:39:20 aligns and we’re moving forward in the right direction.
0:39:24 And I think doing that properly for a year really taught me that lesson.
0:39:31 And so I started considering other solutions, whether it was just minimizing my own role or,
0:39:35 not really selling, just seeing ways that I could step out.
0:39:36 Yeah.
0:39:38 What was the day-to-day?
0:39:41 And that was like, so you mentioned, you know, I got to manage this huge team.
0:39:43 Am I still, are you still running marketing?
0:39:45 Like, what’s your, what’s your role?
0:39:46 Yeah.
0:39:50 So at that point, I was still running marketing and we still had our set of weekly calls that
0:39:52 had to happen to ensure things kind of ran smoothly.
0:39:56 And, and I think as we kind of went through more and more of those, as we set like a good
0:40:00 weekly cadence, I just realized that there was a pretty big disconnect for me personally,
0:40:05 between both me and our clients, because I personally, I’m not a video creator.
0:40:06 I don’t know how to film.
0:40:07 I don’t know how to edit.
0:40:09 I don’t know how to, I guess, promote.
0:40:15 I don’t particularly enjoy promoting myself or our editors because I don’t have the, a creative
0:40:15 eye.
0:40:16 As I said already, I don’t know how to edit.
0:40:24 And so I realized that lack of sort of founder market fit and founder product fit was really
0:40:28 hindering, I guess, my own ability to, to apply myself in video husky.
0:40:29 Okay.
0:40:34 So you think, well, it may not be sellable where it’s at today, or I’m not quite ready to let
0:40:38 go of it, but I do want to outsource myself from the day to day.
0:40:43 I want to like, you know, bring in somebody else to be the operator, the COO in a way.
0:40:44 Is that what happens?
0:40:45 Yeah.
0:40:50 So it was around, I think, beginning of 2021 that I started working with another coach,
0:40:50 Taylor Pearson.
0:40:56 And so working with him kind of made me realize, okay, this is really not my role.
0:41:00 Even though, of course, like at the end of it, I am responsible for video husky.
0:41:05 I feel a lot of responsibility for the team that I just could not continue on a day to day
0:41:05 basis.
0:41:10 And he kind of outlined the consequences of a person running a team when they’re already
0:41:10 burnt out.
0:41:15 And it turns out that this is a thing around the four to five year mark, a lot of founders
0:41:16 get burnt out.
0:41:21 And the key is to kind of already have a team in place that you can transition to so that
0:41:24 when that burnout inevitably happens, your team is still good to go, your business is still
0:41:26 good to go, and it can run without you.
0:41:27 Yeah.
0:41:31 And so he was the one who outlined kind of like what a sale process would look like and what
0:41:36 the multiple would be, which wasn’t all that attractive to me, just because it’s three to
0:41:39 four times earnings, five, if you’re really lucky.
0:41:44 Compared to the idea of, let’s say, bring out a general manager where I personally might
0:41:49 earn a little bit less, but it would mean that the business would continue to spend out
0:41:53 dividends, which would be enough to live off of while the GM would have the opportunity to
0:41:59 grow the business while reducing the kind of key man risk that the business was relying on
0:42:02 me, which also ironically makes it more sellable in the long run.
0:42:08 Yeah, I was, and this is an interesting kind of fork in the road, and I won’t name names,
0:42:13 but I was talking to some friends at FinCon who had gone down, not a completely similar path,
0:42:19 but they went down the path instead of doing a clean, one and done, cut me a big check,
0:42:21 I’m getting out of here, sell the business, exit.
0:42:25 They went down the path of kind of bringing on a partner with the hopes, well, maybe the
0:42:26 partner can grow the business.
0:42:28 I’m kind of in this burnout phase.
0:42:32 I don’t really want to work on it day to day, but then the partner ends up just tanking
0:42:32 everything.
0:42:35 So it’s a huge risk for you as the business owner.
0:42:40 They can take what we’ve already built, and they can take it to the next level, but they
0:42:41 can also screw things up.
0:42:43 Like, they could also upset the clients.
0:42:45 They could also upset the team.
0:42:47 They just might not be the right cultural fit.
0:42:52 Like, you know, we might have another crisis where 30% of the clients leave again.
0:42:58 Like, it’s a risky proposition versus, you know, almost taking the money in and just
0:43:01 so, you know, washing your hands of the whole thing in a sale.
0:43:02 Yeah.
0:43:06 And so I think that was something that I was willing to give a shot for.
0:43:11 So the way I figured it was the absolute worst case scenario is that if it turns out he’s not
0:43:17 a good fit after one, two, three, six months, well, I guess I’ll step back in and I’m exactly
0:43:17 where I’m at.
0:43:21 Well, at least I had a three to six month break, which maybe would be enough kind of
0:43:22 fuel to get started again.
0:43:29 But while there are downside risks of potentially doing like worse than what Video Husky was,
0:43:33 there was also the upside risk of doing better than what Video Husky was previously doing.
0:43:38 And in my head, it made sense because at the end of the day, I have limited business experience.
0:43:40 I had never managed a team of 50.
0:43:45 So I inevitably would have made a lot of mistakes versus bringing on somebody who had that experience,
0:43:49 who had already worked at a higher level than where I was at.
0:43:54 I think there was something to be said about about that kind of know-how that I really wanted
0:43:58 to bring to Video Husky and our team, because not only am I, but like our entire team is just
0:44:04 so young that we can either learn from experience or ideally learn from other people’s experiences
0:44:07 and get to where we want to go faster.
0:44:10 And that was Justin Tan from episode 540.
0:44:15 Really powerful episode on a side hustle that turned into a pretty big business in all the trials
0:44:17 and tribulations along the way.
0:44:21 Plus, did you catch the part where he said he wasn’t a video creator or a video editor,
0:44:26 but still managed to build one of the most popular video editing services for video creators?
0:44:30 Really cool example of not needing to be the expert to solve a problem,
0:44:31 but playing matchmaker instead.
0:44:33 So that’s number 10.
0:44:34 That’s the delegation piece.
0:44:39 If you’re burnt out or overwhelmed, what’s one thing you can get off your plate this week?
0:44:43 How can you start chipping away at these tasks and start leaning more on your team
0:44:47 so the business maybe can start to run a little bit less without you?
0:44:49 You start to be a little bit less of the bottleneck.
0:44:53 And you may not even need to delegate it.
0:44:56 I mean, if it’s really that important, if it’s not really that important, you could just eliminate it.
0:44:59 Or you could ask ChatGPT if there’s a way to automate it.
0:45:05 You might even upload your time log into Chatty and ask for some recommendations on what to outsource next.
0:45:06 That’s number 10.
0:45:07 Hire some help.
0:45:09 Number 11 is to sell the business.
0:45:12 Like Justin mentioned, if you can make the business less reliant on you,
0:45:17 the more sellable it becomes down the road, which might be the ultimate way to beat burnout.
0:45:18 Cash out.
0:45:19 Be done with it.
0:45:22 This was a fail of mine holding on too long to the shoe business.
0:45:24 In hindsight, I could have exited.
0:45:28 It might have been worth maybe half a million dollars if I timed it right.
0:45:31 And I could have used that runway to figure out the next project.
0:45:35 Because as entrepreneurs, we’re always looking ahead for the next thing.
0:45:41 And I’ve found that having an exciting new project or experiment tends to breathe some new life into an old business.
0:45:45 That’s why that’s number 12 is to change up the routine and spark some creativity.
0:45:55 And sometimes that creativity gets sparked just by changing up my routine, working from the coffee shop instead of from home, visiting a new city, going to a conference, taking some time off with the family.
0:46:08 Because it feels new and different and exciting, even if it’s adjacent to what you’re already doing, I feel like I attack it with some more energy and enthusiasm than I would if it was just the same old, same old.
0:46:14 And this is super common in startup culture and maybe should be a little more so in side hustle culture.
0:46:16 But it’s the idea of a pivot.
0:46:17 This is number 13.
0:46:25 If you’re burnt out and you’re not seeing the traction or results that you like in your current business, maybe it’s time to consider a pivot.
0:46:33 One of the most inspiring and profitable examples of that from the side hustle show comes from Abby Ashley in episode 284.
0:46:40 She’d already replaced her day job income with virtual assistant work and even built a small agency at one point.
0:46:42 But she had this itch to grow it even more.
0:46:47 She just wasn’t sure if taking on more clients was necessarily the right path.
0:46:49 I was starting to get a little burnout on client work.
0:46:55 So I got actually I got a few more clients because hey, I needed money and I knew how to do that.
0:46:57 Well, I knew how to get clients.
0:47:06 So I grabbed a few more clients and started working again and still just devoting a lot of time to trying to figure out what I was going to do.
0:47:12 I actually stumbled upon a podcast in fall of 2016 about discovering your niche.
0:47:15 And it was so funny because I had hired a business coach.
0:47:30 I had really like done so much soul searching and this one stinking free podcast like totally just made me think I just need to teach or like I need to ask my audience and teach what I’m actually good at, like what I’ve had success at.
0:47:34 So rather than creating courses, I had the idea.
0:47:39 I didn’t just say, you know, what do you want to learn in general to my email list?
0:47:43 I said, hey, I have this idea for creating a virtual assistants course.
0:47:45 I created this agency.
0:47:47 I was able to quit my job doing virtual assistants.
0:47:51 I thought up what like the modules for the course would be.
0:47:52 I just kind of listed them out.
0:47:57 And I asked if anyone was interested in that topic.
0:48:01 If so, I was going to sell the course at a lower price.
0:48:09 It was about half the price around I think it was like four or five hundred dollars where I knew eventually the course would be probably a nine hundred thousand dollar product.
0:48:11 I said, hey, you can get in early.
0:48:15 And I had about 16 people buy from my list of a thousand.
0:48:19 So I made eight thousand dollars from doing that tactic.
0:48:21 Just asking people before I even created the course.
0:48:23 Is this something you would want to learn?
0:48:23 Here’s the modules.
0:48:27 From doing the thing to teaching other people how to do the thing.
0:48:31 Here was a low risk, low overhead pre-sale validation.
0:48:32 She hadn’t recorded anything.
0:48:36 She just had outlined it and said, hey, is this something that would be a fit?
0:48:41 I think in that episode, she goes on to describe that the sales page she used was a Google Doc.
0:48:44 Really, really lean startup style.
0:48:44 Really cool.
0:48:52 So is there something new you could sell or even pre-sell to your existing audience or customer base that would reinvigorate you to the business?
0:48:58 For me, what’s gotten me excited lately is some process improvements, usually powered or assisted by AI.
0:49:05 Coming up with new episode ideas like this, new affiliate partnerships to test out or creating new digital products.
0:49:08 It was a question that came up lately with a friend of mine.
0:49:11 He said, dang, I can’t believe I’ve been doing this show for 12 years.
0:49:13 I was like, you know, time flies when you’re having fun.
0:49:17 But he asked if it got boring or felt repetitive.
0:49:20 And the answer was an immediate no, which I took as a good sign.
0:49:30 There are repetitive components to the process, but the individual stories and strategies will keep it exciting and such a fun, creative outlet for me.
0:49:35 And that creative constraint of six times a month, we’ve got to come up with some compelling radio to share.
0:49:41 And how are we going to fill in those boxes with something that is hopefully helpful on the side hustle front?
0:49:42 So that’s number 13.
0:49:46 Consider a pivot if you’re feeling burnt out in your current work.
0:49:51 Like, OK, what is adjacent to something we’re already doing that we could use the existing skills for?
0:49:57 Number 14 is this mindset shift of I get to versus I have to.
0:50:07 Now, this definitely doesn’t apply if your burnout is the commuting two hours each way to a job I hate that barely pays the bills variety.
0:50:11 But it definitely applies to side hustlers and entrepreneurs who chose their path, right?
0:50:13 It’s a it’s a privilege to get to be the boss.
0:50:18 And it might feel like we have to get up and work on our business today.
0:50:27 But we get to it’s a unique chance to help our customers, to learn new skills, to connect with people in a meaningful way and hopefully improve our financial well-being along the way.
0:50:35 Now, I remember not being a lot of fun to be around leading up to my TEDx talk where every spare moment was spent rehearsing in my head.
0:50:37 I may have been physically present, but I wasn’t there mentally.
0:50:39 I was like, you know, stressed out.
0:50:40 I was losing my appetite.
0:50:44 And at one point, my wife goes, just remember, you chose this.
0:50:45 And she was right.
0:50:46 I volunteered for it.
0:50:50 It didn’t necessarily make me any less stressed, but it did put a smile on my face.
0:50:54 And it was an important reminder of get to versus have to.
0:50:57 And that’s where I want to wrap this one.
0:51:05 So to recap, we covered how to prevent burnout and some different tactics that you might find effective in reducing it in your own life.
0:51:09 We started with finding your why and try and go five whys deep.
0:51:10 Why is it important to you?
0:51:11 Why do you want to do this?
0:51:21 Talked about your five-year Perfect Tuesday exercise, kind of this visioning exercise and how to start chipping away at that in small ways today.
0:51:23 How can I get closer to my perfect average day today?
0:51:26 Talked about the importance of a nightly shutdown routine.
0:51:30 When I get done, I’m going to recognize and celebrate the progress that I did make.
0:51:33 I’m going to be grateful for the positive things that happen.
0:51:36 And then I’m going to prioritize my next day.
0:51:37 How am I going to win tomorrow?
0:51:39 Talked about building sustainable systems.
0:51:41 We talked about avoiding the comparison trap.
0:51:42 Easier said than done.
0:51:52 Talked about the importance of taking care of your physical health, your fundies, your sleep, your diet, your exercise, and the impact that that can have on your mental well-being as well.
0:51:54 Talked about finding a creative outlet.
0:51:57 Whether or not it turns into a side hustle doesn’t have to be.
0:51:58 Don’t put that pressure on yourself.
0:52:04 Talked about this balance of persistence plus patience with the example of style.
0:52:10 Hey, I worked for nine months before I started to see any meaningful revenue here, but I was afraid to stay where I was.
0:52:12 And this goes back to the finding your why.
0:52:14 That persistence plus patience piece.
0:52:19 Talked about, in certain cases, a short-term sprint might make sense.
0:52:20 If you could see the light at the end of the tunnel.
0:52:21 Remember Rachel?
0:52:25 Oh, she’s like, I felt like I was drowning, but I could see the light.
0:52:28 I knew I could get myself out and free up an extra 40, 50 hours a week.
0:52:30 We talked about giving yourself a deadline.
0:52:35 We talked about setting specific quit dates, three, six months in the future to say,
0:52:38 I’m not even going to be allowed to question this until then.
0:52:41 Or we can address that at the next quick date meeting.
0:52:46 We talked about delegating, outsourcing the parts of your work that don’t light you up.
0:52:48 Talked about the optionality to potentially sell your business.
0:52:51 Something I did with a website of mine in 2020.
0:52:57 We talked about the idea of keeping your work fresh, changing the routine, sparking some creativity.
0:53:00 Talked about maybe doing a pivot where that might make sense.
0:53:05 And finally, the mindset shift of I get to versus I have to.
0:53:09 So if you’re battling burnout, don’t just think it’ll magically go away.
0:53:13 I encourage you to seek out some professional help beyond the advice of your friendly neighborhood
0:53:14 podcast host.
0:53:19 I will also link up the individual episodes that we heard clips from in the show in the
0:53:20 show notes for this episode.
0:53:24 Just follow the show notes link in the episode description and it’ll get you right over there.
0:53:28 As I mentioned, the Side Hustle Show recently had its 12th birthday.
0:53:29 It’s almost a teenager.
0:53:32 And like you heard, there’s a lot of gold in the archives.
0:53:33 You just got to know where to find it.
0:53:37 And to make that easier and hopefully more relevant for you, you can actually get a personalized
0:53:41 Side Hustle Show playlist at hustle.show.
0:53:46 Just answer a few short, multiple choice questions and it’ll recommend 8 to 10 of our greatest hits
0:53:49 based on your answers that you can add to your device.
0:53:52 You can learn what works and you can go make some more money.
0:53:55 Again, that’s hustle.show for that short personalized playlist quiz.
0:54:00 Big thanks to all our guests over the years for sharing their wisdom on this important
0:54:01 topic.
0:54:04 Thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone.
0:54:08 Where do you go if you want to see all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place?
0:54:09 Stay with me.
0:54:12 Sidehustlenation.com slash deals is that place.
0:54:14 Thanks for supporting the advertisers that support the show.
0:54:15 That’s it for me.
0:54:17 Thank you so much for tuning in.
0:54:20 If you’re finding value in the show, make sure to text a friend.
0:54:22 Until next time, let’s go out there and make something happen.
0:54:26 and I’ll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show. Hustle on.