How Creative Agency Owners Accidentally Build Their Own Burnout

0:00But here's my truth and my belief system. Burnout isn't caused by the size of your ambition or even the workload that you have. It's caused by how you are spending your personal energy, effort, and focus. And in many ways, we're building our own burnout with the choices that we are making every single day.

0:30So for most agency owners, burnout can feel like the death of a dream or the end of the road. And it's not something that we celebrate or we see as a sign of effort. It's something that we actually fear, something that we try to avoid, ignore, or even outrun. But here's my truth and my belief system. Burnout isn't caused by the size of your ambition or even the workload that you have. It's caused by how you are spending your personal energy, effort, and focus. And in many ways, we're building our own burnout with the choices that we are making every single day. So, in this episode, I wanted to

1:03talk to you about what the real problem is in burnout and how it actually is happening and that it's actually an energy drain. And when you're spending your time in the wrong places, even work that you might love, it can become a true weight. But when you realign your focus on things that energize you, that fill your cup, the business can become lighter. It can be more profitable. It can become more sustainable. And so can your energy within the business and ultimately a real meaningful way for you to be able to avoid burnout. So let's talk about how we can get back to that the initial dream, the passion, the

1:36excitement in your agency, the thing that and the reason why you ultimately started the business in the first place. So, here's my belief system and I've had in a bit of an evolving viewpoint in this and having reached at one at points in my own career where I felt like I was edging towards burnout. And I am, as you've probably heard me say, a recovering workaholic. And the fact is is that I can overinvest myself into the business. And initially this idea of burnout to me and here's how I understood it is that burnout was just too much focus on the business and not having enough quote unquote work-like

2:12balance which I have my own qualms with that idea in the first place is that I mean to me I think that there's never going to be a full balance in anything in life because if I'm at work it's not balanced with personal life if I'm on vacation it's not balanced with work that it's more about the mix and the amount of time that you're investing into the different quadrants of your life in yourself and your friends and family and the people around you and into your business and making sure that you are properly paying attention to and investing into the different areas of your business. So the first piece that I

2:44want to kind of go into and let's define burnout fully at least again as my understanding my understanding of burnout was that you're spending too much time focusing on the business and then ultimately your body ends up actually fully being depleted of its energy its ability to focus and you start to have physical symptoms of it where you are completely out of energy to be able to get out of bed. You're physically unable to do so. Whether that is a mental manifestation that becomes physical or it actually is a physical thing, I'm not quite sure. I'm not an MD to be able to describe those pieces, but

3:17that is my understanding of it. And frankly, here's the thing that I found in my own kind of like energy levels in the business is that the amount of time that I spend working actually doesn't create for that full drain. because I can spend only four or 5 hours in a day working on something but if I'm working on the wrong thing can incredibly feel exhausted. Now on the inverse if I'm working on something that is very exciting fully adding on to my energy I can work for 12 hours and then feel absolutely energized want to go run a mile. So it really in the evolution of

3:50it for myself was like and I was grappling with this idea right rehearing online thinking about this quite a lot in well that I'm supposed to be edging towards this idea of balance right like that's the objective and again I have qualms with that idea but the realization that I've had over time was that I needed to actually just focus on the things that were adding on to my energy. So here's let's start to get into the actual topic but that's the kind of like evolution of my own thinking around it. Now, entrepreneurs love to build. They love to create an idea, start an idea, and that's

4:22ultimately why and how we've all gotten started. But in a lot of instances, agency owners that I'm talking to, they've kind of accidentally created a job that they never wanted. So, they end up getting tired of the actual building component because the idea of building more ends up actually creating more of the thing that they do not want. And so, they're tired of doing the 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 things that they're actually

4:44not good at and never even wanted to do. So examples of these things could be, you know, collections for AR. It could be sending out invoices. It could be looking at spreadsheets. It could be responding to emails. It could be, you know, HR management of things. And the feeling at the end of the day of two things. The feeling at the end of the day where you just feel completely exhausted. And there's the good exhaustion where you feel tired because you have really fully invested yourself and you feel accomplished. But then there's the tired where you feel like you didn't accomplish anything and you didn't actually feel happy with the work

5:18that you've done, but you're completely physically and mentally exhausted. And I think that those are two very different camps. And if you're in the latter, to me, that is a red flag of how your system that you've developed is in misalignment with you as a person, as an individual. And the realization is that we have to recognize that us as people, we have a limited it's not a it's a finite amount of energy that we have in attention. There's also just a finite amount of time that we have in a day as well. And just recognizing that fully in it of itself is incredibly vital. And

5:52then where are we spending our time and attention? Is it where we actually do want to be or not? And so one of the first things that I suggest any client when we first start working together do is take just a sheet of paper, put it into four quadrants, and you'd likely have heard me say this before, but what am I great at and I love? What am I good at and I like? What am I bad at or what am I okay at and I dislike? And what am I bad at and I hate? And put them into those four quadrants. And depending on the amount of time that you're investing

6:20into each one of those, it actually is going to create for that realization of this energy component. And so let's start talking about energy is kind of this like currency if you will. Time is limited. Your energy really, aside from you needing to get the number of hours of sleep in a day, your energy really doesn't have a limit. Your attention and doing something doesn't have a limit. So when you're working in an area, you're spending your time doing something that is within your zone of genius. Frankly, I I do find it to be limitless. And where I end up having a problem in this where it kind of covers into the idea of

6:56this like work life balance piece of things is that because I have found areas within my own business, working within a component of it that allows for me to have found this bottomless well of energy that I can continue to just tap whenever I want to. I can end up just continuing to work and stay focused and going at things which is created for that workaholic nature. But the reality is is that you do have this infinite amount of energy and attention and focus in doing the work. As long as you're doing something that actually is additive to you, that makes you feel accomplished, that you do incredibly

7:34well, that you just really enjoy, that pushes you the right amount, that these pieces can actually end up creating for a true energy source for you. Now, when you're looking at that list of the four quadrants, if you've paused this episode and and and done that exercise, and I want you to think about your business in totality really of the different components of it, and all the different activities that you have within it, and the things that I'm great at and I love, the things that I'm okay at and I like, the things that I'm okay at and I dislike, the things that I'm bad at and

8:05I hate, and then having those four quadrants fully built out and looking at it and seeing how much of your life is actually spent in each. And if you spend all of your time at work, and I'm not there yet either, but if you spend all of your time in the things that you're great at and you love, you have you are operating in this place of this completely boundless, endless amount of energy. And so as you start to feel these physical manifestations of overworking yourself, of being overly tired because of this thing, I would say that it's because of the mix of things that you're spending your time on. And

8:39there's a couple of ways that we can talk about managing these pieces, but I think it's very important to recognize that you as a human being have something and there's this old Japanese proverb of icky guy. And it's that same kind of idea really. If you are looking at how it is that you are having impact to yourself, to others, to the world, and being able to live in a space that you are truly living your passion, the thing that you were put on this planet to do, then you do have this limitless power or limitless energy. And so, as you start to look at your week, right? And so, the

9:15reality is is we don't live in a perfect world. We're not going to spend every single waking moment living and working in our zone of genius. That's not a reality for most people, at least maybe not today. Eventually, it can continue to get towards there. And I'm not even sure that's entirely fully attainable. But if you look at the mix of things that you're doing, how do I remove some of the things that are not within an area that adds energy to my life? But then also recognizing how are you as a person? And so, not having a day full of those types of things that create that

9:44energy drain cuz it even can take multiple days to recover from that. So, if you're working on energy depleting tasks, when do you do them? Do you do them at the end of your workday? Do you do them in the middle? Do you do them right after you've had lunch? Do you do them first thing in the morning? I I don't like the idea of it being first thing in the morning, but you you do you. How are you breaking those things up throughout the time? So, how do you also kind of couple them or pair them with things that fuel me with the things that drain me? And like what does that

10:11look like from a weak kind of map? So, I guess you can kind of call it like a burnout map, if you will, of what it is that you have a breakdown of the attention that you have in different sections of your life and how it is that you have that attention being focused in it being an area that you have high amount of energy and a thing that is

10:30creating for that that that separation. You have picked this career for a reason and it is because something it there are so many different options of different types of careers, different types of businesses that you could have chose and chosen. The reality is is that for you, you enjoy either the impact of the client or the creative output of what it is that you do, the strategic component of what your life is. But as your agency grew, there was a lot of administrative pieces. There was a lot of things that created anxiety. There was lots of things that added on to the reality of

11:04owning a business that you didn't like. And there's an earlier episode in this season with Todd Tasky talking about the second bite at the apple of your business and being able to actually create strategic partnerships that have people taking on components of your business. And I'd be very careful with going down this direction to make sure that it is someone that you are going to be happy with having a long-term relationship with. but looking at how can you have someone take on the ownership. So there are people that like the spreadsheets, that like the admin, that like those types of things that allow for them to be able to do

11:39something that they feel incredibly impassioned about and take ownership over it in a way that you never could because it's just not something that lights you up. And so if you start to map things out of like, hey, this isn't easily a thing that I can easily delegate, even potentially a thing that I can easily automate or something that I can just completely eliminate. So here's the options and then these are the things that need to happen that are vital for the the sustainability future growth of my business and these are the items that still have to remain. Here are the items that I can either give to

12:10a strategic partner that I've brought on equity or paid or whatever and then here's the things that I'm going to keep. But if you spend your day in the weeds of the stuff that you do not like, of course you're going to end up hating your business. I mean, if you were to spend your life doing things in things that you just do not enjoy, you're not going to enjoy your life. You're going to be unhappy person. And that's the whole foundational idea around living a life that is within the thing that you're passionate about. Is that if you live a life that allows for you to spend

12:37your days, your workday, the very least, in an area that you enjoy, then you're able to actually live a life of abundance and a life of happiness. And so, I want us to start to think through these different components, right? is how do you create these boundary lines, these focus areas, these systems that allow for you to be able to protect that zone of genius. So, I want you to start to look at what can you cut today, what can you delegate today, what can you automate or eliminate. And I want you to go through that same four quadrants of map that you just listed out. And I want

13:09you to define exactly what items am I going to find someone to take over in time? What items can I automate? What items can I delegate to someone on my team right now? What items am I going to keep? And I want you to be really meaningfully discernible here. And make sure that you start to create for a map of what you're going to do. Because if you're starting to edge towards a place of burnout, you're headed towards a cliff. And trust me when I say that getting to a place where you are on the edge of that cliff, fully now at the edge of the cliff, you may be miles away

13:40from it right now, but once you're fully at the edge of that cliff, you are going to blow things up. And you've heard me talk about the fact that I've done that myself, having actually gone through and just blown up the business because I was in a place where it felt unsustainable, where I was unhappy, and I just needed to eliminate it. I'm also just a bit of a jump in the deep end head first kind of person, but we'll leave that to the side for now. The reality is is that I want you just to start to think about

14:05what is that plan of action going to be. What are your boundary lines? When are you going to stop doing things? How many hours of time do you have attention, power, or energy do you have before it's time for you to shut off this type of work? And then also understanding that as you start to edge, and so here's the reality of what happened. And I want you to be very careful with this as well is as you start to edge more towards working in areas of your business that you do fully enjoy and you are adding more water to your cup or more energy to

14:33your cup every single day because you're continuing to do the work that is within your zone of genius. You have to be careful that you're going to end up overstepping into your personal life a little too much. And so you do need to create some boundary lines around when you working and when you are your personal version of yourself and how do you create that separation between them and have clear defined boundaries for yourself because if you don't and you are living even 80 or 90% of the time that you're spending in your business doing things that you do truly enjoy then you are going to create for that

15:06complete imbalance of these the other four quadrant map that I was talking about investing into yourself investing into your business investing into friends and family, investing into community, and recognizing within those four quadrants that you are going to start to run into a bit of an issue if you don't actually create some aspect of boundary. And so, you're not getting to burn out from building your team or your business. You're not getting to burn out because of your ambition or your desire to grow. You are getting burnt out from maintaining a business and a structure, holding on to the tasks that you do not want. So, fix your focus. Guard your

15:42genius. Guard your passion. Build around the work that gives you life, that gives you excitement, and not the stuff that drains you and that you just really do not like. And that's where real energy will continue to flow, allowing for you to fill your cup up every single day and just be incredibly happy in the time that you do spend at work. And my fundamental belief system in this industry is that you have gone down a path of working in a vocation that is deep rooted in you. And if we cannot create a world where your business is making your life better, especially in this vein, then we're doing something

16:21wrong and it's something that we need to change. Hey everyone, thank you so much for listening in today. With all of the shifts in the industry, it is easy to feel overwhelmed or unsure of your next move. So, I'm not here to try to sell you anything. I just want to give back and guide you through the uncertainty. Whether you're navigating new trends or just need some clarity, we're here to listen and offer advice. Head to creative agencyuccess.com/hat to book a free 50-minute chat with an agency mentor who can provide you with a fresh perspective. Let's figure out the best steps for your agency's growth

16:53together.