The Antidote to Overwhelm: How to Turn Stress into Solutions

0:00I was just reading about the limbo that exists between the de minimis tariff exclusion thing, where any goods under$800 that are being shipped in, generally the person that's bringing them in doesn't pay a duty on that. And that got revoked, which caused a million pieces of, a million packages to pile up in just one FedEx center.

0:27Hey everybody, welcome to Business Lunch with your hosts, me, Roland Frazier, and my wonderful partner, Ryan Dice. Ryan, how are you doing today? I'm doing uh way better than you because I don't have a massive moth infestation where I'm having to basically clear out of everything hopefully this isn't too much information I'm not revealing too much personal life but uh yeah man that sucks you want to give everybody the lowdown on what you're having to deal with right now we we have uh moths that somehow made it into my wife's closet and then somehow spread over to my closet and then somehow spread to her art room and one other closet or something in the house.

1:08And so I don't see them by the way. So it's not like you walk in and there's a, you know, fluttering flurry of, of creatures, but, but they're definitely there. And so we have, she's been dealing with it for a couple of months and we finally are looking into or getting, you know, we, we looked into what does it actually take to get rid of them permanently. And it's basically, we have to take all of our clothes, rent a giant walk-in freezer, put it in our driveway for a week and have our clothes at zero degrees. Um, all of them in there at zero degrees for, uh, uh, basically 72 hours and then, um, wipe down all the surfaces with some sort of moth oil stuff.

1:51And in the closets, which are by the way, our closets are cedar. So, you know, let's not hear it for how good cedar is at repelling them. And then I guess we'll set off some, you know, moth bombs or something, but hopefully that will do it. It's because it's definitely something that's given her, you know, a hard time for a long time now. So it'll be nice to get rid of those guys. Well, I do like the flex of the multi-closet thing that you worked in there. They got in her closet, then they got in mine, and then they got into another kind of satellite closet and they got into an art room. Then they got into like any other kind of like bougie spaces you want to kind of throw out there casually?

2:28Fortunately, we were able to keep them out of the wine cellar. And yeah, I think probably because it's cold, they don't like that. And same thing, we keep the, you know, the music studio pretty, pretty down the, you know, the theater is, you know, and the basketball courts, I don't think they really even care about. But no, I don't know. Did they stay out of the Beanie Babies collection? I know that's a big, big thing for you. Well, the Beanie Babies room, as you know, is hermetically sealed and humidified. So, So, you know, I know you and I have spent a lot of really quality time in there talking about things.

2:59Well, it is one of those things, though, where and we were talking about this. We were, you know, because all this happened, you know, you're you're dealing with that. Like and it's like this series of just garbage, like just nonsense. Like, you know, same deal at like my house. It's like a bunch of stuff like breaks and all happens at once. somebody, you know, backed into, you know, my wife's car and it's, you know, so freaking frustrating. Cause like, okay, let's call the insurance. Let's deal with the body shop. And it's like, I just, I didn't want to do this. You know, I, I didn't want to have a car that I already had that.

3:34Yeah. I already had this stuff. I didn't want to have to get new things and spend a lot of time, a lot of money to just have the same thing, you know, that I already had, but this is kind of life. And I think, you know, I know this is, this is somewhat relevant to actually what we were planning on, on talking about today. Cause I do think that this is one of the things that, that breaks a lot of people. And I know even us, like, you know, I was, I was feeling like crap with my week and then you, cause we had to reschedule some stuff. Like literally we had a trip to Napa planned and you're like, Hey man, I got to cancel it.

4:10Cause I'm dealing with this moth thing. I'm just like a series of unfortunate events. And you're like, I can't go. I'm dealing with all this stuff. And I instantly felt better about my life when I saw just like all the garbage that you're having to deal with. I mean, not that I was happy that you're dealing with, but I'm like, gosh. I'm happy that my garbage life moment is helpful to you though. Oh, it just helped with the perspective. But what I love that you said, and you are good at putting it into perspective, you know, is just, thankfully, you know, we do have the means and we do have the ability to fix this.

4:45And you are always, you know, maintaining agency in these things. And you're always somebody who, you know, is that kind of high agency person. I just, I know we started talking about that. And that's an important aspect of this life that we live of the entrepreneurial journey. And so, yeah, I just, I kind of wanted to chat about that because I know you're doing a lot of research and thinking in this as well. Yeah. And I don't know, maybe this is the high agency episode, or maybe this is the episode to see if there's anything that we can come up with about helping people who are going through challenges and tough times.

5:23Because I think the high agency thing's a little bit different, at least my take on it is. Um, so I, I, so let's just do that for a minute and see what happens with this as an episode. So, um, there are always things that are going on that are less than optimal. Occasionally, it feels like you're getting hit in the face again and again and again and again. And, um, that's what I think both of our wives are going through right now is they're, they're feeling pretty beat up. My wife had, we had the moth thing going on. She's had all kinds of medical challenges with her legs and stuff. And then we had a mouse that died inside a wall, the wall that it chose to die in.

6:15And this is not an attempt to deflect. It's just what's happening, was in our sauna. So, you know, you just want to cook that dead mouse body up through the heat of the sauna to let it waft its wonderful piquant aroma throughout the house. And then I guess we had some sort of plumbing backup in our washing machines. And so my wife is like very OCD. She will tell you that. And so to basically be in a house that has the closets kind of taken apart because she took her closet apart. She had too many clothes in there, too. And so we've got like hanging racks in our bathroom and clothes that are hanging in the bedroom and hanging racks in our garage where she was going to, you know, to try to take care of this.

6:59And a smelly, you know, dead rat in the sauna and a smelly plumbing backup. And then her best friend was just admitted to the hospital and I guess, you know, is given hours or days to live from a cancer thing she's going through with. And she's up in a place that's very hard to get to for my wife who has a hard time traveling anyway, because of her legs. So she's just like, you know, ah, and I made the mistake of saying we redid this room that I'm recording in right now, which used to have a pool table behind me. Now it's more office podcast worky. It's got a desk and chairs and couch. And, um, and I wanted to put a, uh, keyboard over in the corner where the, uh, where there's a, like a kind of a couch type thing under the didgeridoos right now.

7:48And, um, and so I told her, I said, yeah, that, that keyboard is coming. So we, you know, we're going to need to move that. And she just burst into tears. And, um, and I was like, what, you know, I won't play what, you know, she's like, no, it's just, it's that that that's one more thing to have to think about moving that I can't handle anymore. I'm at the breaking point. And I think that happens to a lot of us. And one good thing about having either a business partner or a life partner that hopefully isn't going through the breaking point at the moment that you are, is that that person can help support.

8:24And there's ways to go about that that are good or bad. You can be upset that the person is upset. You can be upset with them. You can, you can be mad at them for not being able to handle more. You can weigh all the things that you're dealing with that might seem to you like a whole lot more than the things that they're dealing with, but that doesn't make the way they're feeling any less valid, you know, and it isn't helpful. Or you can be the problem solver fixer, which is dangerous as a guy because we tend to not want to go through the process. We tend to want to just go to the, let me fix that.

9:03So balancing that is always an interesting thing as well. And so what I always start with is, what can I do to help? I am so sorry that this is the situation that you're dealing with. How can I help? And then try to have the process. I have an idea in my head because that's how I think, right? It was like, okay, answers are one, two, three, four, let's do that on it. But that's not the right process, at least not with my wife or most of the women that I've talked to. So I think it might be interesting to talk a little bit about that because I bet a lot of people right now with high interest rates, if you've got variable mortgage loans or variable rate mortgages or variable rate loans, you're dealing with payments that you probably didn't expect.

9:57If you are trying to buy things, like if any of your things are breaking and you have to fix them or you need CapEx in your company or anything like that, you're paying a whole lot more for it than you would have five or six years ago, assuming that you can get it. And if you need it really badly, you might not be able to get it because supply chains are disrupted. And now we've got tariffs that we might be dealing with that we didn't before, which was interesting. I was just reading about the limbo that exists between the de minimis tariff exclusion thing, where any goods under$800 that are being shipped in, generally the person that's bringing them in doesn't pay a duty on that.

10:38And that got revoked, which caused a million packages to pile up in just one FedEx center over a month period, because they didn't know what to do. They're like, Do we collect duty on that? We're sure as hell not going to pass them all through and just eat it. And we know that if we send out a million packages, a million people aren't going to pay us what they owe us on the duty. So what's going to go on with that? So there's a lot of uncertainty. And I know business for a lot of people in several of the industries we're involved in is down. And that is affecting people as well. I know, I think one of our roundtable people that we were just talking to was down over over half from, uh, you know, from last year.

11:23Uh, so just I'll, I'll stop that. But basically this, my setup here is what, what are the things Ryan that you do, or how do you help people when they're going through difficult times? What you do, step number one is you look them in the eyes and you go, you raise your hand and you go, calm down. Yeah, that's good. That's good. And you go, calm down. Yeah. Especially I do this with my wife all the time. No, I'm kidding. Never do that. Have you ever tried just get, you just need to deal with it or just get over it. Right. Those are also, Hey, have you, have you tried just, just getting over it?

12:06Right. Um, yeah, no, uh, exactly. None of that is, is, is going to work. No, I mean it walking through some walking, you know, with somebody through that, through that kind of thing really is difficult because you've got a perspective that they don't have and you want to bring that perspective to them in the moment. And it's utterly unhelpful in that moment. Um, cause, cause you do have to kind of just hold a little bit of space for them as they're, as they're going through it. So it's, it's difficult. I'm not a particularly patient person. I definitely want to go straight to solutions mode. Um, being married for 20 plus years has taught me a lot of valuable lessons, because I've done that and I've seen it not work a number of times.

12:47And so a lot of it is just shutting up and listening and just saying, hey, so let's talk it out. Because what I have found when you're dealing with chaos and stress, just saying the things out loud is step one. Because when we get it out of our heads, now they become things. Now those thoughts that are just swirling around amorphously, now all of a sudden there are these things called words. And once they become words, they become things that we can deal with. So what I actually want to try to do, and I do this for myself, I've got a very specific exercise that I go through and I do this proactively every 90 days.

13:26But if I'm really stressed out, I'll do this in general. Like I'll just make a point of doing this. And what I do first thing is I want to contextualize what I'm dealing with. And so to do that, I got to look back. And so first I'm going to look back and I'm going to say, okay, what do I have that I am really proud of over the last 90 days? Right. That's just, as I look back, what are some good things that have happened? And that is helpful because now we're beginning to introduce a little bit of gratefulness. Now, again, I do this for me. The worst thing in the world that you can do when somebody is swirling, you know, twirling in a really bad state is like, I think it's important that we just remember, you know, count our blessings.

14:09Don't do that. Okay. That is also very not helpful. Yeah. Even though it's true, it's not helpful. Don't do that. But if you can get beyond that emotional state into a solutions mode, truly getting to a point where you say, okay, what are the things that I am proud of that have happened over the last night? And that's important. Not what am I grateful for? What am I proud of? That is different. But then I want to contrast that with what are some of my regrets? I always want to be working in paired opposites. So pride and regret. Pride is what is going to keep me going. But the regrets, typically, if I am swirling and twirling, it's a function of mistakes or happenstance that has already occurred.

14:56So I need to collect all of that stuff. I need to swim in that. I need to live in that. And I need to list it out. So these are all the freaking regrets that I have. And one of the biggest mistakes that people make, and the reason that people get into these really tough states is they never do business with the past and they never process the regrets. They'll spin them. They'll go Pollyanna with it. They'll say, I have no regrets. I don't believe that. I think it's fine to say I've learned from mine and therefore my regrets are no longer regrets. But until you've processed them, right, I think it's important to treat them as what they are.

15:38And regrets to me are some of the most valuable things because that's where the lessons are. So that's kind of the first step. I want to look back. Um, so the, the thing about that I think is really good about what you said is, um, that overwhelm is generally a result in, I believe of a lack of organization. And, um, it's, it's so many things, thoughts, feelings are coming at you at once that you can't deal with them. But if you do put them into words, if you do list them out, if you do have them an inventory of all of the things that are coming at you, then it gives you the ability to organize them.

16:29Number one, it lets you actually know what they are, that it's not just a feeling of angst and overwhelm. And I have no idea because you can't do anything about it if you don't have anything to work on, right? They say what gets measured gets managed. So the first thing is, what's my inventory of overwhelming things? And then that's the words thing, I think that you said. And then you can think about how important are each of these things in terms of urgency or impact. And if you've got if you've got the ability to do that, then at least you can say, I don't think I can get through this. It's just too much stuff.

17:18Or you can say, this is an elephant I need to eat one bite at a time. And, um, and it's not the same elephant. Like it's not a wall of one thing that is undeal withable. It is a, uh, a group of things that can be pieced off and picked off one by one so that I can get it down to manageable. And that, that, that I think helps because I'm not sure. And I, I, like, I'm thinking about, I'm thinking about her situation, uh, my wife's right now. And I'm thinking about, you know, businesses that I guess you could, you could do the regret inventory and say, well, I regret that I took on that loan, uh, or, or I bought that piece of equipment, or I let that customer go, or I didn't invest more heavily in marketing.

18:10But I'm not, and I'm curious for you, how does that help you get past? And maybe it's the next steps. How does that help you get past it? Because like, I don't see that my wife could really sit, could say she regrets anything about the stuff that she's dealing with and people that are impacted by external events like presidential tariffs and things like that. I don't know that they could do that. And that's why we're not, yeah, the inventory collection is, you're right, we're not done. So the first aspect of that is looking back. That's pride and regret. The next step is looking at the present.

18:49And the question we ask there is, again, paired opposites, what am I confident about today? And then where do I feel like I lack? so what am I confident in so what are some things that I feel like I can really stand on and then similarly what do I feel like I lack so confidence and lack is the question we're going to ask and that allows me to kind of anchor the present so we want to do business with the past we want to anchor the present so what doesn't show up in the past in terms of regret is typically going to show up in lack now what doesn't show up in regret or lack now we want to envision the future.

19:25And so the question we're going to ask there is, what am I excited about? And what am I worried about? So if you ask those six questions, what am I proud of? What do I regret? What am I confident about? What do I lack? What am I excited about? What am I worried about? You have fully processed and fully taken inventory of the context that you are living in, right? But you've done it at the full spectrum of it. You're not merely focusing on the negative, but you are allowing yourself to go there for the sake of learning and dealing with the reality. But what you're also doing along the way is you're gathering tools because all the things that you're confident in, the things you're proud of, the things you're excited about, these are all tools that we can pull in to deal with it.

20:12Now the question that we ask, and this goes to what you were saying before, which is organization and prioritization. What must be true that isn't true today to feel more confidence, to feel more, you know, pride, to feel a lot less regret, to feel less lack, to feel less worry. And when we have all these things before us, now we can begin to list, okay, what are the things that aren't true today? And then the mistake that people tend to make is they will order them based on impact and they'll order them based on priority. And that's where people get stuck because you can't actually execute based on impact and priority.

20:54You have to execute based on sequence. And this is what, you know, this is, I think what, what people who are in business are good at and what most normal people are not is we have high executive function, which means we can look at a situation and we can immediately say, okay, you obviously have to do this, then this, then this, then this, then this. A lot of people don't see it that way. And so for us, it seems so obvious. They just see like, okay, I've got to deal with this thing right here. But the reason they get overwhelmed is because they don't see the five or six things that must occur that are smaller, seemingly innocuous that must occur before that.

21:28And that's why they get stuck. So when you identify the thing, you don't ask what's the most important. The question you ask is, what is the right next thing? What is the right next thing that must occur to get there. And you're only asking that question. What's the right next thing? What's the right next thing? And I think for anybody in any chaotic situation, that's the only question that matters. What's the right next thing? If you're in chaos, that's your question. What's the right next thing? And this is chaos in life, chaos in business. And I think it's the right next thing Um, I do think that important and urgent are going to fit into that.

22:14And so I think that if you're, you know, if you're, what is it? The Eisenhower matrix that it has important, not important, urgent, not urgent. If you guys aren't familiar with it, it's, it's worth looking up the Wikipedia on and checking it out. It's very simple. Um, but I think that you do, I think the right next thing has to apply to the thing that is important and urgent or the things that are important and urgent. So maybe it's first you sort that and then you say, what's the right next thing to get this important urgent thing that I've ranked highest done. But I think you got to do that first.

22:52Yeah. That's what I was saying. When I said, answer the question, what must be true that isn't true today? That's kind of that initial sorting that I was referencing. Right. So that's where you're going to come up with like typically five to seven things that are truly important, truly urgent, that must get done. The mistake there is that's where people stop. And they're looking at the five or six things that must get done. Okay, well, we have to get a giant freezer delivered to our house to deal with this moth thing. That's the thing that's got to get done. You know what's interesting about that?

23:24And that's such an overwhelming project that they're like, but I don't know how, right? So that's the big project, but what's the right next thing? The right next thing is to figure out what's a local company that even does it. So it's always identifying, yeah, this is the big project, but what's the right next thing? And that's going to inform the next to the next. I was going to say, it's interesting because my first thing was to go to how do you get rid of moths? What do you need to do to do it? And there's, you know, basically tent your house and, you know, pesticide it all up and destroy all your landscaping and everything or, uh, other things.

24:02And then I saw the freezing thing. And so I was like, okay, well then it seems like the easy thing to do is we can't, can't put a compressor in the room because I know that from wanting to do a wine room before the, like you have to treat the walls and everything because compressors and cold creates moisture, which creates mildew and mold. So you can't just go in and put something in there. So I can't do it in the room. Uh, so then I was like, okay, well, can I get a freezer? And, uh, when I did that, I immediately went online, researched portable walk-in rental freezer companies and found several.

24:42And, um, and when I told several people about it, they were like, I had no idea that was even possible. And I think that's like, that's part of it is don't rule out anything as impossible until you have confirmed it's impossibility. Right. So like, like to me, it was, what are the, what's the menu of solutions? Then it's, this one seems to be the one that would be the best. And I don't care if it's possible or not yet. Now I'm not going to rule it out because I think it's impossible in my head, or I don't know that it is possible. And that's something that I think is a giant important step because I run into people that say that all the time.

25:23It's like, I had no idea you could even do that. And I'm like, neither did I until I went and found out, right? Actively seek to confirm impossibility. Yeah. I like that. Because you'll be shocked how often you fail. Yeah. Right. Delightfully surprised how often you fail in trying to confirm that it's impossible. But I think we're, you know, we're lazy and we're discouraged and And we just want to just believe that, that, ah, it can't be done. No, actively seek to confirm impossibility. And I'm using this, this personal analogies that I hope you guys can draw your own conclusions to your personal or business situations from.

25:55But so where, where she started was, you know, well, we, you have to, um, dry clean the clothes, dry cleaning, the treatment of dry cleaning of clothes will kill them. She's got so many clothes. It was going to be like$20 ,000 to clean the clothes. So now I'm measuring the cost of renting a freezer, which is going to be about a thousand dollars against the$20 ,000 and huge effort of carting all of the clothes out offsite to, you know, to some dry cleaner place where I would definitely negotiate a deal. But still, let's say I got half of that. This 10 grand, that's, that's like insane. And then, um, and now I'm comparing that to my possible, but probably crazy expensive.

26:36let's rent a giant freezer, like, you know, like the size of a, uh, 18 wheeler and put it in our driveway for a week. It turns out that's cheaper by, you know, what 95%. So, um, that's, that's to me, that's like an interesting exercise to go through because it's what, what's my, so if let's kind of step this into process, so put it into words. What is the list of things that are overwhelming me. Yeah. Now it can be managed and ordered. Rank it by importance and urgency, but we're not going to take any action yet. Now determine the thing out of that list that's important and urgent that you want to tackle first.