578: (Solo) The Wake-Up Call That Changed How I Work

0:01Hey founder fam, I want to talk to you about something super exciting. We're officially partnered with OmniSend, the email marketing and SMS platform built specifically for e-commerce founders. We've been recommending OmniSend to founder students for a while now because it just works. Whether you're launching your first store or you're scaling to seven figures, it really helps you automate your marketing and get real results. Did you know on average, OmniSend customers make$68 for every$1 they spend, which is an insanely good return on investment. And because you're part of the founder community, you get 50 % off your first three months with the code founder50.

0:39Just head to omnisend.com forward slash founder without the E to get started. All right, now let's jump back into the show. Hey guys, Nathan here. Welcome back to another episode of the Founder to Founder podcast. It is a short series that we're doing around 10 minutes where I share a valuable lesson, no fluff, to really help you on your journey of the things that I've learned from building Founder over the past decade. So guys, as always, we'd love to hear your feedback at Nathan Chan on Instagram or at Founder. We'd love to hear your feedback, any improvements, anything you want me to answer.

1:16I'm here to help and I hope you're enjoying this series. I'm having a ton of fun making it. So today, I want to talk about the moment when I almost quit Founder.

1:32So I experienced really, really, really deep burnout and I want to share how I recovered from it and what I did to work through it. Now, I think unfortunately this is a common thing that i find amongst many of my founder friends where it was just after covid i'd been building founder for seven years straight i had no off switch i was just constantly always on and the business was booming right seven years straight things were going really well it looked from the outside that i was winning in life but what i realized very very quickly during that time was you can have all the success in the world, all the accolades, but it doesn't mean anything if you don't have your mental health.

2:23And so I want to talk you through what happened, how I went through it and how I recovered. So the thing I found with burnout is it doesn't just hit you overnight. It's something that builds up over time. And if you think of it like a cup, if you don't refill your cup, it'll just eventually take a toll on you. So when I first started Founder, I was just always on. I was just working relentlessly. Honestly, guys, if I wasn't seeing friends or family, if I wasn't spending time with my girlfriend, had something locked in my calendar, like extracurricular activities, I was working every waking moment.

3:00And it built up. It took its toll. And COVID was a crazy time for the business. And it just made me even worse. Like I couldn't go outside in Melbourne. We were locked down. It was like, you know, Melbourne was one of the longest lockdown cities in the world. And I was just working because I had nothing else to do. And then what happened after COVID was we started to come out and things started to open up. I never forget, I was just waking up in the middle of the night. This was early 2021, where my heart started beating really fast in the middle of the night. I'd never experienced this before.

3:33And then I was waking up with like this terrible dread and anxiety. and I just didn't know like what was going on. And I remember telling one of my mentors, you know, I don't feel right. Like I'm not right. And the lesson here is growth at all expenses of your health is just not worth it. So I quickly realized after a couple of weeks that I was actually burnt out. Like that's what's happened. I ran myself into the ground and I didn't want to go to work. I have never shared this publicly. Like I remember we had a company strategy day and I was just feeling terrible. Like I didn't even want to be there.

4:11It was so wild. And I remember my assistant saying to me, hey, Nathan, are you okay? Obviously, I was not showing up great either. So what did I do? How did I overcome it? Well, first and foremost, I really boiled it down to three key things that I started to do. I started to hire and delegate more than ever. I started to prioritize my health and I actually started to really enforce balance throughout my work life. And I know people talk about work-life balance like it's a myth and all these different things, but I started to set boundaries between work and personal. So I want to go through these big shifts.

4:46So first and foremost, let's go through hiring and delegating. I didn't realize it, but I was responsible for everything. And what I started to do in the business was I started to let go. I just had to. I had to let go. I had to stop being so ingrained in every fine little detail and back my team, back the people and share more responsibility with the people in charge of certain functions in the business. And I started to let go more. That was a massive one. So then that didn't force me to just continually work around the clock all day, every day. The second thing I did was I started to have balance and I enforced really strong rules around that balance.

5:25I didn't work weekends. Once it hits Friday, 6 p.m., 6.30 p.m., I clocked off. And on weekends, that was my sacred time. Now, I do work on weekends still now, but there are some times where I don't work weekends. And I think that's a really, really, really healthy thing. I might keep on top of a few things here or there, but I'm not constantly working. I have time for me and I do things that energize me. So one thing that energizes me is playing pickleball with my brother. That's a routine. I lock that in every Sunday. When I see my family now, I see my family always every Sunday. That is a non-negotiable.

5:59I had non-negotiables. I put my phone at the front of the house. There's a table when you walk in the door and my family's place. I put my phone at the front of the house. So I have like a no technology and I want to be present. So during these boundary times, I'm super focused on being present. Another thing I did to double down on doing things that energize me, doing things for me is I started speaking to someone. I started seeing a therapist. When I look at therapy, I know sometimes when we look at, you know, people going to therapy, people think it's a negative thing. I think it's a really, really healthy thing.

6:28When you go to gym, you're lifting weights for your muscles to get them bigger and training them. I see going to therapy as training your mind. So seeing a therapist was really, really helpful that helped enforce boundaries. I had a regular cadence there. Another thing that I did was float tanks. I found float tanks. And what was really powerful with float tanks was Nathan time, where it forced me. I remember my first float tank. I went in there and I had to float in the water in the dark for 60 minutes. And I was just alone with my thoughts. I struggled so hard. I almost got out. I pushed through.

7:04And you know what I realized? The fact that I couldn't sit there or lie there in float for 60 minutes and struggle, that meant that I had to do it. So I kept going back. I set up a routine. I did my float tanks. I had the pickleball. I spent time with my family. And I really enforced really strong balance. I started getting my steps in every single day, 10 ,000 steps, getting fresh air, taking regular breaks. And slowly but surely, these things really, really, really helped me. And then another thing that I did during that time when I was having really just crazy anxiety was I took a break. I hadn't had a holiday.

7:37What I realized is I hadn't had a holiday in like 18 months because of COVID. So I took a two-week holiday and I just didn't work and I recharged. And I think sometimes it's easy to forget that every single person needs a break. They need a holiday. And you think of it like racehorses, right? You don't have a racehorse running around the track, constantly racing, you know, for 12 months, for 18 months. They get spelled, you know, horses, they spend time in the paddock. They rejuvenate, they recuperate. It's the same for you. And that's what you need to be doing. So there you have it, guys, through hiring and delegating more, through finding balance and having really strict rules and breaks, that's how I was able to work through my burnout.

8:24I also started journaling as well. I think that's really, really important just to be able to get your thoughts on paper. But I just want you guys to know that you're not alone. In this journey of building a business, it's tough. And I wanna free you from this feeling of guilt. It's so hard sometimes to just kind of go, I wanna break, but then you feel guilty because everything relies on you and it feels like you've got the world on your shoulders, I want you to know that it's okay to feel this way. It's okay, but you have to look after yourself. You're not good to anyone if you are working yourself into the ground.

8:59And I can't stress this enough. You need to look after yourself. You can have all the success in the world, but the reason that you started this business was more freedom. There's three types of freedom. There's time freedom, financial freedom, and a life of meaning. And you can't have true freedom if you don't have all these three things. So you might have financial freedom. You might have a life of meaning, but if you don't have time freedom, then what's the point? So I can't stress this enough. This is a reminder to you. If you can, start journaling. Get your 10 ,000 steps every day. If you can, speak to somebody.

9:30If you can, put yourself in a place to start delegating more. Stop taking on all the responsibility for your business. If you can, hire people to help give you leverage. If you can, start doing float tanks, going to the gym, Having something that is non-negotiable at least once a week, 60 minutes of your time, it's your time. Protect it and look forward to it. Make it fun. Have it as a reward. It will make things so much better and will give you more clarity and you'll be a better founder for it. So guys, I hope you enjoyed this episode. And just so you know, we have an incredible coaching program.

10:07It's a one-on-one e-commerce coaching program where we help everyday e-commerce founders like you, like me, work through things like burnout, help you build your business, help you hire, help you get more leverage, help you delegate, help you scale your brand so you can get your time back. So if you'd like to know more about our six-month mentorship program where we help you and coach you one-on-one, go to founder.com and just book a free quick starter session. That's founder.com and just go and book a free quick starter session. I hope you enjoyed this episode, guys. Would love to hear from you.

10:38DM me at Nathan Chan or at Founder. We'd love to hear your feedback and I can't wait to see you in another episode.