1944 – Overcoming Burnout in Business with TJB Media’s Julie Bee

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1:05With us right now, it is The Julie B. Julie, you are a burnout strategist. You're an author, you're a speaker, you're a coach, and you are the author of the book, which I mentioned, Burned, How Business Owners Can Overcome Burnout and Fuel Success. And by the way, Julie, your website is thejulieb.com. That's B-E-E.com. Julie, thank you for joining us. Josh, thank you for having me today. I'm really excited to be here for this interview. Absolutely. Well, listen, my first question is, how can business owners overcome burnout and fuel success? Yeah. First step is you got to have a support group and support groups are different than networking groups.

1:46You've got to have other business owners. Doesn't have to be a lot. One, two, or three other business owners who are going to treat you the same, no matter if you're burned out or having massive success. When you walk in that door, they're going to treat you the same no matter what. That's step number one. And then overcoming it, It's a lot about making space. It's a lot about prioritizing and also understanding what burnout looks like for business owners. It's a little unique. It shows up a little bit differently. And my goal is really to turn it around before it burns our business to the ground.

2:21I work on the assumption and the gut instinct that I think burnout might be the second reason why businesses don't make it. And so I'm on a mission to help prevent as much of that as possible. Yeah. How does burn, I mean, I can imagine this, there's a number of different ways that this can happen, but where does burnout take place? Like, how does it happen? Where does, what are usually the big instigators? And if it's such a varied list, maybe the top two or three things that you commonly hear. Yeah. From a business perspective, it's usually one of three things or maybe all three things. Sometimes if something's off with your profit, something's off with a process somewhere, or it's a personnel issue.

3:02Those are usually the three biggies for business owners, just depending on where you are, that can really trickle into and then ultimately cause burnout. Yeah. And I would imagine too, the thing I was immediately thinking about, it's, yes, financial stress is, that's far and away, I'd say the number one complaint that a lot of business owners have. If it's ups and downs in cashflow, I've got obligations, but yet there's uncertainty around, you know, how those obligations get met. Oh, that's hard. Hey, how do you, let's, let's talk about that first. How do you typically help someone through the money stresses that they may encounter?

3:44Well, I have a background in accounting, actually, that's what I got my master's and undergrad. And so I bring that to the table. And I also have 15 years of experience running businesses. I mean, the first thing we have to look at is obviously we just break down expenses and see if there's any place we could potentially save large chunks of money. I'm not going to look for, you know, 10,$20 here and there on the initial cut. And I also try not to go straight to people. I think that's often too easy for consultants to do. So I look for other places to save, but then we also look at ways to make more.

4:18So, and sometimes Josh, quite frankly, it's just a matter of the business owner taking action. that's a lot of what my coaching is about is sitting with the business owner and making sure they are doing the daily activities only they can do and that they need to do to to grow their business to you know head towards the vision and to lead their team so a lot of the times you know we we get up in the morning we put 15 different hats on as business owners sometimes you need somebody there to say no julie today you need to wear the sales hat and the sales hat only and we're going to follow up on these 15 prospects you haven't followed up with in two or three weeks.

4:53Sometimes it's as simple as that. So a lot of the times it's just a matter of overwhelm and lack of being able to prioritize effectively because even that's a decision you have to make every day. Decision fatigue is a thing and with business owners have to decide every day what they're going to do first thing in the morning. So sometimes it helps to have support in that. Yeah, I would imagine that the subject or the topic of time management versus priority management comes up quite a bit. Because as business leaders, business owners, there is always, always an infinite number of things you could do.

5:31And what you decide to focus on really is going to be a big impact on maybe the things that are stressing you out right now. Correct. I often tell business owners entrepreneurship is walking past fires that you know you could put out, but you choose to not put out so that you can get to the thing you actually need to work on. I mean, we all we walk past emails, we walk past returning phone calls that can wait, but sometimes we choose to do the easier things because it feels good because we get something done. but a lot of the times you just have to walk past some of those fires because they're not going to burn your business down, you know, and you will eventually get to them to get to the thing that you actually need to do.

6:12That's going to keep your business going and sustainable. Yeah. How about Julie, when business owners find themselves doing activities that are just not really like, it's not in their zone of genius. They don't enjoy it. But yet they keep doing it. Maybe they just haven't delegated it to someone or they feel like, well, only they can do it. But yet for me, I know that like, if I'm engaged in activity that I just don't enjoy day after day after day, it's like, I may as well go get a job in my opinion. There, there are, I think there's two groups. There's, there's activities that we don't enjoy that we continue to do because we don't want to delegate or we don't want to whatever.

6:54And that's, that's the lowest hanging fruit, Get rid of the stuff that you hate to do first. That's repeatable. And then I even fall into the trap of things that I like to do. For example, bookkeeping. It took me forever to outsource bookkeeping. I should not be doing bookkeeping as a business owner, even though I can do it and I enjoy doing it. That was one thing that was hard for me to outsource. And ultimately, you have to ask yourself, what is this costing your business? You continuing to do this, to do something you could pay somebody$200 or less a month to take care of. what is that actually costing your business how much is your time worth and you can also get into it really depends on how the business is set up sometimes I even lean into you're doing your clients or your customers and your team that you lead a disservice if you continue to focus on something that can be easily outsourced and not focus on the stuff that you that only really you can do as a business owner.

7:51So in terms of like what you're seeing right now, like things that, I don't know if this year you're noticing any trends, any patterns, any, you know, any common complaints that, you know what, I think we've seen an uptick in X, anything immediately come to mind? It's, it's been a slow year, especially for B2B services. I would say like marketing agencies, HR consultants, those types of people, coaches, kind of across the board. And I talked to a lot of those individuals. It has been a slow year for them from a closing sales and getting sales done. So a lot of companies are not meeting the revenue projections that they have for first and second quarter.

8:32I don't know necessarily what that means. You know, there's a lot of things I could say that I'm not going to say, but it's just, I think it's good to be aware of that. The other thing I see is there's a lot of push towards, you know, AI is a thing, but there's a lot of fear around that. And what I tell my clients, what I tell people, there's stress around I'm not using AI enough. And you got to take that in bite-sized chunks. So I think there's just like, it adds to burnout thinking that you should be doing something that maybe is causing you stress that you don't necessarily need to carry. That kind of stuff is really weighing on business owners.

9:14So those are kind of the two things, two of the trends that I'm seeing right now. Yeah, yeah. So Julie, tell me a bit about your book, Burned, how business owners can overcome burnout and fuel success. Who should be, it's on pre-order right now as of when we're recording this. I don't know if you have a date, a published date or yeah. Tell me about it. And what I'm curious about is the, you know, kind of the impact, like who should be reading it and what would you imagine the transformation that would take place would be? Absolutely. So the, it will be available June 18th, 2024. So it'll be out that day.

9:47You'll get it. You can buy it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, anywhere you buy books. Obviously business owners, any business owner, and you don't have to be burned out to read it. A lot of the people who had read the pre copies or the pre the advanced readers copies have said to me that it's it's like it's almost like a life manual for business owners. So if you want to prevent burnout, if you want to overcome burnout or if you want to even leverage a burnout that you've had to turn it into something else, you can get a lot out of this book. So it's all phases of it from recognizing it to overcoming it to leveraging it.

10:22But so really business owners in general, and then also leaders. I'm working with some organizations where they want me to come in and talk to leaders and even in corporate America or middle market size companies can get a lot out of this to understand burnout for themselves. And then also how their burnout impacts the people that they lead. That's also something I don't think we talk about enough. And they can get a lot out of this book for that audience as well. Yeah. Yeah. And Julie, how do you work with leaders? It looks like you do some one-on-one work. You've got group programs. Yeah. So I primarily work with, I work with a lot of business owners who are B2B service providers.

11:01And there's really two markets for me. A lot of them are one to five years and then 10 years or older. So that, those are my two markets. And I approach coaching a little bit more, I'm an intensive coaching person. I get in, we spend one day a week for four weeks together, 90 minutes each one of those days. And I'm bringing all of my knowledge in. So my CPA background, my marketing background, all of that, my 15 years as an entrepreneur to help you move the needle forward, whatever it is. So I've helped people go like launch podcasts to launching new services, to hiring people, to bringing on, one of my clients had to bring on 230 consultants.

11:41in a month. So I'm really focused on getting in, getting it done and getting out instead of doing long-term coaching agreements. I do that one-to-one, I do that in groups. And then I also go in and work with teams and businesses. If you have a team of people who has a project that just isn't moving forward, you know, something feels a little stuck, a little stagnant. I can really come in, diagnose, triage and move that needle forward in four weeks. So that's what I'm really good at doing. Yeah. If someone is, let's say someone, Julie, at this time, like they're just kind of on their own right now, or at least, you know, maybe they've got a small team, you know, but definitely, you know, there's a lot of leadership burden that might be on the shoulders of our friend that's listening right now.

12:25what would be maybe some self-care routines that you would say listen if you're in the middle of something right now and maybe you just had a bad situation maybe you lost a key customer or some other bad news any immediate kind of I don't want to say kind of like 9-1-1 type of things but just something that we can do when we're in the midst of a bad situation where it just feels like the weight of the world is on our shoulders the the mantra I always repeat people is to say that was then this is now and this too shall pass so this is this is a unique moment in time it is not going to be forever and sometimes just like repeating that to yourself helps you bring it down from the emergency to the it's still really important to deal with but it's not going to you're not going to spin out about it and i mean the you know basic things like make sure you maintain an exercise regimen or take a walk if you aren't doing that get outside a little bit take if you a lot of people say i don't have any time for myself what i will often tell people is if you're driving to and from someplace pull over in a safe place for five minutes and just sit there and listen to your favorite song and listen to it twice and then go about your day if that's all you can do do something like that just to take care of yourself and take a minute for yourself to breathe and to just kind of check out of whatever that problem is in that immediate moment of time.

13:46And then you can get back to it with a clearer head and a little bit more of a steady place. Yeah. You know, actually prescribing or scheduling downtime and just making sure that we adhere to that. You know, I am, when I'm on, I'm so much more effective when I've taken the time to take care of myself. And just like, even if I say, I don't really need it, or I can multitask during this time. But very, very consciously unplugging, I think is pretty critical. Do you want to talk a little bit more maybe about the quality of our off time or our downtime or our away from work time? Yeah, I mean, I think the first thing is you have to unplug.

14:34So you're not really getting downtime if you're still checking your phone for emails or social media messages or whatever. Use the technology. Use some of these AI tools that we have. Use the autoresponders on email. Tell people you're not going to respond after 3 p.m. every day. There are so many tools you can set up. Set up the family time schedule on your phone so that you aren't tempted to go in there and look at it. I think that's probably the hardest part is our phones. So if you can figure out how to deal with that, closing your laptop is easier than turning your phone off. And a lot of us can't turn our phones off because we have, you know, caregiver responsibilities or whatever.

15:14So I actually set my phone up. I think it's really smart to set it up so that only, you know, family and friends can contact you during that off time. Oh, absolutely. Do that. Turn off the notifications on your phone, like turn as much stuff off on your phone and that will set you up to have better quality off time. And then you just, you have to be very clear about your boundaries. And the other thing I would say is communicate them to somebody. So if it's your spouse, your partner, you know, say, I do not want to be on my phone during dinner tonight. Say something to me if I am like, give them the permission to say, Hey, you didn't want to do this.

15:49You're doing this now. Just give somebody else the permission to hold you accountable. Something as little as that can really help you protect and make sure you have a higher quality downtime. Yeah. I'm currently listening to Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, and I'm really intrigued by the idea of demanding more or disconnecting from social media. For those of us that are, it's pretty integrated with the business that we do, that may not be an option to completely disconnect. But I do like this idea of demanding more of what we get from social media and certainly, you know, not using it just for recognizing the role of those quick little endorphin hits and just being curious about that whole process, maybe taking a step back and evaluating that.

16:43And do you have any thoughts about like how you recommend leaders and their role and how they use social? I think it's important for leaders to model how they would want their people to use social. So I think if you're struggling with it, think about the people who you're leading, how you tell them to maybe take time off from social and not, you know, not be on it all the time. think about how you would want them to use social and you got to model that behavior you have to be the the person who's leading them in that behavior uh and again it really depends on business some businesses you can just completely be off of it some businesses like yours and mine with coaching i mean i'm on linkedin every single day so again i think it goes back to as a leader modeling the boundaries you want your people to have around social media and then helping them also uh holding them accountable.

17:36If you see somebody posting something at 11 o 'clock at night, I mean, that might be an opening for a conversation with them the next day and saying, Hey, I noticed you posted something at 11 o 'clock. What were you doing on LinkedIn? You know, just, just to, just to kind of reinforce the boundaries that you want them to have. And again, it depends on the business that you're in and how you want them to use social media. But I really think it's, I like what you said about demanding more of our own usage and social it likes and comments are going to make you feel good i i think you got to evaluate what kind of relationships you're building out of it yeah you don't need a thousand people follow you you don't you really businesses need i mean i i think there's a hundred you know a hundred really true fans and you don't you don't need to have hundreds of thousands of followers to have a successful business.

18:31So I think - That's true. Yeah. And it's particularly in B2B. Yeah. You need a couple of hundred of good connections and you're pretty much set for life in a lot of things that we do. The last thing I want to talk about would be our role as leaders. You talked about this a little bit in social and I don't certainly want to police my team members use of social media, but I am interested in making sure that they don't feel like I am obligating them to work at hours that are inconvenient, or I want my team to have boundaries for themselves. And I want to honor those boundaries that they set for themselves.

19:10And I don't want them to be worrying about work when they are with their family or whatever, right? So that's immediately where my mind goes to. What are some other best practices for leaders so we can make sure that we're not encouraging or leading to more burnout with our team members. You got to make it a safe space to talk about. I think that's probably the biggest thing is if you have an employee who's working for you and they don't feel like they can say, I'm approaching burnout or I'm getting overstressed. The first thing is you've got to make an environment where everybody feels safe enough to come to their leader, come to their boss and say that.

19:48First things first. Second thing is create a plan around it. You know, I talk about this all the time. We've got strategies for marketing, for sales, for revenue, for HR, for leadership development. Why not have a plan for if and when burnout shows up? Because it's going to show up. I mean, the stats all point to that. It's kind of just part of our culture. So plan for it. Write it down. have your team create have them say what they want their ideal schedule to look like what they want their ideal work life and their ideal boundaries look like and then help them be held accountable some some businesses put in a burnout buddy where you know there's two people where the boss isn't even in it there's two individuals working and they're holding each other accountable and also saying i noticed you canceled that doctor's appointment so that you could make this meeting is that a burnout sign for you like those types of things you gotta you gotta know what your burnout signs are last one for me is when i start canceling like regularly scheduled health care appointments because i'm like i'm too busy for that that's a sign so you gotta you gotta make an environment though where it's okay to have these conversations that's like the first thing and then you can start getting into building structures around it to help prevent it and also help deal with it for when it happens.

21:11Julie, your website is thejuliebee.com. That's B-E-E, thejuliebee.com. When somebody goes there, I know you have some really great resources. Obviously, you can find more about the book. What else would you recommend they do after this interview or listening to this podcast episode here? Absolutely. So I would definitely recommend buy my book, a pre-order it or buy it. Go to thejuliebee.com slash burned. And there's a form on there, if you fill it out, you are going to get about$2 ,000 worth of bonus content that either didn't make it into burned or just things that I've gathered along the way.

21:47There's some courses, there's a whole document guide about how I landed a traditional publishing deal with a book publisher and other business owner burnout stories. Tons of extra content, tons of valuable content for you. That is what I would recommend people do. Excellent. Julie B, burnout strategist, author, speaker, coach, your website, thejulieb.com. Julie, thank you for joining us. Thanks, Josh.

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