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30 - Avoiding Burnout in Your Business
Description
The topic today is hitting burnout in your business. I’m not exploring burnout itself, but more accurately some of the causes and stressors in our businesses that lead to burnout. I was walking my dog earlier, thrilled that I can now have light and temperate weather after 5:00, and it got me thinking about seasons and how they affect us. There are seasons and rhythms in everything, even in business, and working with those seasons is what can help us avoid burnout. Explore that with me.
Every business has a different rhythm and flow. The first months of the year are extremely busy for accountants but summer is extremely busy for wedding planners. We all know what times of year our business blossoms and fills out and when we feel more of a lull. That rhythm, if we don’t plan for it, leads to a lot of stress. It’s not the busyness of business that causes burnout, it’s the unpredictability. That’s what I want to focus on: how can we prepare for the busyness ahead of time so we avoid the last-minute stress of the sudden demands?
If we follow the natural seasons and rhythms of our bodies, we sleep better, we function better, we are more productive. It’s the same with businesses. If we prepare for the seasons and rhythms of our business, we can market well ahead of time and get clients set up early for the busy time. And conversely, we can plan holidays for quiet times instead of stressing over that slowdown. How do we manage the unpredictability and make our businesses run more smoothly? How do we avoid busyness burnout? I’m going to talk about that so we can start planning for efficiency now.
Key Moments
01:31 Different industries have different rhythms and seasons
04:40 Why we shouldn’t just “seize the day” and grind early, but work with our personal rhythms.
06:20 What do customers need in each season of our business?
- We have the power to request change in our work so that we can align our rhythms
- We need to assess and understand the natural seasons and flow of our business
- Last-minute demands and rollercoaster emotions, when not accounted for, can cause burnout
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Transcript:
Kari Lotzien: [00:00:01] Welcome to Be the Anchor, the podcast. I'm your host, business and leadership coach Kari Lotzien. When the seas of life get stormy, and they always will, it is not up to us to captain anyone else's ship or to try to calm the waters of the ocean. It's up to us to set our own destination for what we really want, and to learn how to navigate those waves of life together while finding that place of security and stability with others. I call this being an anchor.
Kari Lotzien: [00:00:37] Hello my friends. I'm so glad you're here. I just got back from taking my dog for a walk, and I got to tell you, it was so nice to be able to get outside and not have to put on my winter coat and boots and mitt and toque to try and stay warm as I bear down in winter weather to take the dog outside. We are coming into spring. I feel like it's breathing new life into me, that I could take my dog out and enjoy the sun on my face. I am enjoying the longer days when we have daylight past 5:00 at night. It just feels amazing. And this got me to thinking about how we think about seasons and rhythms in business. And more specifically, today, I want to talk about how we can utilize seasons and rhythms to really help avoid burnout. Now I work with clients from all different industries, and what I notice i