The Complete Entrepreneur – EP33

[00:00:00] 

It’s interesting, Michael, the topic tonight, the news that we just talked about and what’s going on in Ukraine and other parts of the world is part of this question of reducing entrepreneurial burnout.

Because when you’re trying to focus on your business and there are also monumental things going on in the world, I believe that contributes to some of the stress and some of the burnout, because we’re trying to juggle now focusing on our business keeping it moving forward and at the same time, having concern for others in other parts of the world and what’s going on.

And I think, it is a factor, the rest of the world is a factor in burnout. We have blinders on oftentimes as entrepreneurs and we’re focused on our business and growing our business. And that’s sometimes, without paying attention to what’s going on around us, but what’s going on around us does have an effect.

It [00:01:00] certainly does. That’s for sure. Like burnout is a real problem for many entrepreneurs and developing strategies for reducing burnout is critical. If you plan to drive your business forward I wrote that obviously before the whole Ukraine thing and all that sort of thing, one of the things that can be absolutely devastating to entrepreneurs is you’re doing everything right in your business.

And suddenly this external factor happens. Whether it be a war, whether it be a pandemic or whatever it is, this external factor occurs that you have no control over. And it suddenly blindsides you. Like how do you handle that? Let me share with you a story that happened to me. I was it was back in the noughties and one of my business.

And everything was just like, it was the late nineties. Everything was going absolutely brilliantly. Like I just raised millions of dollars with venture capital and the venture capitals be paid in torches. And so you got a couple of million dollars and then [00:02:00] another million dollars and so forth like that as you met targets.

So we met all that targets and I was so excited and I put my hand out to our multinational corporation who invested in the business and they said, I’m sorry, we’re not actually going to be paying. And it completely blindsided me. I said what do you mean you’re going to pay you’re contractually obligated.

And they said, yeah, we know that. But we’re actually merging with another great big multinational conglomerate and we’ve allocated $300 million with, of legal fees to handle these small sort of ventures. And Lori number 423 is happy to speak to in six months time. And the business plan was basically run your cash down to close to zero, and then you get your next traunch and so forth and eventually go on it completely blindsided me.

And like you expect, you just don’t expect the sort of. And I remember hearing the news for that. And I’m [00:03:00] looking at a 20, it was a 23 people in my staff and everything like that. And they’d been absolutely working themselves to the bone to achieve the targets. And what’s herself with deals with television shows, major television shows.

We had all sorts of things was happening. And I looked around, I thought, what am I going to do? I like, I couldn’t plan for this. And it was a real shock to go through that experience. And in the end, ultimately we had to close that business down. Like you can’t. Instantly feel multimillion dollar halls, as much as we wanted to and had the support of some smaller shareholders and they use this wasn’t possible.

So we had to close that business down, but it was an educational experience. There’s entrepreneurs. We could be doing everything right. And the business could be like right on track, right on a business plan, but something comes along and [00:04:00] completely blind Sargent, and it’s something you cannot, it cannot plan for.

But more than that is, how do you handle that experience? And I must admit in my own sort of personal journey across that time, as we were sorting out what are we going to do and all that. I I’ll never forget. I went along and had this picture of myself going up in the elevator, into my office.

And each day I put my head down and I was working 15, 16 hour days at this stage. I put my head down and I’d say the words into the breach on outcome. In other words, I was about to be the bullet put into the gun and I’d put my head up as a, the lift as the elevator stopped at, I take a deep breath and add a weight and it’d be like going into like chaos.

And it was a soul destroying experience. And the pressure was so intense, particularly from [00:05:00] people who watch you had. Like staff members or be executive team. They thought that as the CEO, you’re supposed to have all the answers as entrepreneur, you have all the answers to this situation and I didn’t have the answers.

It was just like, wow. Like it was one of those things. And so I would have ended up having as until we made the decision to wind up and everything. I’d have staff members sitting in my office continuously. Some would take advantage of it and say, I know you really need me. Therefore, I want to get, see if I can get any more money out of you.

And I want to pay it up front and all this stuff, all sorts of things were occurred. But the thing I found was difficult was handling the internal dialogue within one. That internal dialogue. When I finally at the end of a long day, jumped in the car to [00:06:00] go home, or actually more than more cruelty to the car, sometimes I’d have energy that time and to get into the car, hit him on the way home and the plague of questions.

And like I said, that internal self dialogue was quite difficult to handle. And I remember fondly coming through all of that. When we made the decision as as shareholders and everything to close the business down, you end up having an enormous number of questions around yourself. And I realized that stage that I was going through I wouldn’t like to say a time of depression because I wasn’t depressed, but I was definitely becoming very introvert and looking at my, and focusing on the core of who I was in order to survive the experience.

Some of you in the audience right now, maybe you’re saying, wow, [00:07:00] I can relate to that. And some of you are saying thank goodness I haven’t been through that. And I have to be quite blunt. I pray. None of you have to cause not an exciting experience where you go from hero to zero from one day to next.

But if your personnel and you say, look I’m about to go through that or have been through that. Then please put your hand up. We’d love to invite you to the stage and hear from you. And it’s times like this as entrepreneurs, we need to gather around. You may be in the middle of going through that right now and the pressure of it all.

And the sense of failure is beginning to hit you. That sense of can I really keep on going or it could be that you’re just completely exhausted, whatever it is. It’s something that we here in this room, the complete entrepreneur, like I said, can gather around you. And [00:08:00] we’d love to hear from you too and hear your story.

And sometimes that could be as therapeutic as anything else. And that doesn’t mean you’re a failure at all. It means you’re on a different journey and you’re on a journey going forward. And what happens after those events? That’s the most important. So please, we invite you to put your hands up. We’d love to hear from you.

So Jeff, have you experienced anything like what I’m talking about there? Because I find that as I talk to entrepreneurs, there’s so many that have actually experienced exactly something similar to what I was sharing about. I think more of burnout as what I was thinking of tonight, when I saw the topic and just, definitely what you pointed out about external forces.

That’s life, right? We never know what’s going to happen in the next moment that could change our life dramatically good or bad. So that’s life, but it’d be great to hear tips of how people deal with burnout. I think one thing that is important is to get over. From it, [00:09:00] sometimes that’s physically.

So taking a walk, doing exercise getting the blood flowing, getting that serotonin going is definitely a way to help reduce burnout when you feeling it. And then the thing that I’ve struggled with personally had never been really good at is really stepping away, taking a real vacation when you really are disconnected and not focused on the business and doing it in a way where you recognize, what things don’t necessarily fall apart.

If I don’t answer that phone or respond to that email or take that call or meeting, the business continues without you. Most of the times, even though our minds tell us, oh no, I can’t. I can’t step away even for an hour because everything will fall apart. The truth of the matter is if you’re setting up your business properly, it won’t fall apart.

If you step away for an hour, a day or a week vacation. So it’s important to. Break away and it’s hard to do. Yeah. So true. What you said there, I shared a [00:10:00] story of a crisis instance because I was thinking there’s some people in the audience right here, maybe going through a crisis right now. And they’re in the in their own businesses because of something, ultimately it was not their fault, whether it’s like the pandemic, wherever you crane or whatever it is, but you’re dead.

Jeff, there’s the other side of it also, which is that workaholic nature that most entrepreneurs have. And it’s not necessarily a crisis, but it’s the endless grind grind you out. You get to, you finally get to one day and get the, oh my God. Can I really keep on going, can I just keep on turning up and can I go along and make another phone call only to be told?

No. Once again, like it’s that grind, which is really what burnout ultimately is. The crisis is a different type of burnout and it’s more like you flamed out. But burnout can often be that grind, but anyway [00:11:00] it’s really great to have you guys here on the complainant entrepreneur.

We’re talking about the topic of reducing entrepreneurial burnout. And I want to share with you across this out. Some of the things that I do now to reduce burnout, even though I work incredibly hard, like what are some of the strategies I’ve put in place in my life, but just before we do so and Carrie it’s great.

Let’s say that you’ve put your hand up and love to hear if we carry on this topic. So welcome to the stage. Thank you for having me up. I’m so glad I stumbled across this room. I love the topic. My name is Carrie. I am a first time founder that co-founded a tech company with my daughter who is also a first time founder.

And just because we like hard things to do, we’re also, non-technical people in a technical business. What I will say is, has a former HR executive. This whole grind is way different. It’s hard. It’s probably, it is. It’s harder than [00:12:00] my corporate job, because it’s my thing. And the tip I want to give people is please don’t let social media and TV and movies, fool you.

This is something hard. This is truly like eating an elephant. And you really do have to go one bite at a time. And it is easy to say oh, take off time when you can. And all of that. But if you’re raising money and have other people’s money involved and your money involved or whatever, it’s hard to do, but you will come to a point and you’ll know is different from everybody.

When that three days, five days, one week. We’ll actually make your business better. And so it’s just hard. It is hard to fathom because you have, we have investors. So we have, from angels to family offices to VCs and they are awesome. Great. And nobody has ever called me and said, Hey, you better not stop working.

And we want [00:13:00] to see you fall out. But at the same token, that people want to get something back from their investment and then you have clients, then you have the technology. So I just think it’s great to take a deep breath. And as I believe Jeffrey said, it may have been you Michael, that you know what your business is.

If it falls apart, especially if you’re after maybe that three-year milestone and you leave, then something is wrong with the processes you have put into place. And the other thing that has truly saved my sanity and my daughter, sanity, we realized. Three years ago, it’ll be four years in December and that’s how clear I can see it, that we have options.

We are educated women. We now have added entrepreneur to our background. We are storytellers. We are, we have options. So don’t be afraid of failure. It’s guess what failure would make you kick in another option? And you’re always worth more than what you think. So if you go about this, knowing that you have [00:14:00] options, you know that your life is not just killed at one particular swim lane of your life.

And so really appreciate the opportunity to share that and what a great room. And it reminds me to take a breath, so I will do thank you so much for having. Oh, Carrie. It’s great to hear from you. Let me tell you, I think it’s like how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time and show true? The thing I love of amazed with movies and I love movies is they quite often the, you see the the hero or the heroine or something like that, going away their business.

And then it says six months later and I’m thinking. Yeah. It’s six months later. Cause a movie, but that character had the live there six months. What was that going to be like? Yeah. And it’s just so true. So Carrie question for you, if I can come back to you what’s some things you [00:15:00] do to be able to handle that six months later type time period of time.

Oh, it was the, it’s the grind of the business. What’s something that you do to keep yourself energized in your business where you can be, become really focused and continue to press onward to that point where you said there’ll be that week where it suddenly gets it, it just takes off or something like that.

Thank you for that question. And I think it is about setting milestones. And celebrating them no matter how small they are when we look back. And again, I always talk about we, because my daughter is my co-founder, like sometimes today in the middle of the grind, it’s what have we done? And what have we been doing for this past five, six years?

And this is crazy. But then when we started looking back, guess what we won, we also order 37 to 38 black females to ever raise a million dollars plus in VC pre-seed we [00:16:00] have clients from Salesforce to Babson college, to Kauffman foundation, and we have been able to employ people, a small, but mighty team.

And during COVID we made a pivot that other people couldn’t by taking our product from in-person to virtual and hybrid, and now is rocking. And sometimes when you’re working so hard, even though you’re swinging the bat and you’re hitting home runs, you forget to keep up with the score. And we were noticing we never celebrated anything, like whatever it was, it’d be like, yay.

We did that. And keep on going. As an HR professional in manufacturing, where many times I’d go into turn around events or something that needed to be done, you can only stay in fifth gear so long before you will burn out yourself management teams and profit. And so I had that experience and background to say we gotta [00:17:00] start celebrating.

And, again, may not be able to fly around the world, but we got to start doing that. And because I have a family outside of just my daughter, a husband and adult child, it has to be a way not to isolate myself from them because then you’re messing up the family dynamics. So you just have to be intentional.

But I do think as entrepreneurs, unless you’re on the cover of fast company, you don’t really oh, that was nothing. Getting a new client. I really needed 10. We always. Make the things that we do seem lesser up, but that’s really part of the journey. And more than anything, what I tell people, what really, when you get on here, it’s no joke.

It’s a journey. And really, if you are at the five-year point and still in business and at the six year point, I’m hearing people now, I’ve been telling me where we are. It takes 10 years to get to where you need to be. You’re where you think you should be or where your company is like just renown.

So you got to [00:18:00] come in here, mentally thinking long game, but also being smart enough to know, Hey, you have options getting out is one of them. And if you’re burnt out, you’re not doing anybody any good. And I just think sometimes we run so hard. We forget the fundamentals. Thank you for asking. Yeah. Carrie, look, I think you gave some really great advice to many of us here which is celebrating.

And take the time act to celebrate the wins. And it’s so often as entrepreneurs, I think we live in the future. So much that we go along and get a new client on board or something like that, rather than celebrate. Hey, we just got this new major client on board. We’re looking at where’s the next client coming from straightaway, w we’re not living in the moment we’re living in the future.

And I know that’s a day dry hat I personally have where I tend to live in the future rather than the present. And I’ve got to keep on pulling myself back and they could, as I’ve got a great wife who reminds me of to do that is to come back to the present and [00:19:00] realize, what the team needs to celebrate.

That way, not just you, but the team needs to Jeff just came back to you on that is this resonating what Carrie was just sharing about with the whole aspect of celebration of what does it mean for the team and everything to celebrate some of those win wins. And did you, have you found that it is dramatically changed the mindsets, so it reduced Burnett?

I think, recognizing accomplishments is really important. Acknowledging the team is really important to help prevent burnout amongst the team. There’ve been many studies and Carrie as an HR professional, Prior to your entrepreneurship journey, you probably know this better than I do.

There’ve been studies that show that people at work appreciate recognition more than money. Like people want to know that they’re part of a purpose bigger than themselves, and that their contributions are being recognized and appreciated and taking the time to [00:20:00] celebrate those accomplishments, not just for you, but for the team and for the company as a whole is going to be something that will contribute to reducing burnout, because someone’s going to feel burnt out if they’re slogging away in their mind and working and never feeling like they’re making any progress.

If you’re rowing in a boat in the middle of the ocean it’s hard because you don’t see any progress. Gage your distance. You don’t see that shoreline coming closer and closer. You need to make sure that everyone sees that shoreline sees it coming closer and sees the progress that not only the company’s making, but sees what was their contribution to that progress and knows that the rest of the team acknowledges and recognizes that contribution.

Yeah, so true to do that is to really recognize the team. And that’s the issue. Quite often, I find myself when I actually get more of a bang at a recognized team members and I do about celebrating something. I’ve done myself. I get as an [00:21:00] entrepreneur, I get so excited when I see a team member make a particular goal or achieve a, even a personal milestone or something like that.

And I love rejoicing with them and celebrating their success. And I actually find that energizers, I just that more than anything else that the other thing I want to come to Mario in a second Marriott the other thing is I find that quite often entrepreneurs are their own worst nightmare and we meet to learn to cut yourself some slack.

And it just if I could only just work a little bit more than then my business will turn around or it’ll become successful quicker and all that sort of stuff. If I could only judge, if I could only. And that’s and you ended up working, it was a no all work and no play makes the entrepreneur a very dull person.

And there’s nothing like [00:22:00] talking to someone who’s who still has that passionate in fire. And that, let me tell you that will quite often help you sell whatever your business is faster than anything. But if that passion of fire has been gold, because you’d be working just ridiculously hard for an extended periods of time, then that passion that fire won’t come out.

Yeah. So it’s cut yourself some slack. It’s okay. So you take that break. And so Katie to go along and take some time out at times, it’s okay to sit down and read that science fiction book or to go and watch that movie. It’s okay to do that. Yeah, whatever it is that energizes you. It’s okay to do that because ultimately your business will benefit simply because you’re becoming more energized and you’re not on that road to.

Anyway, you understand the complete entrepreneur. We’re talking about [00:23:00] entrepreneurs and reducing Burnett, and it’s a very common thing that happens too, to be quite blunt with you. Very few entrepreneurs do not hit the wall at some stage along their entrepreneurial journey. And they either struggled to get through it or they learn from others and so forth.

And that’s what this room is all about. So if you were in the audience stage, say, boy, if I got a story to tell, share with you guys, then please stick your hand up. We’d love to hear from you and on the meet. Tom want to jump across to Mario. It’s great to have you on the stage. Love to hear from you and your thoughts on the topic of entrepreneurial Burnett, Mario.

Hi guys. Thank you, Micah. Thank you, everyone. Appreciate the way this talk was started about our chronology and what was going on currently in the world. And we do recognize Robins . Really for me, the issue is a major thing is a major thing really? And I’ve struggled with too many times with us.[00:24:00] 

I really get to walk, and I do really like pulling out birds. I always like encouraging my. Always take your weekends. Always take her breaks in short, in our workspace, one a of 10 in our workspace. We have chairs. We have that we have checkoffs. And we get to play games.

We can during breaks and because I had my first degree in physics and we have a couple of my classmates also from physics while we, me, and I’m a technical founder. And because I get to walk a lot because I software from scratch before we started adding people. And I think I still have love for physics and science.

So I ensure we old conversations about metaverse about about measurement problems. Could you guys equation? If my team member is a feisty, if I notice you feel tired and you’re struggling to walk, I usually say, go take a nap one hour. It will kill you. It’s better than you just keep up there. Now I turned the shadows [00:25:00] advice.

I can get people energy going on, but it truly is. I really don’t. I don’t really have the time or the courage enough to just step out of walk myself. Because at the end, when we close from the office, I just changed locations. I call them and I opened my systems and I’m working again. So it’s always an exchange locations, but what I do to, I have myself, I do tech.

I play harshly. And and because I read books, I could just Mido in other conversations that just would try to clear my head plus new car and and all that to keep the courage. But I think one key thing outside all these, you can do personality for yourself. Taking milestones taking short milestones like carriage.

I said, take short milestones and celebrate them. We can’t have perfect software in a similar way. We can’t have perfect solutions. So if we wait to build everything out and never celebrate anything, Then we will lose the energy and our momentum to keep going. [00:26:00] But when we release updates bits by bits and we see that people love what we’ve released, it keeps us going.

So one key thing I like to do is immerse the entire team into what we are solving, let them follow the news, let everybody discuss a current challenges. Let us see together collectively why we are doing what we are doing. And someone who believes in doing it, building a very good product. And instead of.

Having a shabby product and making so much nice about it. But I see one to ensure that the entire team agree that we are taking them months to build a lot and not to advertise because it is very important. If I don’t see that collectively, I think there could be a case where there is a collective Barnard, even in that scenario.

So I think it’s just a couple of ticker milestones, encourage people to rest. Don’t be too tight up. I always tell them room is not built in a day. And even if we have all the resources we need now, we [00:27:00] would not build room in a deep, secure weekend rest. And so it’s. Yeah, Mario. Why once again you’ve given us so many things to think about is rest is so important.

Take some time out to play, celebrate with your team, have milestones, all fantastic words or advice of how an entrepreneur can reduce the burden on not just of themselves, but also of their team. I love the fact that you have dots and checkers and things like that in your workplace yet where people can just chill for awhile.

And I think that sh show important. And as an entrepreneur, what are the things I have learned? And by the way, I should come back to the fact. I love the fact that you’d love physics on right there with you and learn about quantum computers and everything of that. It’s just that just, I love it.

Good one for that. I think one of the things I’ve learned is [00:28:00] to take some time out every single day for myself, and that’s become a critical part of my entrepreneurial journey. And what do I mean by that? One of the first things I do when I get up in the morning is I go and sit on the couch and I’d have a time of inputting into myself where I read a chapter of of and I just think about it for awhile.

And I meditate on that and I think, what did I learn from this? What I learned from this, that I’m reading. And I just pause my life at that point of time and I’m more focused on what am I learning about me? And then the next thing I do is I then look for something I’m interested in. And I’ve I’ve a deep intellectual curiosity about a lot of different topics.

And I guess, look at something, read something, or see a YouTube video or something on that topic. [00:29:00] This doesn’t take an enormous amount of time, this whole process, but what it does is it begins to energize my thinking for the day. And I, you wouldn’t believe this, but I find that constant daily input into myself not only carries me through the day, it’s through my very hectic and busy days, but it also keeps me energized.

But more than that, what happens is that it’s trained my mind to view problems from different perspectives. And when I hit a problem, my business, I can tackle it rather than just tackle it head on. I might tackle it from this. Why because I’ve spent that time really thinking about issues in life way before this thing even existed, or I’m reading something from another industry that don’t think I can use the solution they used in this situation in my [00:30:00] industry.

And it’s been really valuable doing that in reducing my level of stress and spend that time really meditating on what what I’ve just read and things like that. Yeah. And it comes to you self Olivia, just on some of the things that are being shared here. Love to get your thoughts on some of this on reducing entrepreneurial burnout.

And just what you think about this. And what’s being shared by say carrier Mario Jeff and myself. So Olivia, welcome to the change and it’s good to have you here as one of the models. Thank you. I think you’ve all touched on really important points that they all fall into the category of self care, which is really important.

But I think we haven’t mentioned the fact that once we get all rested, we may go back to being burned out burnout to the burnout stage because we’re not changing behaviors. So I think a very important point is to be [00:31:00] aware of what triggers or drives you into that state to basically start being aware of your own self and how your body and your mind reacts to stress or pressure and stuff like that.

Because once you figure those out, you can start working on unlearning, unhealthy behaviors and relearning behaviors in a healthier way to. Basically try and avoid getting to that point again. And that starts with changing our thought patterns. The way we expect life to be like, you mentioned perception and perspective, it’s like you are always thinking of the future maybe, and that’s not healthy for you because it gets you to an anxiety emotional state, which is not helpful.

So I think being aware of the way you react or you behave around certain like environments or moments or results, maybe you are going through very negative results and you are [00:32:00] not aware of your reactions that are leading you to burnout. So I don’t know. I think it’s important to be self-aware of these situations.

And also, I would say three things around this, be patient with yourself and. I think these things will help you on a daily basis if we are working in a very under a lot of pressure, because entrepreneurs really don’t really have much time. So be patient with yourself and others, for example, your team, trust yourself and trust your team as well.

Things take time and it’s important to trust and let go of the things that you can’t really control and work on communication. And that is regarding communication within your team and also like how you communicate with yourself. And this goes back to the thought part path sorry, pattern.

Like, how are you talking to yourself about the situation you’re in right now? How are you? Are you celebrating [00:33:00] those moments? Are you lifting yourself up instead of bringing yourself down when you, when things go wrong? I think these things are helpful. On a daily basis to change those behaviors that lead us to that exhaustion because pressure failure and stress is always going to be there.

It’s more up to us, how we approach and deal with it. Great point. Olivia I love that you mentioned self-talk because that’s such an important contributor to stress, to feeling burned out. You know what we tell ourselves about what we’re doing, what we tell ourselves about the progress, our businesses making or the progress we’re making can really change your entire attitude.

And if we can, and I struggle with this often, but if we can learn to improve ourself, talk about business and about our startup as an entrepreneur that can go a long way [00:34:00] towards reducing that feeling of burnout. So I really glad you brought. Yeah, the really good points, Olivia, I completely agree with what Jeff just said.

Just there. I think the what are the keys you shared was how do you look like you can re-energize yourself, take a break or take a few days off even a week off, but have you stopped going back to the bad habits or you just going to end up in the same spot again? And that’s a really interesting question.

I know for myself is it takes six weeks for me to actually be the, in a good habit or a better mindset. A classic example was I hated her. Hiking was one of those things my wife wanted to do, go for walks and all that sort of stuff. And do some exercise. A non-member quite a number of years of Cody is now to try to get me to come out with her.

Now I would do anything I could possibly do to get out of doing that. And when did I say to myself, this is not [00:35:00] good. This is something my wife likes doing. I need to change that and it’s going to, it’s going to energize me. So I had to learn to change my thinking around it. And it’s like I said, it took me six weeks whenever she said, do you want to go for a hike or a walk or do some exercise?

I trained myself and through absolute determination. And I said, yes, that sounds great. I would love to do that. And I got up right away now. I love how. And I love going for walks. In fact, it’s one of my pleasures in life now is I go for a walk because it gives me time just to think and ponder and that sort of stuff, as I’m walking along.

Yeah. It’s the same thing in your business. There’ll be things in our businesses which will send us down a spiral. And sometimes it’s more about a thing. And our approach, those issues. Then it is about the actual activity itself. And so [00:36:00] we put a change, I thinking, and at some times it could be just grim determination to do yeah, so I love the fact of what are you going back to your bad habits? Or do you need to change your thinking? And that’s something that as entrepreneurs we need to really look at in our own lives, do we talk about our clients in a positive sense or that painful in your client?

I know in my own company we bend negative. Talk about clients, no matter how painful they are. Why? Because we didn’t want to develop a mind. That even at Cortez, most painful client is would you ever want to create a negative mindset about that? We wanted to create a mindset of, we need to work out a better solution for that client.

Yeah. And it’s it’s something that is entrepreneurs. It can be quite challenging to do because you’re trying to discipline your own thinking on the journey, but just on, on some of these things, and I’d love to be able to get your thoughts on this. Jeff and Olivia either of [00:37:00] you is fine. Is that, do you find that being an entrepreneur, whether you’re an entrepreneur inside an organization or out there by yourself or something is that also as well as developing business, it’s almost like a journey of self discovery or you’re discovering so many things about yourself that.

It’s quite often, if you’re in some big corporation, you wouldn’t have the opportunities to discover those issues about yourself. You didn’t realize you had those talents and skills and things like that because they were never tapped into say a big corporate. So coming back to yourself Jeff or Olivia, I don’t mind who wants to pick that up either of you?

Ah I don’t agree. Michael, that that these things are limited or that kind of self-discovery is limited to entrepreneurs versus someone working in a company. I think entrepreneurship is not just literally starting businesses and being a founder. I think entrepreneurship is more of a mindset, right?

And you [00:38:00] can have an entrepreneurial mindset as an employee. And I’ve had that my entire career. I’ve never, from the time I graduated college. Never thought of myself as an employee, even when I was in a low entry level position, I always in my mind was a piece of that business and contributing to that business as a partner, even though technically I was nowhere near a partner, I had no equity.

I was getting paid the minimum wage, but my mindset has always been an entrepreneurial mindset. And I think it’s important now more than ever to have that entrepreneurial mindset, because every one of us is the CEO and the entrepreneur and the founder of our own careers right. Of our own paths. And that mindset can carry forth.

No matter what job you have or what position you’re in. And it’s really important today because we move around a lot today, more than ever, especially now post pandemic with the whole work, from home [00:39:00] situation in the great resignation and all the crazy things going on in the world around us.

The days of getting a job when you’re in your twenties and turning that job into a career and staying with one company for 45 or 50 years, like my grandfather did those days are long gone. That doesn’t happen anymore. People will have 10, 15, maybe even more different jobs during a career today. So you have to have that entrepreneurial spirit, that entrepreneurial mentality, whether you’re a startup founder or whether you’re an employee in a big organization.

So I think those items of self discovery that you referenced, Michael happened through challenges. Anytime as human beings, we face any sort of challenge, physical, emotional business. We have the opportunity to grow from it and to experience self discovery. Look, Jeff, let me tell you, you are so right.

And what you just shared just then. And I think you nail on the head that [00:40:00] we’re all entrepreneurs of our own careers. And it’s not just that person out there, but you could be working in an organization. Like you said, to have that mindset, it’s an entrepreneurial mindset of self discovery and things like that, which is this, that you’re writing that, but Olivia coming back across to you.

Yeah. I D I agree. I, 100% agree. I think we’re all entrepreneurs at heart and it’s more of an attitude, but I do want to point out like some differences that I’ve experienced myself between being an employee and an entrepreneur, like practically speaking. I think there’s two types of development that.

Or growth. So you can experience and corporate world or as an employee and the entrepreneur world, I think in a corporate or employee world, you are able to explore and discover the same amount of information about yourself and you’re telling your skills. But I do think that in the [00:41:00] entrepreneur world, you start building like a well-rounded skillset because you do things that no one else is doing and you have to whether you know it or not you have to take on some, let’s say I’m in the creative world.

So I have to do my design work. But I also have to do the admin work and I’m going to mention taxes because we’re in tax season, but things that I would have never thought of as a business owner, if I was working. As an employee, I do think that there are two different types of pressures in the corporate world and entrepreneur world.

So you basically discover and explore at the same level about yourself. But I do think that you develop different types of skills in those two different, like working worlds.

Yeah. Thank you very much for that. And put, Olivia, let me tell you, once again you’ve given us a lot to think about that’s for sure. Yeah. Just, I was thinking of a list of things that, to [00:42:00] help entrepreneurs that are really struggling and whether you’re an entrepreneur within an organization or running your own business, and it can be almost lonely, even though you’re in a crowd, it’s one of those situations.

And I think the first thing. The thing about is you’re not alone. And the fact that you’re here in this clubhouse room proves the fact there’s an entrepreneur. You’re not alone. You may feel lonely at times in what you’re doing, but you’re not actually alone. And as a part of that and I know Colin one of the other moderators who isn’t able to be at today would often say it’s very valuable getting a coach, a business coach, or some confident you can go along and share with it’d be open with and get a different and fresh perspective from and that’s helps reduce that internal potentially negative dialogue.

And. That’s to me is his absolute goal. To be able to have someone you can share with, if you have a co-founder and sometimes it’s great. Just to go with, to have [00:43:00] times maybe sharing a drink or some of that with each other about your dreams about where this, where the business is going to go to reflect if your business been going for a while, reflect on the journey you’ve been on at remember those early days, like I sometimes wonder what it would be like being like Jeff Bezos at remembering, starting Amazon out of his parents’ garage.

And he looks back now on Amazon and I wonder what it was like for him, but speaking of column, It’s great to have you here. The last few minutes of the complete entrepreneur, we’re talking about entrepreneurial burnout and we’ve covered a lot of material here and this be some some great thoughts from people coming up from the state.

So what’s your thoughts on this, on how have you avoided entrepreneurial burnout in your career? Because you’ve done successful at successes on entrepreneurial startups. [00:44:00] Michael, I don’t have a lot of time. My phone’s about to burn. But let me just say this in the last 24 hours, I plot probably slept about three or four hours.

If that I don’t even know if I slept during those hours, to be honest with you. A company that my partners and I have built for the last 20 years is based out of Nikolai for Ukraine. And late last night I was climbing a bed and I heard the bombs were dropping on Nikolai life Ukraine. And it, it made me reflect a little bit when I was on the plane, I flew up to Canada because we we we’re working on trying to get the refugees from our office into Canada.

But I was reflecting on the fact that I couldn’t change this. I can’t change the fact that Russia decided to attack Ukraine. And we’ve invested, years building a company. It was very successful development center, but we do have offices spread around the globe, but we’re about 90% concentrated in this one city in Ukraine.

And it just made me think about, and I hear your topic today and I missed it cause I was on the plane, but there are things we [00:45:00] cannot control and I have to let that go. And I’m telling you, I felt like curling up in a ball. Like I’ve done many times in my life and getting into my bed and just ignoring the world.

And I think we’ve all been there. And we experienced it again today. This is probably the third time in my life. My company’s been decimated by government decisions or actions that are not part of what I have, a part of what I’ve done or anything I could have done. You go back to the.com crash for many startups that were taken out.

Then you go back to the housing crisis of 2008. You go back to the pandemic and now you have the Ukraine invasion. It’s just unbelievable. And what, when entrepreneurs put up with then emotionally, what we’ve gone through to to create a successful. And then have it devastated or destroyed within, within a day or two it’s unbelievable.

Yeah. Colin, my thoughts and prayers are with you and your team and everything [00:46:00] that you’ll do. You’ll move heaven and hell in order to be able to do something for those people. I know that’s the sort of person in your eye. And it’s a very tough time. I was actually talking to a close partner of one of my businesses.

They’ve got a Ukrainian development team and they’re going through exactly the same thing where the bombs are dropping and they’re trying to rescue their team and get them out of the ass. He’s like that. And it’s it’s to me it’s it’s where how can I put this in the words? It’s where business is translating. And it’s been translated by humanity. And yes, business is important, but, and entrepreneur entrepreneurs, we know that it’s important, but you know what, there’s something actually transcends business and it’s times like this.

And it’s the humanity of us reaching out to other people, other humans who are going through absolute hell. And it’s a difficult that’s right. It is. And the one thing that we’re focused on right now is the people. And we said [00:47:00] that, our top priority is get people to safety, get them to Poland, get them to Ukraine, get them to the United States, start to get them to the United States, get them out of Ukraine.

But we do have an office in Leah Ukraine right on the edge. But even that we don’t think will suffice. So get them to our us office, get them to our Canadian office. What can we do to help our people first? And then what can we do to help protect the. And and I think for now, for that for it’s, it’s like for us it’s like a mission right now.

We feel there’s bombs dropping around our office there. This is insanity. And so what we need to do now is just focus on our people and take care of them first. I think that’s a word of wisdom for all entrepreneurs not just ones who literally got bombs dropping on their office, which is absolutely horrific, is take care of your people.

And and your people will help you get through those times you feel like you’re being to Burnett, it’s your team, which will get you through. And I [00:48:00] know just in my own businesses, the number one thing we look after is that. And we’ve had the basic lives on the same team for the past in one of my businesses for the past 14 years.

And the reason why is we look after them and we listen to them and we’re there for them. And just you’re there for your team calling in the Ukraine. And like I said, you’ll breathe heaven and hell. We’ll be able to go along and make sure that they’re okay. And everything. And it’s looking after your team.

And I find the number one thing which will get used through entrepreneurial burnout or others on the other side is a great team around you. If I was to give one word of advice to those people here, it’d be, that is your team is the key, not only to the success of the business, but also the success of you as a person, you’ll learn more from your team and they’ll carry you through those times when you may have taken a few.[00:49:00] 

But you know what the team will be carrying the stretcher

grocery colon.

Sorry. Yeah. Olivia, sorry about that, Michael. I’m sorry. No, I’m just driving here. And I know I have 1% on my power and I’m about to burn out. Literally, I’m going back. I’m going to listen to this episode. I thought this was just an excellent topic. And I don’t think as entrepreneurs that we talk a lot about this, we’ll all have this type a personality and we’re all better than anything.

And then all of a sudden something really goes wrong or we really get exhausted. And we don’t take that reset. We’re all rolling where for these I don’t know, maybe internally we think we’re like superheroes or something. We don’t need that downtime or whatever it is. And I think this is probably one of the most important topics for entrepreneurs.

There was a gentleman who committed suicide. About twenty-five years ago. And that began the foundation of EO with Verne Harnish and Michael [00:50:00] Dell. One of their friends committed suicide, and they decided like why are we doing this? Let’s have people come together and talk about their issues with their business and their personal life and share their challenges because this shouldn’t be happening.

This is a very big issue for entrepreneurs and really happy you took it. Yeah, thank you for your thoughts on that and wish you all the best with your team. And also any other businesses here that have got teams in Ukraine or loved ones in harm’s way. Let me tell you what wish you all the best with doing, I know what you will do to try to rescue them and the situation over there, but also for our businesses, it’s not just limited to Ukraine, there’ll be spill over into quite often in our businesses, whether they’re online, offline, or whatever, because of global events, such as this my thoughts and prayers are with each and every person here and your businesses and that you’re able to go along and weave your way successfully through the sort of geopolitical issues and stuff like that.

Because businesses quite often, the [00:51:00] thing that we’re really focused on that sort of stuff as entrepreneurs and as remember is that team which will carry you through that team will carry you through anyway just as we wind things up just here. Yeah. What I’d like to do is just ask Jeff, what’s going on with startup.club and I know it’s correct.

800,000 members, which is absolutely amazing. But is there anything else that you can just, any tidbits you can really reveal to us what’s happening across the coming weeks? I think the best thing Michael is for people to go over to start-up dot club, which is the website to start up club and sign up for our mailing list.

And that’s the best way to be kept informed of special events and special speakers coming up. We’ve had some pretty notable speakers over the past weeks and months, including excuse me. The author of crossing the chasm, Jeffrey Moore and others. And that’s probably the best way to stay in touch and keep apprised of everything going on.

Yeah. And if I can add tomorrow, Gary Henderson [00:52:00] is joining us on the serial entrepreneur club. It’s going to be a very interesting conversation. He wrote the book, the clubhouse creator, and we’re going to be talking about content creation and how you can monetize your business and clubhouse. So come join us tomorrow.

It’s 2:00 PM Eastern time. Oh, fantastic. Olivia and Jeff. Yeah. A lot is happening. It started up my club. And if you haven’t signed up to the email, make sure you do your just by going to start up.club and putting your email address in there. I know I’ve done that because I like to find out what’s going on and to have people that care caliber, or was it Gary Henderson?

You had mentioned Olivia there is just, it’s fantastic to be able to do that. And what a privilege to hear from those people. I know I was in the session with Jeffrey Moore and I co he caused me to go and read his book afterwards, which is outstanding crossing the chasm. So I would encourage you in the audience here to go ahead and do that.

Next week, what are we [00:53:00] actually going to be tackling? We’re going to attack the very unusual topic and the title is I. When should you quit your business or are you stuck in it for life? Is there a right time to say you’ve had enough? What are the personal science that suggests maybe better to move on?

And then how do you quit? We’ll be taking a look at what that is, is should you quit? Or is it, should you just keep on going that little bit more? And cause there are times when businesses should just cease to be businesses, they longer. So what other times, very unusual topic. I think it’s going to be an exciting time.

I quit, but anyway, I just want to say thank you very much to my fellow moderators for being on the stage, Jeff, Olivia, and also colonies obviously lost these lots of parents and for the speakers have being up here to Mario and Carrie. It was great having you on stage to hear from you.

It’s a real privilege, but more than that, you and the audience, this is why we do what we do. [00:54:00] The reason why I do what I do as a host each week is to be able to hear from people like yourself. And in some small way, we can contribute in a positive way. You have been inspired, discussing these different topics of looking at the complete journey of an entrepreneur, then that is brings joy to my life.

So thank you very much. Don’t forget that the complete entrepreneurs on at 5:00 PM Eastern time next Thursday, and I look forward to seeing you all then. So God bless have a great week and keep safe and keep praying for the people in the Ukraine.

See everyone.