The Solution to Burn Out… You’re Doing Too Much! Part 2
Episode 115
In this episode, Dr. Nick and Dr. Nicole tackle the dreaded “D” word that every burnt-out entrepreneur fears. They walk you through delegation as a leader: which tasks to take off your plate, who to lean on, and how your business can thrive with this approach. Hear about Dr. Nicole’s personal AHA moment which turned their business on its head… for the better. The duo will teach actionable items to implement for a successful delegation roll-out to get you out of the burnout rut. Interested in working with IWG? Book a complimentary consult call to learn more using this link: https://bit.ly/IWRcall2021 Noteworthy Time Stamps: 1:39 The dreaded little word to beat your burnout 2:49 Dr. Nick’s analogy of burnout 4:55 How the number of employees affects how your business 6:11 ScalingUp & Dr. Nicole’s aha moment 8:04 How values contribute to your burnout 11:33 The 3 reasons why you’re not delegating 17:35 Helicopter bosses 20:10 Hierarchy in your business & department visionaries 22:06 How to lovingly have the hard conversation 24:56 Accountability
Topics: business, burnout, grew, plates, part, nick, nicole, dreaded
Key takeaways from this episode
- And I say the dreaded little word because for the most part, when it comes to entrepreneurs, business owners, is that we've created something.
- And also at the same time, because you're spreading your energy so far out to so many different plates, you're really not giving the true energy to the plates that's going to, A, serve you, fill you up, and also help the business the most.
- So, today we're really focusing on the dreaded little word delegation.
- So, when we created this business, we didn't realize what it would grow to be.
- So, burnout, unfortunately, is such a huge part of entrepreneurship.
Pull quotes
Imagine if medicine actually looked at you as a whole, opposed to looking at you as a bunch of separate systems.
Nicole to learn more about the top trends in integrative medicine to learn about what the limitations are with testing and what you can do to start your health journey.
But our last episode, we really focused on burnout and how it has to do with really focusing on things that are sucking your energy.
Transcript
I've been all night, no sleep. Imagine if medicine actually looked at you as a whole, opposed to looking at you as a bunch of separate systems. Dive into Integrative Wellness Radio with Dr. Nick and Dr. Nicole to learn more about the top trends in integrative medicine to learn about what the limitations are with testing and what you can do to start your health journey. Welcome back. We have part two of burnout. So, burnout, unfortunately, is such a huge part of entrepreneurship. It really shouldn't be if they gave us better tools. But our last episode, we really focused on burnout and how it has to do with really focusing on things that are sucking your energy. And these are things that are classified as non revenue-generating activities that drain our energy, keep us from being super focused and clear on the big picture. So, today we're really focusing on the dreaded little word delegation. And I say the dreaded little word because for the most part, when it comes to entrepreneurs, business owners, is that we've created something. We created something that is is our little baby. And we created it from the ground up and it's very hard to let go pieces of it. And it's very difficult for us to wrap our head around the idea that anyone could do it as good as us, or care about the business as much as we do. And this keeps us trapped. And it it's doable. It's doable for a while, you know, you can grow when you're still keeping everything to yourself and and not delegating, but you will hit a plateau. 100% is you will cap out and you will feel so discouraged and disempowered and feel like, I don't know, I don't know what to do. I don't know how to get past this obstacle. It brings me to the, I don't know, where, like, it's the person that's has sticks and they're spinning plates on it and they're running around, literally spinning and spinning plates and spinning plates, until they can't spin anymore, and then all of a sudden, all the plates fall. So it's like, yeah, you can grow by doing a lot yourself, but eventually, you hit a capacity. And also at the same time, because you're spreading your energy so far out to so many different plates, you're really not giving the true energy to the plates that's going to, A, serve you, fill you up, and also help the business the most. Yeah, you're you're not necessarily staying in your zone of genius. And it's not realistic that you're going to only work in your zone of genius in the in the very beginning of having a business, but that should be the goal. The goal to get to a place that you have the right people in the right seats so that you can really focus on being the CEO and the visionary of your company. And this was something that it it took a long time for myself personally to realize because both uh, Dr. Nick and myself, we have an integrative medicine practice and we are the doctors. So, when we created this business, we didn't realize what it would grow to be. And we're very grateful that we were just so dedicated to our mission to continue to help people. And we just kept realizing how much we didn't know and how much was out there that could further help people in their health journey. So our our practice not necessarily just grew with people but it grew with technology and it grew with different therapies, and it just grew, grew, grew, grew. But it was always based on the mission. And then the huge issue was you grow, and when you're at, you know, five, six, even seven employees. Things are still very comfortable. And usually there's decent communication, and things are flowing, and you don't need tons of systems and automation. And then you just hit this point, and some people it's eight employees, some people it's 10 employees, but it's in that window. And you're just like, oh crap, cuando everything change? Because now I feel like everything's falling apart. Yeah, and if, like you said before, it's like It should be the goal to be able to put yourself into that zone of excellence, to be able to start delegating those things. But it really, that needs to be one of the goals. And from any goal, you know, you break it down into micro goals. So, you have a strategic plan to be able to get there. So it's, you know, as we start, we're wearing all these hats and we're wearing all these boxes of the flowchart of, you know, maintaining, growing the business. But we have these certain, like, you know, once we get to this level of collections and blah, blah, blah, then it's like, I got to take this hat off and somebody else starts wearing the hat. So it needs to be kinda, like, you know, part one, where you have that block scheduling, everything laid out. Like the it has to be laid out to be able to allow you to start serving yourself more and more as the business grows, not less and less. But I think even preliminary to that is a lot of entrepreneurs don't have tools for to plan for the bigger vision. And that's really where scaling up comes in. Because when I filled out their functional accountability chart, the functional accountability chart is your it's your organizational chart. It's who's doing what in your company. You know, who is the CEO? Who is the uh, Chief of Operations? Who is Chief of Marketing? Who's marketing director? Etc., etc., etc. And when you fill that out, it is a massive eye-opener because sometimes you, as the business owner, you're in 50%, maybe even 75% or more of those boxes. And you just have to understand is you can be a Superman, Superwoman and be so multi-talented and be a hard worker and all the good stuff. But it's not sustainable. It's not sustainable for your mental health and it's definitely not sustainable if your goal is to to scale and grow your company. So you have to understand is that at least being able to use tools that create a roadmap. So, okay, we feel this out and then we realize that you're in more than 50% of the boxes, is that now what is box number one that you want to get filled because you hate doing it? Or it's an energy sucker, or it takes you, you know, 10 times longer than the average person because it's not your zone of genius. And these are things that you just don't know what you don't know. And once you start to use these exercises, it's just these massive lightbulb moments. And you're like, whoa, no wonder why I'm burnt out. Yeah, it's like I mean, everything I talk, I'm probably going to talk about values. And we all have the same. Or they're important. Values are like thumbprints. We all have different values. And when you look at values, it's a hierarchy of, you know, what's least important to most important to yourself. And that can change slightly as, you know, we go through life, but for the most part, it it stays pretty consistent. So, like Dr. Nicole said, it's like, we want to remove those activities that's connected with our lowest values. Because that's, you know, literally wasting your energy, draining us, but we're also not product productive in it. And what's what I love about this is that, you know, understanding that for your specific value to maintain equanimity, I'm not going to go too much into the energy, but one of the foundational laws of energy is that energy is always balanced. And one of the things with values is that there's always an equal and opposite reaction. So, for your set of values, there's someone in the world that has the equal and opposite set of values to maintain balance within the energetic realms of values. And understanding this, pretty much, it's somebody loves to do what you hate to do. Yeah. So they're going to be amazing at it. So whatever you don't like to do, literally, hire somebody because they're going to be so much more productive, that's going to allow your business to make so much more money. Don't waste your time doing things that you hate. Give it to somebody that's going to love to do those things. 100%. So, I want to get into the top three reasons why you're not delegating. Prior to that, I just want to say that we've been there and and I think that that's really important because there's a lot of coaches out there that haven't walked the walk. And it took many, many times of burnout before I was at such an all-time low that I I had to make a change. I had to make a change. I'm saying that on purpose. I had to. Because there was no way that I was going to be able to keep doing it because I was losing my health, my sanity, and and so much more. I really just didn't even have a life anymore. It was I was in a toxic relationship with our business. And and that's the best way that I can phrase it. And I remember specifically reading a chapter by Keith Cunningham, and it was the five things that you cannot delegate as a CEO. And there was another chapter on being an operator. And pretty much saying that you created a job for yourself. You didn't create a business. And I I just like had tears because I was like, oh my gosh. I'm sitting here, you know, thinking that I'm a I'm a business owner. I'm an entrepreneur, and I'm not. I'm I am an operator. I am an employee to a business that is running my life. And I want you guys to know is you can get out of that toxic relationship, but you have to have someone show you what you cannot see. And when it comes to the fact that you're holding on to everything, that you're micromanaging even the people that you have, or you're not willing to give up certain things, or you're just continuing to work harder, harder, longer hours, it's because you have some major obstacles. And that brings us to the three reasons why you're not delegating. So number one is lack of trust. And we're going to get more into this. But lack of trust really comes down to the idea that you don't think anybody can do it better than you. But as Dr. Nick just said, is We think you're all wonderful, but you're not great at everything. And there's definitely people that are out there. I still have to tell Dr. Nicole that sometimes. that are going to be good at the things that don't really light you up. I'm good at a good amount of things. Uh, so number one, lack of trust. Number two, this is a really hard one to swallow. Not having the right people in the right seats doing things right. This is something that we dive pretty deep into as we take people through our deep dive diagnostics, our triple D, as we call it. But it has to be evaluated. And and that was really when I hit that ultimate burnout and I decided to make a change. And I decided to stop being the operator and to truly be the CEO of the company, that was the first question that I was faced with. And it was a really hard question because there were family members that worked for us, there were friends that worked for us. And there were a couple of individuals with, you know, as the question was posed, would you enthusiastically rehire these individuals? And unfortunately, the answer was no for a few of them. And it's really just it's it's it's a hard thing because it's what you have to do for the business. But at the same time, what I realized is that if that's the way that I feel, I don't care how good I am as an actress, that person knows that. That person knows that they're probably capped out for growth in the company. They know that they're not excelling at their job. They know that they're not an A player. Like, it's impossible for them to not know if that if your ques if your answer to the question is, no, I would not enthusiastically rehire them. And that in a way, you can tie it back to trust as well. So it's like, you know, trust, are they going to be able to do their job? But, you know, jumping back to one of the things we talked about in part one is it's not what you do but how you do it is so important. And there needs to be a fair exchange. So it's like, you yourself, you have to be literally filled up as much as you're filling up the business and serving the business. So there needs to be that fair exchange between you being served, your employee being served, as well as the business being served. Because somebody can can do their job, but if they're either, you know, quote-unquote being selfish in a negative way, that selfish isn't always that thing, but if somebody's being selfish more than they're actually giving as well, then it's not a fair exchange, it's not fair for the business. So that's a big part of trust as well. And not to to dive too far off, but one of the amazing books that both Dr. Nicole and I love uh by John Maxwell, The Five Levels of Leadership. So with that, he shows where you are as a leader. And, you know, part of delegating is about being a leader and being able to create other leaders in your company so that they can create other leaders. It's not always about you having to be the one. Mhm. Yeah, I I think that that's huge. And and I will say is that I thought that that was my job. I thought it was my job to to be the go-to person for everything. Um I'm forgetting what book that I I read uh But it was specifically discussing like it wasn't a Jim Collins book, but it was discussing like visionary companies and and game-changing companies. Um the first chapter of the book, they went through a couple of different scenarios of CEOs and how they were being misperceived by their team. And the then they named it. So, the one that I resonated with was, uh, giving too much value. And it's like, in my mind, the fact that I was uh so readily available, but also so involved with every department, was because I thought I was giving value. I thought it was I was giving value by helping the marketing team and helping the operations team. And I'm not. I I was disempowering all of these individuals. I was not allowing them to reach their full potential as leaders. And there was so much that I was doing that was inhibiting their growth. And when I remember when we went away, we went away for over a week, and the office just crushed it. And I came back and everyone was kinda like had this air of confidence and they're just like, things are awesome. And I was like, any any, like, kinda like assuming we had to put a fire out and they're like, no, everything everything's good. I'm just like, oh, I'm like, do you guys want us to not come back? I don't know this went really well. Well, yeah, when when you're doing that, it's like, you know, are you coming from to add value, are you coming from to try to save from doing something wrong? Well, exactly. And I think that's really Is In my mind, it was adding value. But I'm sure that that's really what it was was unconsciously, you're probably trying to make sure that no fires were started, you're you're kind of like the overseer of everything. I think I was just trying to be a major safety net to everything. And when we do that, it's kinda like, when you think about it, it's like those uh, what are the parents that we call? Like, it's um helicopter. Helicopter. Helicopter, it's Like it's literally a helicopter boss. It's it's the same thing. And whether you're a helicopter boss or a helicopter parent, what we're doing is we're disempowering our, quote-unquote, our employees, our kids. And we're disempowering them by not giving them the chance to have that self-growth, self-accountability, literally, it's it's when we give somebody freedom to have the chance to fail. Like, there's no, like, this is a huge thing. I don't use fail or success in my vocabulary. Because I don't I don't believe in either of them, honestly. Failure for me, you can only fail if you don't learn from it, if you don't take action from it. And then, success, I don't think I will ever be successful because once you achieve success, there's no other growth. It's just downwards. So I'm always going to continue to grow. And yeah, I will mess up, I'll screw up, there'll be painful things, but it's not going to be a failure because I'm going to learn from that, get back up, and then evolve forward. Yeah, and and that's going to be uh so we did a webinar a while back that was called Evolve Or Die. Yes, it was a very intense title. But it got most people's attention. And we're actually going to break that webinar down into a four-part uh podcast series because there we talked a lot about that. And it's really not a matter of thinking that a failure is just the end-all be-all or, you know, it it's going to create such an obstacle that you can't get past it is there's always going to be ups and downs, and they're just there to teach the lesson that you haven't learned already. And you have to be able to know that, and it's not expecting the worst, but it's being prepared for anything. And that sets a strong foundation to be able to move on to that next level, because like if we don't have those, quote-unquote, painful, you know, mishaps, we could call failures if we didn't learn from them, it's growth isn't a straight line. You know, it's it's we grow, then we kind of go pla plateau, we tend to go downwards a little bit and go back up. It's it's honestly, it's like if you look at the stock market, it's very similar to that. It's just growth isn't a straight line, we need these resets to be able to set a strong foundation to be able to build upon again. 100%. So we've talked about lack of trust. We talked about not having the right people in the right seats. And the other one of why you're not delegating is lack of systems and accountability. And this is something that takes a bit more time, but you can't create systems and accountability if you don't have the right people in the right seats and if you don't trust the people that you have. So you have to kinda take this as a hierarchy is creating that trust so that you have the ability to know that there are other people that can do the job and they might actually be able to do it better than you. And that you also give your people the ability to be the visionary within their department, especially if they're on your executive team or, you know, they're they're classified as a chief um of some department. So you also want to give them the ability to create vision, create strategy. But once you have that, built into your culture, that you have trust, that you want people to be self-starters, you want individuals to create solutions and not always come to their higher-ups looking for a solution to be provided. These are things that can be embedded in your culture. But if you are someone that you feel like you have a significant amount of pain points in your business or you feel like you are capped out on your growth, you have to also look at your team and do you have a team of A players? Do you have B players? Do you have C players? And understanding that you get what you tolerate. And it's it's a hard truth, especially if you have friends and family that are on your team. But you have to understand it's not saying anything is actually harmful to them. because, like I said before, is if you feel that they're not a good fit or not excelling in their position, it's inevitable that they feel that they're not valued or they feel like they're an underperformer. And being able to have an honest, transparent, and loving conversation with that individual and say, I really want to give you the opportunity to release you back into the workforce so that you can find something that you really like and really enjoy, that you really are excelling in. Like, you're actually doing them a huge favor by having that conversation. So it's definitely not being fearful of it and just knowing that you're doing what's best for the company, but you're also doing what's best for that person. Yeah, and you can't do what's best for the company without doing best for that person. And the great thing is, like, literally everything works in cycles. So it's like that last part of really looking at accountability, if you set up the right structures and systems for tracking that accountability, that's going to go back and build trust. It's not going to build your trust on your employees, but it's also going to build the employee's trust with you because they know that they're actually meeting the targets that you want them to be meet. And if they're not, then it's an easy conversation, it's not an emotional conversation, it's an objective conversation of saying, hey, what's going on? Like, you're not holding yourself accountable. And if you're not holding yourself accountable, that's probably because you're really not into your work. So you have to go through and going back to values, you know, it's like, what are you doing throughout your day that's not serving yourself? And then it's like, Dr. Nicole said, it's like, maybe moving somebody around to a different position, or one of the hard things that I've learned, actually said this to a mentor last year, one of my mentors. He asked what one of was what was one of the biggest learnings that I had? And I said, you know, I don't want this to come out the wrong way, but I go, fire fast and hire slow. And people outside or not entrepreneurs, or even some entrepreneurs, uh, they can judge turnover. And I would say it's not what you do but how you do it. And it's like, turnover can be a great thing because But to everyone they interact with. when you have somebody that's in your business, that's not serving the business, they're a toxin to you. They're a toxicity. And if just like the human body, if we don't remove that toxicity, we don't remember that toxicity out, it's going to start affecting other systems. So, it's fire fast if they're not a good if if you can't put them in a position that's going to serve themselves, where they can serve the business. If that can't happen, then you have to, like he said, lovingly set them free back into the world, so that they can serve themselves and serve somebody else's business, or start their own business. So, it's really kind of coming back to, you know, that trust with the accountability that what each one serves the other. 100%. And, you know, for those of you listening, there's going to be, like, certain pearls that you take away that you're like, okay, I can I can implement this on my own. But number one is, it's okay if you can't do it all on your own. Number two is, this stuff takes time. And it also it's also necessary to revisit things. It's necessary to revisit your personal core values every couple of months, every year at least. To revisit the core values of your company that dictate your culture. To revisit your key performance indicators and your systems of your business. To revisit do you have the right people in the right seats doing things right? So, these are all things that are a consistent and constant evolution. And it takes strategy and it takes experience. So, when we are working with people through the Integrative Growth Institute, you know, number one is that we focus on actually doing diagnostics on your business. We're figuring out, you know, where are the kinks in the chain that are causing you to feel that you're stuck or causing you to feel like your company is not growing or your culture is not in a good place or you have high turnover, or whatever it is? Because very often, we think we have an idea of what the problem is, but all you really know is the pain point. And you don't really know what the root cause of the problem is. And it's interesting because this is what we live and breathe in the integrative medicine piece, but this is something that has just resonated so much when it comes to businesses and entrepreneurship is that you have to figure out what the root cause is, because then that dictates the roadmap of where to start and, you know, what needs the most attention. And we actually, in our private program, we work with both the CEO and the entire leadership team. And we take them through a variety of different assessments that dictate how well they're working together, how well they're communicating, but also their own human design. Like, who are they uh as a leader? Like, from a biological standpoint? Like, how are they programmed? And what is their leadership style? What are their core values? And how do those core values tie to their day-to-day tasks and the mission of the company? When you are able to fine-tune all of these things, that's when you really see the magic happen and you almost feel like there's this effortless positive change overnight. It's just like, oh, that's all I had to do is get my team, you know, like, working together better and communicating better. And now we just doubled our revenue. Oh, cool, I wish I knew that a while ago. Yeah, it's it's pretty crazy. I mean, it's complex, but it's so simple because literally every single pain point, you could easily argue that it's just a breakdown of communication. You know, it's even on the our doctor integrative medicine side of things, it's easily seen that, you know, when we have pain within the physical body, it's just a breakdown of communication from one system to the other. And a beautiful aspect is, you know, taking that understanding, all systems affect every other system. Where it's the same thing in business. Every system of business affects every other system of business. So be able to get crystal clear on the foundation and work through that and have proper communication through connecting the values of the business, through the values of the executives, through the management team, all the way down to every single employee. And like, we even take that one step further, we have very, very small cap group that we work with uh doing it this way, but we'll even take this concept and work with family members of the executive team. Because we know that really the health, what we're bringing the energy into our business so greatly affected just by our personal lives. So be able to work on the physical health of each individual executive, as well as family members, so that we know that, you know, we've all done it. We have a high, high coming from business, it was an amazing day. We get home and literally our spouse just slams us, bringing us back down. So it's the world, I love to talk about energy and balance and we'll get more into it later. But it's it's about understanding the dynamic of business and of your personal relationships and making them both work for you that you can serve yourself, have an amazing life, and have that amazing life both in business as well as in personal life because life really isn't worth living if you're crushing business, but you come home and it sucks. So it's it's really about taking these concepts and growing the individual, growing the entrepreneur, just to be the best version of themselves, so that they can actually have and be able to teach and allow others to be the best version of themselves as well. 100%. And you know, as we wrap up, I just want to say, you know, burnout is a choice. And I chose not to trust my team. I chose to, you know, be in control and make sure that I knew everything that was going on in the business. I chose to continually step out of my zone of genius. You know, I I chose to be burnt out. I chose to work the 100-hour weeks because that's what you have to do to succeed. And I really just encourage you to to take the blinders off and to know that working more hours and, you know, essentially just running yourself into the ground is not what's going to get you ahead. It's all about strategy. Like Dr. Nick said, it's not about what you do, it's about how you do it. So, definitely hop on a call with our team if you want to learn a little bit more about the Growth Institute and how it is transforming the lives of entrepreneurs through an integrative lens. Uh check it out because I really can't tell you how valuable it is and how it's changed our lives. We thank you for being a listener and subscriber to Integrative Wellness Radio. If you're looking to learn more about Integrative Wellness Group as well as Dr. Nick or Dr. Nicole, you can check out Integrativewellnessgroup.com all night, no sleep. Cuz I feel like I'm always dreaming. That's so okay.
Related episodes
About Integrative You Radio
Integrative You Radio is a root cause medicine and integrative medicine podcast hosted by Dr. Nicole Rivera and Dr. Nick Carruthers — two integrative doctors who build personalized wellness protocols from your DNA, minerals, hormones, gut, and nervous system rather than from a population template. Looking for an integrative doctor who reads your labs together instead of in isolation? This is the show.
Further reading
Listen and read the full episode →