Welcome to the Virtual Antics podcast, where we help entrepreneurs streamline their business to six figures and beyond. These short, sweet and info packed episodes will inspire, educate and leave you feeling motivated to take one more step forward in your business. So put down your never-ending to-do list, because in this podcast we are interviewing the best of the best in the entrepreneurial world as they spill their secrets to success. This podcast is sponsored by Nandora, the all-in-one software for entrepreneurs to grow their business, with unlimited landing pages, automations, emails and text campaigns, and so much more. I'm your host, natalie Guzman. Now let's get into it. Welcome back to the Virtual Antics podcast. As always, I'm your host, natalie Guzman, and I'm so excited because today we have Michael Leavitt on the call. He is the founder and chief burnout officer of the Breakfast Leadership Network, a San Diego and Toronto based burnout media firm. Welcome, michael. Michael, how are you doing today?
Speaker 2I am awesome, great to be with you today and we had a long pre-show talk so I thought we probably should record something at some point, but I'm really glad to be on the show.
Speaker 1I know that's kind of like. The best is like when you just start a conversation and it just like happens so naturally that then you're like, oh wait, when I'm recording this is even part of the podcast. So that was pretty awesome. So tell us a little bit about you and what you do.
Speaker 2Yeah, I launched my organization back in 2016. Really focusing on burnout prevention and recovery. I wish it was more on the prevention side. It tends to be more on the recovery side, but I used to work in healthcare so I'm kind of used to that. That's just how the nature of humans are is we're kind of stubborn and put things off and then we burn out. It was birth basically out of my own burnout experience, and I had pretty significant burnout back in 2009 and 10 where I had some significant losses in my life, and then, after recovering from that, I determined well, I don't want to do that again. So I learned a lot about me and why I burned out, what are the symptoms and how to prevent them. And then, from there, I started noticing people were going through similar experiences and I thought, well, I've been able to figure this out myself. When I start sharing that knowledge with others to help them prevent what I like to call my year of worst case scenarios.
Speaker 1That's awesome. Yeah, I had that year for me was 2017. I had two kids under two and also had my first parent loss, so it was extremely. I got burnout, had a whole business shift and everything, so I know how terrifying it is. It's like you're a whole different person when you hit. Burnout is crazy. So how do you help people with burnout?
Speaker 2What I do is I help them from where they are. A lot of times, people will say, well, here's what you need to do, here's the steps XYZ and away you go. For me, it's like figuring out where they are and some of the reasons why I became certified in NLP, neuro Linguistic Programming and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy because I kept running against the same thing with people, that their habits, their beliefs. I should do this. This is how things are done. This is how I go about. Life was setting themselves up to burnout.
Speaker 2So let's figure out where you're at right now. Let's get you back to a normal-ish state, whatever that may be, and then from there we can start diving in a little bit more of okay, why did you burn out? What were some of the things that happened? In order to do that, however, you have to be in the right mental state to go through that, as any therapist will tell you, to dig back and start peeling back layers of why you did something can be very traumatic, and if you're not ready to do that, then you probably shouldn't, because it could send you spiraling down a deeper hole. It could bring on anxiety or depression or both. So you have to be really delicate on how you approach it.
Speaker 2But when I went through my burnout and my recovery, one of the things that I did and I did this without a therapist, and that's my one regret, if I have one is that I didn't work with a therapist sooner on kind of figuring out who I am, why I did things, what was you know, what were the factors and the beliefs and all that that led me to burning out and all the other things that I've done in my life. But I did it myself, and what I did thankfully had the hindsight to do. This is when I was going back and I was looking okay, you know what decisions was I making? Why was that important to me? I was doing it from a state of basically childlike curiosity instead of a judgmental you fool.
Speaker 2Why the heck did you do that? That was dumb. Don't ever do that again. You're worth. You know all those negative self-talk things. That does nothing to help you. I approach it like a little kid that's asking Mom, why is this, mom, why do we do this? Why is this, what's this? How does that work, you know? So I was doing it that way and it was a very enlightening experience for me.
Speaker 2And then, of course, you know years later in using therapist and I highly recommend everyone use therapy. I'm not saying that you need it, but you do for a variety of different things. It doesn't need to be okay I'm mentally ill and I need to do therapist. No, there's. There's things in everybody's lives that, if you had some additional insights on it, can help you kind of move forward. So that's just a side note, just I highly recommend it and there's never been easier access to get those types of services.
Speaker 2But back to you know my situation when I was going through that and discovering, okay, why did I burn out? What were the signs that I missed? What were some of the things that I did that led to it. Then I started making the adjustments in my life to say, okay, I'm not going to do that again, I'm going to learn how to delegate, which in your business. You know very well how important that is, because as entrepreneurs we think we're superheroes and we can do everything. And we do a bunch of things that we're, quite frankly, not good at, and if we would have delegated that to an assistant or a VA or technology or something like that, it would have taken less or made things less pressure cooked for us and we could focus on the things that we're really good at, which then, of course, can grow your business.
Speaker 1That's awesome and yeah, delegation is definitely that's. I feel like once I started delegating more and realizing that he did delegate, that is when I was able to avoid burnout, like for the most major part. So now your book Burnout Proof is that more about how to prevent burnout or is it more about dealing with the aftermath of burnout?
Speaker 2For me it's the. It brings to light the signs of burnout, and actually I actually created an acronym for the word burnout. So B is for boundaries. You got to have boundaries in your life Because if you, if you don't say no to all the things, you're actually saying no to yourself, which we all are guilty of from time to time.
Speaker 2The you the first you in burnout is unhappy. You're just not happy with life, you're just overwhelmed. You just don't. You just don't enjoy things right now and things that you used to enjoy doing outside of work, that you love. You cut those things out. The R in burnout is for rhythm. You're out of rhythm, you're not in sync with your life and that's that Basically impacts every aspect of your life, all day and all night.
Speaker 2The an is neglect. When you're burned out, you're neglecting yourself. You're not taking care of yourself physically, mentally, spiritually, anything you're just you're. You're basically abusing yourself, which is not a good thing. The oh is offside. I'm a sports junkie, so you know out of bounds, offside, you're not in the game of life, you know you're not in the play, you're, you're on the sidelines, which is no place for you to be.
Speaker 2The other you and there's upheaval, when you're burned out and your life is just upside down. And is this case that you shared, yeah, that's, you know, two little ones. That's that's like five full-time jobs right there. The loss of a parent I've had, you know, a loss of my parent. You know, my dad passed away in 2020, just prior to all the fun that we've had over the pandemic. So, in a side note, I'm actually as surreal as the sounds. I'm glad he didn't have to go through that, but it was because it would have stressed him out and it probably would have killed him anyway. So he checked out just in time. So, but you know, you know, you just you know your life's in upheaval and life is good.
Speaker 2And then tea for time. We don't do a great job with Using the time that we get allocated to us. It's not something that we can get back once that second is gone. That second is gone and never to be visited again. Unless we come up with time machines, which maybe Elon will do something like that, although I don't know if I'd want to go back or not.
Speaker 2That's kind of a scary thing. I could really disrupt things, especially if you watch any of the comic book movies lately. They're all talking about, go back and time and screw things up. So let's, let's not do that. So I came up with that acronym and it's like it all. It just lined up really well Because that's basically what you know the books about. It breaks down those different things, gives you the signs that I commonly see of people burning out In some steps to prevent them, and because ultimately it's one of those things where it's easy to do but it's also easy not to do, and I think in life that's kind of the conundrum that we face. Taking care of ourselves is easy to do, but we often don't because it's easier to not.
Speaker 1Yeah, and I think another thing is like, a lot of times we, you know, self-care and Adults is just like almost non-existent these days. I feel like we have a really hard time, you know, taking care of ourselves, especially, I know, women definitely. You know, we're always putting our families first and our spouses first and everyone around us first, right, and so one of the things that I loved about learning about burnout was that I was actually doing it for my team and I knew that I've experienced burnout. The step that made me really learn about it and be curious was my team was experiencing burnout and I wanted to prevent them from going what I went through. Um, so even if you feel like you don't need burnout, maybe your team does or your spouse or someone that you love and Just know. Getting that knowledge will apply to yourself, too in the future.
Speaker 2So, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1Yeah, because you that's a number one thing you want to protect your team, because that they're protecting you and so Making sure that they don't have burnout, because my team, our, our Work is very fast-paced. Our clients want things in 24 to 48 hours. They're very complicated automations, websites, funnels. You know our brain. We have a bunch of techies right, so we get lost in our work and so we can get burnout really really easily because we're just doing after work, after work, and we don't eat, we don't take breaks. I know you can't get up all to me if I'm deep into automation, and so protecting my team has been like, really forefront on my mind, because I don't want them, like I never wanted my company to be their life. I always want them to have families. My job is just wait for them to make money, and that's how I love it, and so making sure that they're healthy mentally is super, super important.
Speaker 2Well, I applaud you for that and the world needs more people like you to walk that walk because it makes such a big difference. It helps with their attention. They do their best work because they're harmonized. Yes, it is a way to earn a living, to be able to do the things you want to do in life. But when you're working and you're having fun and you get to create, it doesn't feel like work. It could be busy, you got time frames, you got stressful situations, you got to get things turned around and all of that, but when you're operating at a healthy pace that can be invigorating, it's like, okay, we got 24 hours to turn this around, okay, what do we need to do? And it's everybody gets working together. I can do this, I can do this, I can do this. You put it together at the end of your life. But you also can celebrate that you have the skill set, the team dynamics to be able everybody participate. And when you have that, it shows. It shows in the quality of the work you do, it shows in the quality people you have. It just has this positive ripple effect everywhere and real quick.
Before we go on, you made a comment about you know, obviously being a mom and women bringing out and all of that. And it's one of the things that really upset me and I don't get upset very often about things, but it really upset me is at the pandemic and as people started going back, we started to see a lot of female executives take a step back and potentially even a pretty significant percentage, you know, left their professions because they wanted to return to staying home, taking care of their family and all of that stuff. And it really upset me, not that they wanted to do that, that's. That's incredibly important work and it paves the path of our future to make sure that you raise your children and give them the best opportunities to thrive as they grow up. But what irritated me is that they had to make that choice. They shouldn't have had to make that choice. They should have said yes, I can still be the CEO of this company, but I can also take care and spend time with my family, like you just mentioned. That that's what you want if your organizations. When I started seeing that I'm like no, I don't, that's wrong. No, no, no, no, don't leave, let's read, let's redesign work, and I think that's One of the things that we're seeing right now is, especially with the hybrid versus in-person.
Speaker 2Where's all these other things going on? It's kind of a tug of war, but part of it is we're as a society. I think we're redefining what work looks like and how it is, and I think this is where technology and VA's and utilizing AI and other things can help with that. If we approach it with that goal, it's like here's a pen, okay, what could I use this? For A lot of things, but there's usually one purpose, but it's how do we best use a tool to help us get to the end result that we want? And that's how you can use AI or VA or anybody else. And when you do that and you get those systems in place and I know you love systems, just like I do it's so important and it helps you prevent burnout if you have a system that flows and allows you just to do the things that you're really good at.
Speaker 1Yeah, plus, the system saves you so much time. Yes, you have to invest some time to set it up, but once you're able to create it, you can hand it off to a VA with no issues. And I was telling you in our pre-call I have these trackers that say, when something maybe when we create a piece of content or we have an affiliate link where we create a podcast episode, all these steps happen, and I have trainings above where those happen. I have who's assigned it to and everyone checks it off, and so I don't ever have to bug them on the progress. I have created. The trainings, I created the system and I've handed it off Is the best thing.
Speaker 1I think that's like the number one thing too, with my team. They're not guessing what their job is, they're not trying to figure it out, they're literally just doing it, and that is making them not burnout either, because they don't really have to figure it out. Now, on more of our creative and our developers of course they have a little bit of a different job, but our admin VAs it's just so easy and all they have to do is just follow the trainings and make sure they're on track and that's it, and I don't even look at it anymore. I don't look at half my trackers. I always look at them for the first 90 days. After that, everything has been really consistent and smooth. I just do like quarterly check-ins and that's it, and it's amazing what happens. It's just so cool. It's like it's a well-oiled machine.
Speaker 2You built the infrastructure for that and what's nice about it is, you know I'll use the phrase dashboard kind of thing, where you're like you're looking at your trackers and kind of seeing where things are. The fact that they're also looking at the same system to see where they are makes so much sense, because I see a lot, especially in organizations where the executive suite has this dashboard or where things are, and then the people that are not saying that the executives don't do any work, but the people that are doing the actual work that feeds that information on that dashboard often is a separate thing. So they're not. They're looking at the same thing, but they're not looking at the same thing. And it's one of those bottleneck kind of things where it's like, okay, they should be looking at the same thing. Yeah, there might be more executive-esque type of reports or things that they could look at that the team doesn't need to necessarily see, but it should be a similar thing where they're all looking at the same thing.
Speaker 2So you're all singing out of the same hymn book. It sounds better, it doesn't sound like a second grade band in October after about three weeks of practice. It's, it's, it's it. The sound is is unique, you know. Hopefully they're better in June, but it's just an old kid's story. I remember my kids being in band and, you know, sometimes it's like they're not sounding much better than they did in September. Okay, well, we'll, we'll get through this, just smile.
Speaker 1Yes, yeah, that's funny. So I definitely think everyone should read your book, because we all have experience burnout where we will, if we haven't already, and so I think it's really important to be aware of the signs and how we handle it and all that. So tell us where we find more about you and your book.
Speaker 2Yeah, the best way to find me is to go to breakfastleadershipcom, and there's a blog that I post articles pretty much every weekday on a variety of different business subjects, including burnout. Then there's also my podcast show, the Breakfast Leadership Show, which you can find all the major or on all the major platforms. Pretty easy to find the books available on Amazon. You can get it online other places, but you know for your audience, if they want a free PDF copy, just go to breakfastleadershipcom, slash burnout book and just enter your name and email and I'll send you a PDF copy. And it's a quick read. It's less than 100 pages. That's intentional, because if you're burned out you're not going to pick up a Tim Ferriss-sized book and start reading through it. I wanted people to get get the information that they needed so they can start rebounding from burnout, because it's not fun.
Speaker 2You know that. I know that it's not something fun to go through. So if we can do anything that can help ease their their burnout state, to get them back to a more normal state, we all benefit from that. So just go to breakfastleadershipcom, slash burnout book and get a free copy.
Speaker 1Awesome. I'll make sure I put that in the show notes as well, but thank you so much, michael, for coming on. It's been a pleasure and we'll talk to you all next time on the Virtually Intx Podcast.