The mental struggles of a business owner

The mental struggles of a business owner

Entrepreneurship often looks like matching blazers, revenue milestones, and flawless routines online, but the reality is frequently filled with sleepless nights, putting out fires, and constant pressure. Building a successful business takes more than just work ethic; it requires immense mental and emotional resilience.

In this episode, Jeremy and Nick sit down to discuss the unseen mental struggles of being a business owner. They explore the emotional rollercoaster of entrepreneurship, from the dopamine hits of closing big deals to the deep anxiety of managing daily operations and unpredictable crises. They break down why sustainable growth comes from protecting your mental health, prioritizing your day, and building systems that allow you to step away.

They discuss what this means for business owners and leaders:

• The Reality Behind the Glamour Why the 2 AM cold sweats and daily fire-putting are the unseen side of business ownership, far from the flawless routines shown on social media.
• Managing the Emotional Rollercoaster How to handle the extreme highs and lows of daily operations without letting false expectations and fear dictate your mindset or decisions.
• Slowing Down to Speed Up Why taking a few minutes to step away, let your brain cool off, and release steam is essential for preventing burnout and protecting your personal relationships at home.
• Prioritizing the Day How setting clear daily priorities and accepting that you won't get everything done can help you win the day and leave work at the office.
• Protecting Yourself Why maintaining your physical health, establishing clear boundaries, and taking real vacations are crucial for your sanity and your business's long-term survival.
• Business Owner vs. Self-Employed Why true resilience means shifting from being an overworked individual doing everything to a true business owner who builds valuable systems that run without them.

Whether you're launching your first business or scaling an established company, this conversation offers practical insights on managing daily stress, maintaining your passion, and building a sustainable lifestyle alongside your business.

Discover why the strongest entrepreneurs don't just endure the daily meat grinder. They build resilience, protect their mental health, and never lose sight of the vision that started it all.

Your Brand, Your Back Yard with Jeremy & Nick

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hello, listeners, and thanks for tuning in to your brand your backyard podcast. I'm Jeremy Ren, and I'm the first one. This podcast is centered around being a business owner, removing chaos, and then replacing it with strategy, division, and clarity. How to build a business, but more importantly, how to build your brand in your backyard.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

So if you're just starting a business, rebranding or expanding, or if you're a marketing professional, a business major, or all of the above, this podcast is created for you. So let's dive in.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Alright, here we are. Hello, Nick. How are you? I'm doing well. How about yourself? I'm doing great. It's been uh a great week. We uh just coming off 4th of July holiday weekend, which was lovely uh for us and our family. But what about you? Did you guys do anything fun?

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Yeah, well, it's fine. My my oldest daughter, her birthday is on July 4th. So as I called her in the morning, we were talking, she goes, I don't know why everybody keeps talking about the 250 birthday. It's the 27th birthday. I don't know what these guys are talking about. So I thought that was kind of fun. And we spent a whole day of running from parade over to the in-laws for lunch, over to a party, back, and then back to see some fireworks. And so it was one of those days where you started at about nine in the morning and went till 11 at night, and like, wow, fun day, but a lot of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

Yeah, you know, for me growing up, 4th of July was probably my favorite holiday. I mean, all kids love Christmas, but it was a time to be outside. We would always barbecue like burgers and hot dogs and brats. Uh, we'd all do our own firework display. This is in Oregon, and now, you know, still to this day, it's one of my favorites just because of obviously what it represents. Yeah. But time to get together, celebrate, appreciate our freedom. It sounds like you guys were able to do fireworks, huh?

SPEAKER_01 1:52

Yeah, yeah, we had well, around the rain. So some of them happened on the fourth and some of them happened on the fifth, and just kind of depend. There was big, big kind of rainstorms coming through, so they were trying to sneak in between things. But yeah, there's there's a lot of fireworks.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Yeah, well, the only thing that we've had is fires. So there were zero firework shows probably in the entire state of Colorado, which is sad because you know, monumental 250, uh, and then for the state of Colorado, 150. So it was an all-around, you know, special year to be celebrating. But we still had a great time. Uh, we were up in the mountains in Gramby, Colorado. Huge parade. There was a really cool uh flyover, so that was fun, and uh yeah, it was just great seeing everybody out and celebrating. And then we went to uh the rodeo that night. Uh that's uh that's you're living your world right there, aren't you? Yes, yes, I am. And you'll notice, notice my hat. I had to put it on some red, white, and blue. And then we also got we're knee deep into the World Cup. Have you been following that?

SPEAKER_01 2:50

You know, I have followed it more this year than I ever have in the past. I've never been a huge soccer fan, but it's been kind of fun to watch it this year a little bit and see some of the the I you know what got me involved really was hearing the story about all the Scots, the Scottish people coming over and drinking Boston Dry and all that. And I'm like, I started following that, and I'm like, oh yeah, there's games going on too. Let's check those out. And uh so it's kind of weird how that started it, and then it got me kind of into the soccer a little bit more, and uh, you know, it's been fun watching the USA win a few games and then really kind of drop the ball in the in their last game. But yeah, it has been fun and there's some interesting good stories. Yeah. So who now that the US is out, you got a favorite? Oh, I mean, just from a fan favorite, I I like the Norway team. They they're kind of a fun team to watch. Like I said, I'm not a huge f soccer guy, so if you ask me like who's on what teams, I have no idea. It's a little too low scoring for me compared to what I usually like. But you know, I don't know, it's just it's kind of fun to see these guys go out and the and the fans and and everybody, you know, and I think a lot of people getting a real positive view and take on America versus what they typically see in the media, it's been kind of cool too.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Yeah, absolutely. And and Nick, just a segue here, and this is a perfect opportunity. So we're gonna be talking about the mental struggles of a business owner. And when you take that back to sports and and the mental struggles and the highs and lows of just say the the US team, you know, they they started off strong, you know, they had some great games that they were really performing both on the offense and defensive side. And then think about you know, getting onto that field with uh what team did we just lose to? Belgium. Yeah, and the mental struggles as soon as they realized that they were being outplayed and outmatched. And think about the toll that that takes, you know, that mental toll and how it translates into physical paralyzation, if you will.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

Yeah, totally. I mean, you see it. It's one thing when you play ahead in sports, and then when you get behind, all of a sudden you're trying to press a little bit and things just don't go as smoothly, and and you see this over and over and over, no matter what the sport is. You know, I saw some guy the other day he was playing for the Pirates. I think I had three home runs and 10 RBIs, the most they've ever had, right? I mean, there's no way he showed at the ballpark going, yeah, I'm gonna get 10 RBIs today. It's sometimes things just get easy now to flow, and and that's how it goes in sports. Well, the same thing happens business. Sometimes things are just easy and sometimes they're not. So we wanted to delve in today. There's a couple experiences I had this week that kind of kind of made me think about this topic, and I want to dive into the mental side that that people don't see about running a business. So I think it's gonna be a fun topic, and I'm looking forward to kind of diving in.

SPEAKER_00 5:30

Yeah, a hundred percent. You know, think if if you open LinkedIn right now, Nick, entrepreneurship looks like matching blazers, revenue milestones, and flawless routines. But what does it look like at 2 a.m.?

SPEAKER_01 5:42

Yeah, it's a whole different ballgame, right? It's the the can't sleep, wake up in a cold sweat thinking about what you didn't do yet, or forgot to place that order, or I gotta this person I probably need to have a tough conversation with, or you know, there's just so much. And you know, it's interesting. I was this week I was at my son's lacrosse practice since last week, and you know, it's seven o'clock at night, and the number of dads that had to jump out and take a phone call at seven o'clock because something with their business and you know how to take care of things, and and we all just understood all the dad you could see the moms getting kind of annoyed, but then you see the dads kind of like, oh, this is just what it is, this is just how it goes. And because there's you know, five or six business owners there.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

It happens, it does, and we've both lived it, we're living it. I uh before we hopped on here, I shared an example of myself, and you know, in the middle of the night last night, I just had a hundred things go through my head and kind of strategizing and how do I solve this and how do I increase this, and you know, how do I increase revenue and sales, and we're doing good here, but we need to pay more attention here. We're kind of dropping the ball, right? That's non-stop, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 6:48

Yeah, you know, it's I had an interesting thing this week. I one of the companies I'm consulting for right now, they're a window distributor, they do big commercial buildings, and and and I said, Well, he goes, I got a delivery coming in. I said, Oh, you know what? Let me come over. I want to see how it delivers, I want to see the process. So I show up to meet with him, and and as I said, get there, he's like, Oh my gosh, it's been awful, my hair's on fire today. And I'm like, What's going on? He goes, I don't know. The truck driver got there before he's supposed to, and he almost got in a fist fight with like the superintendent down there, and I don't know what's going on. Then I'm on the phone with the project manager, and he goes, I wasn't ready for this crap. And you know, I was like, I'm dealing with this crap this morning, and I gotta so let's jump in the car and run down there. And and literally, you know, you get you're dealing with truckers and they didn't know where to pull in, and the superintendent, and and they're going through all this stuff, and he was just like, Man, I just don't have time. I'm putting out fires all day long, every day, and thinking about this. There's money going here, and there's money coming here, and I felt great when I made that big deposit from that huge job. But but then all of a sudden, then I write out 10 other checks, and I'm like, Oh my gosh, what am I doing? And he was even saying things like, you know, gosh, last year was a terrible year, and and I hope I can make it. But then he was like, But then I in two seconds later, he was like, Yeah, gosh, I just figured up, we've already done 14 million dollars in sales on the books for this year, and we only did 8 million all of last year. And it went from the you could just see, even within a conversation of 15 minutes, it was like up and down and up, and can I do this? And it's gonna be okay, and we're gonna have a great year. And my gosh, the sky is falling, and you can just see the emotional toll that that was taking on him as he was in that stage of like a successful business, but trying to really take it to that next step.

SPEAKER_00 8:23

Yeah, you know, when you think about being an employee, and we don't want to downplay being a business owner, an entrepreneur. You you think about what being an employee and the struggles that they go through, right? So many people leave employment to seek other opportunities to be self-employed, to be the owner or the operator. And that's great. That's kind of the American dream. And when you think about, you know, the complaints that there's always something, isn't there? So I'm I'm tired of waking up, I'm tired of uh the commute to my office. Not not very many people commute, it seems like nowadays, but you know, I'm I'm tired of sitting in a cubicle, I'm tired of listening to, you know, what's her name, you know, down the hall. Uh, I'm I'm I'm tired of getting told what to do and not enough responsibilities, too much responsibilities, overworked, underpaid, underappreciated, right? And then you flip that. And I guess my point here is nothing's ever as glamorous as it seems or you think, right? And so why do you think for entrepreneurs and business owners, let me share this with you, and Nick, you might already uh know this, but a landmark study by Dr. Michael Freeman found that 49% of entrepreneurs suffer from at least one mental health condition during their lifetime. So why is that?

SPEAKER_01 9:39

Well, I think that and and I I will disclaimer here. I I have been very blessed the way the Lord made me, but I've never really had to deal with anxiety. I just I haven't. I I know a lot of people have, it's a real thing. I just have never really faced that for whatever reason, the way I'm wired. But I think what happens is, Jeremy, that you know, we we get so much into this, like we we tend to find things that we like and we look for all the good things that support our like for that. We tend to take things we don't like and we look for all the supporting things that prove why we don't like that, if that makes sense. So I was literally taking my son to Bible study now. He's 13 years old, he's like, I don't want to go to Bible study. And and I was having this whole conversation with him about it. And I'm like, hey, do you remember when you tried out for the all-star football team this year and you didn't want to, you kind of had a bad attitude the first few weeks because we just got done traveling and you retired, and and then you found all kinds of reasons why you hated football all of a sudden for a couple weeks. The coach, this and that, and you complained about it all the time, and you didn't start then, you got pushed on this back to the second line. And then as the season went along, you kind of changed your mindset and attitude. And what happened? Because oh, I started playing way better. I said, and when it went for lacrosse this year, you were excited about it to start with, and it's amazing how excited where you were to go to practice and all the guys and hanging out. I said, So your mind, even though it's not a muscle, it really is the biggest muscle in our body because it will dictate so much. And I said, So, what you're doing right now is you're focusing on why you don't want to go to Bible study tonight, and you're and if you go into it with that mindset, you're gonna look for all the reasons why your your viewpoint was right. But if you go in with a mindset of this is good, and I want to do this, and and I'm it's gonna be great, you're gonna look for all of the things that are great. And I think that happens to business owners, and it's a long answer, but I think it happens to business owners all the time. And we go through these phases where we're really positive and enthusiastic and we'll look for all the good things in our business, and there's times where we're not, and as employees, it's the same way. There's times when you're like, man, this is awesome and things are going great, and then we'll find times that aren't. And that's when people when they get so focused on the negative, that's when they give up in ownership. That's when they leave the corporate world, right? That's when they look for a different job because they get so focused on the negative, and then they look for all those things that prove their point.

SPEAKER_00 11:49

Yep. Yeah, no, that was great. And what came to mind is, you know, as you were explaining kind of those highs and lows, you know, when we achieve success, whether it's, you know, closing a new deal, a big deal, you know, a continued relationship with a client or a customer, whatever success looks like to you, we almost get that kind of dopamine hit, don't we, in our brain? And that is like putting gas on a fire that energizes us more, that excites us more. My my brain is almost a little bit more clearer. I'm thinking and seeing things differently or proactively, right? I'm engaging, I'm speaking, I show up differently in terms of my confidence and my whole demeanor and approach. I think that's very valid. And you know, one of the things I wrote down here, Nick, is vision, excitement, passion. You add work ethic into that, and that will help remove and separate doubt. But that's the one thing that we cannot lose. We cannot lose sight of our vision. Clarity, right? Get even if we're not being successful today, there's there's small things that we can do to move the needle to get that kind of sort of dopamine hit to keep us energized, to keep us focused, to keep us moving forward. We have to maintain the excitement, we have to maintain the passion, and and most importantly, that work ethic. You know, a little story. When I first started my career, my sales career, I'm more of an introvert than an extrovert. And it was very, very challenging and difficult for me in the very beginning. And I remember, Nick, I was employed to make cold calls. I had to schedule, I was outside sales, so I had to schedule meetings, do presentations, and I'm 19 years old. And I remember literally being like hiding under my desk in tears because of the fear, because of the doubt that I had, not to mention lack of experience. And so, as you were talking about your your own personal story and you just the way that God created you and you don't have anxiety, that wasn't the case for me. Now, what I've learned to do over time is compartmentalize. Like when something doesn't go well, when I'm spending a day putting out fires and I'm annoyed or I'm frustrated or I'm irritating, or maybe I'm not moving the needle. Well, business has to stay business. It is what it is, but I still want my personal aspect and time with my kids and time with my wife and my life, that has to stay completely separate, right? But it's very hard, isn't it? Oh, it's so hard.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

And you know, when you're talking about that, it it reminds me that there's the acronym for fear, right? It's false expectations appearing real. And so how many times as again, this can happen when you're an employee, but it's much less, it happens much less as an employee, right? Sometimes that fear is, well, we're gonna get fired, or I'm gonna get a demotion, or I'm not gonna get a raise. But as a business owner, it happens much more aggressively. The edges are much sharper because there's more on the line, right? There's more financially, there's more personal. We attach our feelings of how we succeed as business people to our personalities. Those two things can be kind of mesh together almost like a skin graph sometimes. They're hard to separate. And so we have to be aware of what's real and what's not. And that's where a lot of people have outside coaches because when you're doing it and you're in the in the middle of it, it's sometimes hard. You can get too high and be unrealistic or too low and be unrealistic, and having somebody outside take a look at that is important. And I want to go back to one other thing, Jeremy, is you know, I really look at success as a business owner like a triangle. There's three sides to that triangle there's the technique, right? You're actually doing the business the right way, and that there's a lot of components to that, right? There's the passion that you mentioned, which leads to the fire and the enthusiasm, and there's the work ethic. So if you some people that go out and they're they're not very good technically, but they have they're on fire and they just work their tails off and they can be successful. And some people have the other side of it. As long as you have two of those three going at all times, you're generally going to be okay. But when it gets down to one of those, only one's going well and two aren't, that's the real danger zone. And so we just want to kind of talk through that a little bit. What are those things and what are those symptoms really look like on a day-to-day basis?

SPEAKER_00 15:51

Yeah, great, great points. So, how do we how do we deal with the day-to-day? You know, we wake up in the morning and we show up in our office or we show up at our desk, and all of a sudden the whole the whole day just blew up. Now I'm overwhelmed. Now I'm stressed, anxiety. Like, how do we break that down to still have a successful day, to stay mentally strong, to be clear, and to be on point? When when I feel like nothing is working, nothing is going my way. And and my business right now, I we are 100% on track, if not exceeding expectations for the year, but yet I feel like I'm not on track. I'm behind. What is truth and what is reality? But how do we break that down? How do we show up and still be productive when we feel that way?

SPEAKER_01 16:39

Yeah, and it happens a lot. I mean, the reality is like I just had something today, something we did, I think, six or eight weeks ago. Met with a potential client, threw something out there, never heard back. I'm like, okay, that's a dead deal. And all of a sudden it's like, hey, by the way, it's been a busy summer, hope you're doing well. By the way, is that offer still available? We want to go forward. We're like, what the heck, right? Really? It took eight weeks to get that simple response, you know. And and I think what happens for me at least, I've found when I can sit down and those days are flying, and you don't have enough hours, and there's just a list of things that never get to. I came to the real realization and got comfortable with the fact that I'm not gonna get it all done today. And so instead of feeling like I'm failing and I can never catch up, I changed my shifted my focus to I know I'm not gonna get all done today. There's just gonna be a pile of stuff tomorrow. So trying to get to that, that's a race I can't win, so I'm not even gonna try to do that race. Now I could then say, okay, I can let's focus on what's most important today and what can go till tomorrow. And that was a mental shift. That was one thing. The second thing, and I I learned this through sports. I had some great coaches along the way that said, Hey, sometimes to speed up, you have to slow down. And so I would find myself literally in the busy of the day where I'm like boom, boom, boom, flying calls, emails, text. I would sometimes we would just stop and I would close my eyes and I would just sit there for like two minutes, or I'd just stop and I'd grab Facebook and I'd flip through for five minutes. And and as weird as that sounds, it that would almost like my brain needed to cool off. I was going so fast that what I would find is by the end of the day, I had nothing left in the tank. I was short with my wife, I was up with the kids, I had no, I'm like, I'm tired, I just want to go to bed. I I just there was nothing left because I never took the time to kind of plug back in a little bit. So, Jeremy, that's what I again it's a long answer, but I think I just learned to take time and slow down and realize I'm not getting it all done. This isn't an emergency, and I get to it when I get to it.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

Yeah, you know, one of the things that's helped me, and this has evolved over the years, and also understanding kind of my brain and how I best operate, you know me, I always have this next to me. And one of the things I really try to do is prioritize my day. And if I can accomplish these things today, regardless of the outcome, regardless of the results, I can't control some things, right? I can't control the stock market, I can't control the interest rate environment, right? But what I can control is my focus, my priorities. So I literally prioritize like in order from most important to get done today to least important to get done today. And if I accomplish, you know, 30%, 40%, 50% of that list today, I won the day. And I can feel good, I can shut my computer and I can enjoy my family, I can enjoy my evening because the rest is gonna be waiting for me tomorrow. Isn't that right?

SPEAKER_01 19:28

Yeah, I think I even took it one step further. I mean, uh, I remember in a previous career, I had a lot of really good days, but I allowed myself once every six months to have a crap day. And it's so funny because all the people in my office, my assistants, everyone's helping out, they would just learn after a little while, they're like, today's the day, isn't it? And I just had a lousy attitude and I was pissy and I was short with people, and nothing was good enough. And I was just, and I go, yeah, I'm allowing myself to just feel sorry and just have a bad day. And I did that like once every six months, and it like reset my brain because sometimes when you try to be positive all the time, you just you you break. And that what I learned is over time, I didn't have to have a day every six months, I need to have, you know, 20 minutes every other day where I just felt sorry for myself and I complain and it's not good enough. And I got in the pity party, and I learned then I got it down to like, oh, I just need three minutes of complaining. And I remember there was time I I called at my time, you know, the the founder of the company I worked for before, and I go, Hey, do you have three minutes? And he goes, Yeah, what's up? And I go, I don't need you to do anything, I just want a bitch for three minutes. And he goes, Okay, go. And I literally just unloaded. I don't even remember what it was about an applicant or something, or this happened, or that happened. And he was like, I got done. He's like, You feel better? I go, Yep, thanks, appreciate it. Have a good day. It's sometimes you just need to be able to give yourself that freedom to say, I don't have it all together. I'm struggling. I had a tough day. I got my butt kicked. I dropped the ball, our team dropped the ball, and then own that and go, okay, cool, it happens. Nobody's perfect. Let's get back and do what we can do.

SPEAKER_00 21:01

Let's look at that through a different lens. And you're a hundred percent right with that, but I think days like that exposes opportunity. When we are being tested and we are being challenged, doesn't good or can good come of that? Like, hey, I'm feeling this way because I've noticed this. This system is broken, this process needs to be upgraded or improved, right? This person needs better training or better support. I'm feeling this way because I see it and I now have identified it, and now I'm gonna execute. Now I'm gonna put a plan in place. Now I'm gonna course correct, if we will.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:39

So it's not all bad.

SPEAKER_01 21:39

Yeah, it's like when you go work out. I mean, you're literally tearing your muscles. You're doing micro tears in your muscles, so they repair themselves and they grow bigger. So if you go through these days, and sometimes it's like, well, I really need to get rid of that employee, or I've got them in the wrong role, or I'm I'm paying, I'm paying them too much money and they're not really worth it to me, and they're causing me financial stress and you know, different things, you start to realize, oh. Okay, these things are like you said, they're being exposed. So if I can go and take that information and say, okay, these things are broken. I've got a program, a system somewhere that's breaking down. What do I need to do? It's just like if I go to the mechanic and he's looking and he goes, Hey, by the way, your right front tire is like completely bald on the outside, and all the other tires are good. That means there's a problem you have with your line, not your overall alignment, but there's a problem with that tire that's causing that. You probably need to get this looked at, right? And so what it does is it forces us to take a real deep look at our business. But that's hard for me because I'm so busy, I don't have time to think about my business. You have to slow down, Jeremy, and just say, no, this is this is an issue. Something's not running smoothly. What do I need to do? How do I need to fix my car, my engine, my brakes, whatever it is? How do I need to fix that? And who do I go to? Do I already know how to do it? I just need to implement it. Do I need some extra help? Do I need to go to people on my team and ask them what's going on? But I've got to fix it.

SPEAKER_00 22:57

Let's talk about the importance of you know structure within our days so we're not feeling like we're chasing our tail. But also how we start the days or how we end our days. You know, what about when you get into the office, you protect the first hour? You have an hour to yourself, an hour to sit down and map out to evaluate the current state of the business. What does my calendar look like today? What are my priorities? Right, just just like I talked about making those daily to-dos. Or if you can't start your day that way, what if you end your day that way with reflection and more of a wind down? How did I do today? How did my team do today? And what can we do better tomorrow?

SPEAKER_01 23:41

Yeah, listen, I I've never been the early morning guy. Uh so I was the guy in college. I'd never open a book until midnight. But I'd stay up till three or four o'clock, literally every night. I'd go to class, come back, take a quick 45-minute nap, go play some basketball for a couple hours, and do it all over again, right? And and so if somebody, if I try to say, well, I gotta be like XYZ person and I need to take an hour to meditate in the morning or to, you know, to read or do this, that I'd probably be miserable doing that. I'm I'm the late night guy. So I use it. Well, you were saying the second half of how do I wind down my day? How do I put things to bed? How do I, you know, do some of that stuff. But some people are in the morning, right? Some people are at lunchtime. I think you've got to figure out whatever does it for you. If it's listening to your favorite song for five minutes, I remember I have previous care I used to do that. It's one song I listened to before training started every week. And I would literally put my headphones in and crank it up to almost the point where my ears were ringing. But that was my one song that got me ready to go. So I walked into that room, I had control and I was in charge. That doesn't mean it would work for you. You have to find your own thing. But I think you're right, you gotta find that time, whether it's five minutes, it's an hour, whether it's reading your Bible, whether it's meditating, whether it's listening to a podcast. But you gotta figure out what how do you release that steam, how do you release that pressure? Because if you don't, as a business owner, you carry that to multiplies. As an employee, it doesn't really multiply, it comes and goes. At five o'clock, the natural steam release happens. You don't take it home. But as a business owner, you take it home.

SPEAKER_00 25:08

Yeah. And I and what came to mind is, you know, with so many people working remote, you know, there used to be that, you know, sitting in traffic or commuting to your office was kind of that mental shift, right? You're you're driving, you're drinking your coffee, you're listening to, you know, AM radio talk shows or your, you know, your favorite music station. But you had that mental shift before you got to the office. Well, a lot of times, and for me, my mental shift goes from I get out of bed, my coffee shop is in my kitchen, and my commute is upstairs here in the office. So it is literally a 30-second if that commute where I've got to turn it on. And that is why I have to sit here before I start my day and plan and get in that mindset. I think about going to the gym. You know, a lot of people want to protect, you know, their workout routine. Well, 6 a.m., 7 a.m., you know, gym time, or maybe you do that during the lunchtime, and that is a good release of stress and tension, right?

SPEAKER_01 26:08

Yeah, and I think ultimately what you have to do is it's it all comes down to a matter of priority, right? And people say, Well, I don't have time to do this, I don't have time to do that. And I've certainly been guilty of that over my career. There's times where I've hundreds of times where I've said to someone, I'm just too busy to get that done. But when I really take a deep look at it, it wasn't that I was too busy, it's that that item wasn't high enough on the priority list. And I just made other things more important to me. That's that's what it was. And sometimes that's because I felt like, well, that's what I needed to do, or the image, or that you're chasing it. And then other times, you know, as you get older, you start to realize, okay, some of those things I thought were really important, maybe aren't quite as important. And and so you start to reevaluate, you start to change those things. So I think we just have to ask yourself of saying, hey, if I feel like my life's out of balance because I'm running this business, but why am I doing this business? If getting to the gym is important to me three times a week, then I just need to say, I'm gonna go to the gym. And if that means I get in a half hour later or 45 minutes later on Tuesday and Thursday, so be it. Right? The world will will not stop spinning, right? And my business will still be there, but I'm gonna be in a better position to actually guide and cap be the captain of my business versus just a slave to it.

SPEAKER_00 27:16

I want to talk about I wrote down protect yourself. And what I mean by that, Nick, is we get so busy or we feel like we're so busy, we're bogged down that we we don't spend time for ourselves, our physical condition. We're on the go, so we're eating fast food, and we justify that, right? Or or we don't eat at all, right? We don't we don't hydrate, we don't drink enough water, we're not we're not going into the gym, we're not doing yoga, we're not, you know, riding our bike, you know, the normal five miles a day that we usually do. Whatever, whatever your outlet is, you have to protect you because that protects your mental release, your sanity and clarity. And so I just wanted to touch on that. The other thing that you just mentioned was balance. I want to shift gears a little bit and I want to talk about balance, work-life balance, and the importance of that.

SPEAKER_01 28:04

Well, boy, I've heard a lot of different theories from a lot of different people on this one. You hear some people saying work-life balance does not exist. Your job is to excel and your life is second. Other people are like, no, gotta live your life first, and that's why you do it. And I think that I personally think it kind of depends what phase of business you're in. There's times where you do have to make those sacrifices and put your the the priority, it's not 50-50, it's 90-10 towards your business. But then there's other times where it could be 90-10 the other way, right? And it's gonna fluctuate through different seasons. I'm always amazed, Jeremy, how many people don't take vacations? They don't take vacations because they don't think they can afford that my business will fall apart if I'm not here for a week or 10 days. I'm like, well, guess what? If you feel that way, then your business is broken. You just aren't you're not willing to admit it. If you can't step away as a business owner, why are you running a business? You're you as an employee, you get a couple weeks a week off no matter what. You're treating yourself worse than an employee. And I think it's so easy again to justify and rationalize these things. So if you're not willing to take some time for yourself, you're gonna get stuck in that game that you were talking about. And and you're gonna always be like when you're taking time off, you're gonna feel guilty for not working. And when you're working, you're gonna feel guilty for not doing that. So you just accept I'm gonna feel guilty all the time, so I might as well feel guilty but doing the things that I want to do instead of feeling guilty about the things I'm not.

SPEAKER_00 29:26

Absolutely. We started a business, we wanted to become an entrepreneur because, again, we have vision, excitement, passion. We want to build something, and it's more than a company. We want to build a lifestyle, we want to provide for our family and pay for colleges and uh pay for weddings, which you know, I'm I'm in the I'm knee deep in that right now, planning my daughter's wedding. That's why we do it. And business should not be the ball and chain. Now, in the infancy, yes, like you just said, 90-10. You know, look, when you when you start a business, or there's key key time frames where you've got to ramp it up. I think it's very important to get your family on board. Like right now, I'm building this, and it is go time, and this is massive opportunity. But what that's gonna mean for the short term, and here's what it's gonna look like, but here's what it's gonna mean for us in the long term, and the importance of getting that family on board and sharing the vision.

SPEAKER_01 30:18

Well, I think Jeremy, that not only applies when you're starting a business, that also applies when you're getting ready to expand a business, or you're getting ready to downsize and maybe phase out of a business and exit. What's that look like? And so I think that that happens multiple times throughout your career. You may go, okay, hey, we've gotten pretty good and we've got a good lifestyle and think we're used to doing certain things, but we're really we I think we want to take it to the next level, and that means maybe acquiring another company or adding another crew on or whatever it is, and that means we're gonna have to maybe cut back, we're not gonna buy a new car this year, we're not gonna, you know, do some of those extra things because we're gonna invest, you know, a hundred thousand dollars into this new program and we're gonna take that out of our personal and what you know, our personal finances this year. Um are you on board with that? And let's look at what does this mean down the road, right? And so it doesn't just happen in startup phase, it happens, and every time there's a significant change in your business, you have to kind of reevaluate and get people on board that are they'll go with you and we'll be your cheerleaders.

SPEAKER_00 31:18

Absolutely, not just family, but staff included, right? Why are they here and what is the important role that that they're gonna play in the success of building this company? And again, the short term versus the long term and promotion, right? So often a lot of what we have to do is promotion.

SPEAKER_01 31:35

Yeah, I mean, we could do a whole nother call as we get right, probably wrap this one up today. We do a whole nother call about the recruiting side. About you talked about getting your employees on board, and so much of that is okay, this is the vision of the company, this is what we're shooting for. Are you getting the right people into those seats that will help you get there? Or are you just getting somebody that has a good looking resume and they're you know, they're available, you know, that type of thing. So and there's so many nuances of running a business that you just don't think about until you're in it. It's kind of like being a parent, right? Until you're actually a parent, you can look at other parents and you're like, Do you have kids? No, and you're like, Okay, cool. And then you talk to somebody else, like, yeah, I got four. You're like, ah, cool. We've we've been in the we've been in the jungle together then. We know what it's like, and how old are your kids? And you can kind of relate to different things. Business owners can relate to other business owners because we've been all been through the same struggles and different shapes and forms. We've all essentially been through the same meat grinder over and over, and so we've come out okay.

SPEAKER_00 32:31

Yeah. I think as we wrap up here, one of the things that we know to be true is the roller coaster isn't gonna stop. And we're gonna have good days and productive days, and we're gonna have uh not so good days and not as productive days, and we're gonna have days where we have to put out fires, and we're gonna have days where we're signing record deals, and things are going well. But I think it's just so important to never lose sight of the vision, excitement, and passion. Keep working for what you want, but protect yourself, protect your time, protect your family, the mental health part of it. Plan your days, whatever that looks like, have outlets and work towards eventual work-life balance. And uh, I think when we think about this, true business resilience, Nick, isn't working 80 hours a week. It's building a system where the business can survive while the owner thrives. Any final thoughts before we wrap this up?

SPEAKER_01 33:25

Couldn't agree more with that. I mean, I I I think I would just say this: you have to ask yourself, do I want to be a business owner or do I want to be self-employed? Because those are two different things, and we've talked about this before. You can have a great lifestyle, make a lot of money being self-employed, but you have to do everything. When you're a business owner and you what you're striving toward is having something that can ultimately run without you, that's when businesses become very valuable and you want to cash out on a business, go to an investor and say, Oh, by the way, I work 10 hours a week and we did this much in volume. And all of a sudden they go, Yes, we want to buy that business. Of course, you go and hey, I work 80 hours a week and this is how much we're making. They're like, Yeah, but nobody else is gonna work 80 hours a week to do this job. So, what you do is you build the value of your business by learning these systems and letting other people help you along the way.

SPEAKER_00 34:12

Yeah. Well, this has been great. Uh, I want to thank our listeners. One of the things that we've added is our YouTube channel. Uh, so feel free to watch and follow there. Like and subscribe. And we also have the ability for fan mail. I want to ask our listeners to to chime in on this episode. What's self-talk? What boundaries, what systems in place, what do you do to maintain positive mental health during highs and lows of both business and life? And that's the thing. We haven't even talked about, you know, managing the business and some of the struggles and the highs and lows with business, but also, you know, family and you know, all the the outside, you know, other aspects of just life that that life throws at us. And so it can be cumbersome. But this has been great. Hopefully, you've taken some nuggets away. We're gonna be keep we're gonna keep coming uh with more topics, and uh, we're having a great time with this. So, Nick, it's great to see you. By the way, I like your indie 500 hat.

SPEAKER_01 35:09

Yeah, that's I I told you before the thing, I said this is a hat that's from this May, and it looks like it's about 20 years old. So it's become my work hat, do stuff around, sweat through it, get dirt on it, who cares? So that's the one I threw on today, and that's that's what we gotta go with. So uh anyway, guys, it's been been uh fun today, and look forward to seeing everybody in upcoming uh episodes. Take care.

SPEAKER_00 35:29

Thanks for listening to the Your Brand Your Backyard Podcast. I'm Jeremy Rent, and I'm Nick Mathean. Be sure to like, follow, and subscribe. And tune into the next episode. More great content coming soon.