Why You HAVE to Prioritize Rest in Your Window Cleaning Business

Burnout is real in the window cleaning industry. Long days, physical labor, constant estimates, employee issues, family responsibilities, and the pressure of running a business can leave you feeling completely drained.

In this episode of Clean for Profit, I talk about the importance of rest as a business owner and why nobody is going to prioritize it for you. We cover practical ways to find rest even during busy seasons, how to protect your mental bandwidth, and why being constantly “on” will eventually catch up to you.

I also talk about:

• Finding restful moments even when life is chaotic
• Blocking distractions and phone addiction
• The importance of being present with your family
• Burnout in home service businesses

Whether you’re running a window cleaning business, pressure washing company, or any home service business, this episode is for the owner who’s been grinding nonstop and feeling it.

#windowcleaning #smallbusiness #entrepreneur #homebusiness #cleanforprofit

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to Clean for Profit. We're just here on a quiet weekend evening, and I just wanted to share some thoughts that I had with you. In the last handful of months, growing the company so quickly has been a huge blessing. But it's also exposed a lot of weak points in both in my business, in my prioritization of my schedule, which is what we're going to talk about a little today. I guess to say that rest is important, but it's not. So it's like you do work and then you rest. And I think you know, as I get older and busier, I've just realized it's more the opposite than that, than anything else. It's like we rest so that we can work. We don't work so we can rest. Um and because of that, the busiest seasons are when rest matters the most. It seems ironic because you're supposed to be working the most and you probably are. Um, but also the quality of your rest um has to be as high as it pro possibly can, especially in the busy season when it might be as scarce as it is. Um you know, uh I have children and a wife, um and my family needs me. Family needs my presence, not just my productivity, so that's a big a big thing for me. So the first the first point, I have three points. Um and and three things to pay attention to is like prioritizing rest. We rest so that we can work, we don't work so that we can rest. Uh in my case, you know, I have a family that I'm raising and stewarding that needs my presence, not just my physical and financial productivity. And you know, rest is really trust in a way that uh that your life isn't gonna collapse when you step away. And you know, if your business Um is so fragile that you can't either you can't continue operations over the weekend without your presence, or you can't close for the weekend without it being a major problem, then you know, your your work, your business has become a bit of an idol uh to you, and it's it's um it's taken more of your time and attention than is healthy. Uh so prioritizing rest is is super important. And prioritizing high quality rest, which kind of speaks to a point where I'm at right now. The second point is finding rest in the middle of chaos. So, you know, there's lots of times, especially in busy seasons and especially when you have other major priorities where life doesn't allow ideal rest. You know, you can't you can't take all day off and just chill out. There's stuff that needs to be done around the house, uh, even on weekends. Um you know, ideally there's there's there's time to do some kind of a formal Sabbath in some way where you abstain from work altogether, um, and just yeah, have that space for for true rest. Um but even that doesn't always happen. And so being able to find restful moments and states of mind when you're running a business is becoming more and more important to me, which you know, like I said, being able to step away and have a longer break and and true a true rest that elapses for a la is you know, elapses for a little a little bit in time, I'm looking for that, ideally. But when you can't find that, finding restful moments, um, you know, silence or reading in your car, uh for me, prayer is uh a big part of my life. So being able to do that, stepping outside, taking a walk for five minutes, um, and even when you're busy or working, um, kind of doing meditative exercises where you're able to be fully present uh instead of worrying about yesterday or what yesterday brought or what tomorrow might bring. I I think the biggest thing that I do in um during my weekends, you know, this is the first uh time in probably six or seven years that I've consistently committed to taking weekends off, Saturdays and Sundays. Um and it's been really rewarded. Um both in terms of like just prioritizing rest has really gotten me from a place where I feel constantly overwhelmed to a point where um you know rest is non-negotiable for me now. And by the time Sunday evening arrives, I'm ready for Monday to to come. Um because I'm ready to sprint again. Um but yeah, being able to be fully present and not carrying tomorrow before it arrives, I think that's been the hardest part for me is on Sundays overanticipating what Monday might bring, when it's like Monday is gonna worry about itself when it gets there. Um obviously there's things that I have to that I have to push and make sure are organized. I could probably do a better job at doing that on Fridays, uh, so that Monday is ready when it gets there. Um but not, you know, not creating anxiety and a mental load that creates exhaustion before the work even starts has been something that I've been learning to do better and better. Um and the last thing I would say, like the biggest thing for me, um I don't have the actual brick with me, but I got the box that it came in, is um literally protecting your time and your mind. You know, I like gaming. I haven't been gaming as much recently. I've been doing a lot more reading lately. Um, but the one thing that I do not like doing that is super accessible all the time is doom scrolling. Um just getting lost down endless YouTube rabbit holes. I mean, I don't mind a little bit of it on on the weekend. You know, it's Sunday evening right now, and you know, I have some reading to do. I'm for sure gonna do that. It's eight. I'll probably do some reading for like an hour, but to be totally honest with you, before that, I'll probably unlock my phone. But anyway, and and engage in my first Doom scrolling of the weekend because my phone's been locked all week, not just on screen time lock, but I got this this product called Brick. Um it's not sponsored or anything, but um this thing uh is like a uh what is it called? NF NFC chip. Something like that, where it's it's like a little brick. It's like just a little gray box looking thing, basically. We have a magnet uh it m on a magnet on the side of our fridge, and um it locks your phone like how screen time does, like on an iPhone, uh, except you can't unlock it until you go physically to the app, open the app, click on brick, and then tap your phone against the physical piece of hardware. So we were actually at a wedding this weekend, and fortunately I have all of the essential apps unlocked, so you can select which apps are locked or unlocked, but I forgot that I didn't set it to like not brick for the weekend, and it was actually it was awesome. I woke up Saturday, um, and apps like YouTube, uh I don't have Insta. Yeah, actually I do have Instagram, I'm never on it, but Instagram, um, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, uh places where it's not really that important for me to have access to. Oh, and all my business apps uh get locked as well. So I'm like locked out of my business during the weekends. Um and it's great because all notifications are blocked. It doesn't give you an option um until you physically go unlock it. So that's been awesome. Um it's given me scheduled lockouts where I'm not able to access uh work-related apps because that's what happens, man. That's what happens during the weekend is that I will introduce a little bit of work, like I'll get a text and I will read it. And sometimes I'll even respond to it. And it's like, where's the line? You know, because as soon as I engage in that, my mind kind of shifts out of a restful state into a state of trying to be as productive as possible, and then I think of people that I haven't followed up with, and I'm like, ah, I should make like two quick calls, and then I do, and I close $1,500 worth of work that I did estimates for but never closed. And it's like the cycle just goes on and on with work that you could be doing all the time that would be justified if you did it, and people would applaud you for doing it. Um, but ultimately, long term, it's just robbing you of energy that you need to go kick ass during the week. Um, so yeah, I mean the the brick specifically has been super helpful in giving me non-negotiable boundaries um and just removing a lot of pseudo-rest from my weekend, where it's like I don't my average screen time per day is like maybe 25 minutes um on the weekends. Um so that's that's been incredibly helpful. Um, you know, I'm I'm a man of faith, I'm a Christian, uh, and so I'd be remiss if I didn't say that like for me, um rest in God goes beyond physical or mental recovery, um, and I have peace even when I'm exhausted. Um you know Jesus said, Come to me who all who are weary and heavy laden or heavy burdened, and I will give you rest. Um, and I do I do think that spiritual rest carries me when my physical rest or uh psychological rest is limited. Um so I have that faith element as well that I would encourage uh my you know friends, family, anybody listening to look into. Um but yeah, guys, I just wanted to kind of like go over that, like the importance of prioritizing rest, finding rest in the middle of chaos, and protecting your mind, like your physical psychological boundaries when it comes to your phone and your spirit, um, so that you know ultimately no matter what's going on, um, you do have that rest. So um it's incredibly important. It's been a theme of my life for a while, uh, not only because I've started prioritizing it recently, but because I didn't prioritize it for a really long time. Um and it showed in my lack of patience, um, in my inability to think deeply, um, like I used to. Uh, and just in my I don't know, in the way that my mind was organized, basically. Like I feel more at peace and organized when I'm prioritizing rest. And so, you know, there's a lot of tactics and strategies to growing a cleaning business or any business that are really brass tacks. And uh I'm sure I'm not sure, I know we're going to get into that um in in some following episodes. Um, but ultimately those tactics are completely useless if you're not in good health. Uh and you know, along with diet and making sure that you are exercising, which isn't all that hard when you're in this business, um, is incredibly important. So I just thought I would go over that. Thanks so much for listening. I appreciate you guys being here. Um, you know, we're 25 episodes in or something like that now. These are still very much so the early days. Um I plan for this podcast to be a couple hundred episodes long. You know, we will we'll see what happens, but uh, I'm aiming for consistency, and uh I've been able to kind of live up to that so far. Um thanks to you, because a lot of you have been reaching out, uh, and thanks to Dave, uh, who's been such a regular guest of mine that I just really appreciate. Uh, and so, anyways, I wanted to bring this word to you guys. Um, I hope I hope you guys are having a great well, this will publish on Monday. So I hope that you're having a great start to your week uh and that you got plenty of rest uh this last weekend or last couple of days that you took off, whenever that is. Uh, and if you didn't, I hope this gave you kind of uh something worth trying. Um because I really believe that if you employ rest systematically into your life and prioritize it, which you have to prioritize it because it'll just get stolen away from you if it's not a priority. Um I have faith that if you prioritize it, things will pan out very well for you and you'll feel better doing it. So uh thanks so much for listening. We'll see you in the next one.