EntreLeadership - Top Strategies for Dealing With Leadership Burnout with Dr. John Delony

Episode Date: July 5, 2021

All entrepreneurs experience burnout—a time when you’re overwhelmed and feel like you’ve reached the end of your rope. It happens. But you don’t want to get stuck there! In this episode of The EntreLeadership Podcast, you’ll learn how to recognize the signs of burnout and what you can do to deal with it. In our first segment, we sit down with Dr. John Delony, a bestselling author and mental health expert. Listen in as he discusses the bricks (aka stories) we all carry around in our backpacks (aka brains) and how we can work on setting them down. Then in our second segment, George Kamel sits down with Ramsey Solutions Chief Creative Officer Luke LeFevre to talk about his struggles with burnout and the tools he uses to get through it.   The EntreLeadership Podcast Dr. John Delony's website The Dr. John Delony Show Burnout by Dr. Emily Nagoski and Dr. Amelia Nagoski Learn more about EntreLeadership Summit. Lonely at the Top by Dr. Thomas Joiner Ramsey Solutions’ website Learn more about EntreLeadership Elite Coaching. Schedule a call with Tim, our producer.   Learn more about the offers from our EntreLeadership Partners: BELAY  |  Gravy  |  Hite Digital   Want expert help with your business question? Call 844.944.1070 and leave a message, or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When you hear the word burnout, what do you think about? Physical exhaustion, mental fog, maybe just straight up apathy? As a business owner, you're probably just used to pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and powering through. We've all heard the saying, when the going gets tough, the tough get going, right? But how long can you keep this up before you hit a breaking point, before it affects your personal health, your business, your family, and your team? From the Ramsey Network, this is the Entree Leadership podcast, where we help business. leaders grow themselves, their teams, and their profits. I'm your host, George Camel, and in today's episode, we've got two interviews on the business driver of personal around this topic of burnout. In our first interview, I sat down with Dr. John Deloney. John is a leading voice on relationships

and emotional wellness, and he's one of our Ramsey personalities and hosts the Dr. John Deloney show. Then in our second interview, we've got Ramsey leader, Luke Lefevre, on how to avoid burnout from a personal experience of his. Up first, we've got our conversation with John. We talked about burnout, what it is, what it's not, and how to know if it's happening to you. Now, burnout has become a word that people throw around a lot these days, but what does it actually mean?

We hear it, like, I'm burnt out on Chick-fil-A, I'm burnt out on whatever. It's kind of become this catch-all for, I don't want to do that anymore, or I don't like that anymore, right? at the end of the day burnout is when your body says enough i'm out right so burnout can be that deep exhaustion not when you're tired but when you're just exhausted right when you're absolutely just fried or when you have that feeling that nothing's helping right there's no amount of work that

you're doing is going to get you out of the situation that you're in or when you're treading water as hard as you can when you're fighting as hard as you can you're trying to run as hard as you can your body eventually just says, dude, I'm out, right? So think of it as your body saying, I don't care how hard, how tough, or how would have snap into a slim gym, bro. I'm out. There's no amount of pull yourself up by the bootstraves. It's beyond just an exhaustion. It's not just I'm tired at the end of the day.

Yeah. And I don't have brain power. So there's just, I mean, it was a, I'd call it a shapeshifter book for me. It's a book by the Nagasaki sisters and called Burnout. And it was written for professional women. I got a lot out of it. It's a marvelous book, and here's why. I've always known emotions to be signals, right?

So somebody comes in, you get pissed off, you get angry, you get frustrated, right? You and I are offices are right next to each other. I'm real messy. You're very neat. And so you walk in. Offices is generous. They're just desks. Our cubicles and our workstations.

Makes me feel like we're on a spaceship or something. Like, go back to your workstation. That's probably an overstatement, but it is. and you come by, I see it, you have to inhale. Like, it's hard for you to walk by the station because it's a wreck. It's embarrassing. I'm pretty OCD, pretty clean, and you are mad scientist. I'm not that, right?

So your emotions are a signal, right? That guy needs to clean that up. That's driving me crazy. That's out of order, right? And I always know about the trauma response and how that kicks off a casket of chemicals. The Nagasaki sisters, they pointed back to that emotional, that emotion, right, that signal, that gong that says, hey, you need to get connected again, you, something matters to you, you're frustrated, you're angry, whatever, that that has a cascade of chemicals that your body kicks off. It dumps you

into fight. It dumps you into flight. If you can't go anywhere, it dumps you into freeze. And you've got to let that cycle run its course or all that cortisol and adrenaline, all that stuff stays trapped in your body for days and days and days, right? And it begins to poison you from the inside out. Think about trying to clean your pipes with draino. You pour them down your pipes. You know, I know you're a big plumber guy. I've done it. Have you?

Yeah, once or twice. Have you? Okay. So you pour drano in your pipes and it can clean it out, right? If you just every morning got up and dumped draino down there and every night dumped drain it on there, in short order it would burn a hole through those pipes. That's what happens to our bodies, man. If we don't cycle this stuff through and we just sit on it and sit on it, sit on it,

and that's burnout, man. Our bodies just say, hey, we're out. You clearly don't know what you're. doing, you can't drive this thing, we're putting into neutral and we're going to pull over. So what causes people to get to that point? Are there certain things, you know, as a business owner that, hey, if you get into these kinds of patterns, you're probably well on your way to burn out. Hmm. I think it's not honoring that cycle. It's not honoring that system. It's thinking that you know more than your body does. It's thinking I can, you know,

push beyond limits. There is no, I'm not tethered to reality when it comes to how little sleep I can get, what kind of foods I'm putting my body, how much I think I can do, how much I think I can earn and accomplish and achieve without coming back to Earth, man, without paying the pipe on the other side of that teeter tire, right? So you can have seasons where you can run really hard, but if that becomes your life, if you try to live life with, I'm just going to be on 24-7, 365. I'm going to deal with my kids when I get to my kids. My wife, she'll figure it out. My husband, you know, he's going to be there no matter what. Man, it's going to be a price to pay. And it reminds me of your talk that you did on-ray leadership summit where you were talking about

bricks and stories and the bricks in our backpack. And it feels like that kind of stuff as we carry it around can lead us to that burnout. So unpack what do you mean by bricks in the backpack? So, man, you know what, George? I'm putting this together in real time here. It's an Andre exclusive Watching it happen live, folks Yeah, you're watching, there's a smoke start coming out of my ears here. Man, so stay with me on this.

So you had these stories you carry around. A lot of them are imprinted when you're a kid, right? That coach told you, hey, you can't do this. You suck at this. Or you were abused, or your mom, when she got mad, she just quit talking to you. And you're a seven-year-old wondering, what is so unlovable about me

that my mom won't even talk to me, right? or your dad would grab your shirt and scream at you. In this house, we don't miss free throws, you know what I mean. Whatever the thing was, the stories that you were born into, or you wore the wrong color in the wrong neighborhood, or you didn't have the right shoes in the right school, or whatever the thing was, right? These stories become your biology, right?

They set off alarms in your body to say, hey, you're not welcome here, you're not safe here, you're not smart enough to be here, and, dude, we carry that stuff with us our whole life. And so the analogy that I like to use is those stories become bricks that you just carry it around and most of us don't even know we're carrying them i the the story i told it at entree summit was man in first place for going for a 10 year sweep in the district track meet my high school my senior year in high school i was anchoring the mile relay and i dropped the baton

i've never even seen a mile relay baton dropped it's a slow handoff man we're looking at each other i'm cheering him on and i dropped it and we lost the meet by one point we lost winning a Decade Suite by one point, I didn't realize that here I am 20, 30 years later. And whenever it says, all right, Deloni, you're the last one to go. I instantly think, I probably, I don't want to go last. That's still in there, man. It's so cheesy and ridiculous. I make good money. I got a cool job. It's still in there. Right. So these bricks we carry all the time, that sets us up for what am I trying to do every day to achieve, to solve, to numb those stories that are just rotate that are spinning spin and spin right that are always going and so those

bricks that we carry on all day every day that contributes to this stress cycle that we set off that contributes to hey i got to deal with this employee oh man it's probably your fault it's probably your fault so i'm not going to fire i'm just going to let this cancer just stay here in my organization or you're such a wimp dude i'm going there screaming and yelling and everyone's like whoa back it down right And distress response just goes and goes and goes. I never deal with it. Boom, I'm burned out. Yeah.

I mean, a lot of business is making decisions. And if you're making decisions based on that biology and based on those breaks and stories, that's going to affect your life. And you're going to be striving for this thing over here. And it's going to be hard to make it all match up. Hey, and this is important too. You may have had parents who told you're the smartest thing that ever lived. You may have had a third grade teacher's like, you're a genius. And you may now look up 20, 30 years later you're running a business.

and you are the smartest person alive, right? And anybody who challenges you or says, I don't think that's the right idea. What if we did it like this? Fired, you're an idiot, right? Those stories can over sensationalize as well as undersensationalized too, right? But the thing here is there's always a physiological toll. Your body, to quote Bessel van der Kolk, your body is always keeping the score.

It remembers whether you do or not. It's always getting the environment for someone else is going to hurt you. someone else who's going to affirm what you think about you up or down it's constantly spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning and so you can pretend that's not happening but it does man and so our knees hurt our back hurts we have headaches all that stuff is happening and then all of a sudden one day we're like you know what i don't care anymore i don't care and that's that's the Nagasi sisters they walk through the three the three you know um what'd you call them the three stages of burnout it's that exhaustion that I cannot get up.

A lot of us felt that like, you know, midway through COVID, like, dude, I cannot look at my children. I don't, I don't, eat whatever. I don't care, right? You want to go out in the yard and eat grass, knock your lights? I don't care. Hey, I got eight cases of Twinkies. Eat them all today.

I don't care, right? That's number two is that deep personalization. Normally I'm a caring, connected person. I don't care. There's just an apathy. I don't care. That's the number three is that deep sense of futility. I do matters, man. It doesn't matter what's happening right now. When those three things happen,

you're not yourself, you're disconnected, man. You just think everything I do. It doesn't matter. I'm always going to have a boss like this. I'm never going to be able to satisfy that customer. I'm never going to get on top of my stuff. That's the alarm sounding that you're burnt out. So I want to talk about prevention and recovery. Let's start with recovery. Let's say the business leader's listening. I love you're using addiction language. Hey, you're right on though. I'm spot on. That's perfect. You've taught me well. So for the business leader listening, he was going, oh my gosh, John's reading my mail and I think I'm in that stage or I'm trying to come out of that burnout. What are the steps that leaders can take to start to walk out of that?

So think about the way our bodies are designed to deal with stress. We really got three triggers. We got fighting. We got running. We've got freezing. right so the first two choices are our best option right i'm going to get out of here there's a bear at the front of the cave i'm going to get out of here the second one is hey dude i can't get out of this cave grab a stick it's me versus the bear it's probably going to end well for you but if you're a gangster

fighter like you george you know me you know me well so many fights i get into the third option which is the worst of the three but it's the best you got is body goes into neutral we're frozen that's where your body says you know what that bear's going to come over a gnaw on a leg they're going to take it with them, but we're going to get to tomorrow. All right, that's the goal. And so that's what depression, all right? That's when your body just says, hey, shove all that crap down. We're out. We're going to check out. We're going to get beat up, we're going to survive, right? So think about when you show up at the office and that idiot employee shows up. You can't fire him because I don't know why you pointed to me when you said idiot employee. It was an accident. It was a little bit Freudian.

I kind of my hand just went to you, like one of those watering sticks or whatever. So you can't fire him because we're just printing money and handing out checks and so there's not a lot of people in line for this job right see what i did there that was like my little subtle political dig i'm trying to get better at those um so you can't just fire him or you don't want to deal with it and it sounds cool at an entree like you just fire him it's hard man i've had to fire a lot i don't like it so i'm going to avoid it so boom my body goes into fighting or fleeing and what are our option these days i can't go hit him right he's going to coal hr on me. And if you're a small business, HR is me, right? I'm going to go to jail.

I can't just run away from him forever. And so what do I do? Here's what I do, George. I open up my laptop and I write him up. Or like, I'll send a mean email. And then after I sent my, ha, ha, I showed you email, then I'm going to text my wife about how tough I am. Dude, all of that stuff is still coursing through my body. It's not solved at all, right? This is what I get really annoyed by. There is an entire, I'm just going to make up a number because it's going to help my cause here, an $80 trillion industry. Sounds about right. Give or takeish, self-care industry. You know what you need when you're burnt out a candle and a warm bath. It's going to bring you, but you know what you need? You need to ride a horse.

Actually, that could actually help, so I'd take that one back. But like, it's this whole, you know what you need? You just need some, I don't know, I don't know. some lavender essential oil under your eyelids or I don't know where you put that. That could work too. Listen, entree leaders, don't put estuoles into your eyelids. That's probably going to burn your eyeballs out. I don't know. It's real painful.

But there's this idea that you can just, you know, deal with the surface level nonsense and you're going to get to it. So, just circle all the way back and answer your full question. By the way, if you're wondering, did me and George get any work done to the office? What a journey we've taken just with this one question. Very, very little. So here's what you've got to do. And this is, again, straight from that book. it's straight from this is a this is a research back this isn't just me making this stuff up you first got

to address the meaning of what you're doing here right so if you're a plumber trying to change like i want to change the face of plumbing in america right or i am a hvac person in texas i want to change the face of hvac in texas well you know what their power grid doesn't work super great right now it's so you're probably not going to do that and every day if you're going to work trying to change the face of hvac in texas you're going to do you're going to do that you're going to do you're going to going to get burned out because you're going to realize dude i'm treading water i'm going nowhere so sit back and ask yourself why am i doing this and you may have to readjust your meaning which may be i want to make sure that every person that reaches out to me and says hey i need help they're going to feel honored and dignified and

they're going to get their needs taken care of you can do that right so sometimes it's re-scaling down or rescaling up what your mission is what making meaning of what you're doing and then dude nobody likes this especially in the western world but you got to move your body you've got to discharge this stuff that's why all the research circling back now is saying man you want to start addressing anxiety you want to start dressing depression you start exercise dude go move you've got to move then you've got to be in relationships you've got to have skin to skin contact you've got to sleep george sleep entree leaders listen i'm pointing at a camera and i know most of you're listening to this you have to sleep you've got to sleep it's a reset it's a control all delete for your brain right um you've got to breathe be creative

be grateful live a life of gratitude there's all these things that sound old woo-woo and cheesy and i'm thinking right now there's some dude in kentucky driving his plumbing truck and he's going to pick up some one of his idiot co-workers screwed something up and he's going to fix it and he's thinking did he just say be creative and gratitude what are you talking about dude he's like covered in i don't know like uh that pvc that purple stuff on the connects pvc i love the visual here. I know this guy. Of course we do. And he's saying, what? I've got to be grateful. Yes, you do. I don't have time to go to sleep. You have to. Right. So there's some very basic things you got to do to take care of your body. And then your body goes this, George, it's amazing. It'll say, oh, cool, we're back in control. I'm going to shut off the spigot, man. I'm going to quit pulsing all these chemicals for our body. We're good. And we'll get up and start again tomorrow. All of that reminds me of your hosing off the boots analogy.

When I first heard this, I had no context because I'd never had to hose off boots. I realized that was a very Texas analogy. Very Texas, but I love the heart behind it. So share with the listeners what you mean by hosing off the boots. This is a PG podcast. If you're out shoveling crap all day, you can't take those same boots that you were out working with and walk through your living room. it's disrespectful to your home, to your kids, to your spouse. Like, you got to leave your boots outside and you've got to hose them off because you've got to go back out to work the next day.

The analogy is, dude, you've got to have a process. If you're a hardworking, exhausted, small business owner, you're trying to deal with these yo-yo, like, county regulations and state regulations and people are upset and you're just trying to help people out. The power grid's going out. Our pets' heads are falling off, all of that. man you've got to have a process every day to see workday's over i'm hosing these boots off i'm not going to drag this crap into my house so my kids have to deal with it so my wife has to deal it so my husband's got to deal with it i'm going to clean it off and that goes back to that process that we talked about man that is did i accomplish today what i needed to accomplish what are the things that could

control did i do those things what did i did i accomplish making meaning today do i have an exercise program am i going to reach out to some friends am i going to talk to people i'm going to hug my wife for 20 seconds without stopping. It's doing those things that you know help you be well so you can get up and then go be the dad or mom or husband or kid, whatever you need to be, and then get back out there tomorrow and go get them again. Well, as you're talking about this, it almost sounds like the recovery advice is the same as the prevention advice. Here's the thing. Exactly. Genius. You don't even need to go to grad school, man. You figured it out. The prescription for all this stuff is to create a life with with enough margin to handle the crazy days,

to have friends in your life, because they are, you know, they're the, to use Dave's word, they're the emergency fund for your life. There's going to be seasons when you can't handle it all, right? You've got to have other people in your life. And this myth that, I can do it all myself, you can't.

I promise, I promise, dude. My dad was a SWAT guy and a hostage negotiator in Houston, Texas. The joke I used around here is, I grew up in the place where they processed the leather and then I spent 20 years in Lubbock, Texas. That's where they grow the cows to make the leather. So I've seen it end to end of this imaginary bootstraps. I'm supposed to pull myself up by dude.

It's a myth. It's not real. It can't happen. One thing is going to happen. You're going to crash. And you're going to take people with you. You're going to collapse your business. You're going to burn out.

You're going to drive everyone around you crazy. And you're going to all by yourself, man. And so, yes, the prevention here is create a life that you want to live. Choose to make less money so that you have more joy and happiness in you. your life. Make that decision, man. Drive a 10-year-older truck. It's still going to get you to point A to point B. But if that keeps you from having to redline everything in your life where you don't have time to be around people to to drive, to exercise your body, to read books, to be around people to have a faith community, then do drive the older truck for crying out

loud. You know what I mean? Take one last job, right? So yes, you're exactly right. And you're talking about being a community, having good friendships. Is that the place where a leader can kind of vent when you're feeling like you're heading towards this burnout you're feeling like you're in this stage who's the right person to go to do you there's some really fascinating research on venting and anger it's really shifted the way we think about we being mental health nerds about how to quote unquote express your anger think of it as uh i don't think of it is it's a groove in your brain and if you're angry it used to be hey you need to get that anger out right you need to go vent get that out of there now what we've realized is we're just digging that groove

deeper we are making it more likely that's going to become a default for us so if you feel like i just got vent what it down write it down write it down the things that you're frustrated with write down what you're feeling and then write down things you're grateful for do it all the same time right find a mentor to say hey am i thinking about this the right way or here's some things i'm working through right now but if you go to somebody just be like yeah man you're going to lose they're not going to want to hang out with you anymore and you're going to it's a wrong approach but yes you've got to find people you can say I'm struggling with this somebody who's ahead of you in business somebody who's got something just like you some who's coming up right so you've got you're a part of that whole cycle but you got to

have people you can say dude I'm over my head right now give me some wisdom and perspective on this well I want to do a little lightning round here if you're okay with it I want to walk you through some different scenarios that might connect with the the business leaders listening and they may go yep that one's me 100 percent and you're just going to quickly tell us what to do if we're that person. Can I be real direct? Yes. As direct as you can be, just don't scare me. All right. Let's say you're the owner who feels like it all depends on you to solve the problems. They don't believe that they can ask their team for help and the weight is more than they can carry. You're a bad leader. You probably shouldn't be leading. If you've hired people that you don't trust to ask

input on, then you've hired wrong people. Fire them all and hire new people. Right. If you think you can do this by yourself, you're fooling yourself. This whole thing ends in ash. That's the truth. That was pretty direct. You weren't lying. Okay. How about this one? The person whose successes and failures define their identity as a business owner. And since the business is their baby, if something fails, they equate themselves to being a failure. Man, that's the stories you tell yourself, right? Somewhere along the way, somebody told you your value is in your output or your value is in success. And so Jocco, says it best you got to detach right you are not your wins and you're not your failures you are

the relationships you had on the way you are how hard you worked you are did you cheat liar steel like the character you were on that journey but dude the outcome is the outcome you take care of the process man the outcome happens you can Kevin Durant can practice all day long sometimes ball and go in he shot it right he had good form he jumped high did everything right didn't ball and he go in right it doesn't mean he's a failure and a loser he may have lost that game he's still going to to go to the Hall of Fame, right? Yeah. This one sounds like me.

This sounds like the people pleaser. Yes. One of my favorite things is when you do interviews, you sneak in personal questions. I need this for me, John. Great. What do you do when your breath doesn't smell good and you're at a work event? This is so good. This is me, John.

The person who says yes to the customer at the expense of saying no to themselves and they feel like they can't let their customer down, so it keeps them from doing anything for themselves. Again, that goes back to a story. that somebody told you that you are responsible for taking care of everybody else and you don't have enough value to take care of, right? You're not worth taking care of.

And what happens is you can do that in the short term. You can put other people's needs ahead of your own. That's an airplane that has no gas and it will crash, right? So you have to choose to take care of you so that you can better take care of your customers. Well, you mean the airplane advice has put the mask on

everyone else first and then yourself last. Exactly, right? That's actually the way to make sure everybody dies, right? Because your kid is going to start fussing around and moving. Your customer's going to have, I wanted it like this. And you're like, I'm real sure, ma'am, because I recorded it. It looks like this. I want to change it like this, sir, I promise.

I mean, you signed it. I don't care what I signed. I want to like this. Now you're about dead, right? You got to get a good night's sleep. You got to make sure you're being a good steward of your body, taking care of your relationships. and then when whatever crap comes your way,

you've got margin and strength and clear mind, clear-headedness, you can handle that, man. Yeah. Well, it's interesting if you're trying to help everyone else to the point that you get burnt out, well, then you can't help anyone at any level. Right? And again, somewhere along the way,

that's a common story that we're told. Your job is to make sure I'm okay. It's when parents say things like, you know you really made Daddy mad, or you made me do this, or, honey, if you wouldn't have said that, I wouldn't have got so mad. I'm telling my six-year-old that she's responsible for the emotional intelligence of her grown-up adult parents. That's too much for a six-year-old to carry.

And then she takes that into her business world or he takes it into his small business that he owns. And he believes it's his job to make sure every person around them is taking care of before they are. And, man, you cannot do that. That's a recipe for some serious resentment. It's just, you can end up in ashes. That's right. So George, take care of yourself, man. That one was for me. That was for you, John.

All right, this one's for someone else. For the person. That's code podcasters to this one's about him too. This one's not me. Go ahead. Someone who's maybe they're faced with the reality they don't like, and the mindset typically falls into acceptance. They don't believe what they're not changing.

They are choosing. Summed up, maybe a leader's burning out. They've lost the belief they have any control. in their life. Yeah. That's, you got to reach out and talk to somebody,

right? If you're looking around and realize everything around you feels futile, like that you're just treading water, never going to get anywhere, slow down and back out

and talk to somebody. That's a recipe that you're, I mean, that you're getting hyper anxious, right? You are depressing. You are doing, your body's starting to take over,

right? Everything feels caustic. One of the things our brains do, George, whenever we experience, real fear, think about this, like you're almost in a wreck once, right? Or maybe you were in a wreck. Somebody peeled off in front of you, sidest wiped you. For the rest of your life, there's a part of your brain that is on alert all times in your car for a side swipe. And you

might feel your heart rate go up a little bit, or if somebody, you look out the corner of your eye and you see them coming, you've got to let your heart and mind know I'm okay, right? And you've got to do that work. Well, we talked about community, accountability, friendships, and this one I'm sure you've taken a lot of calls about. This is the leader who knows how to lead people. They know how to get the results, but they don't know how to have a friend. Man, that's me. Right. That's honestly, that's me. I'm an awkward guy. I like weird things. I've got an eclectic mix of things that I love. And I struggle with trusting people, right? That's just a hard thing for me. And so it was about five or maybe 10 years ago, I realized there's no like swipe right app for

35 or 40 year old dudes like hey man I'll someone make an app for that I like the astros I don't want to talk I like not real expensive beer but not cheap like there's no I wear still like my cargo shorts that's true but my shirts don't fit good I there's no app for that right and you want to come over just not talk and then just go home that doesn't exist right so I had to look at the science and look at the mess that was the world around me that I'd created and say man I got to learn how to have friends. And that sounds stupid because we all think you just learn how to have friends. Look at your kids.

You just put them in a room and they just go, but they don't know about judgment. They don't know about what they can and can't do. They don't know about I'm supposed to. They just go play, man. And so I had to learn as an adult. Dude, I'm a person of value. Yes, I'm weird, but so is everybody else. And I'm going to go hang out.

And sometimes it's weird and awkward. That's fine. I had to have people over to my house, dude, and say, hey, I know this is going to be super weird, but I'm asking you to be my friend. I want to be your friend. and they were like, this is now weird. Dude, you just took your weird to a whole new level. But, and I say, that means I'm going to show up in the middle of night.

If you ever need something, holler, I mean, I'm going to show up to your kid's game. I'm not some weird stalker. I just want your kid to know that if you're not around or if something goes on, I'm a safe person they can call. And I'm going to invite you to my kid's games. You don't have to come, but I'd love you to be there. It was just these awkward conversations. And, dude, it was transformational. I'd forward a podcast to a buddy and say, hey, I want you to listen to this and we're going to go hiking.

And I don't know, I just want to talk to you about it. he listened to it man or he said i'm not listening to that stupid thing let's go hiking anyway right so there's just you got to put yourself out there and it's awkward and you get feels like you're getting cut from your junior high team sometimes and someone's like i don't hang out with you so important man yeah especially for the men out there i think they have a real hard time creating deep friendships and getting to that level where they can be vulnerable socialization man it's just so dumb we've got to get over dude it's the you may have talked about this podcast the diseases of despair we're literally dying

we are literally dying. I read a remarkable book by Thomas Joyner. He's a researcher at a Florida State. It's called Lonely at the Top. He just says, if you look across the world in every single culture, men have most of the leadership roles, most of the money, and they lead earth in strokes, heart attacks, cancers. They leave Earth and everything. There's a cost to winning, and it's dying young, right? Yeah.

And so stepping back and saying, what are we trying to do here, man? and a lot of that starts with friendship with getting connected with other people. Well, when you talk about how winning won't make you well, and I feel like that that's very connected to this burnout. But you can be well and win, right? So it works the other way. I'm not saying, yeah, you shouldn't be ambitious and you shouldn't want to buy your neighbor's company or buy your neighbor. I want to buy my, I hope they're not listening to this.

I hope to buy their land too, right? They're definitely not listening. Yeah, so I hope not. I'm going to get like an offer in the mail. It's going to be triple what it's worth. I'd like to do that, right? So I'm an ambitious guy. I want to do things.

But I know that buying my neighbor's field is not going to make me feel better about myself. It's not going to help my marriage get better. It's not going to help me be a better dad. I got to do those things first. And that will inform my ability to go out and do these other things long term, right? Dave says it all the time. Dave Ramsey, our boss says, did I reread that stupid book every year? And the tortoise always wins, man.

And so it's just knowing I got to take care of this stuff so that. I can take care of the stuff not in spite of, right? Yeah. So to recap here, we've got some themes. Obviously, winning won't make you well. Hose off your boots. Friends are the emergency fund for your life. Any other advice that can help the business leaders out there avoid or recover from this burnout?

Burnout is not a thought problem. It's a physical issue, right? So if you find yourself in a situation in a day, which most of us do, that man our alarms got set off you were in a traffic jam and you just were squeezing that that steering wheel tighter and tighter your kid calls you and you just get off the rails your spouse says something to you that sets you off you're in a couple of hard meetings during the day and then a client of yours says hey i'm thinking about putting this back out to bid even though they promised you they weren't right you have a physiological tool you've entered a process you've got to complete that cycle right you've got to go move and be with people and eat right and sleep and go do something creative and go watch a funny movie. You've entered a process whether you want to or not.

You can choose to not complete that cycle and you will pay a physical toll. You'll pay a price for it. Or you can go do it. You're not going to feel suddenly magically better, but your body says, cool, George is back in control now. I'm going to shut the alarms off

because you're good. And you're still going to be pissed off. It's going to be angry. It's going to be frustrated. But you're not going to be burning a hole through your pipes. Well, John, thanks for taking some time today to help our listeners

avoid and recover from that burnout. And thank you for the work you do every day on the Dr. John Deloney show, helping people be well and be whole. Thanks, man. I appreciate you. Let me hang out with you in the Entree crew. As John talked about, your body is always keeping score. You can pretend the aches and pains aren't happening,

but if you don't deal with them, it can really mess you up. So what can you do if you're experiencing physical symptoms of burnout? We'll have a conversation about that right after this. Our second interview is with Luke Lefevre, who's our chief creative officer here at Ramsey Solutions. We talked about how he experienced some physical symptoms of burnout years ago. His body was telling him, stop doing what you're doing. It was 2010, and my wife and I had been down here in Nashville for about a year and a half, I think. I'm going to mess up my timeline.

But we had been down here. We moved away from everybody we knew up in Illinois. come down here starting a new job leave everybody we know and then you're kind of you're just with just with your wife and we had a little kid at the time two and a half she was pregnant with our our second she had just had our second actually and um new job new place and we kind of started to struggle at home so it was stressed at work and it was it's hard it's hard work here you know we're We're working. It's a lot.

It's pushing myself. And then at home we were struggling, too. And I was at work sitting at my desk doing, I was a designer at the time, doing some work. And my friend Tim Newton, he's been on here before. He's sitting across from me and I look over at him and I'm like, hey, is, is something happening on my face? Because I just felt, it felt like tingley or something. And he looks at me and he kind of goes, go, go. Just frightened by you.

And I'm like, oh, no. And so I get up and I go to the bathroom, I look in the mirror, and my top lip has started to swell up. And it was bad, but it wasn't that bad. But it was definitely noticeable. And I didn't know what was going on. I was like, did I eat a bad jalapeno at lunch or something? You're just an allergic reaction? Like, what's going on?

Yeah, I don't know what's happening. And it was like 3.30 in the afternoon. So I was like, well, you take me over to the walk-in? Because in case my throat starts swelling up, you know, I didn't know what was going to happen. So we go over this walk-in clinic and, you know, they don't know what's happening either. They give me this epipen. They're like, I don't know. If your throat starts swelling, stab your leg.

And I'm like, oh, okay. Didn't know. That was how they do it. I don't know. They probably were more professional than that. And so I just go home and I'm like, well, look at my face. And over the course of 24 hours, it kind of goes away. And I'm just like, what the heck was that?

I go back to work, go back to doing the things that I do, didn't stop doing what I was doing and just kind of went back to it and was like, well, that must have just been some bad food or something. I don't know. You did not connect it to anything you were doing at work. You thought it was just like a dietary thing. Yeah. And I didn't connect it to anything going on in my life. It was just, what was that?

A couple weeks later, it was the middle of the night. I'm sleeping. And I wake up and it literally was like three in the morning. And I just feel like my face feels funny again. And so I feel my face and I'm like, what is happening? So I stumble out of bed I go in the bathroom And I flip on the light

And my bottom lip Is giant swelled up Like have you seen Hitch? Oh yeah Will Smith Not his whole face But the bottom lip was just Just my bottom lip

Like a clown character And I'm staring at And I have pictures That you're trying to convince me To put it on the internet And it's not going to happen It's not going to happen That

I just was like What is happening? My face swelled up Okay So that was early December, I think it was by that point. And again, I don't know what's going on. 24 hours go by and it goes down.

I obviously didn't go to work that day. I'm not going to show up to work. Because it was, I mean, all anybody would talk about it. You would have not going to. It would not have happened. Yeah. So it goes down again. At this point, I'm like, okay, I'm going to call an allergist.

I'm going to call somebody a couple weeks go by. Again, it kind of goes away. I wake up Christmas morning, December 25th, 2010, and I was at my wife's parents' house. We're at their house. I wake up Christmas morning and I go into the bathroom and my entire face, my ears, my eyebrows, it looks like I'd been in a fight. It was just swelled up. And I don't know what it was. And so we go through Christmas, we get back to work, back to life. And I go to an allergist. They poke me with all the things an allergy test does, and it says I'm allergic to everything. I've never been allergic to anything in my life before. Nothing. And they do these tests where they poke you with all the ragweed and all this stuff. And they literally said you're allergic to everything.

And I'm going to have to go get different sheets and different curtains and all this stuff. And I'm like, how have you survived up until this point? Exactly. I'm like, no, this is not true. What happened over that time is my hands started to swell up. My eyelid would swell up occasionally. I didn't, but I didn't really know why, but over time I could start to see when I was really stressed, this would happen. And it's weird and embarrassing to say it, but Jen Sieverson, she's been on this podcast and Suzanne Sims, they've been on this podcast before.

And at the time, they were my direct leaders. And Jen would be like, so how you doing today, Luke? And I'd be like, I'm totally fine, but she could tell my eyelid was like sort of swelled up or a little bit. And they started to call it my tell. Like if I was stressed, I'd be like, no, no, I'm fine. And then poof, like a puffer fish. Your face would just explode. I would puff up.

And it was so obviously annoying and embarrassing and everything. But what happened was I was driving to work one day and it happened again. That morning I woke up and my eyes swelled up. I'm just wanting to go to work. But I'm not going to go to work. I can't put my contacts in. I got my glasses on. My eye is so swelled up.

It's like touching the lens. of my glasses. And I'm driving to work because I was like, I'm powering through today. Like, I'm not going to miss a day. But I just couldn't bring myself to go in. And I remember driving to the top of this hill over here in Franklin and just being like, God, what is happening? And I texted another leader, another leader of mine at the time and told him what's happening. And he just responded with, man, this is all connected. Like what you're going through in your your life, this is connected. And I'm a Christian spiritual person. I believe that the enemy doesn't want things to happen. And so he's attacking as well. And I pulled up a journal entry from

December 10th around that time. What it ended up being was hives. It was internal hives. And no one could ever really explain why they were happening. It was just, I don't know, my adrenaline, the stress at home, Mandy and I were working through a bunch of really hard stuff. I was stretching myself here at work in a new way. And it just ended up being too much. And my body was like, peace out. I have to react. It was an alarm going off.

Yeah. Exactly. And what I started to do around that time was when I got to the top of that hill, I just said, God, what is happening? And I just sort of, it was like a turning point kind of a thing. and I drove home. I didn't end up going to work for the morning that day because I was just, I didn't, I don't want to. You know, I don't want to deal with everybody. Hey, oh, what's going on?

It's happening again. And I just don't want to deal with it. But what got me through that was eventually I got home and I started, I was I was holding in a lot up to that point. I wasn't telling Mandy the truth. I wasn't really being honest with. with people at work necessarily. It's not like it was hiding things, but I was just in here.

Yeah, I can power through. I'll figure it out. I'll deal with this. Yeah. And so I got, it was around that same time that I just, I prayed to God and I was like, I don't have anything to offer. Like I'm at, I'm at the bottom.

Me and my wife are in trouble. My face is swelling up. You know, it's like just these things are happening. And I just started to write, I started to write what I was actually. feeling, at least to God, in these, in journaling, I started writing. And God, my face is swelling up, like I'm pissed about it, what is happening. And I looked up a journal entry before this interview from December 10, 2010. And it's from that day that I drove to the top of that, that mountain,

this Tennessee Hill. It's not like a, it sounds way, for some people it might be. It sounds way more epic to call it a mountain. It just says, I couldn't bring myself to go in yet. I know I would just get there and just stare out the window trying to find the best way to express this. I took a beautiful drive into work today and tried to get to the top of the highest hill, just to feel closer to you, God. I think I've been under the worst spiritual attack of my life, and Mandy and I are becoming what God wants us to be, and the enemy's not happy about it. The stress over the last two weeks has been incredible, and I think that's what the hives and the swelling are coming from.

And I'm in. You know, I won't read you the rest of it. That's too personal. But it was just like, it was like all of this is coming, like something is happening. Like I just started to acknowledge that I am stressed. Something has to change. And that's kind of the beginning of that face swelling story. Yeah.

Wow. So telling the truth to yourself seems to be the life hack here. Well. And praying and journaling and resting, I imagine. I mean, did you take any time off to go, I got to stop going. I don't remember taking time off, but I do remember setting aside time in the morning. And it wasn't telling the truth to myself. It was telling the truth to God.

And just I woke up and said, God, I'm frustrated with this today. Here's what's going on. And I just started to tell the truth of what I was actually feeling. And I didn't take days off. I took an hour in the morning where the kids weren't up yet. I didn't have the pressures of the day. and it was just for me to have some Luke time and for me with God. But I think that it's important whether you're a believer or not to have that time to figure out what you think about today

before anybody else tells you what to think about the day. And that writing out what was actually going on in my head and my heart and giving that to God was one of the things that helped us start to go away. because it did over the course of the next months. Because when I went to the doctor, they gave me steroids, they gave me all this stuff. None of it helped just over time, continuing to work through, tell the truth, journal out what was actually going on in my heart. This stuff has gone away. It doesn't happen anymore.

Sometimes I can feel a little tingle in my eyelid and I'm like, oh, maybe this is it. And then nothing happens. Wow. Yeah. So it's been over a decade since then. Yeah. What are the kind of the practical tools you use to now recognize those warning signs? Where are you going, hey, I'm headed to this territory.

Let's not do that. Has that happened more recently? Yeah, this week, actually. Today's Friday. We're recording this. You probably don't want me to say that because it's whatever. It's fine. This peak behind the curtain.

Yeah. Sometimes we record on Fridays. And this week was like a really intense week. I had a vacation last week and it was out and we went to Florida and it was awesome. and then come back to work and it's i had a bunch of stuff scheduled that i had to be ready for and there was something uh yeah something decent sized every day of the week that i had to be on for and prepare for and i kind of looming in your day and by yesterday morning most of it had happened and so about 1130 most of it had happened and i started to get a headache and i think it was because

it was just adrenaline high all week and i got through all the things i needed to get through and i felt just really, really exhausted at about, it was like two or three o'clock, maybe it was Wednesday. I just felt really exhausted and my head was hurting and I'm staring at the computer still and I was like, I cannot look at this screen anymore right now. I got to get up. I'm going to go for a walk. I was actually looking for a dark room to just close my eyes for like 45 minutes because my head hurt bad and I had something else to do at four that day so I couldn't just leave. And so I was walking around and I just had to get away and walk. And in this particular case, I walked around our new building and I saw Alex, he's one of our creative directors and he said, hey man, how's it

going? And he starts talking. He's like, how are you doing? I'm like, well, actually, I have a headache. And I just needed to get up, get away from my desk and walk around. And we started talking about deep sea fishing and we just got into this other kind of conversation. And then I walked around somebody else and they could tell my head hurt by my face. And it's like, what's going on? I'm like, I just got a headache. And I was just telling the truth. I wasn't trying to be like, I'm tough and everything's fine. Everything's great.

But over the course of having those conversations, by the time 530 hit, I saw the person who said, asked me if I had a headache. And he points to his head, and he's like, how's your head? And I was like, I mean, it's actually gone. I got up, I walked around. I had some conversations. I got with some other people. I took some Advil. That helped too.

So let's not. Medicine is good. not be told i'm not saying i'm against that but it just got me out of the element i was in and having a conversation with people talking i told the truth of what was happening and it just sort of starts to release it you know um but it happened this week you know it was just i can feel it today being friday i'm like man i'm i'm ready to turn off the motor for a day you know or two here on the weekend and so i i've known people that go through their whole week and they are on from early morning till five, six at night, maybe later.

And then on the weekends, they have a side gig. And they're on morning to, well, I'm just doing the morning on Saturday. And they just keep going. And you just keep pounding, pounding the adrenaline, pounding the work, and proving yourself. And it's like, dude, no, you got to slow down. You have to. Like, somebody asked if I have big plans for this weekend. I'm like, no.

like I want to work in the yard, you know? Yeah. Like I think doing something that's the opposite of what you do all the week. Like some people might be outside all week and they want to work on a computer on the weekend. That's great. But you have to give yourself real rest and figure out what rest means to you. And for me, that's, I'm just around people all the time. So the weekend is a nice time to turn some of that off.

Yeah. And I think for the business owners out there, you know, some of them, they're not even working 40-hour weeks. They're doing 50s, 60. I mean, they're on. all the time, you know? And so I think it's hard, especially for them to turn that off and find that rest and really take that, get that moment of peace where they go, I got to wake up an extra hour early and do this quiet time or sit or read or do those things. But what you're talking about is what are those things that energize you? Yeah. And for some people, it's having a great

conversation. Yeah. Sometimes I'm so tired. And I'll find a person and we'll have a great conversation. And I'm like, I'm awake now. I'm energized. Yeah, I wasn't physically tired. I was just mentally exhausted. And so finding those things that do energize you like you're talking about. For some people, just being out in the yard can be one of the most peaceful, most energizing, restful things you can do. So for the business owner that's out there going, okay, Luke, what are some practical things I can go do this weekend, this upcoming week, to avoid that burnout, to start to recover if I'm in it now or to avoid it in the future? Yeah.

Learn about yourself. So I'm sitting here. My assistant, Molly, was like, she could tell I was. I was just very exhausted yesterday. And she's like, well, you have that entree leadership interview thing tomorrow, you know, should we move it? And I was like, no, that brings me energy. Like, I know that about myself that having this conversation will give me energy.

And that's a good thing. And so learn yourself. I know I'm being sort of contradictory. I love conversations. And then I like to be alone too. And so that's one thing. Figure out yourself and then do those things that, whether it's being, with people that gives you energy or it's being alone that gives you energy. The other thing is,

and it's really hard, but turning, like the reason I can turn off on the weekend is because the email isn't poking me in the eye all the time. I turn off the notifications. And luckily, not luckily, intentionally, we've created a culture here that it pretty much shuts off a lot of the emails on the weekend and in the evenings. But if you're the leader, if you're the runner of said business, you can start to create the habit for your team that when they email you at 7.30 p.m. or they email you on a Saturday at 11,

if you immediately respond, what you're doing is you're training everybody that that is the way you want to live, that that is the way you want your business to run. You're setting the tone. You're setting the tone. And I know you want them to see you hardworking, and yeah, of course you want to be a hard worker.

but if you respond quickly, they're going to say, oh, that's how this is. So start to change the habit of when you respond to people. And if they send it at 7 and you just don't respond to the morning, they'll start to get that expectation. And then you can start to say it and be like, hey, you're probably not going to get a response for me in the evenings because I'm with my family. I'm trying to refresh. And I know that's even harder when you have outside clients who have a different expectation if you're serving them as their business. But you can work it in to start to be the habit and the tone of if you're immediately responding all the time at these weird hours of the day, they're going to be like, they're just going to keep asking. I mean, it's if they do that. It was like what movie we were watching? Oh, Storks. I was watching Storks with the kids over the weekend. And there's this, the parents in this movie are realtors. And they say, we never stop.

We never stop. We'll answer your phone call on Christmas. And, you know, they're missing their kid. And they're being sarcastic in this movie. movie, but start to set the pattern of... Get those boundaries in place. Boundaries up, yeah. And that's what comes to mind.

I mean, I remember him saying, hey, I'm emailing the team because he's just firing off emails left and right. And he might be working on a Saturday because he just wants to catch up with some emails for fun. And he started scheduling the emails to fire on Monday morning. But he'd be sitting there writing him on Saturday and he found out there's a scheduling feature. But using that really set the tone for the team that, oh, my gosh, Dave's emailing on Saturday. I got to respond ASAP. and it helped create those boundaries. So definitely understanding yourself, setting those boundaries in your life when it comes to, you know, the work, life balance, which we've got Christy right on talking about that all the time.

And are there any other practical things? Let's say it's not you, but it's your team. How do you avoid someone on your team experiencing burnout? Because you lead a huge team, and I'm sure this stuff floats up to you. We go, hey, this person's struggling over here. I don't know if they're on the edge of a burnout, but they're not, they're not. doing well. What does that conversation look like that a leader can have with a team member? Yeah. What I've found also is that it is up to the team member. So we can, I'll tell you what I,

what I would say to them here in a second. But ultimately, me as the leader, they're still a grown-up human. And I can tell them to stop and I can tell them to turn this off and let's cancel these three to five things and let's move this. But if they don't internalize that and say, no, I have to do this for myself, my own sanity, then it won't work. I've done it. I've been the leader who said, well, let's knock these out and let's stop doing this. But if they don't actually do it, even though their leader, their boss is saying you don't have to. There's just this internal drive that they can't stop. That's where it's like, hey, go see a counselor. Work that through. What are you trying to prove? What are you striving for that they need to figure out? Now, if I am talking to my team member and

they're on the verge of burnout, you as a leader have to just listen to them. And they'll be telling I'm doing this, I'm doing that. What I've done a couple times is I just get a piece of paper out, like a blank piece of paper. I don't try to be distracting. I'm just looking at it. I'm like, let's just write down all the things going on. And so it's, well, I've got this squad that's doing this and I got this team that's doing this. And I'm just writing it down in front of them. And write down. And it ends up being nine or ten things. And I'm going to, like, all right, which one is the most important? And then they're usually like, oh, well, yeah.

And then also there's this, this. And they just keep adding to the list. All right, let's pick the three that only you can do. And so we'll kind of mark those. One, two, three. All right, who might could take this one? Well, there's nobody. You know, there's nobody that can take this one.

All right, okay. How about this one? Well, I could do that, but they're going to screw it up. The other person is going to screw that. Okay. So I just kind of keep track of those things. And then by the time you'll get to a few that are down on the bottom of the list. And I'm like, all right, do you have to worry about that now? Or can we push that off for a couple weeks? What I'm trying to do is just focus their brain a little bit just on two or three things. And then you can just say, hey, I don't want you to worry about below the list for the rest of this week. Let's connect Monday. Let's see how you did on this, this and this. And let's take one. step of action because oftentimes in those top three things, they're kind of floaty things where they need to have a conversation with somebody else and they need to do this thing with somebody else and that person's not responding or or or. And it's like, okay, let's find one thing that

can move you in the right direction with each of these top three things. So, all right, for this first one, you're stressed about so-and-so not getting back to you. Let's go find him today. Find him today. Tell him what you're worried about. Tell him your concerns. The next one. All right, let's take one small step in that direction. And all you're doing is helping them take a giant cloud of stuff that is weighing on them and giving them a single step. It's just like Dave and the baby steps. There's a giant cloud of stress and debt and and and and we're just saying $1,000. We're just getting you down here, get $1,000. And what that does is it just starts to clarify and take this giant cloud of chaos and give it some focus. Yeah, just still it all down.

That's really good. Yeah. So the leaders, the team members, let's say the leaders out there and they're going, hey, Luke, this all sounds good. But I'm going to get back to work on Monday. And it's just going to be the same chaos, the same struggle. What encouragement would you give to that? The leader listening who goes, look, I want to avoid burnout. No one wants to go there. What do I need to do?

Maybe it's not practical, but maybe it's just a mindset that they need to go into their week with. Just give them some encouragement. You're doing a good job. out there. So you're either driving right now or you're sitting at your computer and there's 27 emails in your box waiting for your response and you feel like you're not doing a good job leading Susie and John's got this other problem and your new team members on his phone all the time. You're doing a good job. Keep showing up tomorrow even in what feels like a wilderness. come back tomorrow and keep trying my daughter learned to play the guitar over this last few years and

when she first started playing she'd put her fingers on these steel strings that are rigid and she'd pushed down hard and it hurt she was saying dad how am i supposed to learn this it hurts and it would leave these red lines across her tips of her fingers but she just showed up again the next day practiced a few more notes and she did that for a month and two months and six months and a year

and another year and this is three or four years later and just last night she goes dad feel my fingers and I rub my fingers off across the edge of them and they're tough and she can play that guitar

and that's what you're doing here you're learning to play the guitar you're building the right calluses so you're doing a good job, build the boundaries because you can't practice the guitar all the time or you will be bleeding all the time. You have to stop and let the callus form. And the way that happens is when you're not playing, they have to heal to form that callus. And so set the boundaries. You get back on Monday, decide a time Monday night where you're going to be done for that day. And turn it

off at 6 or 5.30 or whatever is the right thing. Pick a day. And just choose a small boundary to hold for yourself. That's what I would say. And if you hear nothing else, you're doing a good job and come back tomorrow. I love that. Well, Luke, so much good stuff here from praying to journaling, to processing, to resting, to delegating, to boundaries. Thank you so much for sharing your story. I know it's going to help the listeners out there avoid that burnout and continue to do the work that we need them to do.

It's an honor to be here. Some great tips there from Luke Lefevre on avoiding burnout. And as John said earlier in this episode, delegation is key to avoiding burnout. And if you don't feel like you can trust your team enough to delegate to them, then he said fire them and hire people you can actually trust. And while he was probably half joking, hiring and firing is always going to be part of running a business. So you might as well use our 12 steps to a good hire that we outlined in the Entree leader's guide to hiring. To get this free guide, text the phrase,

EL Hire to 33444. Again, text ELH-I-R-E, no spaces, to 33444, or click the link in the show notes. Hope you enjoyed today's episode of the show. If you did, leave us a review and subscribe so you don't miss the next one. If you're a small business owner with 2-200 team members, we'd love to hear your feedback on the show and ask you a few questions. Click the link in the show notes to fill out a brief survey to schedule a call with Tim, our producer. You can follow us on social media at Entree Leadership. This episode was produced by Tim Hull, edited by Jacob Harrison, and mixed and mastered by Will Rutter. I'm your host, George Camel, and on behalf of the entire Entree Leadership team, thanks for listening. Until next time, keep learning and keep leading.