The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Dex Randall, Burnout Coach Interview

Episode Date: July 21, 2022

Dex Randall, Burnout Coach Interview Grab a freebie from him at: go.dexrandall.com/start

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks chris voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey it's just so wonderful to see you again see you all thanks for coming for coming on the show. We certainly appreciate you being here. Hey, if you get a chance, go give us some five-star reviews over there on iTunes.

Go to iTunes, look for the tab that says, hey, do some reviews on the show. Give us some five-star reviews and say some beautiful things about the show. Even if you're lying, just go do it. Anyway, guys, refer to the show to your family and friends and relatives. Tell them to do all the stuff there. Go to YouTube.com, Fortuness Chris Foss. Hit the bell notification button. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortuness Chris Voss. Hit the bell notification button. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortuness Chris Voss.

See everything we're reading. Big 120,000 group over there on LinkedIn. And our big LinkedIn newsletter as well. Subscribe to that. Anyway, guys, we have another amazing guest. We always have the amazing guests. We put them in the Google machine. We type in, hey, podcast, amazing guest.

And they come on the show. It's pretty darn amazing. We get to learn more about them. Today, we're going to be talking with a wonderful gentleman. He's going to be talking about burnout. He's a burnout coach. I think he's the first burnout coach I've ever met. So that's cool.

His name is Dex Randall. He's going to be on the show with us talking about how he does, how he counsels people, how he tells them all the stuff that he needs to do and how to do it. Welcome to the show, Dex. How are you? Thank you so much, Chris. I'm really good today. How are you? There you go. So you coach professionals from burnout to heart-centered leadership. Tell us a little bit about, well, give us a.com if you would, so people can find you on the interwebs.

Sure, thanks. It's just DexRandall.com, D-E-X-r-a-n-d-a-l-l.com now it when i was going through junior high and high school we called burnout something different and usually was referring to the guy who was smoking too much ganja you know what i mean but evidently your burnout is a different kind of burnout is that correct yeah i'm really talking about chronic stress at work ah there you there you go. And not chronic marijuana habits. Okay, I got it. No, not the kind of chronic, no. So you help people go through that. Let's talk a little bit about your journey.

Tell us about your history and what got you into the business that you're in now. Okay, sure. Well, I'm IT from way back. I'm a software developer and designer. Hmm. For a long, long time. And yes, I always loved that. I'm the kind of guy who just

wants to sit quietly in a room by himself and pump out software and design all day. And, and I did that for quite a long time and I was very, very successful at that. And I taught a lot of other people. I mentored a lot of teams. I led a lot of teams and it was all brilliant until I myself got some, some jobs that ended up in burnout and i guess that's where i kind of crashed i crashed my whole career really i transitioned into i found out how to fix burnout and i transitioned into helping other people because burnout's really a slow burn thing it's something we we take years and years often to get into and a lot of people can't find their way out yeah i mean you just you're just fried at every level you feel like you're

being pulled every which way what are some other ways you can identify if you're suffering from burnout demotivation disenchantment cynicism not wanting to get up in the morning dreading works a really big one if you're getting up dreading work, that's no good. Why don't you just subscribe to me? No, I'm just kidding. I love my work. Other than that, there's some dread. I don't know what that's all about.

I reckon you're doing that pay, Chris, yourself. I'm here. Hey, we're still showing up. No, I'm just doing jokes here. So you also had a heart attack at 55 yeah that was right after i burnt out finally my last in my last job i was waiting for a startup and i was in charge of getting product out there and the founder of the startup was in charge of not getting product out there. He was a little bit like, don't put my baby out in public. So we were across purposes.

So I tried to do that role for quite a long time and I never managed to get the bloody product out. And putting out product was my specialty before that. Anyway, I got so stressed and anxious that I couldn't do my job. I couldn't fulfill the only thing I was supposed to do that. I just fried myself. And eventually I realized one morning when we had yet another meeting about how we weren't going to launch any product, I just said to him, I said, look, I'm never going to be able to do this with you. I'm quitting. I'm out. And I left because I realized that the stress I was under was actually going to kill me. It was physically such a, I was so anxious and I had such

a burden of stress. I just finally realized it was physically going to kill me if I didn't do something. And then I left. And then three weeks later is when I had the heart attack. Oh, wow. So you attribute some of that to the stress you were going through with burnout then? Yeah. It's kind of like, you know, if you're under a lot of pressure and you go on holiday, you spend the first week being sick and you go on holiday you spend the first week being sick and sleeping it was a bit like that as soon as i came down off my levels of stress my heart went okay that's it i'm out wow it's probably better that you didn't have that happen when you were under a lot of stress because you probably would have died maybe

i don't know well a heart attack would have been worse it actually was quite bad they were lucky to save me oh wow i left my run a bit too late wow so so after that what what epiphany do you have that leads you to where you are now i think really it's because i wanted some help it's like this is burnout i reckoned i must have been in burnout i kind of recognized that i thought okay who can help me because i know a lot of people i know a lot of people do that kind of healing work i couldn't find anybody i thought this sucks somebody must know how to fix burnout and it took me a long long time to find anybody who could help me and then i thought wow well if i'm in this boat i know a lot of other people who are in the same kind of boat. And that's when I decided, okay, then I need to teach myself how

to fix burnout. And then I can teach other people how to fix their burnout. There you go. And so you spent about five years perfecting techniques to coach people out of burnout. And you know, I imagine you have an endless supply of potential clients because so many people, especially here in America, where we work like 80 hours a week and we're really gung-ho about, you know, just frying ourselves to the living ends, you know. We don't even do what you guys do in other countries where, you know, we have an official holiday and you go on holiday. You know, here you're just like, no, I'll skip the holiday because I need to make some money and got bills to pay and the wife's running up the Amazon, all that. I think you put your finger on it a bit that the American culture of work is fairly relentless.

It is. It is pretty relentless here. In fact, they say it's even worse with COVID. People are working from home, so now they don't really get any tune-out time. It used to be you go in the office, you do your work, you come home. Some people bring it home. But for the most part, you could tune out at home. You could sit and veg a bit.

Now you've got the boss calling you while you're trying to watch Netflix, binging and stuff. So there's all that. So talk to us about some of the different things or services that you offer to people. Is there a variety of different help that you give for ways to get them, you know, first, I imagine they have to recognize they have burnout. Yeah, and that's quite difficult for many people not only because they don't really know what is burnout and what isn't but also just put their hand up and say i'm in burnout yeah it's not

glamorous it almost feels like you're saying hey i can't hack this or or uh you know you're yeah there's kind of a mentality especially in american culture of the go-get ism keeping up with the joneses there's that achievement sort of bs that we're always you know we're always the the donkey chasing that carrot the carrot and the stick if you will and so you almost you almost feel like you're a loser if you just kind of throw up your hands and go well i'm tired of running the race. I quit. You know, no one likes a quitter, basically, in America.

Unless you're an alcoholic. Then we like you. Nobody likes a quitter, but nobody wants to be a quitter either. Nobody wants to see themselves in the main role of their whole life falling down on the job. Yeah. And, you know, even in even yeah especially for men even in america you feel guilty when you take a vacation like i when i have my companies i almost never took a vacation and finally i burned out and i started to take weekend vacations and saying hey you need

at least get away but a lot of people don't do that they they just fry themselves to the very end and what are some what are some tips or techniques you know i don't need to know everything about what you do but what are some ways that you've helped people maybe some stories of of ways that you've helped people and helped them overcome their problems and put them on a better path okay one is springing to mind straight away i work with people across a lot of different industries and professions but one springs to mind there was a guy who came to me and he was running a high-end home construction luxury home construction business and he was pretty much ready just to walk away he was so burnt out he was checking his messages

from the instant he woke up until the last thing at night all day long thinking he couldn't keep up with the demands that the customers and his team were putting on him and he didn't even want to sell his business he just wanted to run when he came to me and i think this is common for many people in burnout is their mind never goes off the job even when they're supposed to be with their families or playing golf or whatever else they do but their mind is still working working working the whole time and that level of anxiety this is kind of crippling and what we really did for him is one of the things that i do with people in burnout

first of all is people in burnout don't notice how fantastic they are at their job they think they're failing a lot at their job they're letting themselves down they're letting other people down it's generally speaking completely inaccurate and so what i teach people first of all is to notice the things that they're achieving in their job the things they're doing well the ways they are meeting demand because when we're in anxiety all we ever notice is what's going wrong we need to start sometimes noticing what's going right as well is part of that like a gratitude or or just recognition of of hey it's not you know the world's not always on fire there buddy yeah it's a bit the world's not always on fire because when we're in a stress cycle all we're looking for is the fire but if we're in chronic stress we're chronically

looking for problems we don't give ourselves the opportunity to notice what phenomenal human beings we are ah that's always good because it's always good to be phenomenal it is always good but i mean the people who come to me are normally pretty senior. They're very skilled. They're very capable, ambitious, hardworking. They've got everything going for them. But they don't perceive any of that. All they can see is where somebody wanted something and maybe they didn't supply it in the right way or quickly enough or to the right standard.

And the other person's going to moan about it, complain. They're going to get kicked back. It's how we start seeing the world when we're in burnout. It's like I'm failing and everybody else is going to notice. I'm going to lose my job. I'm going to lose respect, et cetera. Do you find more people in burnout that are entrepreneurs or just maybe high-level executives? Who usually do you see burns out the most?

Yes, executives, entrepreneurs, anyone in medicine, law, teaching, certain professions, even accountancy. Really? There are certain areas where it's more endemic. But for my money, the people who burn out are people with type A personalities, really hard-driven people people the super achievers who are constantly raising the bar on where they think they should be performing and then they don't see themselves as meeting that performance target and those people when they're working and they see themselves not quite succeeding at the level they want they'll always try harder they'll always give more energy more effort and they're working and they see themselves not quite succeeding at the level they want, they'll always try harder.

They'll always give more energy, more effort. And the giving more energy and more effort works unless they're in burnout where they're already so depleted they haven't got much left to give. And then it starts to kind of go downhill instead of uphill. Are people usually perfectionists that have that? that or they have a high self-criticism do you find you know because i've met people that are perfectionists and i'm like you're a little more perfectionist unattainable i'm not even sure jesus has that level of perfection yeah good question yeah they're almost all perfectionists but i think having extremely high standards and the capacity to meet them

is completely different than perfectionism you can turn out extremely high quality work but to which perfectionism adds nothing perfectionism is actually fear of judgment it's not pushing quality higher you can get higher quality when you have less anxiety not more anxiety and the anxiety of perfectionism is the constant straining and straining and straining i'll just do another hour on this i'll just do another couple of hours on this is where they dig themselves a bigger hole yeah i i've been known to do that went back at the peak of my businesses i was running three different corporations at the same time and yeah i i've been known to do that went back at the peak of my businesses i was running three different corporations at the same time and yeah i was frying myself out i would wake up

setting everything on fire and then go to bed at night with piles of work that i brought home and yeah it was just constant work work work work and doing stuff. And it's Friday and part of it is, is, I don't know, I don't know if this is correct, but I mean, to my experiences, when you're an entrepreneur, you know, you start out, you work really hard and you have this whole attitude of working hard equals success. And the way you stand out for more people is you outwork them and you, you know, you want to work smart, but you also work hard and you kind of see a reward for that when you're first starting out. But there reaches a point of scale where a business gets so big, uh, things get, there's so many more plates that you have to do. You know, when you're first

starting out as a entrepreneur, you get two or three plates to spin, whatever. And then, you know, but when you got like a hundred employees, then it's crazy stupid. So, you. And then, you know, but when you got like 100 employees, then it gets crazy stupid. So, you know, then you reach a point where you're doing, you're trying to wear too many hats, you're not delegating enough, you're not relaxing enough, you're not taking time out, you just fry. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point.

And I can only imagine what running, kind of getting three organizations off the ground at once would be like. But a lot of people are doing this and a lot of people are moving away from traditional employment to entrepreneurism. And there's a common concept that we need to hustle. Yeah, hustle the hustle economy. The hustle economy, the gig economy, all of that. The gig economy. Grow faster.

But I don't personally, I mean, yes, you have to put a lot of energy in to get any business running yeah of course but like you say the working smarter is much more effective than the working harder and this hustle thing is is it's it's actually promoting anxiety and anxiety is is actually a bit of a closed loop once you get in it you stay in it and once you're anxious you trigger your stress hormone and that causes you to feel more anxious and you get in that kind of it's actually an addictive state because stress hormones themselves are addictive they give us this boost of energy yeah and so there's a kind of compulsive aspect about hustle which i think is not not really very healthy for us yeah the you know that's the way

that's the way a lot of people you know they think that that that's the thing or you know they're like me they drink five pounds of coffee a day you know it jacked up a caffeine you, they're like me. They drink five pounds of coffee a day. You know, it jacked up the caffeine. You know, they're just burning at both ends. I'm certainly not as bad as I used to be. And with my age, my ADHD has gone away. I actually kind of like to get some of it back, actually, sometimes. But the more you get it, the more you're like, you're just like, I am going to take a nap. And, you know, that's the thing I think a lot of people do is they don't take breaks either.

Like one of the things I learned from burning out with my company years ago was instead of waiting once a year for that two week vacation where you go on Memorial day and you pretty much spend most of your here in here in America, we have like Memorial day or, you know, some other major holiday. But the problem is the rest of the country decides to go on holiday at the same time. So you end up just sitting in traffic to go to the beach for an hour and then come back sitting in traffic for the whole holiday. And then you're even more angry because you just sat in traffic the whole time.

But what I learned to start doing was taking off on weekends and just going out and getting a bed and breakfast, going someplace peaceful, quiet, you know, some back valley, some beautiful valley, Sun Valley, Heber Valley, Park City, and, you know, getting a bed and breakfast and just chilling out. Let somebody do the work with the bed and breakfast for you and serve some meals and just relax. Don't look at your phone. Don't think about anything. Take some time out.

And that's a real important thing to do because, you know, one of the things against you is the bigger you build your business, the higher the high wire is that you have to, you know, balance beam across every time for the big circus. And the higher and higher you go, the bigger you get, the more money you make,

the more you look down and you go, that's a long, the more money you make, the more you look down, you go, that's a long ways down from where I am, and if I screw all this up, it's a long ways to fall. So most people, when they see it, they just go, oh my gosh, what am I doing way up here? Interesting, isn't it? The stories we tell to ourselves, because actually I can relate to what you're saying about the high wire thing and raising the bar. But I actually find I'm more relaxed now than when I was kind of at the beginning. failure in my business i actually really enjoy the challenges more because i take time out like

you say because i don't let it consume me i've got a much more probably laid back attitude to business than i would have had before because if i can't enjoy it then why am i doing it huh so that's interesting you look for something that maybe is more fulfilling for you and and that helps people maybe that certainly is an aspect yeah i love for the other people thriving where they were in burnout before just like the guy i mentioned before he was in his construction business he was burning out big time he just wanted to smash the whole thing i worked with him for a few months and suddenly he fell back in love with his business, the potential for growth. He kind of sorted his teams out.

He started supporting his clients. He was kind of top 5%, but he took himself up even higher than that in terms of service. And he started to love the whole machinery, which is, I think, the whole point of coming out of burnout is is to enjoy your life more not not just your work but your whole life in burnout i didn't find that accessible i don't know about you no no it's you you can't operate sometimes you're so you know when i started my companies over several years the the adhd was frying my brain. And I was thinking about everything. I mean, I would dream business. I would have dreams of what I was going to do the next day, who was

going to fire, what meetings I was going to have. Every now and then, if I dreamed of a beautiful young girl in a bikini on the beach somewhere, I would be like, I dreamt of something that wasn't business. But it was pretty much 24-7 business. I would dream business. I would be like, I dreamt of something that wasn't business. But it was pretty much 24-7 business. Like I would dream business. I would eat business. I would sleep business. It was too much. And, you know, there wasn't a whole lot of other things to get a break from

that would do me well. And so you have a podcast as well. Let's talk about that a little. You launched a podcast, I think, recently. Yeah, yeah, I did last year, I think. Tell us what you talk about on that podcast. Give us a link if you want to where people can subscribe. Sure, thanks.

It's the Burnout to Leadership podcast. And what I'm really doing on there is I'm laying out step by step for people how to get out of burnout themselves. I'm giving them all my best tips, all my best ways of understanding how burnout comes up, how we can deal with it. Because what I really want is for people to be able to solve their own burnout as much as possible, to find relief directly. So I can give a lot of that information away in my podcast which is what i tend to do and also the other thing is normalize their experience of burnout because a lot of people as we mentioned earlier get into a bit of embarrassment and shame about not being where they think they should be

and i think it's that's not worth leaving people there it's not worth people being there it's no point in looking at your experience, which is not your fault. It's, to a large extent, cultural. And how do you measure outstanding leadership? What does leadership mean to you? Leadership is really nurturing people so that they can give their best performance it's not telling people what to do it's helping people shine and enjoy and expand their own potential through work and i think it's heart-centered leadership is really connecting as one human to another with all our flaws and with all our wonders just being the full

person being relaxed in their competence and just letting being in flow bring drawing the best performance out of people by helping them feel comfortable and at home in their work rather than by cracking the whip harder and telling them they're not meeting their deadlines and the targets should leaders look at should leaders be taking into account burnout stuff for their employees and be concerned about that? Well, I would be because the cost of burnout, I think even the medical cost of burnout is $6 billion a year in the U.S. Oh, wow.

People taking leave people having medical issues people be having presenteeism where they're at work but can't function and also turnover employee turnover is enormous when you've got people in burnout so the cost to a business of allowing people to go into burnout is huge. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, so I would be concerned. But also I'd be concerned because I would be looking at my team around me being very miserable and underperforming at work and then at home as well because they're not two people, right?

Whoever they are at work is the same person at home. So if they're not succeeding at work, they're also not having a very rewarding time outside of work probably so i don't want to see people in that misery yeah so maybe leaders really need to be sensitive to burning out employees you know and i know in like other countries i think it's france or something where they made it illegal like you can't like answer emails or force your employees to answer emails after hours or something where they made it illegal? Like you can't answer emails or force your employees to answer emails after hours or something? Or text messages or something like that?

I think more of that needs to go on where leaders need to say, hey, you know what, when you go home, take your time out, gel, do whatever it is you need to do. Don't be answering emails. We want you that when you come to work, that you're recharged, that you've recharged the batteries and that you're refreshed. Because, you know, like I say, that hustle culture, you know,

here in America, especially with Silicon Valley type culture, you know, it's go, go, go, go, go, go, go. I mean, hell, they serve you booze at your desk in Silicon Valley. So, you know, I think more leaders, like you mentioned, really need to sit down and go, you know, are we burning out our employees? Are we getting the best out of them? Are we pushing them too hard?

Are we demanding that they're having to, you know, do things at both ends? And are we really getting the most return for our buck because we're burning people out and because maybe we shouldn't? Yeah, but also, if you employed somebody, really, why can't you just trust them to do their job? That's true, too. If people want to do their jobs,

normally they're very, very highly incented to do that. But they have to be allowed to be them that's true it's always on culture this anxiety this fear-driven culture is employees and bosses worrying about the business collapsing around their ears really it's taking a very negative view rather than a positive view which is these people can solve problems if you let them have enough space and time to do it in their own way. Normally, in a knowledge-based industry, the people we employ are very capable people. We give them enough rope, they'll actually do a better job. So if we're able to trust that they're going to do their job for us as leaders

and we empower them to do that and give them room to do that we're going to get a far far better result than if we just keep cracking the whip going i know it's 11 p.m but you need to fix this problem so does some some people think that by changing jobs or quitting what they're doing we fix burnout. Is that true or not? Good question. Yeah, about 100% of them. And I think it's, of course, it's very tempting to think that, but what happens really is if you're a type A personality person and you're in a job where your experience is burnout, then if you leave and get another job, what's the common factor?

You'll just do the same thing because you have a change another job what's the common factor you'll just get you'll just do the same thing because you have a change if that's your habit if overwork over-efforting to solve all the problems is what you do then you go to another job and do the same thing yeah i did it for three jobs in a row. Wow. That's pushing it hard. Is burnout the same for men or women? Oh, not a good question. Well, it has a burnout for me. Every different flavor of burnout, professional and otherwise, has a core set of behaviors that aren't taking us where we want to go. But women experience burnout differently than men.

A lot of women relate that to the patriarchal system where women's role is typically as a support for men, is how it's often perceived, and also their role, they may experience burnout at home as parents and home builders, as well as in their professions, where there are different pressures on women than men, because women are quite often expected to leave the workforce for one thing. Yes, there are different flavors of problem, but the core set of symptoms of burnout remain the same i think they're common to people in burnout do you find that part of it is well that's probably perfectionism

do you find that part of it is too is they don't delegate enough delegation is often a problem for people in burnout i'll just do that job this other person's not going to do it well enough. Yeah. Yeah. That probably, like I said, comes back to perfectionism too. Because, like, you know, sometimes if you're a husband or a boyfriend, you're like, hey, you know, put the dishes in the dishwasher. And then they'll look in the dishwasher like, you didn't wash them and scrub them clean.

They're not perfect. And, you know, that perfectionism of how things have to be done a certain way or else and you're like you know no one's gonna die if you know some if the dishes aren't to a certain class before they go in the thing yeah they have to be washed but i mean you know they don't you know i've seen some people that will wash the dishes more than the dishwasher will wash the dishes and then put them in the dishwasher. You're doubling up the workload. But people have these idioms that they can do and make it work.

What other advice or examples or techniques do you want to talk about and how you help people with burnout? I think perfectionism is quite a good one to focus on. Perfectionism and anxiety those two and fear of criticism perhaps an addition are kind of the core pain points that people come in with i think perfectionism though because it's just fear of judgment it's actually it's insecurity it's a playing out of our insecurity and what we're doing is we're saying i'm not really feeling good

in here i'm just going to try and control my world i'm going to try and control my environment so i can get safety from my environment because i'm not feeling safe in here the person i am is not feeling safe so what i do really with people apart from allowing them and encouraging them to see what's already great about them, all the goodness that's in them that they've been overlooking, is I teach them to take care of themselves better. Because what we really lack, I think, in our culture so much is a sense that we're okay as we are. A sense that it's kind of safe in here, that we'll get through it

rather than trying to be something better and then I'll feel okay. I teach people how to feel okay now. And I think it burns down a lot of the fear and the anxiety. Yeah. And, you know, a lot of people don't realize that, you know, we've been through stuff all of our life. We've survived it so far, knock on wood. And you've got the resources there. So a lot of times you could just be overthinking everything you're doing. Overthinking for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Well, a lot of people are known to do it. Even me. So there you go. Anything we want to touch on, Dex, before we go out? I would really encourage people, if there's anybody listening to this who's in burnout

or has chronic stress, chronic anxiety, chronic exhaustion, thinks they could be heading in that direction is, I would point them on my podcast because it's really helpful to know that you're not alone, that some of it is systemic, and that there's something that can be done about it. Because when I was in burnout, I didn't think I could get help. And I want people to know that there is the method I use. I bring people out of burnout very, very quickly and sustainably. They never need to go back into burnout again.

That's healthy. And I think it's good that people would know that. And if they listen to the podcast, they might find out that there's some things they can do right now that help them ease the pressure on themselves. Well, that's really important to be able to have those tools.

And I think we need to all work more to do that. All right. Well, this sounds good. This has been pretty insightful in helping people understand how to deal with burnout and everything they go through. Give us your.com so we can find you on the interwebs one more time. Sure. Dex Randall, D-E-X-R-A-N-D-A-L-L.com.

There you go. There you go. Well, Rex, it's been wonderful to have you on the show. I got that mixed up, didn't I? It's been wonderful to have you on the show. Thank you very much for coming on. Lovely. Thank you, Chris. It's been wonderful to have you on the show. I got that mixed up, didn't I? It's been wonderful to have you on the show. Thank you very much for coming on. Lovely. Thank you, Chris.

It's been great. There you go. Thanks to my audience for tuning in. Go to youtube.com, Fortunes Chris Voss. Go to goodreads.com, Fortunes Chris Voss. All of the places on the internet, we certainly appreciate. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you guys next time.