How to avoid burnout.

Episode Transcription

Den Lennie (1s):
Hey guys. It’s Den here with episode 265 of the, How to Scale a Video Business podcast. And I want to talk about how to avoid burnout in the video business. And I want to share this from a very personal perspective because I’m feeling a little bit burnt out at the minute. And we were just having a discussion on our coaching call this week about personal systems to help you become more efficient. And I think within that comes the idea of how you know when you’re getting close to burnout and how you make sure you can avoid it.

2 (37s):
Welcome to the Video Business Accelerator podcast. Each week we uncover the secrets to creating a wildly successful and scalable video production business with your host, Den Lennie. Discover how the accelerator program is transforming the lives of our members at www.videobusinessaccelerator.com. Enjoy this episode.

Den Lennie (1m 8s):
So I’m going to be just coming straight out with that. I’m very close to being burned out and it’s entirely my fault and here’s why. I haven’t followed my own system. And the reason for that is we’ve had a really hectic first five months of the year. We launched a brand new platform for our two programs, the Uplevel program, and the VBA Elite. Those are two mastermind programs, and we moved the entire platform from Kajabi over to Skool in January. And that was after three months of building our own app and looking at different solutions and then deciding at the last minute that it wasn’t quite right then we’ve radically, up-leveled our programs this year in terms of we’ve added live events to the elite program.

Den Lennie (2m 2s):
There’s a lot more one-to-one support as well as group coaching. Plus we’re really working and focusing this year on helping people build a business that’s a real cash cow that can provide the resources to build wealth. And so that’s pretty exciting for the more mature businesses. And then for the businesses that are at the earliest stages of growth, we’ve added a weekly call. We’ve added a lot more content to the program, And we’re really working very hard to provide the very best education for serious business owners in the video space. But within that, we’ve also been doing a lot of work in our house.

Den Lennie (2m 44s):
And we’ve been looking at some investment properties and, and looking at our kind of longer-term wealth and kind of, you know, sort of life goals as well. And, you know, the truth is I haven’t had a break since December and I normally am a great advocate of having time off every quarter. But the fact is when you run a business, sometimes there’s just an awful lot to do. And even though I typically work about three and a half days a week, I’m still feeling a bit exhausted, a bit burnt out. So I’m actually taking a week off next week. And we’re about to have a virtual event in our mastermind group is that a kind of a half-day virtual event that we run after every live event.

Den Lennie (3m 30s):
It’s a live mastermind for our members who are taking part in the VBA Elite mastermind program. And we’re going to go through their big picture plans for the year and really work on specifically making sure everyone’s clear on what their goals are. And we’re just reviewing on the call this morning. Some of the guys who’d been to the Gold Coast event sharing the power of the mastermind. And if you’ve never been in a mastermind before, it’s about having essentially a board of directors who are all running video businesses in different stages around the world, getting together in a room and sharing the journey and providing support and guidance to each other.

Den Lennie (4m 12s):
And so it’s a really powerful environment. And I created this program because I wanted to have an environment that I could enjoy, and that would give me support as a business owner. And so, you know, you’ve got a choice. You either join a mastermind or you create one. And I created one, but it’s still an enormous amount of work. And even though we have a team I’m still very involved in the actual coaching, which I think is important, but I’m going to take some time out. I’m going to have a week off. And so I’ve just basically decided to do that and have a break because as a leader, I’m not demonstrating great leadership if I just work myself into the bone. So, you know, how do you avoid burnout?

Den Lennie (4m 53s):
How can you avoid it yourself? Because it’s very easy to be burned out as a video production company. One of the conversations we had this morning on the call was that whole idea of the clients being able to call you and you being able to pick up and respond at a moment’s notice. And we had an interesting discussion around that. And I have a very firm view that you shouldn’t be that available. And my reason behind that is if you were on, on a shoot, or even just driving your car and you’re in a tunnel and a really important client calls, you might not be able to pick up. And so if, if your clients expect you to be on call all the time, that will create a large degree of anxiety.

Den Lennie (5m 37s):
And so what you have to do is you have to kind of set up a process for how clients can communicate with you. And one of the ways that I do that is I don’t have voicemail on my phone. And here’s why I don’t want to spend time listening to other people’s voicemails. I see them as a call. Then I feel anxious that I’ve missed the call. Then I go and listen to the voicemail. Someone leaves a rambling message. I’ve then got to decide what to do about that matters. Do I get back to them straight away? I may not be in a position to do so. It might be as simple as I’m just not in an area with great reception. So, the way they avoid that is my voicemail actually says, hi, this is Den.

Den Lennie (6m 19s):
Please don’t leave a voicemail. I don’t check my voicemail ever if it’s urgent and can’t be dealt with via email in the next 24 hours, please text me and I give my number. And if it’s not urgent and can be dealt with within 24 hours, please email this email address. And that will go to the team. Or if you’ve got a team, you can say, please call this number here. And the team will deal with you straight away. But really what we’re talking about is how you create systems for how you want your clients to deal with you. And this can seem like a very alien concept when you’re starting your business, or if you’ve been running it for a while and your clients are used to having you.

Den Lennie (7m 3s):
One of the things we focus a lot on in the mastermind is removing the business owner from being the first point of contact. And that’s something that is really important as you scale your business. If you’re just starting out and you’re more of a freelancer, then yes, you are the point of contact. And there’s definitely a sense as a freelancer, you don’t want to miss calls in case there’s an opportunity for work that someone’s just calling around then the first person that picks up gets the job. So there is a distinction there, but what I can say is as someone who’s focused on helping people build businesses, you want to start thinking about a system for removing yourself from being the bottleneck because if you’re the point of contact that everything has to go through, you’ll just end up getting really stressed and burn out.

Den Lennie (7m 53s):
Now I’m feeling a bit burnt because I’ve just had an enormously busy five months and we’ve done a lot of real growth developing in the business here. And we’ve been taking on some bigger projects outside the business as well. And that’s obviously been there, you know, taking a certain amount of emotional fortitude. We’ve been investing in some properties and playing a bigger game there as a result of the business and what that’s able to help us achieve in life. So I just want you to think about how your energy levels are and I’ll leave you with this. You can protect your energy levels by protecting how people can contact you and when they can contact you.

Den Lennie (8m 38s):
And remember, you always have the decision whether or not to receive a phone call or not, and it might seem counterintuitive, but if you are running a business and you’re feeling a bit burned out, it’s possible that it’s because you are allowing too many people access to you. And the true entrepreneurs and business owners who have achieved phenomenal success have a level of protection around that time. If you protect your time and energy ferociously, you’ll have more time and energy to create meaningful change in people’s lives and their businesses. And that doesn’t necessarily need to mean you are always available. Anyway, guys, I will talk to you next week.

2 (9m 18s):
You’ve been listening to the Video Business Accelerator podcast with your host Den Lennie. If you are a video business owner who is tired of going it alone and would benefit from mentorship, support, and weekly accountability, then mouse over to www.videobusinessaccelerator.com to learn more about how the accelerator program can help you today. Don’t forget to subscribe and rate the show over on iTunes. And we’d really appreciate you taking a few minutes to leave a review.