Burnout—it’s a word that gets thrown around a lot in the business world. Every entrepreneur has faced it at some point or another. It’s not just about feeling tired or overworked. It’s about feeling like your efforts aren’t being rewarded, like you’re pouring everything you have into your business but not seeing the returns you expected.
In today’s episode, Kristen talks about how we prevent burnout and, more importantly, how we bounce back after we hit burnout.
Let’s look at a few highlights:
- Burnout is not just about working too hard or taking on too much—it’s about working unsustainably.
- Burnout is not a reflection of our business or our abilities as entrepreneurs. It’s a wake-up call to realign our actions with our values and to rediscover the joy in our work.
- You have to learn to regulate your emotions and to navigate the highs and lows of entrepreneurship with resilience and grace.
Ask yourself: What am I doing that’s unsustainable? What can I delegate or eliminate to reduce my workload? And most importantly, what brings me joy? Ultimately, burnout isn’t caused by our business itself. It’s a symptom of how we show up in our business—our mindset, habits, and priorities.
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Transcript for Episode #206: How to Prevent Burnout
Kristen Boss (00:19): You are listening to the Kristen Boss podcast. I’m your host, Kristen Boss. As a bestselling author and performance coach, I’m on a mission to share about sustainable and purposeful approaches to both business and life. Each week I bring relevant topics that I believe are necessary to create a life of purpose, significance and meaning. Entrepreneurship is about so much more than growing your bottom line. It’s about who you are becoming in the process and building a life that is truly extraordinary. Entrepreneurship is really just the beginning.
Kristen Boss (00:57): Hey, bosses. Welcome to another episode of the podcast. Ooh, we got a big topic today, and it’s one I hear a lot of, not just in network marketing, but I’m going to say in the business world, especially with entrepreneurs as a whole, and this is the topic of burnout. How do we prevent burnout from happening? Is it inevitable? Is it just part of the game? What causes burnout? How do we bounce back from it? I’m going to answer all those questions today before we get into it. If you haven’t already done a review for this podcast rated and given us a review, I would love for you to go ahead and do so now. It actually helps the show get discovered by more people, and I’m all about serving more people. And if there’s three friends you want to share this with, especially friends who have been telling you they’re tired, they want to quit, they’re on the precipice of quitting.
Kristen Boss (01:42): This is for them and this is for you. And really this is one for all of us. I think we’ve all been here at some point, and I have absolutely experienced my own season of burnout. It was back in 2018, and I remember feeling like I had nothing left. I was so depleted, exhausted, just thought, I can’t do this anymore. This isn’t the way I want to do things. I was like, I think I need to take a step away. I step back and this is actually what inspired my book, pivot to Purpose, how to Leave the Toxic Hustle Culture behind, and it was really birthed from my own story of burnout and realizing that I didn’t want to walk away from my dreams, but I didn’t know how to pursue my dreams without also feeling miserable and burnt out all of the time. So I went on this discovery journey for lack of a better term, to really be like, is there a better way to build business that doesn’t cost me my mental health?
Kristen Boss (02:43): Doesn’t feel like I have to sacrifice everything and that my family is on the altar of this or hobbies or anything else. Does it really have to be this all or nothing mentality with entrepreneurship? And I really see a lot of that. There’s this all are in like you got to go all in on your business, all in on your dreams. And I do agree with that, but I think we have misconstrued what all in means. I do think we can take it to an unhealthy level just like somebody who could be like, well, I just kind of want to do this sustainably, but they end up going so slow that they make no progress at all. So what’s the middle of this? How do we help people work hard without burnout? Because that’s even how I kicked off the podcast for this year was just like, all right, this is the year we got to get gritty.
Kristen Boss (03:32): We got to work hard. We got to be in the trenches, and I hope you have a good relationship with hard work because there’s no short cutting this. It’s hard. Okay, so how do we do the hard things? How do we stay gritty? How do we build a business when it’s really hard without burning out? So let’s cover that. Let’s tackle that today. All right, so I’m going to talk first about what we think burnout is because I actually think we have a misunderstanding of burnout and I think burnout. We think we are burnt out when our efforts no longer feel like they are worth the current return. We are seeing that is when I see people assigning the term burnout to how they’re feeling in their business. I’m putting in all of this work and the return on my effort, my time, my energy and the finances, it’s not worth it yet.
Kristen Boss (04:24): The return I’m seeing on this isn’t worth it and I’m exhausted. And so this is where I think people start to say, I’m burnt out. I’m tired. I can’t do this anymore where I really don’t think we’ve been fair to ourselves in the industry as a whole with what it actually takes to have success and understanding that in the beginning of entrepreneurship, what you get out of it is way less than what you put into it. And I know it’s not sexy to say that. I know it’s so much more fun and exciting to be like, yeah, be your own boss. Make six figures overnight and swim in cash and woo-hoo and time free. I’m like, guys, that is a byproduct of the journey. That’s way down the road. But at the beginning, we actually have to have a different relationship with our work and with where we’re going.
Kristen Boss (05:13): But I think when our expectations are misaligned or we go in with stars in our eyes thinking, oh, it’s going to be so easy and I have time freedom and I’m going to retire my husband in the next 90 days, it’s like, okay, well slow down because we’re going to burn out real fast. And I see this happen too, is I see people come to this business and they come in hot, they come in with a lot of energy, a lot of excitement, a lot of enthusiasm. They’re like, woo-hoo. They’ve got the entrepreneurial bug, they’ve got the dream. And they are like, they’re on fire. And I can’t tell you how often that about 75 to 120 days in these are the same people that you can’t find ’em anywhere. They ghost. You’re like, what happened? They were so excited. They were telling everybody about this.
Kristen Boss (05:57): They were on fire, and suddenly they’re like, I am exhausted. I can’t do this. And so what happens is a lot of people who generate, who go into the business and experience some level of success relatively quickly because they go in with a lot of energy and enthusiasm, which there’s nothing wrong with that. What happens on the backend of this is where the problem is, and it’s when people go in, get big results, it’s exciting, it’s sexy, and then reality sinks in and the honeymoon phase is over, and the honeymoon phase lasts differently for each person. For some people it’s a week. For some people it’s a year. It just depends on the person. But they’ll go in, they see some fast casts, see some fast return, and then suddenly the excitement dies down and it’s hard and it slows down inevitably because businesses aren’t always exploding.
Kristen Boss (06:48): Friends look at stock markets, look at any business profit and loss statements, p and l statements. You’ll see there’s ebbs and flows of business, but when we take off and we’re just skyrocketing, we’re like, this is business. I’d be like, no, it’s not. This is a short winning season. Enjoy it because your real test of entrepreneurship is right around the corner when you see ebbs in your business, when it starts when you hit the valleys, everybody loves entrepreneurship at the mountaintops. They’re like, oh, it’s the best. But everybody’s complaining with actually, we’re not just complaining. We’re surprised when there’s a valley. Why is this so hard? Why is this frustrating? And I was telling this to one of my students inside the academy the other day. I was just like, Hey, if you’re feeling things feel harder now and you’re putting out posts and you’re not getting the same traction, I want to tell you that that’s actually true.
Kristen Boss (07:39): And she’s like, why? I was like, because you’re speaking to a cold market who knows nothing about you. So the same post you write to a warm market where somebody has context about you isn’t going to land. The same with a cold market where people are meh, and why should I listen to you? You have to approach your cold market completely differently. You have to put a lot more thought time and tension and strategy behind it so it feels harder. So if you’re like, my business feels harder this year than it did two years ago, I’d be like, yeah, probably because you’re out of your warm market and growing a new audience. This crap’s hard. This is hard, but this is when we’re surprised. We’re surprised by the hard part when it comes. And so the ones that come out, there’s fast cash, fast wins, inevitably.
Kristen Boss (08:20): This is where the mistake comes in, where they make the assumption that in order for me to have success in this business, I have to keep the pace at which I started this business and it’s not sustainable. It’s like I have to sprint the whole time because now they’ve only associated the results when they’re sprinting. And so guys, I can’t tell you how many six figure earners I’ve sat with where they’re like, okay, I went so hard and I built to six figures, and they’re like, I’m here, but it nearly killed me to get here. And when I challenge them about their next season of growth, they have a negative association in their mind of what they think growth will take them. They’re like, well, it’s going to look exactly the way it did to build six figures, and I don’t think I could take that anymore.
Kristen Boss (09:09): So a lot of people have this negative association with that nearly took everything out of me. And so therefore, if that’s what it takes to sustain this business, I don’t want it. And I see it happen all the time where people are like, go hard. They’re excited, they see quick wins, and then they’re exhausted and they’re like, oh, I don’t want to keep doing this. Well, who wants to work with their hair on fire 24 7? Who wants the nervous system, the tax on your nervous system to do that? Your body literally was not made to be set on fire all the time as a business owner. We’re going to talk about this. So this is burnout. I think these are the symptoms of it. We’ve lost joy. It’s not exciting anymore. We kind of feel like we’re in this like, oh, this isn’t as exciting as it used to be for me.
Kristen Boss (09:52): It’s not very fun. Just this feeling of constant exhaustion and fatigue. Everything feels heavy. Your normal daily business operations, you’re like, Ugh, heavy, hard. I think resentment creeps in. Why did I do this? Why is this so? And then we start judging the business or judging the process. Why is it so hard? Why is it like this? Why isn’t this easier? What’s wrong with this? And we start to skew our lens of what we think business should look like, and then we become more resentful. I never should have done this or whatever else. I also think when we are on the precipice of burnout, as we’ve lost our vision, we’ve lost why we’re doing this, or we start talking ourself out of the vision and be like, it’s okay. I didn’t want it anyways. I think women are unbelievably amazing at this. We talk ourselves out of our own goals all the time in the name of, I’m fine, I don’t need that.
Kristen Boss (10:43): Anyways, we’re good here. I can be totally content here. This is great. And I’m not saying don’t have gratitude for your life. Please have gratitude for your life. But I see women talk themselves into the, it’s fine. It’s okay. It’s okay if we don’t have time freedom. It’s okay if we can stay here. And what we do is we talk ourselves out of our desires because at one point it becomes too painful to have desires because you want to know. A perfect example of that is like walk your kid down the toy aisle and target their desire is just coming out of the pores of their skin. They’re like, ah, I want all of these things. And then they come to reality with mom saying, not today. Or You can only spend $10 on a toy today, and they have intense desire for this $150 toy and look at immediately because that desire is unmet.
Kristen Boss (11:33): They’re in emotional pain. I think this is entrepreneurship. I think a lot of people talk themselves out of their goals because they don’t want the emotional pain of wanting something they don’t have yet, and so they talk themselves out of wanting it so they don’t have to be in the pain of longing. That is a real thing. We have to actually, as an entrepreneur, learn to hold space for our own longing for things that are not yet, and that longing some days feels so freaking heavy of just how long do I have to hold this? How long do I have to hope for this? And this is where I would say, if the longing feels exhausting to your soul, I would say there’s some part of your everyday life that is lacking gratitude, where you can find groundedness in it, be like, well, I do long for that and I’m really thankful for the currencies and I’m, I’m really thankful for those things.
Kristen Boss (12:29): There is a point where sometimes I think our longing becomes really a desire to escape a pain in our reality that we haven’t yet grown gratitude for or learn to view it in a different lens. It’s like, I just hate this reality, so I need out of it as quickly as possible, so therefore, I have this longing and desire for this big thing over there, and I don’t have it yet. So now I’m resentful and hate my current reality because all I want to do is escape it instead of like, okay, how do I find contenta, enjoy it in my current reality and find the lessons here and find what’s good here while I’m also holding space for this longing for more in my life without talking myself out of it, without being like, oh, I don’t want this anymore. So we lose vision. This is all symptoms of burnout.
Kristen Boss (13:13): Another thing with burnout is I think it’s when people think the business is the source of burnout instead of how we interact with our business, I can’t tell you, you know how I know this, because people, when they’re burned out, they’re like, I need to quit my business. And I’m like, no, no, no, no, no, no. The business is not the source of your burnout. It is you and how you interact with your business that is burning you out. Let me give you an example. This is like now we’re moving into why burnout happens. There’s parts of your business that you’re not working sustainably. You actually have to ask yourself, what part of my daily operations and how I run my business is currently unsustainable that if I keep doing this, I either am burnt out in this task or I will be burnt out in this task.
Kristen Boss (13:57): Maybe you’re like, I can’t keep doing reels on the fly while also trying to manage my home life. I can’t work on the fly anymore. I actually need to sit down and batch my content to protect my mental and cognitive load or my crazy daily busy schedule, so I can’t keep operating in this way. Or maybe some of you’re working in the nooks and crannies of your day, five minutes here, five minutes there, five minutes there, and you never feel like you’re truly gaining progress. And you might be like, okay, this nooks and crannies thing isn’t truly sustainable for me to keep operating at this way. And I say this to business owners, I’m like, it’s not sustainable if that’s how you need to start, okay, if that’s what gets you in the door, but what that actually does to your brain is it tells you, I’m working all the time and it always leads to burnout.
Kristen Boss (14:40): Ask me how I know I’ve seen hundreds of people burnout working in the nooks and crannies. Okay, so why burnout hop is, is there’s an aspect of how we are working in our business that is unsustainable. Two is we aren’t doing enough of things that bring us joy or fill us outside of our business to offset the heart of business. If you are finding your joy in your business, that’s nice, but what happens when your business is in a really hard season and it’s hard to extract joy from that business? Suddenly your whole life is miserable because you’re not like, oh, I’m finding meaning here and here and I have this hobby and I do this thing and I hang out with these friends. I believe a happy entrepreneur is a well-rounded entrepreneur, one that has friend groups and has hobbies and interests. You guys, I am so ashamed and embarrassed that my first two years in entrepreneurship, my entire personality was my business.
Kristen Boss (15:42): And if people were to ask me, what’s your hobby? I’d be like, I don’t know. I wouldn’t have one. But now I could tell you, I have so many hobbies and things that fill my cup and things that bring me joy. I’m convinced my going skiing on the weekend absolutely fills my cup and provides joy and quality time with my family, and it well rounds me as an entrepreneur. I can look forward to it, be like, oh gosh, I’m so excited for ski weekends. No matter what’s happening in my business, I’m like, I can look forward to this. But I believe burnout happens when we’re not doing enough of what we love to offset the hard parts of our business, and we’ve made our business our entire personality. Okay? Number three is the inability why burnout happens is our inability to regulate our emotion. Business can sometimes be volatile, meaning you could have a month where you’re crushing it financially and then a month where you have the lowest sales you’ve ever seen in your life.
Kristen Boss (16:32): And when you’re over identifying with your business or you haven’t learned to regulate your emotions and your business volatility, meaning the sales go up, the sales go down, is also your emotional volatility. It’s no wonder you’re exhausted with your business. You might be in a toxic relationship with your business. I’m only good if my business is good. I’d be like, if you were in a relationship with a man and you’re like, I’m only happy when he’s in a good mood, I’d be like, girl, we got a problem. I’m only happy if he’s happy. I’d be like, oh, okay. What’s happening here? Or is there codependency with your business? I only feel good about myself if my business is winning. I’m going to be like, listen, I don’t know what statistics you’ve heard about business, but business feels like you’re losing most of the time, and then you have a couple big wins.
Kristen Boss (17:17): It’s the truth. It’s like, but nobody wants to talk about that because it’s not sexy. Losing’s not sexy. Failing isn’t sexy. Doing the hard thing isn’t sexy, but everyone wants to sell you the fast, the easy, the fun, the mountaintops. And I’m like, okay. We keep selling mountaintops to people and then they’re surprised when there’s valleys and they’re completely ill-equipped to handle valleys and because they don’t think valleys should be there because they don’t know how to regulate their emotions. They think, I shouldn’t be on this adventure anymore. This valley shouldn’t even be here. It shouldn’t even exist, and therefore I have to quit. And I’m like, we are doing this all wrong. We actually have to learn to regulate our emotions and separate what is happening in our business from our emotional experience. If you are exhausted, I can’t tell you how often I meet with people who say, I’m burnt out, and I’m like, you are emotionally burnt out because you keep riding the highs and lows of your business.
Kristen Boss (18:07): You’re good one day and you’re terrible the next. That’s exhausting, which leads into the biggest thing is emotional burnout. We haven’t learned, when you haven’t built emotional resilience around your business, you are going to feel kicked seven ways to Sunday. Every single week, every single setback will feel emotionally painful for you. Every single setback will feel like a tally mark of why you’re not good at this business and why you’re never going to have success. You’re going to have hard days. It is absolutely inevitable. So how are you going to become somebody who is emotionally resilient on your hard days where you are not crumbling on this idea of emotional burnout? I also think we have a problem, and it’s funny, I wrote my book a few years ago, and when I first wrote it pivot to purpose, I thought, oh my gosh, I’m coming out with this book too late, and now I’m realizing, holy moly, I might have actually come out with this concept earlier than I thought because now I don’t know how you’re following things on social media, but there is a lot of talk of how to regulate your nervous system and being in fight flight freeze mode.
Kristen Boss (19:14): And I talk about this in my business. I actually talk about why burnout is actually the product of burnout is when you are in a constant fight flight state in your business where your nervous system is on fire because your body feels like it’s being chased by an angry bear 24 7 because your business is that volatile and emotionally toxic to you because you haven’t learned to have a good relationship with your business again, because you’re not doing other things that bring you joy. You don’t have realistic expectations of what business is, so it all just feels terrible. Your nervous system’s on fire all the time. I just said this to one of my students. She’s in a hard place, and I was coaching her on this, and I said she was in a place where she was making a transition from corporate into social selling, and she’s like, well, I’m living off of savings.
Kristen Boss (20:03): I’m getting this start. And I’m like, okay, but how are you feeling in your business? And I picked up that she was incredibly scarce. I was like, okay, I can’t even imagine how your nervous system feels when it’s constantly telling you we’re about to run out of money. I need to pay my mortgage, I need to pay my bills. I need to do these things. And I’m like, okay, there’s two ways we can solve for this to actually calm your nervous system down, to get you out of fight flight because you’re not a good business owner when your nervous system is on fire, period. You’re not a good business owner when you are in fight flight mode. You’re not a good leader when you’re in fight flight mode. It’s impossible because you’re too busy in survival, and by the way, the front of your brain is completely offline.
Kristen Boss (20:41): It’s like critical thinking, unavailable like, sorry, we’re unavailable for that right now. Your body’s like, we’re just trying to stay alive with this really stressful situation that you’re putting on us because our nervous system can’t decipher between an upset customer sending us an email and a bear chasing us. It’s the same thing to our nervous system. So I told her, I said, you have one or two choices. One, you can change your thoughts that you could truly believe to calm your nervous system. You could tell yourself a different story that you’re safe, you’re okay, and you actually look for all the evidence of how you are going to be fine, or you can actually change your circumstances or your environment and go get a part-time job where money’s coming in so that your nervous system can relax, so that you can actually serve in your network marketing business from a different place without your nervous system being on fire, without feeling scarce, without feeling exhausted and terrified 24 7, which by the way, your customers can totally feel that and they’re not going to buy from you.
Kristen Boss (21:39): So now it’s just creating an even bigger problem. I’m like, you could do one of these two things, but we have to calm you down, and this is when you will experience. If you’re in emotional burnout long enough, then you are going to experience physical burnout. You’re not going to sleep well. You might have weight gain, you might have adrenal fatigue. Your cortisol might be shot. You might be waking up in the middle of the night being like, I didn’t have these problems before I became an entrepreneur. Why? I was like, because your body’s been in fight flight state for, I don’t even know how long I talk about this in depth in my book, but it’s like this is why burnout, because we don’t know how we have unhealthy relationships with our business, and then we think the business is the problem, and I see people quitting the business instead of figuring out, how do I need to interact with my business differently?
Kristen Boss (22:18): How do I need to change so that I can still be a healthy, profitable business owner and my dreams can still be possible without burning out and killing my adrenals on my nervous system and my mental health? So here’s what’s happening. Here’s what I want to offer you. If you’re like, oh my God, you ticked all the boxes and this is me. What do I do? And you’re on the precipice of burnout or you’re having a bad day, here’s my solution that you could do right now today. Quit for 24 hours, quit for 24 hours, put your phone down. Go take a bath. Go take a nap. Make sure you’ve had some food. Literally sometimes, maybe check when your period’s due, because sometimes if you’re three days before menstruation, I’m sorry if you’re a dude listening to this, but you might need to know with your wife, but it’s like, listen, your judgment is way skewed three days before you menstruate.
Kristen Boss (23:05): So maybe just step away and realize, okay, everything’s burning alive because my hormones are telling me so, but in reality, it’s not okay, right? So you need to quit for 24 hours. Get some perspective. Calm your butt down, calm your nervous system down. Take care of yourself, okay? Get yourself to a regulated place. You can even Google how to regulate my nervous system when I feel like it’s on fire. What are ways to care for my nervous system to get me back into a parasympathetic response? We teach this in depth inside my social selling leadership school. We teach leaders how to regulate their nervous system and how to help their team regulate nervous system, their nervous system so they can be more productive. Isn’t that crazy? Okay, so then ask these questions. What am I doing that is currently unsustainable and how do I need to change that?
Kristen Boss (23:51): Here’s ways you can change it. Do I need to hire somebody? What do I need to get rid of completely? What is choking up time that I just need to stop doing? Where am I wasting my time? Where am I putting my time, my effort, and my energy where it’s just not serving me? I like to ask this, what is the most exhausting aspect to my business? Is it customer care? Is it follow-up? Is it content batching? A, you got to go through your gritty season, but B, if you’re a season entrepreneur, it might be time for you to ask either, how can I reframe my thoughts around this activity so it’s less exhausting for me? Instead of like, I have to do this, I get to do this. Look for all the ways that you enjoy it. Train your brain to be like, how can I rethink this activity?
Kristen Boss (24:33): Or Who can I hire to do it for me? In the beginning of your journey, you might not have the luxury of hiring somebody to do that, but you do have this amazing thing that’s free and available to you, and it’s your brain and you are able to change your thoughts and rewire your thinking to change your relationship with your work activity. But if you are, let me give you an example of this. It’s not business. Imagine if every time you had to wash the dishes, you were like, oh, I hate washing dishes. Washing dishes sucks. I’d rather be doing anything else than washing dishes. Just notice how your emotional experience, we’re now creating this awful thing that you dread instead of, how can I make washing dishes? It has to get done. How can I make this enjoyable? Okay, I’m going to put on my favorite podcast. I’m going to put on my AirPods. I’m going to diffuse smells that smell good to me.
Kristen Boss (25:24): I’m going to dance, or I’m going to do it at this time, or I’m going to do vocal notes. I’m going to do voice memos for content ideas while I’m doing my dishes. Whatever it is. How can I reframe this? Because it still has to get done, but how can I think about it differently? How can I think about the activity differently that changes my relationship with the activity so it still gets done? Okay, so friends, your business is not the problem. It is who you are being in your business. It is how you are interacting with your business. It is how you are living your life. It is your ability to regulate your nervous system and your emotions around your business. That’s why I teach neuroscience to my students. Like we have to talk about the psychology and the brain science of what’s happening.
Kristen Boss (26:11): We also need to talk about what’s happening in the nervous system. We also need to talk about how that nervous system response affects your bottom line and your productivity in your business. If you don’t think it does, I can give data all day of how you be in a fight. Flight, freeze, or fawn response directly impacts the bottom line of your business and your overall productivity. So friends, bring more joy to your business. Do more of what you love to bring. Balance hard days will happen, but change your relationship with your business, and you might realize burnout actually has nothing to do with your business. We’ll catch you in the next episode. That’s a wrap for today’s episode. Listen, if you love what you heard here today, I would love for you to leave a real quick rating and a review. This helps the show get discovered by new people. Be sure to take a screenshot of today’s episode and shout us out on Instagram. We’ll shout you right back out. If you’d like to find additional resources or discover how to work with me, head to www.kristenboss.com
