I explore the differences in work-life balance for business owners versus employees, emphasising the importance of enjoying your business to prevent burnout. I share personal insights and practical strategies for maintaining sustainability and joy in entrepreneurship.
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👋🏽 Hello! I'm Sumantha McMahon, and I've supported over 100 tutors and education business owners.
As a teacher 'dropout' turned professional tutor, combined with my 20+ years as a business owner, I'm in it with you! Yes, I'm qualified too :-)
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The title of this episode is How to Avoid Burnout, but really it should be How to Avoid Burnout and How to Pull Yourself Out of Those Cycles of Exhaustion. Now, I just couldn't make the title as long as that. But the reality is, when we think about work-life balance as a business owner, it's very different to when we compare it to what we might mean if we were an employee. As an employee, work-life balance relates largely to physically working and placing boundaries around that.
Sumantha 1:00
But as a business owner, yes, we work hard, but something that really contributes to exhaustion and burnout is the cognitive load. We don't switch off from our businesses. It's not unusual to be thinking about your business from the moment you wake up until you go to sleep. And so for us, we have the actual working side of things to consider, but we also have that thinking side. And actually, more recently, I have found that it's that cognitive load that creates a lot more of that exhaustion than how much I'm physically working.
Sumantha 2:00
switched to teaching back in:
Sumantha 3:00
In January:
Sumantha 4:00
When I speak to my clients, many of them just accept that periods of burnout and exhaustion are normal, just a normal part of it. And for a long time, I actually just accepted that it was a normal part of running a business. But a while ago, I decided that I'm actually unwilling to accept that. And I was determined to find a way to avoid burnout as much as possible and to actually find a way to be able to pull myself out of it fast. And because that's something almost all of us experience and will struggle with, I want to do a bit of a deep dive so that I'm not just changing that experience for myself, but for as many of you as possible as well.
Sumantha 5:00
The one thing that pulls me out of burnout and now helps me avoid it is this concept of enjoying the business. Loving what you do and enjoying running the business are two very different things. I love tutoring. I love working with my tutor clients. I love that I get to be their thinking partner and almost like a business partner where I can help them design a business and get creative about what the future could look like. I find it so exciting. But when I'm feeling like there just aren't enough hours in the day to do everything I want to do, I'm exhausted.
Sumantha 6:00
And so while I love what I do, I'm not always enjoying the experience. And having worked with so many tutors over the years and being one myself, this is the one pattern that keeps recurring. We are doing what we love, but we're not always enjoying the experience. And this is what often leads to the kind of exhaustion I'm talking about. So what do I mean by enjoying the business? Well, the reality is what this means to you will change over time. It will change partly because of personal circumstances, but also because of where you are in your own journey.
Sumantha 7:00
If I go back to:
Sumantha 8:00
Fast forward to now, I enjoy all of that side. I love teaching my students, I love coaching and mentoring my tutor clients. I have systems and processes and automations in place that mean that I really don't do very much admin. My definition now of working in the business involves client delivery and I genuinely have space in the day and space in the week. So I shouldn't really experience exhaustion, but I'm a business owner and so I'm always thinking of new ideas and ways to improve what I offer.
Sumantha 9:00
nt now to how it felt back in:
Sumantha:
That's one of the first questions I ask my one-to-one clients when I onboard them, because it's really easy to list all the problems you want to fix. But as you find solutions, this vision is the one you have to tap into. And the reason why this question is so incredibly important is because it's the one thing that has pulled me out of burnout or exhaustion. And now it's becoming the one thing that's helping me avoid it. Because I recognise that when my mind is popping with loads of ideas, I want to take action immediately. And all of that takes work and headspace.
Sumantha:
And so that space that I have in my schedule every day, every week doesn't end up existing because I end up filling it with all of this stuff. At the moment I have a word with myself and tell myself that if I'm not enjoying what I've worked so hard to create, then what's the point? Because when I work hard to achieve the next thing, there's going to be another thing that I'm thinking about. So it never stops. If I don't stop during the day, if I don't make the most of what I have actually created, then what's the point of all my hard work?
Sumantha:
It's that question that always pulls me out of that tough situation because then I think of the alternative. I tell myself that if I'm not enjoying the results of my hard work, then I may as well work for an employer where I'll still be working hard, but I get things like annual leave and sick pay. And quite honestly, that thought jolts me out of the cycle that I get myself in. So the key here is to really define what enjoying your business means to you right now, based on your personal circumstances and based on where you are in your business.
Sumantha:
It doesn't mean that business development and business growth comes to a standstill. What it does mean is that you make intentional time for business development and growth, but you also make intentional time to just enjoy the experience of running it. I have business coaches and I've paid them a lot of money. The first six months of working with them was very action packed, which contributed to my exhaustion. But then I reached a point where it did come to a natural pause. Now I want to enjoy my business while growing at a different pace because I don't want to experience the exhaustion again.
Sumantha:
When you pay a lot of money for a course or for a coach, it's easy to get into the mentality that you need to squeeze every moment out of it, otherwise you're wasting your money. It's easy to assume that being productive means being busy. But now I'm making room to work on the development and growth of my business in a more balanced way. I've had to really reframe what getting a return on my investment looks like, because I'm getting what I need, not my perception of what being productive should look like.
Sumantha:
The concept of exhaustion, overwhelm, and burnout is probably the conversation that comes up most with my clients, especially at the point they meet me. And while there isn't a one size fits all solution, the biggest takeaway from this episode is to pause and take your time to enjoy your business, enjoy what you've created, and sit in the rewards of that. You may not be exactly where you want to be, but that's okay because you're on the way. We need to enjoy the journey, not just that final destination.
Sumantha:
The concept of exhaustion, overwhelm, and burnout is probably the conversation that comes up most with my clients, especially at the point they meet me. Because I work so specifically with tutors who want to build something more sustainable, particularly when I work with them one-to-one, they arrive at the point of either exhaustion or they arrive at the point where they have recognised that how they're working isn't sustainable. And so this conversation and this consideration runs throughout my work with them.
Sumantha:
Some people have the capacity and the mental space to do more than others. And so we have to think about how to pace things accordingly. My biggest learning from this has been that exhaustion can happen for very different reasons and it can look different for different people. And this means that I have to be incredibly self-disciplined and self-aware so that I don't burn out. Because when I'm in that cycle, it really affects my health. I don't sleep well, I get into bad eating habits, it affects my mood and all sorts.
Sumantha:
And while there isn't a one size fits all or one solution to this, I hope you found this episode useful. If you do experience cycles of exhaustion, the biggest takeaway is to pause and take your time to enjoy your business, enjoy what you've created and sit in the rewards of that. You may not be exactly where you want to be, but that's okay because you're on the way to being where you want to be. And we need to enjoy the journey, not just that final destination. When you pause, it doesn't mean development and growth has to stop. You just get more intentional about it. You pace it differently. Have a great day. Thank you for staying with me. You'll hear from me on Wednesday.
