Boost Productivity with Simple Systems! with Kris Ward

#EntrepreneurBurnout
#ProductivityHacks
#KrisWard

Evan Gallagher Interviews Kris Ward

[00:00:00] Kris Ward: Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of Win The Hour Win The Day, and I am your host, Kris Ward, and today we have a particular unique episode. So let’s see how this goes. We have Evan Gallagher in the house. Evan is my Project Manager, and he’s actually going to interview me on burnout. So where do we start, Evan?

[00:00:20] Evan Gallagher: First, thanks for having me and yeah, let’s just dive right in. And I was just, I wanted to tackle like burnout and how it disguises itself as like ambition and drive.

[00:00:31] Kris Ward: Yeah. So I say that all the time. Isn’t that interesting? You bring that up. So what I say is people think burnout is this, I don’t know, this monster.

[00:00:39] And then you really do always think, Oh, it happens to other people. And I know for me, I went through burnout a few times and I didn’t even know what it was at first. It’s suddenly I felt disconnected to the work when I’m usually so excited. No, it was, it’s just a whole different. It’s a real, I don’t know, sitting in yucky is what I feel like you’re just, you just everything about your personality changes and you’re like, Oh, maybe I got a flu or this is how I think maybe about this, maybe about that.

[00:01:04] And it’s really just, working too many hours or using your brain too much or because taxing yourself running in all different directions. And what I have come to really believe in is that burnout disguises itself as ambition and passion so that I can justify, Oh, I’m taking this new course. I’m super interested.

[00:01:25] Oh, this is happening. Or we got this new client and it’s okay because this stuff really matters. So let me put in all those extra hours and then I’m in burnout. And so that’s what I want people to understand is it really sneaks up on you in the disguise of this is a good thing that I’m doing for my business or my team, but there you are in burnout again.

[00:01:47] Evan Gallagher: Yeah, no, it’s just some stuff. The talker early office was what we dubbed a Monday madness and used to, we’re pretty adamant about working weekends. And I remember just coming into the office on Mondays and we could tell that you had worked all weekend. And I just, I remember just grabbing the short straw and because yeah, it is a completely different mentality of, the workplace when you’ve gone 48 hours, just hitting the grindstone and then starting Monday. Yeah. It’s a big difference.

[00:02:21] Kris Ward: Okay. So that was many years ago. I have to defend myself, but I do, I remember that what I would think is I’d have a new project or there’d be something happening. And I think foolishly that I could get a headstart on the weekend. And then you become like an addict. You get in there for a couple hours and I’m just going to do this one thing.

[00:02:39] And all of a sudden cut to, Oh, I got so far on Saturday. What can I get done on Sunday? Okay. Okay. And to your point, I know when you did speak to me about this, and even though it was many years ago, it’s still fresh in my mind. Your argument was by Monday afternoon, I’m thinking it’s Thursday. Cause I put so many hours in and I’m asking you about something like, Hey, we haven’t got this done yet.

[00:03:00] And you’re like, listen, you gave that to me Friday at four and it’s Monday at 1 PM. How am I supposed to have this done? But I’m all distorted with time. That’s another thing like I found for me. Burnout often just got me confused with a sense of time. So yeah, it didn’t, yeah, it wasn’t my best friend. It didn’t help me.

[00:03:19] I don’t think it, and studies show now too, that it makes you irritable, impatient. It’s just a hot mess. It’s a hot mess. And I think looking back now, I probably wasn’t that enjoyable to be around because everything was such a rush.

[00:03:32] Evan Gallagher: Some of the, like the things that I found that were other than the time, so the time loss, we’ve dubbed it was, it’s basically the talking was like a mile a minute and such.

[00:03:43] It was just like, okay, where’s this? And that was created like a little bit of a miscommunication. You would go and be like, okay, I want this. And because you have been working for the last 48 hours, essentially. So I guess it was the time you didn’t. It didn’t need to be explained for you, but for us on Monday, it was like, we had never even heard of this.

[00:04:04] We had no idea. And I always joke about the coming in and we had pivoted to something completely different. And the, I was playing catch up and I always think of that friends episode of just, Oh, just pivot. And it’s just, okay, this is a horrible Monday. Yeah. It’s stuff like that where it’s really, it does impact it.

[00:04:23] Not just like a, from our, that, Things are more tense or anything, but like communication does take a hit. I found was a big thing.

[00:04:30] Kris Ward: That’s interesting. You’ve never really, I knew you were the one that would tell me, but, and I do talk quickly to begin with, but I will say, I do know you’re not.

[00:04:39] The first person to say is when I would start working too many hours, I would speed up even more. And I never really heard it that way. Like you said, all of a sudden I’m up to my eyeballs in something that I think is common sense. We’re all in it. And you’re like, no, it’s, I’m not in chapter eight of a book and you’re on chapter two.

[00:04:56] And now I’m like,

[00:04:56] Evan Gallagher: I just got the book.

[00:04:58] Kris Ward: You just got the book. Okay. Okay. And yeah, you’re right. Cause Saturday morning I’d have this great idea and I’d be looking at this course and I would change all these things and yeah, Oh my gosh. And okay. To your point, you have been with me almost 11 years now. So we, these stories to go back.

[00:05:14] But. But it is so it’s one of the reasons I’m so passionate about what I do is because I do remember the carnage this cost, because I do remember, and this was many years ago now, I can’t stress this enough because I have to defend myself. I remember the time that I asked you to, because I was going fast.

[00:05:34] So this is what I said, Oh my gosh, I’m so embarrassed to say this out loud. But I said, Evan, can you not talk quicker? I did not. And I tell people that all the time. I’m like, listen, I’m here to tell you if you ask somebody to speak quicker, it does not go over well. Like how rude is that? But that was my angst and urgency of, because you just start going faster and oh, it just gets out of control.

[00:05:58] So yeah. So we, I haven’t done that in a long time, but I will say this. I will say this. I almost had a relapse just a couple weekends ago. I had this little software that I wanted to get set up for Monday morning and it just had to install on my computer. So I came into my office with just to look at it on the computer.

[00:06:21] And so that I wouldn’t be sitting here Monday morning, watch like that. I could wander away. I wouldn’t be sitting here waiting for it to load. So I had this little program. And then it loaded it’s Sunday. And then I thought, let me just test that it works. And then it worked. And then I thought, you know what?

[00:06:35] I’ve already been here 20 minutes. I’m just going to do an hour. And I know, and then the hour I got so much done. I was so excited about this program that I looked and I thought it’s really early Sunday morning. Oh my God. What could I get? Like I can get so much done by tomorrow. And then I, Oh, Like I could hear myself talking and I could just see like things on full.

[00:06:57] I put my hands up and I walked away from the computer. I really felt like somebody like in a bar, maybe think just have a shooter. That’s not really a drink. You know what I mean?

[00:07:06] Evan Gallagher: Yeah, it’s just a little one.

[00:07:08] Kris Ward: And I was like, Oh no, I can’t, I cannot do this. So that is the first time. But. It’s been like, I don’t know, eight years and still I could feel like a, whatever, recovering.

[00:07:19] I call myself a recovering rushaholic, but I could feel things tingling in me saying, Oh my gosh, what can I get done for tomorrow? So not good at all. So I think for you, I can’t speak for you. I know for me, I’m glad those years are behind us. I don’t do that anymore, but it’s still, it is still something I have to be, I’m aware. I don’t take it for granted.

[00:07:41] Evan Gallagher: Yeah. And it definitely leads us, because it does mask itself as just being really productive. It is really something that I was like, Oh yeah, I can justify this. So easy to justify in your head. Oh, what’s another like eight hours. And then I’ll stop and all that kind of stuff.

[00:07:58] And I’ll get so much done and the office is quiet right now and all that kind of stuff. So it’s a hundred percent. I totally get the allure, but yeah. Monday, Evan. Thanks. Thanks very much for your service.

[00:08:11] Kris Ward: But you bring up really good points. Those are all really valid points. And then also, too, I would say, I know recently we had gotten some big projects and things that we were doing.

[00:08:20] And there’s a couple nights a week I was cutting out even earlier. Listen, people, I do a lot. We’ve got the podcast. I’ve written a book. I’ve done a lot of other shows. We’ve got this coaching program. We’ve got a leadership program for our virtual assistants. There’s a lot, and we have other ambitions that are coming out.

[00:08:34] And yet I generally work somewhere between 10 and five ish. Most days, because science shows us we’re really only productive six hours a day. If, and especially if you set it up effectively, but even then there’s a couple of nights I was cutting out early to go rock climbing and I said to you, this is getting to the point where it’s silly and irresponsible, but the way rock climbing is set up, it’s just better if I get there at that time.

[00:08:55] And I said to you like, Oh my gosh, I really like it, but I think I have to pull back on the rock climbing. Cause there’s two nights I could stay later at work. And you’re like, no, this is not, that’s not, you didn’t see that as a plan.

[00:09:07] Evan Gallagher: Huh. Yeah, no, it’s, again, it’s just the idea of being able to get a bunch of stuff done or whatever.

[00:09:15] Yeah, I can definitely see the slippery slopes that is, burnout and all that.

[00:09:19] Kris Ward: Yeah. And to your point, you said you come back refreshed. You like the rock climbing, I think. And to you were saying, I think that’s well worth, I think you’re more productive the next day for it.

[00:09:28] It’s a stress reliever. You’re like, that’s not the place we should cut it. And I think that’s another great point is having people that can keep you sober. Straight and narrow. Yeah. Talking about burnout, we all have our stories, and I know, oh my gosh, my clients have come to me with so many crazy stories.

[00:09:45] But I think it’s really important here to talk about now, how do you avoid burnout, right? Because I find it insulting when you Google something online, it’s like, how to avoid burnout? And they say things like, set boundaries, leave work on time, do this. And you’re like, what? Yeah, if I could do that, this is not wise advice.

[00:10:05] This is so useless, right? It’s like saying to somebody who’s struggling with obesity, you know what? If you ate healthier and exercise more, you’d be fine. So I find that frustrating. So I want to just go over a couple of little things to me when we talk about our clients come to us. I always joke that a lot of my clients, when we first meet with them, that we should take a before and after picture.

[00:10:31] Cause they look exhausted, their hair is a stray. It’s all crazy. And they’ve gone through their burnout budget of doing it several times. Cause I also think too. You’re really, I don’t know, level about all that, but I think it took me two or three times before I even understood what burnout was. But when we’re dealing with all that, okay, where do we start?

[00:10:54] And so that’s where we created everything we have with our team, our time, and our toolkit. To me, what I think is really important, Evan, is you can tell tales about me all day long, and we have them.

[00:11:03] Evan Gallagher: I have, yeah, I have many.

[00:11:06] Kris Ward: He has all my secrets. They’re not even secrets. I didn’t, I don’t have enough willpower to keep them secret.

[00:11:12] But I think where it really changes is when you have the setup, don’t say silly things to people like set boundaries, work less, do all this stuff. You have to have an infrastructure in play to support and protect you. So that’s what we do with our team, time and toolkits. You wanted to say something?

[00:11:29] Evan Gallagher: Yeah. No, I was just going to say that when I was just looking at Google things or whatever, one of the things, it was just like a meditation video on YouTube. It’s just, Oh, you prevent burnout. It’s like that. It’s just taking about 45 minutes of your life. And at the end of it, you’re still burnt out.

[00:11:44] You’re just now 45 minutes. Like later, so it’s like things that it’s actually having like a solid plan on something that will prevent these things from happening or like a toolkit and all that kind of stuff to prevent that is really just monumental

[00:11:58] Kris Ward: because here’s the thing, nothing would have made my temper flare faster than somebody when I’m exhausted telling me.

[00:12:04] To go meditate, get out of my way. I’ll tell you, so one time, one time, so here I was at home and I had been going through a stretch. So there’s only two people in my life that were brave enough to tell me, you’re out of control. You’re working cause here’s the thing, especially when your business is new, you think you’re doing this right.

[00:12:22] Like I’m giving it my all to my business. Who, it’s not like I’m being selfish. I think I’m doing right by everyone around me, you, my family, by working so hard to get this thing off the ground. It’s not like I was sitting there, I don’t know, whatever. Putting myself first in theory, right?

[00:12:36] That’s not what my mindset was. So it was Saturday. I was at home and apparently I was a little cranky or short, whatever. I just wasn’t my best self because I really was exhausted. So my husband says to me, that’s enough. And he, she, he did not say when he said that’s enough. He didn’t say that very often, but it was enough.

[00:12:56] He said, you go upstairs. And you stay up there and you go do what you need to do. You read a book, you take a nap. I don’t care. Like you are exhausted. You don’t even know which way is up. And I walked upstairs and I thought, who does he think he is telling me to go sledding? How dare he talk to, I was like, not going to fight with him because I knew when he said that’s enough.

[00:13:17] Listen, but I was rehearsing my counter argument. And we were going to have words. So I went upstairs and there was this, I was sit there on this little love seat. Now I have to sidebar, tell you that I’ve always had difficulty falling asleep. It’s great to have high energy, but you have to tone it down and fall asleep.

[00:13:35] And so I have to have all these precise things for me to sleep with something that I kind of work at and it’s a process, right? So I went up and I was sitting on this little loveseat, very small, and I was crossing my arms. I’m thinking, you know what I had my whole, I should be writing this stuff down.

[00:13:49] I have my whole argument that I’m going to have a discussion with him later. I woke up two hours later and I had my hand on the side of this loveseat. My leg was hanging off because it was too small. I damn near broke my neck. One arm is all twisted. I was in so much pain because I don’t even remember this.

[00:14:06] I must have just fell over and I thought, Oh my God, maybe he’s right. I just fell over like a puppy dog tired. Maybe he’s right. So I was like, Oh my gosh. So you don’t see, you don’t see you’re out of control. I think that’s the big thing. And especially as us entrepreneurs where. Most of my clients, like myself back in the day, you, everything that isn’t work is interruption to work.

[00:14:31] So what happens is I hear this all the time from my clients. Oh my gosh, I work this many hours and I stop and I put the kids to bed. And when the kids are asleep, I work two more hours. And so you’re stuffing it in everywhere. And so no one person knows how many hours you’re working because you’re just like a little junkie always sneaking away trying to get emails, right?

[00:14:51] Oh my lord Okay, so we don’t have this anymore. I haven’t done this a long time a because we rely Increasingly crazy about our super toolkits.

[00:15:01] Evan Gallagher: Yeah,

[00:15:02] Kris Ward: we also have a team as a philosophy not a number but I’m not a micromanager because the team relies on the super toolkits. So then that means everything we do, cause super toolkits, what the really great thing about them is they’re really dynamic documents that continuously prove inefficiency and they’re really what separates them from SOP standard operating procedures is their language, clarity, and ease of use.

[00:15:26] So you live and die with your work by the super toolkits. I think for you, how do you speak to that? Like, how does that help you or keep me, I just have to follow the super toolkit. So I can’t go off the beaten path.

[00:15:40] Evan Gallagher: Yeah. So for me, and I think mine is a little bit different because I tend to have like random projects that don’t necessarily repeat the same processes all the time, they’re custom to whatever I’m working on, but that doesn’t change the fact that I still have and can adjust.

[00:15:58] It’s like my super toolkit for what I’m working with one of the, yeah, again, we use a program for, called Basecamp. And one of the things I can have variations on, so if I’m doing something specific, like a banner or whatever, I can tailor that and I do update with the client’s needs. So for next time, if I have to do that, and I can just change it based on what I’m looking at and for the actual toolkit.

[00:16:22] So it’s, it is helpful just to have that kind of stability and flexibility.

[00:16:27] Kris Ward: Yeah. Cause we’re always CUEing them, create, using and editing them. So I think what you’re saying is even when it’s a brand new project, you have a framework that you’re like, Oh, this super toolkit, it’s like a recipe, but if I’m making chocolate chip cookies and I say, okay, you know what?

[00:16:43] I’m now going to make raisin oatmeal, raisin cookies. It’s okay. I have most of the ingredients. Let’s just see what’s different here. You know what I mean? So it’s just modifying your recipe. And I remember actually when we were starting this. Was it this podcast? Yeah, the podcast. I had written a book and we had the whole launch around the book and we had a super tool kit for that.

[00:17:03] Assuming that one day I would write another book. And then when I got talked into doing this podcast and we’re like, okay, we got to do a launch for podcast. We’ve never done this before. Let’s figure it out. And you’re like, why don’t we look at the book? Like a lot of the things must be similar. It’s still a product and we’re launching it.

[00:17:18] And that was your idea. And I was like, Oh, okay. And we went and looked and it was like, Oh my gosh, this is so similar. We already had it. Let’s edit it. We moved on. It was just so things we would have never thought of. Oh, that’s a great idea. We did that. Boom for the book. Boom, boom. Then, you don’t have this false sense of, I gotta come in Sunday and figure this out.

[00:17:40] I need quiet time when no one else is here. And when I say no one else is here, even though we live in a virtual world, a lot of us work from home or our home office, you get this idea that, okay, we’re safe because nobody can be emailing you and they can’t be calling you. And so you feel like you’re in this protective zone.

[00:17:55] And that’s where you go, I got to get started on this project where with us, with the super toolkits and like our clients, we just constantly building on our own efficiency.

[00:18:04] Evan Gallagher: Yeah, no, exactly. And it, again, it’s just, even for somebody that like myself, where everything is tailored to the specifics of the client, I’m never starting from scratch and I think that helps a lot with like my workflow, not having to just figure it out as I go, but knowing that I have, even though they might be slightly different systems, that I can still tailor them and make them as effective for this new project as they were for the old one.

[00:18:31] Kris Ward: Yeah, and I think what you’re bringing up is a really good point, Evan, too, because the nature of your work, sometimes it involves real creative stuff and people often think I can’t use these or I don’t want to be choked by SOP because I do creative work. And I’m like, yeah.

[00:18:44] Evan Gallagher: How do you systematize creativity?

[00:18:47] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:18:48] Kris Ward: But SOPs are usually, the reason they didn’t work is they’re like static in nature. They’re there to cover liability. They’re corporate frameworks that didn’t even work in the corporate world. We were just bound by them. But the super toolkits, even with someone like you, where you have creative problem solving, you might have creative graphic work.

[00:19:06] You’ve got all these different projects that are very unique than anybody else in the company. If something goes wrong, we all call Evan and you’ve got to figure it out, which was never your job description, but you inherited it.

[00:19:18] Evan Gallagher: Yeah. The IT department. Yep.

[00:19:21] Kris Ward: Yeah. Just cause you’re smart at that. It wasn’t what we hired you for.

[00:19:24] I remember one time I asked you to do, I’m like, Hey, I don’t know how, and you’re like, Kris, I don’t know how to do that either. I’m like, one of us is going to figure it out. It ain’t going to be me because I have no clue. But even though your work is all unique, you still start with the super toolkit and you still find that there’s very minor edits to make it a new project.

[00:19:40] Evan Gallagher: Yeah, exactly.

[00:19:41] Kris Ward: Yeah. Okay. So Bruno, you do need to have a team. A team is a philosophy, not a number. You can have a virtual assistant working part time for five US dollars an hour. It’s crazy. It’s awesome. And when you have that set up effectively, then they’re using this super toolkit and you’re not micromanaging, managing them.

[00:20:00] Like back in the day of the corporate world, it was this whole parentified system where you’re checking on their work and then it detracts you from their work, your work, and then you’re turning them into a task cuppet and you’re all over the place. So if you have these things in play. Then you don’t have to manage burnout.

[00:20:16] You don’t have to set boundaries or these foolish ideas set an alarm for 5 PM and then quit work. That’s all well and good, except when you’re panicking and you’ve got so much left to do. So if you put infrastructure in play, that’s super, that workflow and allows you to get more and more stuff done in less and less time. Then you don’t have to worry about burnout.

[00:20:43] Evan Gallagher: And just one quick little caveat too, is also like for your team members and your virtual assistants and stuff, it makes their job exponentially easier just following a foundation of like toolkits and stuff like that. So just a general like workplace improvement.

[00:21:01] All around is, yeah.

[00:21:03] Kris Ward: Yeah. And then too, with the super toolkits, then I can look at somebody’s job that I don’t even do and see what the steps are to that. So then my expectations are reasonable because they’re all clear. It’s all, Oh, this is what they have to do. And it’s all there. And I’m not guessing, Hey, I thought that would only take you two hours and took you three.

[00:21:23] Could you not have worked faster? There’s no guessing. And then, cause I also find too, even if you just have one person there, Again, a team of one, then without these super toolkits and stuff, not only do you get distracted in your micromanaging and checking on the work, and that takes more time because listen, delegating is a lateral move at best.

[00:21:41] The work still has to come through you. And then that takes time off your plate. But more than that, what happens is you start, I think you start to speed up thinking, Oh, they’re not going fast enough. So then I have to speed up to pick up the slack and do all this stuff because you’re just running raw and ragged.

[00:21:59] Yeah, I know. We got all kinds of horror stories here about burnout. I think the darkest day was when I asked you to talk quicker, but, and I have to say, I want to know that I went over my mind about four or five times before. I was like, okay, I can’t take it no more. He’s got to talk quicker. But, and that’s the other thing too.

[00:22:17] I used to think for years that I could just, smile. And I was going hysterical in my mind, like thinking these people have to move faster because the faster I went, the faster I could go. Like it just sped out of control. And then I would think, Oh yeah, I’m fine. I could smile. Nobody will know how annoyed I am that they’re all moving slow, but I don’t, they can smell it off.

[00:22:38] Yeah. That’s what I can

[00:22:39] Evan Gallagher: say. Yeah, we could not fooling anybody. Yeah, exactly. Again, Monday madness was coined for that specific reason, but I didn’t want to just bring us back quickly just to burn it. And I just wanted to like, what are some like telltale sign that for our listeners and stuff that they can maybe see if they’re going down the wrong track and all that kind of stuff.

[00:23:00] Kris Ward: Yeah, that’s a good question. Okay. So I think people. There’s, I think there’s some common grounds and then there’s definitely, everybody’s got their own personal experience. So I do think part of burnout is, first of all, you start to lose that connection with your work that you normally have, like things that light you up.

[00:23:17] You start to get, you know what? I don’t even care anymore. I don’t care if there’s a mistake, whatever. You start to get a little, You also start to, what people don’t monitor is that your output. So all of a sudden you say things like, okay, you know what? I didn’t get everything done tonight, so I’m just going to work later and I’m going to have an easy evening.

[00:23:35] I’m going to stay here till nine o’clock, but I’m just going to stop rushing myself because I can’t take the stress. And so then you start expanding the time you’re going to work, but your output is decreasing dramatically. But you think that’s a break. Like I used to think, Oh, I’m not really working tonight because I’m going to have a break and I’m just going to relax and work on this project.

[00:23:55] I think for me too, another sign of burnout is that you disqualify a lot of your work thinking it’s not work. This isn’t really work. I don’t count that. I just come in on Sundays to get ahead of my emails. Oh, this is a course I’m taking. That’s not really work. And so you’re back to being like an addict, justifying.

[00:24:10] Yeah. Your actions and dismissing for me, I did have a distorted sense of time, not just how much time has passed. But I remember once when we were at the other place and my office, our office was in the basement and I looked at the clock and it was 10 and I didn’t know if it was 10 in the morning or 10 at night because it didn’t really matter. The days are so long, they bled into each other and there was nothing in my day to break up the routine. Like it was like, Oh, it’s this time because I do this every morning or I have my workout or I have lunch or whatever. Everything was just. Go bitch go. And so I remember thinking, I don’t, I definitely didn’t know what day it was, but I didn’t even know if it was morning or night.

[00:24:52] Cause it was also, I think it, cause I just didn’t have window access and stuff, but I was, that’s concerning.

[00:24:58] Evan Gallagher: Yeah. No, not knowing. Yeah. Where you are in the days. Yeah, it definitely a good sign to, to note. Just when you’re talking about just going that. Justifying and it’s not work. It’s just training or it’s not work.

[00:25:10] It’s one other thing is that quality seems to really suffer for just pushing yourself beyond, taking a break and all that kind of stuff is, yeah, it’s like you want to get something out and if you just keep your head down and work on it and, It’s sure it’s an hour, but like the quality of work will suffer because of it as you need that time to just not be focusing on it and to take a breath and all that kind of stuff.

[00:25:38] Kris Ward: Yeah, you bring up a really good point. So after all my years of working with entrepreneurs, I’ve noticed they fell into one of five categories and you can check it out at free.gift G I F T from Kris K R I S dot com. freegiftfromkris.Com. It’s in the show notes. And for me, I am a recovering rushaholic.

[00:25:56] And so I, that speed was my superpower, but I did not realize always like thinking about the next thing and the next thing and rushing that I was skimming over things. I wasn’t getting traction. There was no depth. There was lack of creativity because I think another sign of burnout is you’re never in the moment.

[00:26:12] You’re always just, what time is it? Where do I have to be next? It’s just, you’re always, your eye is on the clock and the next place, it’s like a, it’s like those TV shows where whatever, what do you call that? A hunt? What do you call it? Now we have to think of that word. Not a treasure hunt. It doesn’t matter.

[00:26:28] Scavenger hunt. Everybody write this down. Scavenger hunt. We’ll stop the show until I remember this big word.

[00:26:34] It becomes like a scavenger hunt throughout the day. You’re just crazy all over the place. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay. We could talk about this a long time because I certainly have made a mess of this.

[00:26:46] It’s been a very long time, but I will not live long enough to forget how I grinded myself down to a nub and how I couldn’t believe when I started working regular hours with some things in play. How much my business grew, how much more I enjoyed it, how much more effective I was, clear headed, and how counterproductive this was, I didn’t get it.

[00:27:08] And now, because I did it poorly so many times, I ran out of ways to do it wrong. I can see even for me, If for some reason I like, Oh, what if I stayed to six o’clock tonight to work? Then you get to bed a little bit later because your work days, it just starts to, it’s like a thread in your sweater. Do you just pull it?

[00:27:26] So now it doesn’t matter what we’re doing. I’m so like, I just know. This is the other way doesn’t work. It does not work. It just doesn’t. Yeah,

[00:27:36] Evan Gallagher: exactly.

[00:27:36] Kris Ward: Oh my gosh. All right. Thanks for letting me share my dirty secrets, Evan. We appreciate you as the, I’m not sure if you’re the semi host, the co host or the actual host.

[00:27:44] Evan Gallagher: Co host. Co host. Yeah.

[00:27:47] Kris Ward: Thank you so much. Everyone else, share this episode with a business buddy. Come on. We, the thing is no one talks about burnout or after the fact, they talk about after the fact. So share it with somebody cause they’re not going to tell you. They may not even know themselves when they’re going through it.

[00:28:01] Yeah. Exactly. And we’ve got all kinds of ways to help them. So thank you so much. We will see you in the next episode. Thanks again, Evan.

[00:28:07] Evan Gallagher: Yeah, thank you. Take care.