Episode 55: Cleaning Business Owners: How To Deal With Burnout
If you're suffering from burnout this video will give you tips for dealing with the day to day stress, along with advice for controlling burnout long term.
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Episode #55 - Video Transcription
If you're a cleaning business owner you've no doubt had to deal with burnout. And if you haven't yet, just wait -- your time will come! We have so many responsibilities when it comes to owning a business - finding clients, making sure those clients are happy with our service, finding good employees, training those employees, dealing with employee turnover, making sure the bookkeeping side of our business is functioning legally, and the list goes on and on.
So what exactly is burnout? Well here are a few of the symptoms:
1. Feeling run down and totally drained, both physically and emotionally.
2. Dreading having to go to work every day or having negative thoughts about your business.
3. Finding yourself getting easily irritated by small problems.
4. Feeling you have more work than you can possibly handle.
5. Feeling as if you'll never get any time off without constantly worrying about what is happening with the business.
What I've discovered over the years, is that when you're suffering from burnout, if you're not careful it can take over your life. And if you don't take it seriously and do something about it, it could affect the success of your business. Because if YOU are not happy, your employees will pick up on it and their own performance and productivity will quickly slide down hill.
So there's a careful balance that you need to maintain in order to keep from burning out. Now there are all sorts of things you can do to temporarily help the day to day stresses of running your business such as taking a walk, listening to music, or meditating. But these are just temporary measures.
I believe the real key is to find the right people to help you manage the business. Because when you have the right people in place for each side of your business, you can teach them how to manage the portion that they're responsible for. And that will free you up to do what you want to be doing for your business, and it will give you the ability to take time away from the business.
You should always be on the lookout for people that you feel are trustworthy, dependable, and could fill your shoes - even if it's just for a few days. Start giving them additional training and responsibilty. Also give them small tests to see how well they do with making decisions. Take a day off and let them handle things. Then gradually start extricating yourself from the day-to-day so that eventually you're able to take several days or even a week off without totally stressing out.
Dealing with burnout is something we all have to deal with eventually. How you choose to deal with it will decide if you can work your way out of it to continue running your business successfully or whether you decide it's just not worth it any more and move on to something else. Now I'd like to know how YOU deal with burnout.
