310: How to Recharge When You Feel Drained
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Summary
Have you ever felt completely drained in the middle of a busy schedule? As small business owners, we don’t always have the luxury of pressing pause on everything to catch up and recharge. Today, we break down steps to take to invest back in yourself, even in the middle of the chaos. Then, Natasha O’Banion answers, “What does it mean to systematize my business?”
Main topics:
How to recharge
Questions to ask yourself
Fully commit and take a small step
Ask a Biz Coach
Main takeaway: Whatever our capacity right now, we can do something to change it for the better.
Links
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
business, schedule, recharge, systematize, step, pet, minutes, drained, recognizing, limited capacity, question, emails, clients, capacity, changing, bookings, feel, admit, expectations, mental
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin
Meghan 00:10
Hello, I'm Meghan. I'm Collin, and this is Pet Sitter confessional and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter.
Collin 00:19
Hello, welcome to episode 310.
Meghan 00:22
Today we're going to talk about how to recharge when you feel drained because boy howdy, it has been a summer.
Collin 00:29
But before we do that, we want to thank our sponsors, pet sitters associates and our amazing patreon supporters like Savannah, Katie, Alicia, Teresa, and Jennifer. If you want to learn more about what it means to be a Patreon supporter, and financially support the show with a few bucks every month, you can do that at Pitzer professional.com/support.
Meghan 00:48
It seems like we are always in the middle of something whether it's a busy season, like we are coming out of the summer, at least here in the northern hemisphere for pet sitting and dog walking. But then we also have busy seasons of dealing with business issues, you know what we're told that, and we've even given this advice before of when you have downtime in your pet care when there's slower seasons, to focus on your business and to plan ahead work on your SOPs or your increase your advertising budget or whatever it is. So there's really hardly ever a time when we have nothing on our schedule, which can be very overwhelming. And not just overwhelming, though, but very suffocating, it feels like. So in a perfect world, we'd have time for everything, there wouldn't be any overlap with our schedules. And we'd be able to set aside a full day to dedicate to relaxing and doing nothing, which sounds really nice right now.
Collin 01:43
Sure dies. But the reality is, is that when we have that little bit of open time, we do use that time to try and get ahead on other projects or work more on business stuff instead of doing the field work. Now, we highly recommend that you schedule a day or week to have time to focus on things if you do not budget your time, you'll look and you'll have no time for anything and wonder where it all went. So time budgets. Setting a weekly schedule and daily schedules for when you can block out time to do things is exceptionally important as a business owner, but even with blocked out time for emails or invoicing or eating, or the actual services that you're providing, even with all of that there is still a mental burden with everything on your plate. I
Meghan 02:28
feel like that's what I run into a lot of we try to schedule some time off or, you know, go do an activity with the kids. But my brain is still on business mode getting stuck in a loop of things we have to do.
Collin Funkhouser 02:39
I set time throughout the day, if I'm no, I'm going to set emails, I'm going to check emails on a set time throughout the day. But when I get that notification on my phone and email has come through I have that that's that suspicion, that thing clogging at the back of my brain that I need to go check on that. And even whenever I don't have email notifications turned on. I'm always curious about what's coming up. Was there something that I'm missing? Do I need access that so it's hard to just completely unplug and relax
Meghan 03:06
that continuous FOMO? It?
Collin 03:09
Absolutely. So how do we recharge when we feel drained in the middle of a busy period. Because there are times where we cannot take time off or we cannot take anything off of our plate. Because we're committed to those two or three weeks of 12 to 18 visits a day, and ticularly around the holiday. And we still have a life to live and paperwork to take care of and everything else that goes on.
Meghan 03:35
So we're gonna talk about some five steps to recharging in the middle of chaos. The first one is recognize that you are drained. You just don't have it in you right now to do any more than you are currently doing. You know, we would love to crush it and say yes to everything. And say yes to everyone. But the moment we feel depleted, we have to admit it openly whether that's just within ourselves openly admitting it, or with a friend or another dog walker, that we have nothing left to give that we are just drained.
Collin 04:10
Well, I would say what's important with that is that we have to admit it without shame, because as business owners or solopreneurs, or even if you have a team, it can feel like you're supposed to be able to do everything all the time.
Meghan 04:21
Let's give you permission right now you do not have to be everything to everyone all the time. It would
Collin 04:27
and you have to, especially to yourself, right that that's where that starts. So how do I make sure that I can say no to other people? You have to say no to yourself before you can get to that point, I would say you have to say yes to yourself by saying no to other things, or saying yes to things to say no to other things. See how they're connected.
Collin Funkhouser 04:44
And while that may sound depressing to admit, I can't add another thing. I am completely drained. There's nothing left. I've tapped out. It's actually very freeing, because the pro tip here is that never wait until you're at 100 or percent or 120%, mental capacity or scheduling capacity, set your limits to 80% capacity both physically and mentally, and save yourself and save yourself time and headache. So you have a little buffer there moving forward.
Meghan 05:15
Well, and that's what we talked about with clients do don't operate all the time and 100%.
Collin 05:19
Exactly, always have that little bit of buffer. But start by recognizing the warning signs of when you feel drained. This could be changes in attitude, this could be changes in how you respond to emails changing and sleeping behavior, changing and diet, changing it all sorts of things. Be aware enough to say, Oh, I don't think things are going well, right now. I need to at least the first admit that.
Meghan 05:42
So once you've admitted that, then you need to ask yourself, What can I realistically do for myself right now? You know, everybody, I think I can venture to say, literally, everybody would love to take a month long vacation to the Maldives. Wouldn't that be amazing? But right now, that's probably not going to happen. I may not have systems in place, I may not have a team that where I can actually take an entire month off.
Collin 06:07
I might not have that space in my schedule of Oh, it'd be great if I didn't have to say no to anybody for an entire month so that I could just go and enjoy a trip to the Maldives. But I'm really busy right now. So taking a month long vacation isn't realistic,
Meghan 06:21
or I may not have 20 grand to just spend
Collin 06:25
it. Yes, exactly. So what can you do? Maybe it's sitting in a quiet car for 10 minutes, or taking 30 minutes to meditatively wash dishes. I know, it's not the most exciting thing. But I have found some of my most peaceful moments, to be hand washing dishes in a very methodical manner. Granted, I'm mildly OCD and a lot of the things that I do, but it is very therapeutic to me to go through that and finding joy in the small things in life.
Meghan 06:51
Or it could be listening to your favorite music from high school to get a little bit of nostalgia. Or if you have a best friend, jump on a 15 minute call and just chit chat, say how you doing how's it how's it going? I mean, you know your schedule is full. So what can you fit in and little bits here and there that is really going to recharge your mind and your body and your soul really what is going to give you that that extra little push that you need to keep going.
Collin Funkhouser 07:19
The next step in recharging with a hectic schedule is fully embracing whatever activity you picked in step to empower that time to make the most of it, instead of feeling guilty about it, tell yourself it's how you're going to love yourself right now, for those few moments, because you need those few moments for yourself, this will help put your mind at ease, you'll have to self talk a few times probably to remind yourself how important 10 minutes of not running your business is. Because you have to remember that the break that you don't take is the time that may break you. In the end. When you don't take that break that time could be what breaks you what pushes you over the edge into burnout into passion fatigue. So we don't have much time. So the time that we do get, we have to set aside and make sure that we make the most of it, you'd be really surprised how much 15 minutes of meditation, getting caught up in an aesthetic music or a deep conversation with a friend can really genuinely recharge you.
Meghan 08:20
I think it hits me the most when I really want to be there for our kids and I want to be a present mom. And but we've got all these other business things going on. And so, you know, when we were at the pool, and I would be still sitting in the chair on my phone, not really interacting with them. But when I would, you know, go jump in with them and be with them. But I wouldn't have my phone, it was very free of you know, okay, I'm gonna take 15 minutes right now, step away from the phone, go be in the pool, which I love anyway, and go be with our kids who obviously I love and want to spend a lot of time with them. It really helped me to disconnect from the business of like the phones over there, it's going to be okay, I need to breathe right now and spend time with my kids.
Collin 09:06
I have a greater purpose in this exact moment. And I think that's where we can start to look at this time and go, This time is more purposeful than anything else I have or could schedule in its place. Spending time with my kids, calling my best friend, talking to my parents, listening to music in the car in that exact moment. Those exact those activities are more important than anything else in the world for you at that moment. When you can prioritize them to that point, and understand that you don't have to place them in that priority. You don't have to put them at number one, they're at number one already. I'm just clearing out the rest of the clutter to get to that. That's where we find a lot of clarity in our lives in our schedule. And that allows us to start seeking out those times more and more. And that's what allows us to put in those systems hiring somebody having a VA doing these other things because we go oh That 10 minutes was amazing. I want more of that. Yeah, yeah, no, I'm motivated to do that. Right. That's where we start realizing a lot of that stuff.
Meghan 10:08
But it's not to say that we also don't love a dog walking and pet sitting and we thrive and get joy from that as well.
Collin 10:15
No, it's absolutely it's just saying, right now, what I need is a 15 Minute swim and play session with my kids right now, what I need is to listen to music from my high school era. That's what I need right now. And prioritizing that in allowing yourself to embrace that. Because once we fully embrace that time that we've given back to ourselves, we can now ask this question, is there anything I'd like to do with my limited capacity? Notice, it's not need to do look at your schedule your to do list, your goals, your objectives, and do a 30,000 foot flyover of everything on your plate, and pick something easy, something that you know, you're going to enjoy.
Meghan 10:54
So maybe you're wanting to do some direct mailing, that's something that we are considering right now,
Collin 10:59
a hypothetical situation is direct mailing, I don't know,
Meghan 11:02
it's a massive project that needs to get done. You know, when we lower our expectations a little bit, because we only have a fixed amount of time, you know, obviously, we're not going to get it all done from start to finish in that amount of time. So when you lower your expectations for what you can reasonably do in that amount of time, we stopped trying to do what we think we should be doing, and we let go of some of that pressure. So maybe lowering expectations is not the right term. But it's just we we release that from ourselves, yeah, we
Collin Funkhouser 11:34
allow ourselves to go I don't have to solve all of this right now. I've got this big messy problem over here. And it's not going to take care of itself right now. And these next few minutes. So I need to put take that pressure off of myself and just go I'm going to do something that I like that I was good with, given my limited capacity of my mental my mental or my physical energy or my ability to process things right now, I'm going to look at all this stuff and go, What would I like to accomplish what would be really fun or easy for me to do?
Meghan 12:02
So in the example of direct mailing, maybe spend that 15 minutes just scrolling and looking at examples of what options are out there, not necessarily creating anything in that timeframe. But just looking at the options. So you're not, you know, nailing down fonts or branding, because you don't have the capacity for that right now in terms of time, or maybe even mental bandwidth, you just want to see something that's easy, that's fun to do, you just want to scroll and see what the options are.
Collin 12:29
I love that term mental bandwidth. Because when we think about internet's and connected items, and the the amount of data that's able to pass through a potential pipe or cable, there's a limited capacity for data to come through to that. And we have to recognize that our brains have a limited capacity to take on and process new data or regurgitate old data. And we go, I have hit my limit. My mental bandwidth is at its peak, it's at maximum capacity. I can't push through any more big stuff, what little things maybe can I put on my plate, so I can still feel accomplished at the end of the day?
Meghan 13:03
Or maybe also knowing, Hey, I can't do anything right now. So it's not even like I can do a little bit. It's like I can do absolutely nothing. Yeah, at this
Collin 13:11
good question of What would I like to do right now, there's always option to say, I'd like to do nothing. We forget that we have the option to not do anything. We don't always have to be constantly working and pushing forward. It's just once we've kind of cleared and get gotten a little bit of clarity, we can ask that questions. And it allows ourselves to not be so pressured, or so full or so stressed. So we can actually make a really good decision for ourselves instead of trying to pile on more because we feel stressed. So I've got a lot to work to do. So kind of add more work to my plate because I got a lot of work to do. So I got to add more. It really turns us up. Being able to push aside stopping enjoy a few minutes ago. Okay. That's something I'd like to do. Maybe it's nothing perfect. Right? I answered the question
Meghan 13:55
next. Before we get to the last step. As pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members, pet sitters Associates is here to help. for over 20 years they have provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. Because you work in the pet care industry. You can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections and complete freedom in running your business. Learn why pet sitters Associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote today at Pet sit llc.com. You can get a discount when joining by clicking membership Pet Sitter confessional and using the discount code confessional at checkout to get $10 off. Check out the benefits of insurance and membership once again at pets@llc.com. Our final step in recharging in the midst of chaos is that you have to recognize that living life, rarely fully charged is not a very good quality of life. So it's important to ask yourself, what do I need to do to get me where I want to be? Don't be afraid of long timelines. It's okay. It's important to just be honest with yourself and your act. expectations. It's very important to do this step. Because if we never ask ourselves this question, we'll never think of doing anything different. We get stuck in how we operate and how we think. And we just think this is how it is. And this is how it has to be. And we need fresh eyes and clear eyes on our systems and our processes and everything that we do in our business, so that we can know, how do I get to where I, you know, my five year goal or my 10 year goal? How do I get there?
Collin 15:29
Because how you feel when you are crazy busy that fully drained 100% of time, that is not the expectation in running a business. That is not how it is just is that's not how it's supposed to be? Do we have crazy busy times? Absolutely. Should we be living our lives going 120% 24/7 365? No. So take the smallest step in the direction that you want to go. For me that's actually been working on better sleep. I've been tracking my sleep for five or six years now and can see that it's been really, really bad to last three months, four months, if I'm being honest, I've been waking up in the middle of the night and have been having more frequent migraines, because of the quality of sleep that I've been getting or lack of quality. So what's my one small step? It sounds really simple. But that's the point of this entire exercise. I went to the My watch that they were when I sleep, and I changed the sleep setting that said I wanted to be in bed by 11. I changed that to I want to be in bed by eight to 10. Why did I do this? Well, it changed when my watch and my phone alert me to go asleep. And it's actually helped encourage me to hit that more frequently. So doing that step of changing that in the settings took about 14 seconds. But I had been delaying it because I had not wanted to take that one small step because I had been so burdened. But I finally realized, if I don't do this one small thing, I won't take a second step, or third step or a four step. But I recognize that that was the one thing I needed to do to kind of start the snowball of changing some habits.
Meghan 17:00
I think for me, I've talked about this before on the podcast, but I have an incredibly high phone use percentage of the day. Oh, yeah, it is embarrassing, frankly. It's like half my day I spend on my phone. And that is obviously not where I want to be. So what do I need to do to get me there? It's mostly mental for me of recognizing, okay, my kids are not little for very long. And you know, they say the days are long, but the years are short. And that is very true. So what I have found is being much more intentional of okay, I am going like I just talked about a minute ago, setting aside 15 minutes here and there. of okay, no phone, going to read them a book gonna go jump in the pool going to be intentional with my time because I don't want to look up in 10 years when our oldest goes off to college. And
Collin 17:55
wow, it's only a decade. Yeah. Oh, no.
Meghan 17:58
And have wasted all that time on my phone. And yeah, yes, business stuff is important. And there are things that we obviously have to do and we have obligations. But I need to be there for them. I want to be there for them. And it's very important that I do that.
Collin 18:14
Recognizing that it's all about recognizing that first step, given the energy that I have right now, what's the smallest step that I can mentally and physically? Do I have the capacity for? Maybe that's, you know, what, in five years, I want to have staff. So the first step that I want to do is I want to ask a question in a Facebook group, about what's the first step? Because your first step is asking the question about what the first step is, that's, we delay that because Oh, it's gonna be a lot of work, it's gonna be like, we have to distill all of this down and go. The one thing that I can do right now, the one thing is mentally recognizing, my my time how I want to prioritize that. It could be where do I need to ask this question? Maybe? Who do I need to have helped me in my business or on my business or with my business? Or it could be how do I how do I want to change my physicality? Do I want to go go to the gym? Okay, well, that first meet my first step is, I need a call somebody figure out when their hours are. That's actually my first step. It's not go to gym, it's figure out what their schedule is, and work through those steps. Because the smaller we can break the steps down, the less intimidating they are, and the more realistic they become to us, given the amount of energy and the chaos going on in our lives.
Meghan 19:28
Yeah, because with low energy or low mental capacity to take on one more thing, we have to admit that we just can't get it all done. But the moral of the story here is really we can start something, whatever our capacity right now, whether that's a percentage of your capacity or your time that you can devote to something, we can do something to change that.
Collin Funkhouser 19:49
How are you able to separate and find time in the middle of your chaotic schedule? What kind of tools or behaviors that you have in place or boundaries? Do you have setup that allows allow you to recharge even when you're going at 100% or 120% of your capacity for short stints.
Meghan 20:06
If you'd like to share those with us, you can do so through an email at feedback at Pet Sitter confessional.com. Now onto our business coach Question of the week with Natasha opionion. It the question is, what does it mean to systematize? My business?
20:20
Yes, systematize does not necessarily mean robotic, it just means clarity. So, if someone's like, I need to systematize this whole thing, like just saying in a sentence, I need to systematize this, everything is all over the place. It's a little bit chaotic. No one's really sure what to do, we need to systematize this. All that means is that we need to find clarity on ABCD, like a to z clarity. And so when you find a to z clarity, that means you can duplicate this process to anyone, because it's already systematized. It doesn't rely on Natasha, like having these amazing ideas in my mind. And then I'm throwing this stuff out. No, it's written now. It's in a portal. It's in a training manual. So anyone that comes in off the streets can follow the blueprint from A to Z you because it systematized it's all here, everything.
Collin 21:18
Well, and you'll you'll find that stuff of I think a lot of it starts with man, I feel like I'm writing the same thing out all the time. I feel like I'm telling people how to do that, oh, that's a system? Or what does it mean for me to onboard a client I go through what are the steps that this means? And it's like you said, it's just going, I want to make sure that there are no extraneous steps. I want to make sure that somebody else can do this. And I want to make sure it's clear that even I know what exactly is going
21:43
on. Yeah, like think about like grandma's like macaroni and cheese recipe. Okay, Grandma may or may not have had a system on how every year that macaroni and cheese is amazing. And it always turns out perfect every frickin year. How does she do that? How does that happen? Because grandma wrote down the recipe that they passed down from years, two years, two years, and now everybody else duplicate that recipe, you might put your own spin on it, and you might put your little tweaking on it. But it's so systematized that that recipe can be repeated from generations to come. And that's how we look at our business.
Collin 22:26
Knowing that this is something this goes back to our thing about legacy that we've talked about in previous is now this can live beyond me and other people can be doing this and more people, I think there's plenty more people can benefit from this, because of this process that I've put in place.
22:40
Yeah. And like for for all of us, you know, being employees at one point. Everybody wants to know what's expected of them and what's to be done next. And they want to have something to measure that they're on track. So if I'm coming into work every day, and I really don't know what's to come, and I'm like, Well, based on time to pay is how this is going to flow today. You know, if I'm really just swinging at the hip every single day, I start kind of losing that security within the company within my own business, because I know like everybody is different. I don't know. Even with Pet Sets and seeing different clients, the day is still the same. You know, it always scares when I was, I don't know, it just depends on my bookings. It depends on when and I'm like, well, when did you book your admin time? When do you book your visit time? It should be the same every single day. And if it's not, you should be doing overtime on your marketing. So you can have your days filled up. But we shouldn't be waiting around on like the offseason and like oh, I just know we're going to be booked, you know, come Memorial Day, we always are. Well, how do you know? How do you know? Do you contact your clients in advance in March and say, hey, don't forget to book for Memorial Day? Do you know that you're booked? Do you know how much staff you need? You don't have a system? What's your system? You just wait when do you cut off bookings? So now we're all complaining about last minute bookings? And, you know, I'm burnt out but when did you cut bookings off? When did you email your clients and notify them that they need to get their last booking in by May 2 or they're not going to be on the schedule for Memorial Day? Who told you that it was May 25. That was the last day of bookings. What's your system? You burnt out because you don't have systems.
Meghan 24:37
If you would like to join Natasha's monthly membership group, you can do so at automated ceo.com and use the code PSC 20 for 15% off. If you ever have a topic suggestion that you would like us to talk about or if you yourself would like to come on the podcast and be interviewed about your business and why you run it the way you do and how you do that and how you manage the chaos that is a pet sitter. Your business at times we would love to interview you and pick your brain or if you know somebody else who would be great for an interview as well send them our way.
Collin 25:08
Thank you so much for listening and thank you to our sponsors, pet sitters associates and our amazing Patreon. I hope you have a amazing rest of your week. Thank you.
25:17
Bye
