696: You (probably) need more sleep…
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What if the problem in your business is not your systems, your discipline, or your schedule—but your sleep? In this episode, we talk about how chronic sleep deprivation impacts decision-making, client communication, employee patience, service quality, and long-term sustainability. We explore why pet sitters and dog walkers are especially vulnerable to fragmented schedules, mental overload, and caffeine reliance. We also share practical ways to improve sleep quality, including consistent routines, better sleep environments, caffeine cutoffs, and hiring for early or late time blocks. Most importantly, we want to remind you that protecting sleep is not selfish—it is part of running a healthier, sharper, more sustainable business.
Main topics:
Sleep and business performance
Chronic stress and burnout
Caffeine reliance and fatigue
Hiring for sleep protection
Building better sleep routines
Main takeaway: “Sometimes the most effective business move that you can make is just getting enough sleep consistently.”
As pet sitters and dog walkers, we often look for another system, another app, another SOP, or another productivity hack when we start feeling overwhelmed. But sometimes the issue is not that we are disorganized—it is that we are exhausted. Poor sleep impacts how we communicate with clients, how patient we are with employees, how quickly we respond in the field, and how clearly we make decisions. Protecting your sleep is not stepping away from your business; it is protecting your ability to run it well. If you want to care for pets, clients, your team, and yourself for the long haul, sleep has to be part of the business plan.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Sleep deprivation, pet sitters, business impact, client interactions, employee patience, chronic stress, cognitive performance, sleep habits, caffeine reliance, sleep environment, hiring strategies, sleep quality, mental load, sleep study, health implications.
SPEAKERS
Collin
Collin 00:01
Welcome to pet sitter confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Today we're brought to you by our friends at pet sitters associates critter and our Patreon supporters. If you have found value in the show, check out Pet Sitter confessional.com/support, to see all the ways that you can contribute. Today's episode is a little different. We're not talking about pricing, hiring or marketing. We're talking about something that directly impacts all of that and everything that you do in any given day. What's that? It's sleep, well. And the reality is you probably need more than you're getting. I know I most certainly do. Well, why is this important? Why do we need to be talking about the sleep and the amount of sleep that we're getting? Well, because it shows up in our business, whether we realize it or not. It shows up when we miss details, when we forget those little things over and over and over again, maybe it's just in the slower responses where something comes in and on my plate or a dog reacts and I am tired. I am exhausted, and it takes me a little while to get up to speed and finally react and then respond to that, or even during a conversation or a phone call, we miss details, or we miss the tone, or things fall through the cracks. You also see this when you start to have shorter patients with clients or staff, and I know certainly there are times where my patient is thin on a good day, let alone when I'm sleep deprived. But now, all of a sudden, my clients experience their interaction with my business starts to suffer, and it impacts them or my staff. My employees, they come to us and they have a question and because I didn't sleep well, now I'm a bit more snappy or snarky in my response to them, or I don't take that big breath to interact with them, and now I'm angry and anxious and they are feeling hurt. We also see the impact of the lack of sleep by when we feel overwhelmed, when things shouldn't be overwhelming. We see this especially during the days where it's not the insane busy period, where if you look at the schedule, if you look at your calendar, there aren't many things for you to do today, and yet it all feels like it's still too much, and it feels like we just can't take on one more thing, because here's what we typically say most of the time, when, if I just describe those things, you may be going well. Now wait a minute, most of the time I just say, oh, I need to build a better system. That's why I keep missing the details. I just need to build more SOPs so that those don't fall through. Or I just need to be more I need to be more disciplined. I need to have more structure in my day. I need to have more routine that will really help or just I need to get more organized that will help me not feel so overwhelmed, if I can just have more buckets, more things on my calendar, more folders in my email, or more ways to accommodate and categorize everything going on. Sometimes that's the case. Sometimes those are true, and we do need to address those. They are certainly not bad to take, take in and address, however often it's because we're tired, it's because we're physically and mentally exhausted. And that doesn't just come from a single bad night, doesn't doesn't just come from one weird night of sleep. It comes from being chronically and consistently under rested. Because as business owners, I don't know if you know this, but we tend to work weird and odd hours. We tend to have need to stay up late getting caught up from the stuff that didn't get done the previous day, and then waking up early to get ahead of the chaos that is coming the next day. And yes, this is where systems and processes and boundaries, all of that is really important. However, we can have the best boundaries, the best processes, the best systems in place and still chronically not get enough sleep. Maybe you were done with all of your work at 8pm and yet the Doom scrolling, or the one more thing keeps coming up, and one more thing and one more thing, and now it's 1am and we crash, and then we have to wake back up at six in the morning or seven the morning to do our visits, or to touch base with an employee who's out doing visits, so that we're ready to answer questions that is the insidious part of this. Why does sleep matter so much? Well, sleep is active work for your body. See, which is counterintuitive, right? I'm asleep. I don't know what's going on, but when we are asleep, this is where our brains process information. All the stuff that happened to you the previous day gets processed into your brain, put into long term or short term storage from memory, helps regulate our emotions through our hormonal fluctuations and balances and rhythms throughout the day, our body also physically repairs itself. When you are asleep, your body is in the Body Shop getting repaired, getting remade, getting renewed, so that the next day you're ready to go. It also helps you reset your ability to focus. There is a chemical process that happens in our brain during sleep that allows us to unwind and refocus better the next day. It takes all of the clutter that we just accumulated and processes that away so that now my brain is more of a blank slate and ready for the new things to happen to me than actually to take in new information. When you don't get enough sleep in the short term or in the acute sense, you're going to have poor judgment. I already talked about irritability, where it's we have that shorter fuse. We're gonna have those slower reaction times. We're gonna have missed details, right? That's the short term. What about the long term, though? This chronic, chronic, long term aspect of getting and not getting enough sleep? Well, the first and foremost, you're just going to burn out. Your body cannot continue to go at that pace. You will burn out, and that means that you will crash mentally, physically, emotionally, you will check out, and you will need to step back. Your body will force you to step back in some way. Because here's the thing, your body needs sleep, your mind needs sleep, and it will take it from you at the most inconvenient times, chronically, it leads to higher stress and anxiety in our body, which there are long term studies about the negative impact from living a life with chronic stress and anxiety also lowers our cognitive performance. We are actually less able to think as critically or performatively when we are chronically sleep deprived. And I don't know about you, but in running a business, we have to be sharp. We have to be able to discern and make hard decisions sometimes, and then yeah, with lack of sleep, we're going to have long term health issues and health implications. And here's the really tricky part, we get used to being tired, right? You're this episode is coming out on a Monday, and many of us are waking up still tired from the weekend. And that phrase that we just start to think, how am I doing today? Tired? Ask somebody, how are you doing today? And I'm tired. Everybody's tired. It turns out so it feels normal. It feels like that's what should happen. Isn't everybody just exhausted and burned out and chronically under, under the amount of sleep that they're supposed to get. Isn't that what everybody is? And the truth is that it's no well, that well, a lot of people may feel that way. That is not what normal should be. Sleep is the single best transaction that you will ever take. You will give up your time to get more energy and clarity back, there is bar none. There's nothing that you can do that will enhance your clarity, your your peace of mind, and will then reduce your overwhelm. If you give eight hours of sleep that the regenerative properties that you get back from that it's the best transaction you'll have and should be made every single time you know what something else will have you sleeping like a baby at night, though it's the peace of mind that you have from getting the right insurance as a pet sitter. You know how much trust goes into caring for someone's furry family member, but who's got your back for over 25 years, pets there's Associates has been helping pet care pros like you with affordable, flexible insurance coverage, whether you're walking dogs, pet sitting or just starting out. They make it easy to protect your business. Get a free quote today at petsit llc.com, and as a listener of our podcast, you get $10 off your membership when you use the code confessional at checkout. Again, that's petsit llc.com because your peace of mind is part of great pet care. I've talked about why this is such a big deal and important to us in running our businesses, but what are some signs that i. Not getting enough sleep. Well, some pretty clear indicators are that we rely on caffeine just to function. Here's the thing, caffeine is a very, very powerful and potent drug. It really is. We don't think about it in that sense, because we can get it from a drive through or make it in our homes or whatever. Buy it from a general store. But caffeine is really, really potent, and if we feel like we've got to get jacked up on caffeine just in order to think clearly or to move through the fog, or just don't talk to me till I've had my first 15 cups, or my quadruple, my quad shot of espresso this morning, then I can kind of get my gears going. That's a reliance, and it's a sign that I am not giving my body the natural regenerative properties and nature from from sleep, and instead trying to substitute caffeine. Sometimes that may look like the as soon as I wake up, the first thing I'm grabbing is a Monster energy drink, or, again, that quad shot of espresso. And I'm doubting that before I've even had water in the morning. And again, we do this because we feel mentally foggy those days where we just can't quite focus. We can't quite pay attention. Everything seems to be going in slow motion. We're rereading things multiple times, right? That's a big one for me. Another big one for me is maybe I sort of get more headaches, more migraines. I know I personally am very sensitive when I get chronic lack of sleep multiple days in a row, a migraine is just around the corner. And then do you think I can function really well on those days while being sleep deprived and with a migraine, nope, nope. Those are very those are very bad days. A clear sign is also when we are more reactive and impatient. This is the third time I've mentioned that. Because that is one of those signs that just becomes we can tend to think it's well. People will see it part of us that is an external fact of this. People will notice that about you. They'll notice that they can't quite come to you with those hard things anymore, or they want to talk to you. But yeah, I'm just need to give a wide berth, and I'll come back later here. And the last line I want to mention is that if we are getting a chronic lack of sleep, we wake up tired even after sleeping. Ever wake up after what you think is a good night's sleep and you're still exhausted, that's a really good sign that maybe, maybe the previous 2345, nights weren't enough, because that's what happens, is we get a little bit less sleep than we need, a little bit less sleep that we need, a little bit less sleep that we need. Just getting a single good night of sleep will not make up for that loss of sleep. It's a complete change of habit and timing and rhythm and regulation so that we can feel sharp, so that we can feel like we are grasping things that people are telling us, that I can pick up that phone and be quick and go right along with that conversation, or that employee help them in the field when they need or when that client reaches out, or when I'm in that visit at the fast pace that we move as pet sitters and dog walkers when we don't feel sharp, when we feel foggy, When we have those issues, our services really do suffer. They really, really do. Now the question you may be asking is, well, how much sleep do I need? Do I really need eight hours? Well, research has shown that the eight hour rule is really more of a guideline. Most adults need somewhere between seven and nine hours. It is truly extremely, extremely rare where people thrive on five to six hours consistently. Not that hell, man, I can. I can do a fast turnaround, get a bed at midnight, wake up at five and keep going. Can you do that for years on end, the kind of people that can do that are very, very rare indeed. So if you are regularly under seven, it's likely affecting your performance in some way, shape or form. And I do need to say that this whole episode is not medical advice. I'm not a doctor in any of this. This is just from research and personal experience, and to encourage you to get to know your sleep rhythms, get to know what your body needs, try and force yourself to get nine hours of sleep, one night or two nights in a row, three nights in a row for a whole week, and see how you feel. There are people who, if they get too much sleep, quote, unquote, too much sleep that they it can impact them in a negative way. Well, then we can readjust the next week. But what that takes is having intentionality behind our actions and. Noting how I'm feeling, and so a great thing to do is have a sleep journal. If you have a smart watch, you can get sleep rings and all sorts of stuff to keep track so you can log how you feel, which is important, because otherwise we're going to be influenced by recency bias. Where the sleep that I got last night is, I think the sleep that I got for the last couple of weeks, or at least the past month, obviously, because as business owners, we really do struggle with this. There are just built in challenges. We carry a mental load all day long. There's always something on our mind, always something that needs to get done, always, always, always next, next, next. So our brain doesn't shut off at night because I'm still focused on that phone call that happened first thing in the morning, or that text that I got from my employee who's quitting, or the client who responded who needs help tomorrow, and I just didn't have time, and I didn't get to it yet. So I'm going to mentally work through that schedule and I sit there and reroute plan and reroute plan and reroute plan, or obsess about those things, because it turns out that as business owners in a service based industry. We tend to like to help people. We tend to like to do right and be excellent in our work, so our brains don't naturally just click with the light switch also turn off. There's always one more thing to focus on, and in pet sitting and dog walking. We also know that our schedule isn't consistent. Some nights, I'm able to get into bed by eight or nine o'clock. A lot of nights, though, I have to be up until 1010, 30 to finish up with my visit. Then I can get home, then I need to unwind, then I can get in bed, then I can go to sleep. And then the next day, who knows what time I'm going to be waking up, because whatever, whatever reason, when my clients need me filling in for somebody, whatever. The inconsistency is a major factor for this, and all of that just means that the stress from my visits, the stress from my conversations with my clients or my employees, or the things out in the community, all of that follows us home, and this is especially true, if you provide boarding or overnight care or you're sleeping in somebody else's home, you're on the clock. 24/7, 365, days a year, you don't get we often don't get separation from our work because the pets are back in our home the next day for daycare or boarding if you are if you can do that, where you live, or you go from one overnight to the next overnight, to the next overnight to the next overnight, there's no break, there's no separation. It's always with you and always around you. All that is in addition to the fact that we as busy, are busy as pet sitters and dog walkers when our clients are taking their breaks and their vacation, so on weekends and holidays, my demand goes through the roof, but I also have to be available for the people who need me in my low peak seasons, so I don't get that disconnect or that time off unless I take it intentionally and then my my split shifts throughout the day. It's not as though I just work a nine to five or an eight to four or a seven to three. I had a shift at a job one time, and the seven to three was my absolute favorite shift to work, because, yeah, I got in early, but I got off early enough so that I could enjoy a good chunk of my afternoon. But we don't have that. We don't I have to do a couple hours in the morning, couple hours in the afternoon, couple hours at night, couple hours in the morning, break, afternoon, break, evening, bedtime. That tends to break up the rhythm and flow of our day. So we're it's not just that we're working. It's not just that you're working a lot. It says it's that you're working at inconsistent and fragmented times, which, which is research has shown one of the absolute worst things for sleep quality. It turns out that what good quality sleep needs is consistency, routine and rhythm. Now you don't need to have any of that perfect you don't need to have a perfect routine in order to improve your sleep, we just need to do a few things here, just a few minor tweaks. The big one is find a way to have consistent sleep and wake times even even roughly consistent helps our bodies regulate. This is plus or minus an hour, so a two hour time window really helps. It's just allows your body to start getting into that rhythm. It allows the hormone regulation. It allows the circadian and sleep cycles to start getting kicked back into gear so that you can actually get into the flow of sleep. Also get light exposure, sunlight exposure first thing in the morning. Research has shown that upon waking up, seeking out the sun rays will help your body get into a better rhythm, because it signals to your body now is the time to wake up. It turns out. There are receptors that as soon as they detect sunlight, they start producing good hormones to your body and get you on a better cycle. Additionally, on the opposite end, have a good wind down routine. Give yourself at least 20 to 30 minutes to transition out of work mode. You don't have to raise your hand for this, but if you maybe, if you're just like me, you frantically are working on your computer, transition to work on your phone while you're lying in bed, typing up a last couple things, checking the last few things, and then you shut off the phone, and you put it down, and you're like and now brain sleep. No, that will never work. Your brain is still highly engaged and needs some time to disconnect from what you were just doing. And this isn't now Doom scrolling on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or x or whatever that you are doing. It's not doom scrolling. Maybe it is just reading a book or reading through one of your favorite newsletters or articles that you have saved, or listening to some music while you drink some non caffeinated tea, or having a glass of warm water before you go to bed, and on that caffeine make sure that you have a cut off point throughout your day, early afternoon at the latest. And this is one that I struggled with, and still do, but I was chronically bad about drinking caffeine and coffee at eight, 910, o'clock at night. And why? Well, it's because I was tired. I was tired, but I needed to stay awake in order to get my work done. So I'd reach for another cup of coffee and then another cup of coffee and another cup of coffee to keep myself awake. Well, then what happens now it's 10 o'clock at night, I'm fully caffeinated, and now I need to try and go to bed. And even though I would say, well, it doesn't really affect me, I can drink coffee and then fall asleep. That may have been but the quality of sleep once I was unconscious was very poor, because my heart was racing, my mind was racing, everything in my body was still primed to be awake, and yet I just mentally had to conk out. And when we do fall asleep, monitor your sleep environment, see what you can change. And here are the guidelines for this, a cool, a dark and a quiet space. A cool, a dark and a quiet space. This may mean that dark you need to get blackout curtains where in your room, or whatever that is, sleep with a mask on. If you can. I know I can't, but a lot of people do. Blackout curtains are great. Cool, the temperature needs to be again, there's no set point here. It needs to be a cooler room to sleep, and then quiet, or at least some white noise to allow you to sleep, sleeping with something like whatever TV or the loud trains or the loud, you know, cars and traffic or people talking to the room. This while, yes, we may, we may be able to fall asleep, there are parts of our brain that will still be engaged with those noises, preventing us from our natural sleep rhythms. While we're talking about sleep today, I'm really excited to also talk about a brand new sponsor to the show our friends at critter because growing a pet care business isn't just about great visits, it's everything that happens in between those following up new leads, checking in with clients who haven't booked in a while. Actually, believe this, actually staying in touch, instead of just meaning to and then forgetting. That's where critter comes in. Critter is software specifically built for pet care businesses, and it helps us manage those relationships with tools designed to keep a small business feel even at a bigger scale. It tracks where your clients are, whether they're brand new, active, starting out or starting to drift, and they help you stay connected and reengage when needed. So instead of juggling multiple spreadsheets sticky notes across the desk or trying to remember who to message tomorrow, you've got a system for doing it for you that doesn't rely on constant manual updates or imports, because it's using your actual data straight from your scheduling software if you're trying to grow without dropping the ball on the people you already serve. Critter is worth a look. Learn more and sign up for a free trial today at critter dot pet, and after that, as a listener of our show, you get 20% off your first three months when you use the code PSC 20 again, visit critter dot pet for that free trial and use the code PSC 20 at checkout for 20% off your first three months. Now, if you're listening to this and you are thinking, well, great, Collin, that all sounds fantastic, but what do I actually what do I actually do about this? Well, besides adjusting your sleep. Environment and those other things that I just walked through. Here's a really practical tip for you, and one that Megan and I implemented in our business when we first hired many years ago, because we were finding that our sleep, our ability to come down and wake up appropriately, was being disrupted by those early, early morning visits or those super late night visits, and we just couldn't get into a rhythm. You have an option for this. It's called hiring, okay, hire for those specific time blocks. It's not asking. We're not asking, saying, to do it a full team overhaul, or to go fully team based, or whatever, whatever. Hire somebody for those. And here's the beauty of this hire for the early morning slots, and only hire people who are morning people, people who enjoy being up at that time or earlier. They're out there, you can find them to work for you. You advertise it as a morning only position, and what that means is that you're going to get the people who love doing things first thing in the morning, but they have another job to get to, so maybe they could do a couple visits for you and then go to their other job, or maybe that they've got other stuff going on and they just want to fill more time. And they were up at four in the morning anyway, so they figured, might as well go walk a dog or scoop some litter for a cat. That's a great person to have on your team so you don't have to be awake at that time. Conversely, maybe you could hire an evening or a nighttime only person, someone they get off work at five o'clock and, well, they don't have anything else in their schedule, and they're just looking for more things to do, and they're kind of a night owl. You know, I just like staying up late. Boy, howdy. Do I have a position for you where you can come up, stay up late and also take care of people and their pets. We're just talking about even part time here, especially part time, we might not be able to offer a full time position doing evenings only. So we're upfront about that. This is a part time evenings only position Monday through Friday or Saturday and Sunday. Again, you as the business owner, you get to decide when you need help and where you need coverage, and then you hire accordingly to fill that and this is going to do a lot of things for you. The first thing is, is it's going to protect your sleep window, because you're going to stop waking up early and staying up late, it's the both, it's the yes and that we are now protecting. Maybe you only hire an early morning person. Okay, you can go and you can do the late night visits, and now you can do late night but also sleep in a little bit. Or conversely, maybe you hire for that late night, but you're up first thing at least, you are trying to shorten the amount of time during the day that you are awake and active and engaged. It also is a way to help create consistency in your schedule, which will improve your sleep quality dramatically, because now your body will start to get in the rhythm of when I go to bed and when I wake up, and naturally will begin the wind down and naturally begin the wake up process. Instead of having to be forced by a an alarm or my routine, the more natural that rhythm is, the better the quality is. It's also just going to improve your performance during the day. You're going to be sharper for your clients, for managing your team, for decision making. That will happen because of that rhythm, because now the quality is much better. And it's also going to move you out of technician mode. When you hire for these specific time blocks in this specific need for you, you stop being required for every single day to day and every edge of day task, every morning, every evening, every you are now no longer the blocking point throughout the day. And that's what happens here, because many times we think, Oh, I just need to hire because hire because I'm busy. Maybe I need to hire because I'm not getting enough sleep. It's not just a staffing decision. Here's the power of this. When you hire somebody like this for this specific kind of time window, you're not just doing this to expand this is one of those decisions that's about your health, your longevity, your performance. It's one of those things where we're going to draw a line in the sand and say, I can't keep operating like this, because if I do, it's not just about the client suffering or my team suffering, or the pet suffering, or my service quality suffering. It's about me suffering. It's about me not being okay every single day. And that is control that you can take back now all of this is part of where we do have control. The. Things that we can change and adjust. You can hire you can get blackout curtains. You can also adjust your service windows. Maybe instead of offering 6am to 10pm you offer 7am to nine. Sure that one hour doesn't sound like much, but again, if we only have, or if we can give ourselves 20 to 30 minutes to wind down, all of a sudden, that hour becomes immeasurably valuable to us. Let's say we've done all of that, or you have done all of that, and you're still struggling. It may be more than habits. Sleep is Yes, about habits, but it's also about who I am and my body, if things to watch out for here loud snoring or breathing interruptions. Again, this would be possibly sleep apnea. This would be a major, major issue to go get checked out and ask your doctor about how to be tested for that there are signs for that that you can look for. But again, if that is something that you have or a partner has told you about, take that seriously. Get that checked out. Talk to your doctor. Also, if you have constant exhaustion, despite you having enough time in bed, Hey, Doc, I go to bed and I get a solid eight and a half nine hours every day, every night, and I still wake up so groggy. Additionally, if you have trouble falling asleep most nights where you lay in bed and you lay in bed and you lay in bed, you lay in bed, or you're waking frequently. You're up all the time. It's every 30 minutes, every hour, you're just awake and then you go back to bed, and then awake and then go back to bed. All of this can impact your daytime sleepiness. Right throughout the day, you're just so drowsy, it's hard for you to stay awake these each one of these loud snoring, constant exhaustion, trouble falling asleep, waking a lot, daytime sleepiness, major red flags to go get evaluated by a doctor. Yes, it may mean that we have to carve out time from my business and say I can't do it overnight because I have to go do a sleep study. Why? Because I'm important, I matter, and if I don't get enough sleep, if this goes on for too long, I'm not going to be okay, and I won't be here to take care of your pets, and if that's if that's important for you, I need to do it because I think it's important that I do it because I'm important. That's a hard line. It's really tough. It's really, really tough. But I got to tell you, sleep is not one of those things that you want to mess around with. It will impact every single aspect of your life, your body, your mind, is all tied back to getting enough sleep, because sleep again, it impacts your decision making, your ability to make sound good, solid decisions in your business, which happen every single day, multiple times a day if I make one wrong decision that could have lasting impacts, and if I could get enough sleep to help me make a good decision to avoid those implications. Boy, I should probably do that, or just my communication. I want to communicate so good, and part of communication is, yes, being able to speak clearly and succinctly and communicate my ideas well, it's also listening that I can't do that if I'm so foggy that I can't actually put together what that person sounds like. It's the Charlie Brown person. Wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah. I had had those days where I am so exhausted that everyone I talk to I'm having to say, could you say that one more time? I'm sorry. Could you say that one more time? And I'm just not a good leader on those days. I can't lead effectively if I'm not sharp, if I'm not on it, if I can't take in new information process that make good decisions and act accordingly, which could fundamentally impact the safety of my team of the pets that we are caring for, if it's me, if it's my team who are not getting enough sleep, I may miss a critical detail about that pets care in their notes and not be alert enough to make sure that people know about it or to ask a follow up question. Well, okay, I said I see that you put in here about the crushing the pill and putting it in the wet food for the cat to take. But also, don't you have four cats in this home, and how do I know which one will take it? Because this one is also shy, and you said, I'm never going to see it when we're tired, when we're exhausted, that amount of mental bandwidth and processing that just happened is almost impossible, and especially to do that every day, every day, every day will impact our client experience, because now they won't feel heard. Their information will not be lived out in the visits that we are doing, and when we talk to them, when we react to them, we lack. Consistency. You don't need another system or another app to organize your life and declutter your calendar, or even another strategy for how to do an end of week review or look forward look back, time blocking. You don't need any of that because if you're running around exhausted, sometimes the most effective business move that you can make is just getting enough sleep consistently. If you've been feeling off, if you've been feeling overwhelmed or just slower than usual. Please, don't immediately assume that it's a business process problem or an SOP problem or a boundary issue. It might be a sleep problem and it is fixable, and that's why I wanted to talk about it today, because I know that in this industry, sleep is one of those things that we give up so easily for our business and for our clients and for our team, it's easy to give up sleep. When we give up sleep, we're putting ourselves last. There are things that we can do to fix it, better, routines that we can have, and yes, there may be instances where we need to go talk to a doctor to get more help, because when we don't get enough sleep, or when the quality of our sleep is poor, everything else is impacted. We want to thank our sponsors today, pet sitters, associates, critter and our Patreon supporters, for making this show possible. We also really want to thank you so much for listening. We hope you have a wonderful rest of your week, and we'll be back again soon.
