Christian Rawles

For the last few months I’ve been sensing an underlying nagging feeling before starting my work days. I still feel content. I like owning my business and the life it provides. There’s just been an underlying feeling that I can’t identify and I can’t shake off.

I’ve had the ongoing thoughts for several years that I’d like to try something new. I’d like to move away from my current business and start fresh. But it’s hung around long enough, and reappears during each phase of the ups and downs, that I’m starting to really listen to it.

To dull the above mentioned nagging feeling I do what most sensible people do. I scroll through Twitter. And that’s when I realized what the nagging feeling is. Burnout.

This tweet popped up in my feed with the diagnosis. I’m not sure who retweeted or how it appeared in front of me. But there it was.

I thought I was combating against burnout with my A+ work/life balance.

Burnout never seemed like a possibility for me because I don’t work too much. I’ve learned a lot about not letting work creep into every aspect of my life and take pride in my ‘successful’ work/life balance. 

But reading that tweet struck a chord in me. I never thought of burnout. I thought I was just itching for something new. But you know something is true when it hits deep like that. This is burnout.

How did I get here?

My wife and I purchased our business the month after our oldest son’s first birthday. We were all in on making it work. And we have. We’ve created a good work/life balance. We’ve created a strong brand with loyal customers. We’ve expanded product categories, grown revenue and we’ve learned a ton.

We’ve raised two boys, moved to a new town, built a house and gone on a bunch of adventures all while running this business together. The business is a part of our family. It’s been central to our daily lives and instrumental in the bigger picture of our lives.

But there’s a ceiling that the business keeps bumping into. We never seem to be able to get all cylinders to fire at once to break through to the next level. It starts to weigh us down after a while. 

The golden handcuffs

I know what needs to be done to get to the next level of growth. I see the steps we should take to make it happen. But that unidentified nagging feeling creeps in and my energy drops. What I thought was self-doubt or fear has come into focus as burnout.

We have emotionally invested a lot into this business. Though we’ve tried our hardest not to let it happen, some of our identity is wrapped up in this thing. In some ways, this business is our third kid.

So now it makes sense that the nagging feeling is there. It’s the hard-to-identify sign of burnout. I’ve put a lot into this business and it’s not giving me back the returns I’m expecting. 

It’s not failing. I could stick with it for years and have a good life. It would be easy to shut off that nagging part of my brain and just keep getting paid. I think they call that the golden handcuffs.

How to fight burnout without burning it down

But that’s not what I signed up for. I don’t want to just phone it in every week.

This is the challenge for the solopreneurs and small business owners; how do you combat burnout without burning your whole business down at the same time?

I don't have the answer, but I do have some ideas. Instead of 'building in public' maybe I'll try 'burnout in public' and see what can come of it.

Over the past 13 years, I have owned an e-commerce & wholesale apparel brand.

We don't warehouse our product or pack our own orders.

We use 3rd party fulfillment centers (3PL) to grow our business & make life easier.

Here are 8 reasons why you should use a 3PL.

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1) Easily scale your business up as you grow.

When you need more warehouse space & staff to pack orders you have it available to you without hiring new staff or finding a larger warehouse.

2) Reduce your overhead.

You only pay for what you need, when you need it. No triple net lease for a warehouse. No staffing headaches.

3) Easily build your logistics costs into your gross margin.

Fixed costs per unit to receive in & ship out makes it easy to calculate an accurate gross margin.

4) Run your business remotely.

You no longer need to live near your warehouse. Live in a mountain town while your 3PL is in the city.

5) Operate as a solopreneur.

Grow an e-commerce business solo without concern for scaling up your staff.

6) Reduce shipping times to customers.

Work with a 3PL in the region where most of your customers live. As your business grows, split into multiple 3PL locations to get those fast delivery times.

7) Take advantage of bulk shipping discounts.

3PL’s ship thousands of packages per day allowing them to negotiate great shipping rates. As their customer, you get to take advantage of them.

8) More time to focus on areas that will grow your business.

Order fulfillment keeps your business going, but product development & marketing keeps your business growing.

There's your 8 reasons to consider using a 3PL.

Outsource your warehouse to grow your business & make your life easier.

I have the tendency to be an idea killer. I'm not proud of it.

I'm inclined to see how ideas fail before seeing how they will succeed. I don't like to think this way but I have a hard time re-routing my learned thought patterns.

There's a simple concept in improv comedy that I utilize to help me overcome this and become a better creative thinker.

Improv comedy is spur of the moment storytelling where nothing is scripted prior to the live performance. In order for multiple actors to be interacting together to create a story, improv comedians rely on the idea of "Yes, and...". When one actor takes the story in a new direction their fellow comedians need to agree with it instead of inhibiting it to keep the flow of the story going. Nothing would kill a performance faster than if an improv actor blocks the creative input of their fellow actors.

Using "Yes, and" to generate better ideas.

I've borrowed the "Yes, and" concept from improv to help me brainstorm ideas with other people.

By validating an idea with a 'yes' I'm forcing myself to see the potential in the idea before jumping to my tendency to kill the idea with reasons why it wouldn't work.

It doesn't mean that every idea that is tossed out there is a 'go' but it allows for the idea to live long enough to be explored and built upon.

For example, my business partner will suggest a new idea for a marketing video to me and my mind wants to jump to the potential downsides of that idea. The "Yes, and" response validates the idea and builds upon it to see how we can explore it further:

"Yes, and we could film it in a way that we could use it on our website as well."

By starting with the "Yes, and" instead of a "But" we're moving together in a creative direction. We can continue "Yes and-ing" each other through a brainstorming session to generate new ideas to see what we can come up with.

Improvisation in my own head.

The concept works in my own brainstorming sessions as well. Admittedly, it's harder to hold myself to it but it is a great tool for generating creative ideas.

As someone with a natural bent towards pessimism (an optimistic realist??) I limit the potential of my own ideas by killing them too early. By intentionally setting up brainstorming sessions where I have to use "Yes, and" with my own ideas I'm giving myself permission to see how even the craziest ideas could work.

Not every idea idea is worth pursuing. Yes, and that is why we need to give them space and time to develop and improve.

Coming up with your unique selling proposition (USP) shouldn't be a difficult process.

Discovering your USP and clearly defining it in one sentence is important because it will act as your 'north star' in all of your marketing. You're aiming for clarity and simplicity in your USP so that it is easy to understand and remember.

Here are five questions to answer that will get you to a clear USP.

1. What void can you fill in the market?

This is the opportunity you see that probably inspired you to launch your business.

Dollar Shave Club saw an opportunity to sell razors directly to men on a subscription model. There was an opportunity that nobody else realized was there.

2. Why would someone buy from you instead of your competitor? 

This is what makes you stand out in the side-by-side comparison.

It could be price, warranty, options, technology, aesthetics or maybe you're actually the first to market and you don't have competitors yet.

3. What do people hate about your market/category that you can fix?

The pain points you intend to alleviate for your customers.

If you can show customers how their life will be better with your product you've won them over.

4. Why hasn't anyone else already done what you do?

Maybe you're creating a whole new market or changing the way an existing market delivers value.

Side note: keep your eyes open and stay humble when answering this question. There may be some very good reasons why it hasn't been done before that could keep your from succeeding.

5. What are the positive attributes of your product or service?

List out every positive thing that has bubbled up through the process of answering these questions.

Make an exhaustive list of what makes you unique, special, different, better. What makes you you.

Now, cross out anything on this list that your competitors can claim.

If there's a company that can say the same thing as you, cross it off your list.

Hopefully you're staring at a list of unique selling points.

Remember, you're aiming for clarity and simplicity when writing your USP. Take your whittled down list and begin writing down different versions of a single sentence that combines the best of what makes you unique.

Sleep on it. Then come back to your draft sentences and pick the one that best captures your unique selling proposition.

I was the worst wrestler on my junior high wrestling team. By a mile.

My dad still jokes about how we drove five hours to a wrestling tournament for me to wrestle a grand total of sixty seconds. I was pinned in the first round of every match.

But my coach said something during that season that has stuck with me all these years later.

"You're either winning or you're learning."

It's harder to learn from victories because there's too much ego involved. Every loss is an opportunity to evaluate our weaknesses. To clearly see where improvements need to be made.

I learned a lot from that season of wrestling. The biggest take-away was that I needed to find a new sport.

After 18 years of marriage my wife and I melted our wedding rings.

We originally picked our wedding rings out based on symbolism and budget. They were inexpensive silver rings but they were the symbol of our love and commitment to each other.

But people change, relationships grow and the symbols of our past don't always represent the symbols of our future.

The wonderful thing about marriage is that you are committing to a relationship with a person who will grow, change and develop in new ways over the years. And you get to grow and change too.

We melted our wedding rings and created new ones out of the original material as our way of recognizing that we are fundamentally the same people but we have grown and changed together as individuals and as a couple.

Thirteen years ago I heard a piece of advice from a business consultant that changed the way that I ask tough questions.

This simple rephrasing of a question helps gain understanding while avoiding conflict.

Rephrase your questions to begin with "Can you help me understand...."

"Why did you do that?"
"Why are we doing it this way?"
"Why is this so expensive?"

The typical way of asking tough questions immediately puts the person responding on the defensive. It feels like confrontation and they react accordingly.

By reframing the question to begin with "Can you help me understand..." implies curiosity and a genuine interest in wanting to understand.

"Can you help me understand why you chose to do that?"
"Can you help me understand why we are doing it this way?"
"Can you help me understand why this is so expensive?"

The amazing thing about using this method is that it actually changes your mindset about the situation. You become curious instead of combative.

Curiosity always leads to better outcomes.