Change doesn’t have to be life or death

How to de-risk yourself to give you time to change

Author

Lyndon Bradfield
September 12, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes

I love a good visual metaphor, and recently I heard one that feels fitting for many business owners in response to how they’re doing these days - white-knuckling it through life.

It feels like momentum is the only thing keeping their business profitable and on the road, so they’re ‘pedal to the metal’, with no time to think. Jo’s been sharing on our socials about burning out over the summer, and it’s been genuinely surprising how many business owners resonate with being in a similar phase right now.

But the conversation usually leads to one of two big reasons (ahem fears) that have both led to the burnout and now make it harder to recover:

  1. Can’t change: “I don’t love what (or how) my business makes money, but I feel stuck doing the ‘only’ thing that supports me”

  2. Can’t slow down: “I have to do this much work to make enough to pay my bills, so I don’t have time to catch my breath let alone take care of myself”

In project management these would be labeled “risks”, or things that are possible to happen that could delay or hinder a project from being completed on time, on schedule, or in budget. Which has created an entire career path where people spend all their time on “risk management”, or predicting problems (my anxiety does this for free..) and putting plans in place so that in case they do happen they’ll have as minimal impact as possible.

Thanks for mansplaining a common knowledge biz term Lyndon, what does this have to do with burning out…

Generally recovering from burning out or changing doesn’t happen on its own. So how can you set yourself up for success by de-risking the biggest risks you see?

Yesterday I sent this text message to one of our coaching clients that’s a web designer:

This one question indirectly de-risked both fears that I highlighted above:

  1. Can’t change: we’ve been in the photo-specific industry for a long time, and while I have corporate experience in other businesses outside of photography, it’d be nice to build experience working in a different service area to widen my experience to make me a more well-rounded coach

  2. Can’t slow down: taking on fewer photo clients as we focus more on coaching & education directly affects our income this month, so taking on part-time freelance work can span the gap as we build up a client base in the new focus we want our business to be in long term

A few years ago I learned about the idea of The Mountain of Learning which is nicely broken into four steps by Tom in this medium post:

Here is how the metaphor works:

1. When you first start out learning a new skill, all you see is the base of a mountain. The mountain represents mastery of the skill.
2. The first part of it — the base — might be steep or flat.
3. The majority of the mountain is covered in clouds. You have no idea how high it is or whether it is a gentle slope or the Matterhorn.
4. Only during the ascend, you will be able to see the full mountain. The scope of your learning becomes clear.

And it fascinated me.

It’s basically a metaphor for the learning curve. But what hooked me was learning that the best experts and leaders in their fields are the ones that are willing to go back down the mountain to find a different path when they realize they’ve hit a dead end.

This is counterintuitive in the American “ladder-climbing” society that most of us have grown up in. It’s almost taboo to transition to a lower position in a company or take a job that pays less than your previous one.

But if you connect this back to making a change or recovering from burnout, sometimes it feels like you’re de-risking by going backward, but this is in pursuit of finding a better, or more sustainable route that can take you even higher on the mountain.

A perfect example of this is serial entrepreneur Scott Heiferman. From 1995-1999 he built I-Traffic an online ad-agency then sold it for $15 million, then proceeded to get a job as a cashier at McDonald’s because:

I’d forgotten what it’s like to be in real business, selling something real. In my interview the manager saw that I was the co-founder of a technology company, didn’t give a s---, and then asked my pants size.

He went ‘back down the mountain’ to learn something new. Then proceeded to start a new company you’ve probably heard of, Meetup, and sold it to WeWork in 2017 for $156m. (He also started and sold a photo company for around $90m during the mid/late 2000s).

And after all that, in the last few years, he put on his LinkedIn that he’s working as a pick/packer at an Amazon Warehouse. Going back ‘down the mountain’ to learn a new skill, meet new people, and potentially see a new opportunity.

If you’re feeling stuck or unable to slow down in your business, I’d recommend you find a way to limit the impact of one of your fears coming true.

If that means going back down the mountain to learn a new skill, don’t wait another day, take a curious approach to it and find the quickest way to find a new path up the mountain.

If that means adding in some “less exciting” predictable income to give you a bridge to a much more enjoyable/sustainable business, don’t let your ego get in the way of starting down that path (yes it was my ego that made me wait to reach out).

And if you need some help to figure out what a change would even look like for you (or your burnout) we’d love to introduce you to our coaching offers.

Lyndon

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