We’re back with the Scale Your Small Business Podcast with your host, Jillian Flodstrom. This week’s guest is Wade Stewart. He’s a small business owner in Tacoma, WA. After enjoying several years of success in his business, the long hours had taken their toll and he was unhappy. Once he went on his own Personal Retreat, he found a renewed sense of purpose. This Retreat was so successful he has written this book to help others who might find themselves in a similar place.
When Wade started his business, he had built a robust, thoughtful plan to scale at a reasonable pace. What happened, though, was an incredible amount of growth. Things started ramping up fast than expected, which snowballed into more exponential growth. This eventually spiraled out of control, and not wanting to go bankrupt and leave his family out to dry, Wade found himself working 15 hours a week, every day of the week. This lead to eating poorly, little sleep, no personal time, and the emotional manifestations matched the severity of his physical symptoms. All in all, it wasn’t a good way to live. Trying to wear that many hats at once wasn’t sustainable and Wade ended up reaching a breaking point.
Recognizing the slowly growing heat isn’t easy, but it’s an important step in scaling a business. When you notice other things outside of work are starting to suffer, it can be a good indication that it’s getting a little disproportionate work-load wise. Just like you can get addicted to anything else, getting that next client, and the chase of that client, can become all-encompassing, and you can lose sight of what matters. The next step is confirming this is an ongoing thing, not just a bad string of months.
This is all to say that it’s about loving the work you do. It’s worth looking back–what is it you were passionate about in high school? College? Identify the little nuggets of your work that you really, really enjoy.
A great way to take stock of how you’re balancing your work and avoiding burnout is through a Personal Retreat–something Wade does and has done in the past. Your retreat and analysis can happen as often as you think is necessary. And your retreat can happen anywhere that works. For Wade, he found solitude in an empty park and in a busy Starbucks. Really, it’s about finding a place you can get into a zone. It doesn’t have to be exotic–but it does have to be a place you can focus.
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