What Actually Happens When A Founder Runs Out of Gas?

Welcome back to the episode of the Startup Therapy Podcast. This is Ryan Rutan, joined as always by my friend, the founder, and CEO of startup com. Will, Schroeder will. Will come as no surprise to you that burnout is a big thing in the founder space, but does it happen to everybody? Like have you, you ever been burnt out? Has that ever happened to you every single year? Like clockwork, September the eighth, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, exactly right.

Like we talk about this concept of, you know, what's gonna happen if I run outta gas, if I burn out, whatever, you know, with our startup, but we never actually quantify. What will actually happen? Right? What does transpire So today, I think we should talk about like, you know, how we fear it and we fear this reaper of, you know, I'm gonna burn out and everything's gonna go to hell. Then what actually happens then? How to plan for it, right? How to actually get past it and see through it.

So Ryan, when you think about getting burnt out, what do you picture in your mind? I, I just wanna set this up, you know, what is that apocalypse scenario?

Yeah. So I'm gonna go back in time. I'm gonna go back in time to the first startup and because I feel very differently about it now, right? Like, I now understand that burnout isn't a bug, right? It's just a capacity ceiling, right? And it's not a surprise that we burn out. It's a surprise that we pretend that we. Don't. Right. So look, if I go back in time, I distinctly remember thinking like, I don't have the energy to do this. I can't keep this up.

I can't possibly keep all these plates spinning, and if I don't, it will all just collapse in on itself. Erupt into flames, and when I do wake up from this little nap that I need, there'll be nothing but a pile of ashes for me to stare at and, and lament right. It, it was scorched earth. Right. It wasn't like, well, this little thing could go wrong, or that little thing could go wrong. It's just like, just immediate full destruction every time. It's the equivalent of you going up to play soccer.

Yeah. And saying, the goal is for me to never come off. Is it the pitch? Did I get that right? It's the pitch. It is the pitch. I guess that was the only soccer terminology I knew. But let's call it the field for a second. Like literally you saying, I'm gonna go play this game. Yeah. And I'm never gonna come off the field. Never at all. Or any other sport. Right. And magically I'll still be amazing at it all the time.

Exactly, and And that's actually how we go into building startups. Yeah. We're like, I guess I have to be on the field 24 7 all the time and never rest in what world Does that make any sense? Only the founder world apparently, because we keep seeing people do it even though it doesn't actually make any sense. Yeah. So, you know, from my standpoint, I think the first thing. We have to recognize that burnout is actually part of the process.

It's not this freakish like cancer that, that we've, and we can't believe is terminal. It's one of those things where we have to say, okay, this is, this is going to happen to me over and over and over again. It took me 20 years to figure that out. It took me 20 years of running myself into the ground and for the longest time, the only time I stopped to recover from burnout. Was when I injured myself so badly. Yeah. I didn't have a choice. I basically just ran until I got sick every single time.

That's it. And, and look, the founder pace like is not sustainable indefinitely. Right. While we're out there building traction, you know what else is gaining traction? Cortisol, sleep, debt, decision fatigue. Right?

All of those things are gaining ground at exactly the same time, and so we, we have to take a break and, and I think that most of us do start the same way that you just described will, which is that I'll stop when they have to drag me off the field and they carry me off the field on a gurney. It'll be time to rest. Right. Which I guess there's a certain point in life where maybe you can kind of get away with that. Like when we were in our early twenties, you can kind of get away with that.

Late twenties, less so. Early thirties, less so, late thirties, probably not early forties, definitely not late forties. Mm-hmm. No way.

Not doing it. We've, we've played attached to this one, but I guess what's interesting about startups is that unlike jobs where you know that if you work a lot, you're gonna get a vacation. Like there is a break at your W2 job. There is no set break. No there isn't. And in our minds like this, chaos continues. Forever. And it will actually, it will if we let it. I think that's the dangerous part, right? Because we just keep saying, just one more milestone, right? Like it's the last hill.

But, um, startups are all hill all the time, right? There's always something else to be done. And so I think we, we really have to be careful there, right? To your point, there isn't some marker in time, right? There's not a spring break coming. There's not, you know, X number of vacation days. No, we better use those before the end of the year. There isn't anything that's gonna make us do that. Right? Short of the physical collapse, like you described, I wanna draw a parallel.

If this were a job, if startups were a job, here's what that job would look like. Every week, your boss would come in and say, you're probably gonna get fired on Friday every week. Okay? Yeah. He would indicate that you have no vacation time whatsoever, and that on Friday when your paychecks come out, yours might be zero or even worse. You might owe the company money, right? That would be the job you work at, right? In what place in the world. Would that be okay with anybody?

Yeah. And yet that's actually our job. That's what we signed up for. Yeah. Right. And so like what version is that gonna leave us with? You know? So like pumped up and excited forever. Yeah. Because most of this shit sucks, right? Yeah. Most of what we do, and most of these outcomes are painful. And the idea that we just forever absorb and somehow magically it never gets to us is bananas. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that we look at it as though we've failed in some way.

Right. If we do that right, it's not that right. Burnout isn't some character flaw or something you should have overcome. It's just an unpaid bill. You've been burning the candle at both ends, and at some point it's gonna meet in the middle, right? You're gonna flame out. How you handle that, I think has a lot to do with how you approach. Now, of course, I think you and I would both argue, let's keep that from happening to the extent that we can. Let's be smarter about this.

But there are also times where you just feel like, regardless of how tired you are, like I do need to sprint. I want to run, I want to hit that next milestone. Right? But I, I just, I don't think anybody at this point should be shocked by founder burnout. Right. I agree. Also, we don't have obvious milestones where it's okay to stop because shit breaks all the time. Yeah. There's only two outcomes. Outcome. One is things are getting way worse and we have to save everybody.

Or outcome two is things are growing and we have to be all in it in in order to maintain that growth, either outcome just drains the hell out of us, and I think the problem is. There's never an obvious, this is our free parking where, you know, where we can pause for a second never and not be in some sort of danger like that. Everybody thinks that it must be obvious when that happens. It's not. You don't have any funding. You get funding the moment you get funding, it all resets whole new set.

It all resets. You gotta go complete.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think the part of the problem is that I think everybody's plan. Is it they have to be Superman or superwoman. That is the plan. And that's a bad plan, right? It's a bad plan. If your plan is, I just won't burn out, that's gonna fail, right? We cannot rely on that because it's certainly not gonna exist. I didn't understand burnout for, like I said, about 20 years. I assumed burnout is just what happens when you cannot function anymore, which is true.

I mean, technically that that is true, but I ran to physical failure year after year. All the time, and I assumed that was okay. I assumed like what you're supposed to do is run your body and your mind as hard as you can until it all breaks, and then, then you're sick for a while, so you physically can't work and then you come back and you just do it all over again. Yeah, and I guess nobody tapped me on the shoulder and said, Hey dude, that's actually a terrible idea. Stop doing it. No one.

Right. Nobody in 20 years. Yeah. Ever told me to stop doing it. I think part of it is that it's, it can be hard to see from the outside. Right. I think it can be hard to see because it's something else that founders were, we're really good at is running ourselves into the ground while masking it. Right. We are that need. Oh yeah. The fire all around, like this is fine.

Right. Like that's us to a t Well, do you have a burnout trigger list? Like do you have a, a list of symptoms or things that you watch out for? I do now. I didn't before I do now. It's a great question I do now, because before again, I just was like, oh, just push harder, drink more caffeine, push harder, right? Sleep less, whatever. And I realize now that at which point I lose my creativity. That's my health bar. Uh, you know, Uhhuh, we always talk in video game terms.

Yeah. Yeah. That's my health bar. Like at which point my creativity has gone into zero, that's when I can tell like, I can't write, you know, I can't write copy, I can't come up with a new product idea. Like at that point I'm just like, I'm this the rolled up tube of toothpaste. Yeah. And it happens left to squeeze in fourth quarter of every single year. Yeah. Like now I see it, right? Yeah. Oh, now we, we start talking about it. We start talking about it in October, right?

We start talking about where you're at with the gas tank and the fact that it's coming, right? It's coming. We're about to run outta gas, and I'm not good at taking breaks. I wish I could. Tell you like, I have this great, you know, secret weapon of taking breaks. I'm not good at taking breaks.

Like I sit at my computer from the moment I wake up, and so the moment I go to bed, I don't take any breaks during the day when I work, like when I'm building my house on the weekends, I don't take any breaks. I mean, you've been with me like doing this. I've been there. I know. It doesn't occur to me it should. Right. And this a rational thing to do, and I'm not knocking it and I'm not championing the fact that I don't take breaks. I'm saying it's, it's a failure.

But because of that, I'm constantly like taking myself into hyper speed toward burnout. Yep. Right. If I took breaks, I'd probably be able to pace myself, but unfortunately I don't. However, the one thing I have come to learn is that there is a breaking point. Mine happens in Q4 of every year, but by the time I hit Q4 specifically by December, I am useless. Yeah, I'm absolutely useless. And I used, used to just pound through. Right. And now, you know, and we will talk about this later.

I don't like, I'm hyper aware. Here's why. Because I used to picture. What would happen if I stopped and it was apocalyptic, right? It was. It was the walking dead the day after tomorrow, apocalyptic. If I stopped killing myself for one day, the whole house of cards falls down. Right. That was the picture in my mind. H how, how do you see it when you, when you think of I'm no longer contributing. What's the chain of events?

Yeah. Oh, it was the, it was the same thing, man. Right. You know, I, I used to grossly overestimate my uniqueness and, and input and underestimate the team, right? Like, it's just that, that's a great way to put it. Look in the beginning, and I think it does come from a very specific place, right in the beginning, there is no team. It's you, right? It's just you. It's you. And so if you stop doing. Everything stops, right? But at some point, like that changes, but we, we forget that.

I think it's one of those things. At some point we start to realize that like we can start to move from this scarcity mindset into more of an abundance mindset and go like, okay, it's, it's not actually like I, I'm not the only resource here. There's abundant resource, we can take advantage of it. And honestly, the more we communicate that kind of stuff, the more open we about this.

The fact that you know the team, everyone knows there's gonna be this point in the year where you're gonna need to disappear for a bit and recharge your batteries. Great. Everybody's geared up and ready for that, right? It's when we try to keep it a secret or we pretend that we are like this, this sole resource. That can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? Because then all of a sudden I agree. You just dip out and everybody's like, what the hell just happened? That's bad, right?

Our fear story, I think, is that like product stops, customers flee, investors riot team collapses, right? And it gets published on the front page of every major news outlet, right? That's the way we think it's going to happen. It reminds me of, you know, the concept of Atlas holding up the world. Yeah. And we get this concept in our head that if we shrug again, Alice shrugged, my favorite book, if we shrug, the whole thing goes away, right? Yes. And here's what's interesting about that.

It's true. It just takes a lot longer than you think. Yeah, right? It's not as like cause and effect. Now there's some founder that's listening right now, and it's like what you're saying is, doesn't apply to me. I'm billing hours every month. If I stop billing hours, I stop getting paid. I get it. Totally get it, but what's missing there? When we think about the major categories that are of failure, like our apocalyptic categories, let's break 'em down. We've got customers, we've got staff.

We've got investors. Assuming we have investors, right? Those are usually the big three. From the customer standpoint. Sometimes they don't even notice. Like sometimes you're gone and they don't even notice. Oh, you were gone. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I mean, think about that for a second. Imagine you were so hung up. If you took a break, your customer would go ballistic and then you're sick or some, you know, life event happens or whatever and you're gone and they didn't notice. Yeah. Like, huh.

Okay. With your team, and again, we'll break this down a little bit more, but with your team, it's like, if I'm gone, the team is gonna be in total chaos. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. Are they? Yeah. And then my favorite is if I'm gone, the investors are gonna like grab the pitchforks and like come mob style to my house. Nope, that's absolutely not gonna happen. How do you see of those different categories, how do you see that actually breaking down? Look, it's just not reality, right?

Look, at some point it might be, again, like if it's really, really early stage and you're the only thing, but then also like what is actually gonna be lost at that point, right? Right. If your business is still so young and so fragile that it could completely fall apart. How long is it actually gonna take you to put it back together again? Right, right. Your six Legos in, it's not a whole lot of rebuild. Right, right, right.

So I think that we have to recognize that at some point, what you should be trying to do. Right. Let's just assume that in the early stage that the founder is the load-bearing wall. Right. You should be trying to become one of many buttresses at some point. There should be a lot of other things that are holding that business together, whether those are people, systems, tools, whatever. Right? And so I think that the reality there is that.

Most of these systems aren't as fragile as we, as we would like to think. Part of that is I think just our own ego telling us that we're we're super important and echoing back to the beginning when we were the only thing, and part of it's just fear of identity, right? It's if I'm not constantly producing, what am I worth? Right. Biggest problem with all of this is the irony here is that this apocalyptic fantasy is what keeps founders grinding until it actually becomes real.

Because we do wear ourselves out, we wear the team out, and then all of this stuff can actually come to pass. But if we, if behave more realistically, right, and we do give ourselves those breaks, and we do become a little more cognizant of what will actually happen. Then I think we can become far more comfortable with the idea that we don't have to hold the entire world on our shoulders all the time, some of the time. Sure. Right. But burnout, panic is just your ego writing disaster.

Fan fiction, right? Like that's what this shit is, right? Believe me, mine was quick with the pen in the early stages. Now, like I said, I think we, you and I have both gotten more comfortable with this over time, but at the early stages, like get it, it is terrifying. It feels like it is not, but it feels like getting out of the car. While it's still moving, right? And expecting bad things not to happen, right? You can't do that. The reality is that's just not the case.

When I was first learning to play hockey, my hockey coach said, I want you on the ice for two minutes, no more Uhhuh. And he said, I want you to skate as hard as you can for two minutes so that at the end of two minutes your legs are mush. For folks that haven't played hockey before, try skating as hard as you can in the middle of a game. If you can make it for two minutes, you are, you either have amazing stamina or you probably play in the NHL, right?

Like if you do this, this right and you skate as hard as you can, which is, you know, parallel to, to working hard, you're gassed. Yeah. Meaning if you were still on the ice in minute three, you're useless. You were a liability. Yep. Right? So, which is why he said get the hell off the ice. And I, I never forgot that. I never forgot why I was getting off the ice in two minutes because there was another guy that I was tagging in that was fresh legs. Yep. That was actually gonna score a goal.

Yep. Three minutes. I wasn't gonna score a goal. Right. Yeah, he was, I was a liability at burnout. I, it took me a long time to understand how that worked.

Yeah, and I think it does also go back to something else, which is that there, there is a bit of a fear component there, right? Meaning that if it feels like I can just tag somebody else to do that, there's this feel that am I. As necessary as I thought I was. Right. And I think that as founders, we do struggle with that. Right? Right. So it's like, do I really, do I even want to be able to tag somebody else in to do what I do, but I, I'm the only one that can do what I do. Right.

Well, probably not true. You know, something that's really funny about everything we talk about here is that none of it. Is new. Everything you're dealing with right now has been done a thousand times before you, which means the answer already exists. You may just not know it, but that's okay. That's kind of what we're here to do. We talk about this stuff on the show, but we actually solve these problems all dayLong@groups.startups.com.

So if any of this sounds familiar, stop guessing about what to do, let us just give you the answers to the test and be done with it.

So, aside from taking a break, if I say if I burn out. If I run outta gas, my customers are all gonna bail. The product will never see the light of day, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Everything's gonna fail. My staff will go crazy. Right. They, they'll, they'll ride in the streets. Right? Uh, my investors will all pull out, they'll get angry at me, et cetera. This is what we picture though. All of these things will happen. What we don't understand is that these nightmares usually never come to pass.

Yeah. Like, not even remotely true. Yeah. It took me getting burnt out. Being forced to see those outcomes, to be like, dude, what the hell? Right. Like none of that stuff happened. Yeah. And now because Ryan, you and I work with countless other startups, we get to see the world through their eyes and it like these nightmares rarely, like, hardly ever happen, and certainly not see the extent that we think they're gonna happen. You know what I mean?

I think, you know, as, as we learn to step back, we realize that the, the system often self-corrects, right? The team rises to the occasion, the customers stay. Investors didn't give a shit before, still don't give a shit. Right. They know that most of these are gonna gonna fail, doesn't matter. Right. The thing that I think is important to remember here is also if we wait until it truly is that nightmare moment where we're completely beat up and burnt.

Yeah. And just gone and gasp before we decide, we, we somehow think that this is noble. I'll just go until I break. Well then you're stress testing the team all at once or the system all at once. Whereas if we just take some of these little breaks, give ourself a little more grace as we go, you actually get a chance for that team, for the customers, for the systems to build a little resilience as it goes. Right? It's like building any muscle.

I think when we save it all until, until it really does look apocalyptic, then it has a better chance of actually being APO apocalyptic. Right, right. But I think really the point here, like the world doesn't stop, right? Neither does your business gaps get filled. Things continue to happen.

I remember we had raised our series seed, right? And we'd burnt through it and we've been looking for a series A for a long time. Uh, we had a term sheet, it was gonna get closed and the world changed and we didn't. And I remember I sat down with one of our board members, and I remember I probably spent every bit of a year playing scenarios in my head. As to what he would say when I said, Hey, like, I think we're screwed. Like actually screwed.

Like, like we're beyond the point where if anybody's gonna give us money, they would've given it to us by now. Uh, and we're not there. And I had all of these same thing, nightmare scenarios as to how this was going to go, like how this was gonna transpire. And his response was more like, oh, that's interesting. Like could not care less. Right? Yeah. I was blown like I thought he was G like it was gonna be this big explosive boardroom battle.

Yeah. I basically told him that McDonald's didn't have his favorite Happy Meal. Yeah. And he was like, oh, that's unfortunate. I mean, with that level of caring. Right. And I was like, dude, I've been racking myself for 12 months worrying about this conversation, thinking it was gonna be something else and it was nothing, nothing. I don't know that investors love surprises, but I also don't think that any of them would be surprised to find out that a founder needed a break.

Right. And I think the, the problem there is generally like, and even in this case, like you said, you tried to keep it, you know, kind of hidden for a, a long period of time. Yeah. But I, I think the problem really there is, is more secrecy and not recovery. Right. Like, had you just taken the time you needed to recover, it would've been fine as well, right? Like, I think they would've been equally fine with that, but that's why I ran myself to the ground.

Because I thought this was gonna be some massive, you know, revolt.

And what I didn't know, again, this is 20 years ago, what I didn't understand is that I am, but a piece of everybody else's life. Yep. I am not all of everybody else's life. Yeah. You only need to be central character in one movie. Exactly. And so my information to him was one of 20 things that happened to him that week. Sure. It wasn't the only thing that happened to him that week. It was the only thing that happened to me. Relative to life. It was not the only thing that happened to him.

Here's another example, and I just think it's, it's kind of interesting. Whenever you read something like in social media and it's a big news item or a terrible news item, whatever, and you swirl right past it. Yeah. Right. Such and such famous actor dies at whatever age. Huh. That's interesting. Before I passed it, right? Yep. Like, your world doesn't stop. Right, right.

Like it's amazing because in that person's mind, like their death would, you know, cause this mourning and again, closer family members, stuff like that. But like what we forget is that we are, like you said, not the central character in everybody else's life in that moment doesn't mean nearly as much to them, but we treat. As if it's this cataclysmic it, it affects everybody the way it affects us, and it pretty much never does.

It's not that investors don't care about founders or that customers don't care about founders, but what they really love is outcomes, right? So if the product delivers at some point, if the investment delivers, at some point they stick around, they're fine, right? They don't. And look, man, need you to be on 24 7. There are higher stakes conversations. Sometimes there are a-hole investors. Right. For, so I'm not saying that for all investors don't care.

I'm saying we tend to forget that we are one of 20 investments and 18 of us are gonna fail. Yeah. So it's not like two of us are gonna fail and they're shocked that one of their portfolio to be It has to be one of the two. Yeah. Yeah. They probably had five conversations this month about the same thing. Right. So it's unfortunate, but it's not like, like they're running home crying now again.

Lots of different investors, lots of different portfolios, but I think what's interesting is we always picture those moments as being way different. Like when we talk to our staff and we say, like in my case, hey, you know, I'm gonna take some time off to recharge. No one cares. Like literally Ryan. It took me years to even propose that in this whole time, no one cared. Sweating bullets while you do it. And then everyone's like, yep, it's good. See you in. See you in January.

Yeah. And no one cares.

And here's another side to it that I've also found interesting in other people's businesses. In some cases it's an opportunity. So if we step back from doing something so we can recharge, whatever, it's an opportunity for other people to step in. Yeah. And maybe crazy idea. Maybe that's what the business needs. Yeah. Maybe the business does need some people to kind of fill that vacuum for a minute so you can see what other people had to offer. Yeah. Right. Give 'em the opportunity. Right.

If we keep the business in a death grip, it can't do anything without us. Right. It has to. It relies on us at that point, but the minute we release that and relax a little bit, it can breathe on its own. Right. At least has the chance to. Right. Again, mileage will vary, but like we can be sure of one thing. If you don't give the, the team the opportunity to step up, they can't and then we won't know what they're capable of. Right.

And not, maybe they don't get everything perfect, but everything doesn't have to be perfect all the time either. Right. Like I'm a big fan of they, they call good enough. Good enough for a reason. Right. It's good enough. Yeah. Right. It'll get you by and it's not like you're, it's not like you take a six year sabbatical. Right. You take off part of December. Well, and, and here's the thing for a lot of folks, they don't need you all the time in that capacity.

Especially, you know, if you're in management, like in a key management role, sometimes you are absolutely needed and there's a reason you're earning your paycheck. Sure. But most of the time everybody's doing their own shit. Like they're not super focused on where you are right now. Think about this. Had I never proposed that I'm gonna take some time off to recharge, it would've never occurred to me that I could. Right?

So now, you know when, when Q4 rolls around, everybody kind of knows that that Will's gonna check out for December. Right. And it's not a giant surprise, but for me, the amount of refresh that buys me Yeah, yeah. Is off the charts. Right? Well, the amount of refresh and just, but play out

the other side of it. If you don't take that, it's not like things just keep going. I think this is the fallacy, right? This is, this is a big part of where founders get this wrong. It's like. They assume that just, well, okay, well I don't need that big refresh. I'll just keep limping through. Limp turns into crawl, turns to rollover, turns to die at some point, right? And I think that's where, yeah, you're right. You're right where this goes really, really wrong.

And so yes, you need that refresh, but it's not just that you come out like, and you do. You come outta January like a rocket, which is amazing. But it's not like you would've just continued the same pattern as October, November, December, had you not taken a break. Right. Super, super dangerous assumption for people. I also think psychologically for all of us knowing that there is a break to be had. Yeah. Makes it easier to pace.

Yeah. Right. So like I get less anxious, if you will, that I'm less effective in October than less effective in November because I know I'm gonna reset. And so my, uh, anxiety about, you know, not being as effective is quelled to the extent that my anxiety can be quelled. Yeah, it's, it's similar to like, you know, when you're, when you're young and you're paycheck to paycheck, right?

Yep. And you know, you're getting near the end of that paycheck and the account's getting thin, but you know, the next paycheck is coming. You know, the next payday's coming and so you can feel comfortable, you know, I almost outta gas, but I know where the next, the next gas tank's coming from. Right. And I think that that's, that's important.

Yeah. I was talking to a buddy of mine that was, uh, came to visit a few weeks ago and he had started doing quarterly retreats and he said he is like, I have no idea why I wasn't doing this the entire time for whatever it cost me in time and money. It bought me back in energy focus, creativity, all this stuff. It's like, and it, it just, it never occurred to me that I could, right. To your point. Right. Hadn't given himself permission to even think about it, let alone to do it until he did.

And he is like, actually this works.

I gotta say, you know, as much as we're been talking about it, as I think through it in 32 years of being a founder to this day, I still look at vacation. I still justify vacation as an opportunity to work more. Not during vacation, but post vacation, I look at any time off is an opportunity for me to be more productive when I come through the time off. Yeah. And if I don't feel like I am, I don't take the time. I'll give you an example.

My wife and I go on vacation and she'll be the first to admit I suck at vacation. I'm not good at vacation at all, because the entire time, my mind's just racing about work. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Uh, I can't turn it off. And when I'm sitting on a beach and I'm staring at my toes, I'm like. This is boring. Like, you know, I wonder how we could increase our, our landing page or I wonder how, you know, we could do this or whatever. Right? My mind's constantly on something else, so I suck at vacation.

My wife on the other hand, she's like, I don't care about anything when I'm on vacation. Right? She goes full vacation mode, which is awesome. So I look at my vacation as if, when I go on it, if I don't do a good job with it, like if I know I'm not gonna like rest or recharge, why take one? And so because of that, I'm not good at planning or taking vacations. Yeah. Most people do this crazy thing. Yeah. When you're looking at the ROI, that specifically I think is tough.

Yeah. Most people do this crazy thing where they take vacations just 'cause it's fun. Yeah. They want to. Yeah. Which doesn't occur to me. I remember. This is years back, I'd taken a March vacation, like spring break, you know, for the kids and stuff. I don't remember where we went. Whatever we did. And it was rare because it how much you enjoyed the actual vacation part. Exactly, exactly.

Like, you know, spring break's coming up and uh, to give you a sense for it, family's going on vacation for nine days. They're going place in Florida and I'm not going. Yeah. Because I have work to do. This says it. All right. So anyway, my point is, I remember I went on that vacation and I came back and it felt great. It felt great, and I remember talking to you guys and I was like, man, I should do this every year. And you're like. Like literally everyone else does.

Yeah. Yeah. Just, I thought I'd come back with some special knowledge no one else had ever shared before Lightning. You got lightning in a bottle here will, you should name this something like vacation and sell it to people. Yeah. And I remember saying, I remember saying, dare to dream. Imagine if I, how I'd feel if I did this every quarter. Yeah. You mean like literally every person does? Yeah. See, it doesn't even occur to me. But here's what's been interesting.

Okay, so I'm not great vacation guy, but here's what I have done that I think is very valuable. I understand burnout is real. I've taken command for it, and I planned for it, right? Like I've actually started to say, I'm not gonna pretend it doesn't happen. I'm not gonna look at it as a failure of my ability. I'm gonna look at it as an absolute certainty. Yeah. And I'm gonna plan around it. And I, I think a lot of people miss that. You know what I mean?

Yeah. And, and I think that that is the important part, right? Is you gotta, you gotta accept that it's coming and you have to plan for it. It's like, it's like taxes, right? You don't get to just not pay them, right? You're gonna pay the tax and it comes around, and if you plan for it, it's a lot less painful. If you don't, you can get very painful. We gotta stop thinking of, of recovery as time off, right? It's maintenance. It is a required piece of this.

I'm sure you'd agree, but I can't think of a single great startup that was built on somebody that just looked burnout, drag ass and empty tank. Right. It just doesn't happen. You can't, because that spreads too, right? Yep. If that's you, then that's the rest of the team too. There was, somebody said this once and I, I couldn't help but agree a bit. Like if you can't take time off, you don't own a company, your company owns you, right? Yeah. You're so involved in every single process that.

You are required for everything. You don't have employees either. They have you. You have to build these things in a way that don't rely on your input a hundred percent of the time if you have, you haven't really built a business. I agree. It's also reflective. I mean, if you're saying it's okay to, to run to failure and, and operate at failure, then you're also telling the rest of your staff. I remember like, you know, yeah.

Elon Musk does this thing all the time where he is like, you know, I've got engineers working a hundred hours a week and blah, blah, blah, and I'm like. Okay. Like neat, how long does that last? Right? Like, like who's at peak performance when you do that? You can do it leading up to a, a unique event if you go back and replenish. Yeah. But if you're like, that's our standard work week.

Like I remember the old adage, I think it was Goldman Sachs, it said, if you don't come in on Saturday, don't bother coming in on Sunday. Yeah. And I remember that was such a classic eighties, you know, Axiom at the time. I remember thinking that was awesome. Yeah. And I look back, I'm like, wow. Like, like all those miserable people.

And I get it, you know, I get the, the hard work ethos, but, but I'll say this, I think for a lot of us that haven't done the startup thing before, we don't realize that there aren't scheduled breaks, you know? Yeah. Like, like a W2 job. And we don't realize that we are gonna run ourselves into the ground in a way that we've never done before at a freaking epic level. Well, and that's the thing, right? It, because we've never had an opportunity to do it before.

Yeah. Regardless of whether, you know, where you were, there would've been. Built in break points, right? It's like you can't just go and play on a soccer team and just play and play and play and play. They, they blow the whistle and they make you get off the field. 'cause the next teams right, like it, there are forced and built in stops and breaks. And I think you enter startup for the first time and you, you run into two things.

You run into a machine that will take as much as you can give, right? There will always be something more to do. Endless torrent, endless right? Endless consumption. And. Simultaneously, all the people who would've told you to stop, who would've blown the whistle. Gone, right? Yeah. And so in the beginning, we think that it's our goal to be tireless, right? That we have to just be able to keep doing this. And what I realized over time is like my goal is actually just to be durable.

I don't need to be tireless. I just gotta, it's well said. I gotta be able to outlast this stuff, right? And that does mean resting. That does mean stopping. That does mean taking a beat here and there. I don't think we should worry about running out of gas so long as you plan for it. I think it's, it's okay to run hard. It's okay to do those a hundred hour weeks or, you know, whatever you're doing. So long as you plan for what's on the other side. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

So long as you, you plan for, for your, for your time out.

And when I think about great startups that are built. I don't think about great startups that are built where everyone just runs to, uh, to the end forever. Yeah, it's unsustainable. You cannot run a business. You cannot run yourself by running everybody into the ground. It doesn't last, right? So if you're planning on building for long, team term for yourself, for your, your company, for your staff, et cetera, you've gotta plan these breaks.

There are no great companies that have ever been built on an empty tank. Overthinking your startup because you're going it alone. You don't have to, and honestly, you shouldn't because instead, you can learn directly from peers who've been in your shoes. Connect with bootstrap founders and the advisors helping them win in the startups.com community. Check out the startups.com community@www.startups.com to see if it's for you. Could be just the thing you need. I hope to see you inside.