Elon Musk will likely go down as one of the greatest entrepreneurs ever. His impact on human life and the World will likely be even greater. Yet recent reports are he is burning out because of 120 hour work weeks. Though he might be experiencing burn out, I doubt it’s from the 120. I explain what causes entrepreneurs to burn out in this video.
Hey guys! How’s everybody doing today? I hope everybody’s doing great. I wanted to talk about something here. I don’t know if you all have been following the news, but Elon Musk has come out that he’s getting burnt-out from working a lot and it’s something that is very common for entrepreneurs. I don’t think it stemmed from working too much. Most entrepreneurs are overall positive and confident people. All of us, every single entrepreneur out there can experience negativity and self-doubt. There are definitely points. It normally last for me a day or two, but I can be extremely negative and I can really doubt what we’ve got going on. All this effort is the money we’ve invested into what we’re doing. The chances we’ve taken and the loans we’ve taken out. Is it going to pay off? Is it going to work? These people we’ve hired are going up higher and am I going to have to let them go? That sort of a self-doubt definitely creeps in from time to time because entrepreneurs take on an extreme amount of risk and you have a lot of people depending on you. The weight of that can really bear down on you. To me, most entrepreneurs don’t burn-out from physical work. I think it’s not if you’re out there working 15 to 20-hour days for weeks, months or years at a time or whatever like that. I don’t think that’s necessarily what you get burn-out over. I think it’s the mental end of things. For example, when things are going great back when we first started Junk Doctors and we were really busy, we had a lot going on. I would be extremely engaged. I could work for 16-hour days. I’d be a happy camper. I’d be happy as can be working 16 to 18-hour days, 20-hour days every once in a while. The 16 to 18-hour days are working on the trucks. As in the maintenance as well as working on the truck, like in jobs. Then any marketing we had to do like book keeping.
I could stay focused and see that this ball was moving forward. I could see that this large company is moving along and I’d be super passionate about it. I’d be excited. I’d be enthused. I’d be very involved. At that point right there, I could work like that continuously as long as I saw the ball moving. As long as I saw it growing. The times where I would get “burnt-out” were generally the periods of time where we were slower.
Junk removal is very cyclical. Those of you that have been in business any length of time know that it goes from being extremely busy then it slows down. Now as you’ve been in business longer, it does seem to stabilize a bit when you have more previous customers that you’re working with. Especially if you’ve got some consistent customers out there like contractors, professional organizers, realtors, factories and stuff like that. Places that consistently hire you. It does get a little bit better over time. However, you’re still going to go through periods of time where you’re slower and that’s when I would feel more tired. It was all mental. The physical aspect of it, again, I don’t get burnout from physical work. It’s the mental end of things. It’s that weight. Overall, I’m a very positive person. People that know me say I’m very positive and confident. A lot of times I hide that a bit. Doing these videos as close to ever admitting that it occurs to me.
Generally, what happens is that the slower period kind of knocks your confidence or like what happened to me with junk removal. Later on, as it stabilized, what was occurring there where I was getting somewhat burnout or whatever. I wasn’t working as much anyway. Is the fact that I had accomplished my original purpose? I had built up a business that was sustainable. It did not rely on me and makes me pretty good money. It had been built up and makes me, my cofounder and business partner pretty good money. We built that business up, but what was next? We didn’t want to franchise. Every junk removal business out their franchises. I’ve never been somebody that wants to go about it the same exact way that has already been done. I want to do something differently. Not only from the aspect of doing something differently can give you an advantage. It can also lead to you beating the people that have been doing the game longer.
Like I think we’ve got something now. We could have more influence on junk removal than 1-800-Got-Junk. I think we can touch more businesses and put more people in business. We can improve more locally owned businesses and just have our hand physically touching more junk removal businesses than 1-800-Got-Junk. That means hundreds and I really think that’s possible and there’s a step beyond that too. But where I’m going is we’ve lost that vision, we’ve achieved our purpose. We hadn’t set another purpose that was large enough. There was a little bit of, I don’t know if you call that burnout or it was just a kind of a depressing feeling. You know what’s next? There’s needs to be something else. We have accomplished what we initially set out. We’re making good money but there’s something else we’re striving for. We’ve been striving all this time. You get to that point where you hadn’t changed. You might be making more money but your goals and ambitions. Especially if you’re an ambitious person there’s got to be something else. That’s what we created with Junk Removal Authority.
With JRA I was able to really regain a purpose, regain a vision. Which is to help as many service business owners, junk removal companies and service business owners achieve a level of success that I did or greater. That massive vision should allow me to be enthused and be involved to not lose a purpose. It’s such a large vision. It’s can take years to achieve. I shouldn’t get burnout from that, but some doubt has crept back in. from time to time, we got a lot of customers we’re working with. Some things might not go just perfect and we kind of have to recalibrate. This part is new. We’re in a calibration phase. We’re bringing a lot of jobs to people. Not as many as we’d like, but we are bringing a lot of jobs and we’ve got plans to massively expand is what we’re working on. The people that get in now and get a city reserved is turning out to be 20 or 30 jobs a month. We thought it was going to be closer to 20 or 30 jobs a month.
We thought it’d be closer to 45 jobs for most people. We do have one location that’ll do about 60 or 70 jobs in a month. It’s a few less jobs than we thought. It’s still Pay Per Job though. Overall, I think people are mostly happy. It’s just not quite the volume we were wanting. That just means we aren’t making very much money with it. But we’ve got a plan. So, it’s always in calibration and we’ve got a plan to make it happen. So now it’s a matter of making it happen and once we see this very unique idea we’ve come up with that nobody else has, take off and be successful and work. That self-doubt is going to start creeping back out and you’ll get super enthused again because things are moving along and making progress.
That does not give you any excuse to when things aren’t going well, you still have to work. What I’ve found is if I get to that point where some self-doubt creeps in, what you need to do is to work a little bit less at the office or get an alone time. Work on some of my hobbies that I’ve got or do a lot of reading and big picture thinking. Do those three things right there, at least for me, it gets me re-involved. It gets me saying this is going to work out all right. Even if it might not work out exactly as planned, but it’s going to work out all right.
We know that we’ve made a commitment. We know we’re going to follow through and there might be some calibrations that happened here and there, but we’re going to make it work and it’s going to be successful. It’s going to be large. We’re going to achieve that goal. The steps in between might be a little different than what we originally planned, but we’re going to achieve that.
Going back to Elon Musk, he comes out and there’s been several articles written about how he’s working 120 hours a week. He’s a workaholic. He’s burning out from working too much and I don’t think that’s really the case. I am not an Elon Musk expert. I haven’t done a ton of research on him. I admire what he’s doing. I admire his vision. He has a massive vision, he wants to die on Mars. He wants all the cars to be self-driving and electric where we’re not relying on oil products to run everything. He’s got these huge visions and I really respect that he’s an entrepreneur. As an entrepreneur it’s not the money that motivates him, it’s the vision. It’s the impact he’s going to make on the world. It’s not only that him making that impact on the world, he sees this being vital to the survival of the human race. He’s got a massive vision. My guess is, it’s not the 120 hours a week that he’s working. The reason he might be burning out is probably because he has this humongous vision and things are moving a little bit slower than he expected. He needs to see some progress. He’s talking about taking Tesla private again and I think one of the reasons he wants to do that is because a lot of times your frustration and you getting burned out is actually the result of the actions of other people.
In this case he’s got the Tesla as the most shorted stock in the history of the stock market, I believe. It’s definitely the most shorted stocks going on now. Every time he turns around, somebody short in that stock. I think it’s frustrating him and he’s probably got other people that are frustrating like his stockholders. He’s this huge vision guy. Money doesn’t matter to him.
It’s achieving his vision. A stock holder is somebody that want investment return. They can ride with vision if they think they’re going to get more money. But with Musk, it’s not all about the money. He’s got people kind of pushing against him. He’s got a little self-doubt, probably creeping in. Things are going slower than expected. That’s his burn-out. As soon as they hit a major advancement with Tesla or with some of the other projects he’s worked on. They hit that major investment. He sees some great progress and all the work he’s doing is paying off. I think he keeps running and working 120 hours a week. He’s a happy camper and he’s revitalized. He’s got a lot of energy.
In the meantime, he might need to take some time off just to reflect, plan, think and get out of the factory. He’s always in the factory. He sleeps at the factory. He needs to get out of the factory and do some big vision planning. It’s kind of odd for me sitting here with what’s comparatively a measly net worth. Talking about giving my advice to Elon Musk who is, like I said, just a whole lot of an accomplished man. But that’s what I think he’s through. No, I haven’t gone through anything on that large of a scale. We’re trying to do something very massive. It’s definitely not as massive as colonizing Mars or having self-driving cars around. But at the same time, I think it can have a tremendous impact on the people that do work with us. I think we can allow them to achieve a level of success they never were able to do without us or at least speed that process along.
I get a lot more so with junk removal. I got to the point I struggled a little bit. So, it was always about building the company. I was always passionate to have customers and to help people remove junk. But it was hard for me to really get behind junk removal as being a main passion. With this I can 100% get behind it. I love seeing what we’re doing that have a positive effect on people and I look forward to having even more effect moving forward.
So, whenever you get that burnout feeling, self-doubt and negativity. If you’re out there taking a risk. In my opinion, it’s one of two things. It’s not the physical hours you’ve been working, if you work a lot of fit but what happens is when you lose that for progress. You then begin to think, is all this physical work I’m putting forward really paying off? That’s when the weight starts falling on you and feel that burnout feeling. The only other thing, in my opinion, it can be is lack of purpose. You’ve achieved a purpose and you haven’t set another one. It’s one or the other. You’ve got a massive purpose. You’re unable to eat. It’s going slower than expected. You’ve got people pushing against you, you slow down and your business has slowed down. You’re worried. That’s one way to burn out. The other is you’ve achieved your purpose. You’ve achieved your goal. You’ve achieved your vision, but you haven’t set another larger vision for you to keep working to. That’s the other end of burnout. It’s not physical. When you face that, you’ve got to take the time to do some reflection. Do some long-term planning, get involved and if you have a hobby you enjoy doing other than working. I love working. But in that case, you get away from that hobby and you find another hobby. What I found is when I’m doing my other hobby, I’m thinking about fixing what’s wrong at work as well.
It’s a very calming feeling and then after a few days of that, you can get back out there. You can get super focused. You realize things are going to work out okay and you can achieve your goal. So those of you out there taking major risks and starting your own company is a major risk. Starting a junk removal business in your area is a major risk. You’re going to find self-doubt and when you do that do exactly what I said in this video. Take the time to re-plan, reflect and then get back to it. The unsuccessful ones are the ones that go through that and then they quit. They say, I can’t. There’s no way I’m going to get out of this. Whatever. Don’t, don’t make any crazy decisions when you’re in that mindset, work your way out of it, keep pushing forward and you’re going to find success. Thanks guys!