The Cure for Entrepreneur Burnout

Mike Hambright (00:00.553)
Hey everyone, welcome back to the show. I’m excited today. I’ve got my buddy Trevor Mauch here. We’re gonna be talking about how to eliminate overwhelm in your life. I think the past few years has been a challenging time for a lot of people, a lot of entrepreneurs especially. And sometimes we think the goal, the way to kind of dig out is just to work harder. The reality is it’s also to work smarter. You might have to, let’s just say hustle is a season. So if you’ve had to go through that season, that’s fine, but that is not the strategy. So we’re gonna be talking a lot today about kind of how to get your life back and.

how to take your business to even a next level because you freed up so much of your time. So Trevor, good to see you buddy.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (00:33.772)
Mike, dude, I’m pumped to be back on here, man. And when I saw that you’re kind of re invigorating the podcast and diving into it, you’re the best guy for it. mean, you’ve probably put in more reps on podcasts than anybody in the industry. And I’m just so grateful for you, buddy. Good connecting. That’s right. That’s right.

Mike Hambright (00:46.507)
I’m a podcast honey badger. Like I just don’t give up. You know this because we’ve been friends for a long time, but I talk about this periodically about I started podcasting in 2012 and I think there were six podcasts back then and you know, I don’t really know why I was doing it. I can’t remember how it came about, but all of the people that had podcasts back then, almost all of them are people I would consider friends now. And at the time I didn’t know, you know, if you think of 2012, social media isn’t what it is now.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (01:10.733)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (01:15.241)
Masterminds aren’t what they are now, communities. And so nobody really knew each other. Like they kind of maybe heard of them or whatever, but it was, know, our buddy Joe McCall, Matt Terrio, Jason Hartman, Sean Terry, and you know, maybe another one or two out there. There weren’t very many. And of course now there’s a whole world of them. And you know, I think…

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (01:27.021)
Yeah.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (01:31.639)
Yep. Yep.

Mike Hambright (01:39.903)
back to your point of kind of staying focused on it is it’s still a great way to connect with people and build relationships. Yeah.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (01:44.846)
Yeah, dude, it’s the consistency, right? And, we’ll talk a little bit about that in this podcast, but it’s the consistency. And that’s one of the things I’ve always loved about you, man, is that you’re just, you find the thing and you drum, you beat that drum for weeks, months, years, and it works.

Mike Hambright (02:00.423)
Yeah, there’s plenty of stuff I’ve given up on too, but this happens to be one of the things. I mean, you got to cut stuff loose every once in a while. In fact, that’s probably what we’re going to be talking about today is how to cut some stuff loose, right? So let’s kind of, hey, before we jump in, if it’s possible that anybody listening to this right now doesn’t know who you are, just to kind of cover that base, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background?

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (02:02.413)
That’s right. yeah. Yep. Yep.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (02:19.981)
Yeah, so I’m Trevor mock CEO of a company called carrot carrot.com and this is probably my I mean, depending on what you count as a company, this is probably my fourth, fifth, sixth company or so I miserably failed one or two had a couple of mediocre successes. And then carrot, we started at the end of 2013 2014 and, it became a company that

We were fortunate to have grow really fast, right? We hit the 5,000 list five years in a row, which I think it’s a very, very small single digit amount of company, a percentage of companies do that. And during that process, Mike, man, I’ve learned so much, so much about myself as a person, as a human, a father, a, you know, identity wise, but also learned so much about growing business. And we work with thousands and thousands of flippers, wholesalers.

And get a chance to kind of see what works and what doesn’t but prior to that I would say what am I known for? I’m known as a marketing guy right as a guy who knows how to make the internet work to get you leads and turn those into customers and in this case in this industry into deals for sure Yep

Mike Hambright (03:27.904)
Yep.

That’s great. Yeah. And I think you and I, obviously we talk, It’s been a little while, but we talk fairly often and share a lot of, war wounds and stories and find ways to collaborate and stuff like that. And I think it’s a level of business maturity for both of us to where we’re able to, and we have a, you know, community of people that get together as well that talk about, know, it’s interesting because I think we’re, lot of us are at this level now where it used to be, more, more, more like, how do I build more? How do I grow more? How do I grow faster? Enough is never enough.

like when is enough and you’re like never, right? But you get to a point to where things start to happen in your life. You lose loved ones. I know you lost your dad. I lost my mom a couple years ago. Things start to happen in your life and you really start to think about what is this all for? Like I need to provide, it used to be, you for me, we needed to provide for our family and it’s gone way beyond that. And it’s like, you know, then of course you got the Jeff Bezos of the world that it’s like, how do you grow? How do you grow that large? And, you know, some of us don’t aspire to

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (03:59.874)
Yeah, yep, yep.

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (04:12.311)
Yeah.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (04:16.737)
Yep.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (04:22.956)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (04:28.301)
have those challenges or it’s like that’s too big to get your arms around and so but I think there’s a lot of folks that we’re going to talk to today that have some level of overwhelm in their life and they’ve let their business kind of get away from them and it doesn’t have to be that hard. So let’s talk about that overwhelm a bit.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (04:29.995)
Yep.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (04:37.794)
Yeah.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (04:41.643)
Yep. Dude, the first thing that pops up for me, so this would have been the first time I thought of this question. I’m going ask everyone listening. The first time I thought of this question was probably four to five years ago. And then I started asking this question myself a lot more, you know, this past couple of years, you and I talked and I’m transparent. We all go through seasons in business and life and some seasons we’re hitting the 5,000 list five years in a row and some seasons we’ve got to make an adjustment. And so I’ve gotten through one of those seasons and

I started asking this question when I was in a phase of overwhelm. And I think overwhelm is not something that you figure out and then you’re out of it forever. Right, Mike? It’s you don’t, you don’t go, my gosh, I’m out of overwhelm. I finally figured it out. I’m never going to be overwhelmed again. What we tend to do as entrepreneurs or even just Western society is we tend to, you know, once we get things kind of paired down and in a good spot,

And then we go, man, I’m gonna grab some new opportunities. Now we’d start grabbing new opportunities. We start new businesses, we take on new tasks. We think we can do everything. And so I was in one of those phases five years ago, the first time I thought of this question, and again a couple years ago, and I said, man, I hire employees or contractors or service providers for things, right, to solve a problem for me.

And if they don’t solve the problem, what do we do? Well, we, make an adjustment. Hopefully we, we coach the person or we swap that person out. We, we change something. And if we don’t change something, what happens? Like we shouldn’t expect any other result where we should expect the same bad result. And so in that moment, I just asked the question. I’m like, I hired people to do these things. What did I hire my business to do for me? And is it doing it? Is it doing it? And so.

I’ve been big on vision for years. wrote my first, what I call personal vision story, 15 years ago. And, I coached literally this week. I coached my group on it this week. And I think the first thing is when I asked that question, what did I hire my business to do for me? We have to kind of know what we hire the business to do for us. Like what job is that business doing in our lives? And there’s three things for me, Mike, that a business should do for us. Okay. And then we’re to go into overwhelm here in a second.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (06:47.685)
The three things that a business should do for us for me are number one issue It should provide us work that interests us If we’re not interested in the work that the business provides if it doesn’t give us more energy than it takes Then we have to ask the question. Why am I willing to put all this time into this thing? So One one thing I remember 2008 I was at Gary Vanderchuk’s first ever paid speaking gig in Orlando, Florida and Gary You know years later. He said I got paid five grand for that was the biggest number I could

possibly toss out to Rich Scheffer and he said yes. And after Gary’s speaking gig, me and him and Chris Bresson and a couple other guys, we talked with him for like an hour. And it was before he put out the book, Crush It, know, cash in with your passion. I left that conversation feeling bad about myself going, my gosh, I should be creating a business around my passion. And if it’s not around my passion, I must be failing. And what I’ve learned over the years now is your business does not have to be your passion. I think it should fuel it.

Your business should fuel your passions, but business should provide work that interests you, like I said. Okay, so that’s the first thing. The second thing that a business should do for us is it should fund the vision. Okay, we should have some level of clarity what we’re wanting to live, what type of life we’re wanting to live. We should have some level of clarity for who we want to become as a person and what that lifestyle may look like. Like what does the house look like? What about the car? What about philanthropy? What about the kids, the kids’ school or whatever it is?

How much is that going to cost not the dream life? But how much is a great life gonna cost and then put that number down and your business should fund the vision That’s number two number three Is your business should make you proud that the impact you’re making it matters to the world, right? If the business were to disappear tomorrow that there would be a real pain in your community or somewhere in the world Because your business doesn’t exist

And it doesn’t have to be that your business is this world impacting thing. It might be because it’s impacting that community or that street or these three employees, right? But there should be some sort of reason that makes you proud to be running that business that the business matters. So those are the three reasons now we’re to go and overwhelm. So I’ll recap those really quick. Your business should give you work that interests you. Okay, should give you more energy than it takes. Your work should fund the vision. There should be a number behind it. It should fund it.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (09:11.519)
And any money above that number may be diminishing returns, right? You may be getting into overwhelm and you’re not getting the joy from it because you’re overfunding the vision or you need to make your vision bigger. And then number three is you should be proud of the impact you’re making. Okay? So in that moment, Mike, when I asked that question, what did I hire my business to do for me? I wrote those three things down and I asked, is my business giving me energy? Is it giving me more energy than not? And in those moments, it tends not to.

Right? We tend to get to the end of every day or every week and we go, man, I worked my butt off, but I don’t feel like I really made a lot of progress or I worked my butt off, but I don’t want to do this again. Why did I sign up for this? And then we get distracted with a new business opportunity or something else. Right? And so in that time, I said, well, I’m clear on my vision. Why is it that the business is not providing that for me in this moment? And I went through what I’m going to walk you through here in a second.

Mike Hambright (09:58.657)
Yeah.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (10:11.757)
That I call my momentum meter the question is popping up in my mind Mike is like so I’m out of momentum And I but I’ve been in momentum before how did I get back? How did I get into momentum before? How do I keep it and then if I get out of momentum again in the future? How do I know what’s my system to get back into it? And so that’s what will break down I call it my momentum meter and I’ll walk you through the three to four steps to if you’re in a spot where you’re overwhelmed and your energy is being drained and you’re questioning whether you want to do this business and

You’ve got number goals in front of you, as you hit every number goal, it doesn’t unlock extra joy or extra happiness. It’s cool having extra money, you have money in the bank, but no energy in the tank. And we’ll walk through that. I’ll toss it back over to you though.

Mike Hambright (10:55.423)
Yeah, so that’s good stuff. There’s a couple things that I thought of here are.

said this quote. I’ve re-quoted Matt so many times that people think that this is my quote. I was like, no, I have to give the attribution back to Matt, but that real estate isn’t the thing, it’s the thing that gets you the thing.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (11:04.161)
Yeah. There we go.

Exactly. Yep.

Mike Hambright (11:10.739)
Right, and I’ve kind of given this, like I enjoy real estate, but I don’t love it anymore. Like I used to love it, and I loved it because I had never made that much money, and I love the transformation of flipping a house, and then it gets to a point where it’s like, I got another deal, it’s like cool, whatever, do you want to go look at it? Nope, I don’t care, right? And so I think, and I think that’s okay. I think if your expectations are, I need to love every aspect of my business, then you’re probably gonna get disappointed, because we all.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (11:14.231)
Yep.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (11:19.213)
I love the transformation of looking

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (11:27.469)
Yep.

It is.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (11:34.189)
Hmm.

Mike Hambright (11:37.258)
We all on some level are the CEO and chief bottle washer. You don’t wanna scrub a toilet or have to change a light bulb, but sometimes you’ve just gotta do those things. It almost doesn’t matter what job you have. There’s always parts that you don’t like and you do like. I think the point there is does it overall give you kind of joy in your life? Are you overall able to live the life that you wanna live? And if it comes with a little bit of kind of BS stuff, there’s no way to get out of that, right?

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (11:40.118)
Yeah.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (11:55.115)
Yeah.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (12:03.287)
Do life is like this the one thing Mike that helped me and going through what I did with my dad and I’m sure with your mom as well Is life is full of trials like the only thing that we are actually guaranteed in this world is trial and challenge We’re not guaranteed wealth. We’re not guaranteed perpetual joy. We’re not guaranteed Success, whatever that looks like we’re not even guaranteed time, right? We don’t know when our time is gonna end but the one thing that we are guaranteed is that trials will be there and so we

If for me, when I started to reposition trials in my mind or those moments like two years ago or five years ago, when I hit the spot where it’s like, man, do I want to keep doing this or not? I have to pull back and I go, okay, was this trial done to me or was it done for me? Right? Was this done to me or was it done for me? And as long as we think that that trial has done to us, and it’s something that we’re that we, that we want to eliminate trials or problems in our life, which you can’t.

You can eliminate the one in front of you now, but another one’s going to pop up later. as long as we always look at it as done to us versus done for us, we’re going to be in, like a dirty fuel, a dirty energy mindset all the time. And I started shifting it. there’s a, a verse in James first James where, it talks about, count all trials as joy, my brothers, you know, and then it goes on some more, but it basically says that the trials are the thing that tests you. They, they refine you, they make you perfect and complete.

Mike Hambright (13:03.253)
Yeah.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (13:28.797)
And I started to look at those and go, what if this trial really was done for me and there’s a lesson here for me? And what if I’m getting this trial because there’s an area I need to grow? And the question is, where do I need to grow? Let me find where I need to grow and let me step into this knowing it’s not fun, but I get an opportunity to grow through this. And that’s where I’ll share my screen here in a second. I started to turn trials into my models that I share. Like every model that I have that I’ve

Mike Hambright (13:47.979)
Yep.

Mike Hambright (13:55.627)
Hmm.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (13:58.188)
got 50, 60 models now on how to attack something in business or life. I learned it because I went through that trial several times and I pulled back and I said, okay, what works to get me out of this last time? And now let me write it down and now let me figure it out and go great that worked. Let me capture it right now while it’s fresh on my mind. Cause in a year, eight months or two years, I’m going to forget what worked, but now I’ve got a model that works to get out of this more quickly. So my trials turn into

Mike Hambright (14:25.096)
Yeah.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (14:26.945)
the operating system to use in my life moving forward.

Mike Hambright (14:29.417)
and you start to condition yourself, and you and I have talked about this before, you start to condition yourself that I can work through issues. Where a lot of entrepreneurs like say, they hit a point of friction and it seems hard, and they go jump into something else, some other industry or some other business or some other asset class or whatever, which you get this dopamine hit or this immediate gratification that it’s easy initially, but that too will get hard. And it’s like, if you could start to…

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (14:36.46)
Yeah.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (14:49.857)
Yeah. Yep. Yeah.

Mike Hambright (14:54.495)
build yourself up as like, I’m the person that works through hard shit, then you can get to new levels in your business and have a better life than you ever thought.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (15:01.389)
Dude, it’ll get hard, here’s the thing that I want people to listen to. Because I was that guy, Mike, before Carrot. I was the guy who would switch businesses every 18 months to 24 months. And it was about a two to four year cycle, every single time. And I think the first time I ever presented this was flying to an investor fuel mastermind. I was in the airplane going, what am I going to talk about? And I wrote out, I wrote out.

Mike Hambright (15:25.411)
You’re supposed to have your presentations done a week in advance, All the guys are that way.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (15:28.137)
I know man, I’m always the guy turns an indie the day before cause literally…

Yeah, but the way that I tend to approach it is I don’t fly in airplanes a lot, but when I do, I like to think. I don’t turn on the internet because it never works anyway. But then I get to think. And most of time I’m flying to an investor fuel event, I go, what’s on my mind right now? Because I want to bring something brand new to investor fuel, not something I presented before. And most of the time I presented some sort of a hand drawing I drew on an airplane, flying there saying, I want to process what I’m going through, what worked, what didn’t.

and I’m gonna present something new. So I’m gonna present with you guys one of those drawings that I made on an airplane. This one wasn’t to Investor Fuel, but it was a drawing I made on an airplane to help you get momentum back. So I’m gonna do my best to verbalize for everyone just listen to the podcast version. And if you’re listening to the podcast version of this, you’re gonna get the full value out of it as well, okay? If you’re watching the video version, Mike, are you putting these on YouTube? Is that where they’re going?

Mike Hambright (16:29.066)
Yeah, they go on YouTube and on investorfuel.com.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (16:32.149)
Okay, cool. So guys go to investorfuel.com, go wherever you need to go and, and pull that up. So what I’ve gotten the screen here and I’ll verbalize it is when we’re in one of those moments, we’re in one of those moments where we’re overwhelmed, right? Where the energy is getting zapped from us, where we don’t want to go to do the work that day, where you’re 18 months in or eight months into that brand new business or you’re three to five years in to that wholesaling or flipping company and it lost its luster.

Like Mike said, the business that used to excite him doesn’t excite him anymore because he had a chance to learn and master that skill set. And then it didn’t become interesting anymore because he’d mastered it. And then he went up to the next level, the next revenue level, and he goes, okay, I need to now master a new skill set. So that’s one of the beautiful things about growing businesses is that every revenue level, the threes and tens, hundred thousand, 300,000, a million, 3 million, 10 million, 30.

At every revenue level, you have to peel apart the things that are holding you back from that next level of your identity. And you’ve got to step into learning new skill sets. Okay. So when we’re at that spot of overwhelm, the first thing I want to kind of put in front of you is you might be feeling burnt out. Okay. If you’re not feeling burnt out today, you will get to that spot again at some point. And this is going to help give you a mechanism to get out of it more quickly. But the first thing that I realized,

Is burnout doesn’t come from working too much, right? That, but that’s our first reaction. That’s our first gut reaction is, man, I’m just working too much. But all of us can remember a moment when we were working insane hours and we were not burnout because we were excited and we were still probably doing the things outside of work that energized us. Right? You were still doing that weekly golf thing with your buddies or whatever it is. Burnout happens from.

Mike Hambright (18:01.6)
Mmm.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (18:24.829)
not doing the things outside of work that give you the most joy and energy. Okay, it’s from Things Get Hard. I was literally talking with my clients on Tuesday. He’s in this phase right here. And he goes, man, I just need to pull away from, this is what he said, Mike, and you probably can appreciate this as a person who runs a big group. He said, I need to pull away from the coaching for a bit, because I’m just so overwhelmed that I don’t have time to get on this call. I said, okay, well, what if the very answer

was actually that you needed to step further into this because you’re thinking at a plane, a mental plane, of trying to get out of the problem in the same mental plane that got you into the problem. Einstein has a famous quote that the level of thinking that got you into this is not the level of thinking that will get you out of it. So what he said is, just need to put my head down. I need to just put in some more hours. I need to work. And I said,

Did you have you did you cut your workouts out? Like what what are you doing to fuel yourself man? He goes I haven’t had time for my workouts my wife and I we cut our weekly date nights as well about a month ago and I said what else did you cut that gives you energy? He goes man I usually do a big trail run in the mountains once a month like a 20 mile run I go how long has it been since you’ve done that four months he just listed all these things that he was cutting out because he felt I don’t have time because I’m overwhelmed therefore I need to put more time into work

The answer is actually the opposite. And I’m going show you guys, the answer is not working more. The answer is adding things in that give you life and energy so you can get your brain to a spot that can think about solving those problems at a completely different level. Okay? So the first thing that happens, and I’ll verbalize it through on this momentum meter graphic. So if you can picture like a pendulum, right? There’s a pendulum here, right here in the middle. And this pendulum is kind of down here.

get down here, laying there. And with the pendulum, you pull a pendulum up into the left, and then you let it go. Let me stop doing that, that was weird. Then you let it go, and then it flies to the right side, an equal and opposite height, right? So if you pull the pendulum up, let’s say, you know, to 45 degrees on the left side, and you let it go, theoretically, it goes to 45 degrees on the right side. Well,

Mike Hambright (20:26.997)
You

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (20:40.941)
When I was sitting in an airplane one time, I was thinking about momentum and I said, well, what helps me get back in momentum when I’m out of it? Well, the first thing, Mike, is we have to recognize that we are in burnout. What is burnout? Well, burnout for me tends to be, and hopefully I’m, am I speaking loud enough, Mike, when I look down? Okay. I’m trying to, I’m trying to project here. I’m trying to project into this mic. So when you’re, when you’re in burnout, what burnout is, is you are pulling the pendulum.

Mike Hambright (20:56.587)
Yeah, you’re good. You’re good.

Yeah.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (21:08.521)
up into the left into rest. That’s something I didn’t say is on the left side of this pendulum is rest. It’s being. It’s a state of of just stepping into yourself and resting and and rejuvenating. Okay. The side on the right is work or doing. Okay. What most of us try to do in burnout is we try to only do the things in the right. Maybe if I just put my head down and do more work, that’s going to get me to a spot where I can get out of this. That’s not the answer.

It’s just going to lead you faster in the wrong direction, faster to burnout. Okay. So when we’re going up into rest, that’s what I look at as pruning. You’re pruning. You’re, you’re, you’re, getting yourself back to a spot where you can have that energy. So when we’re in burnout mode, we’re just pulling up to the, to the left into distracted a form of rest is distraction. Right? We pull away from that slack thread. We pull away from the, the, the relentless meetings. We pull away from that computer screen.

And we go to our cell phone, and we flip up Instagram or tick tock or YouTube or whatever it is, we scroll through that to numb the pain to try to get away from the thing that is is drain our energy or whatever other vice there is. Right? What happens, Mike, when we get to a spot where we’re where the business is draining energy from us, there’s something I call the four paths. And I don’t think I’ve shared this at Investor Fuel before. This is something I’ve been working on this past year.

But the four paths on the left side is you, like where are you currently right now, right? This is you in today’s moment. And you’re gonna be moving towards the future. Now the four paths that we can move towards, one of them is transformation, right? We get to transform in some part of our life or business. Transformation for me, Mike, is when you are fundamentally a different person in that area of your life. So I went through a physical transformation 2018 on the fitness side.

I wasn’t consistent. I was starting to kind of get soft. My energy was low. I would get home, you know, almost every single day to my family and I would have no energy for my kids. I made a decision to change and I stepped up into transformation on the fitness side. And we can transform in the key areas. They’re all F’s for me. Faith, family, friends, finances, fitness and fun. Those are the areas I’m always thinking about. Where am I off?

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (23:33.42)
The next part that we can lead to is success. So that’s a path. I think that’s the path most of us want to be on is we want to be in success. However, we define success, right? In those six areas, the six F’s, faith, family, friends, finances, fitness, fun. We want to be in a spot where we feel good about those. And we want to be in success all the time. And when we’re in success, I call this above the, above the line, right? We’re in the green. If you’re above the line up into transformation or success in your life,

Meaning you’re reaching up into transformation every so often in the core part of your life. You’re making a decision to change it, right? It’s not doing the same things. You’re making this decision to change something. You’re stepping into a new identity. That’s above the line. That’s a good thing. But what happens is we oftentimes Mike step below the line and we do it inadvertently and it happens without us even noticing. Okay. At some point we reached up above the line. We tra we transformed. felt we were on fire. We’re like, dude, if I could just bottle this up.

I’m never going to be able to get out of this because I figured life out. I don’t know how many times I figured life out then realized eight months later, I didn’t figure it out. I just have to have a better process to stay in it longer. Right. And so what happens is we dip below the line and we get into frustration. So when we’re in frustration, that’s probably that moment that you’re in guys and gals, if you’re listening to this, that you might be out of momentum, that you’re feeling overwhelmed, that you’re feeling

wiped out, you might be frustrated because the goals you’re trying to push towards are not happening or not happening as quickly as you’d like for them to happen. When we go into frustration, we go down in here and we drift. When we’re in frustration for too long, we drift. We drift into our vices. So when I talked about vices before, we go into our vices, Mike, when we are frustrated, when we are burnt out.

because we don’t have the energy from that daily life anymore. It’s not exciting us. It’s it’s just there is relentless onslaught of the same. And the way that we get out of that, I’ll walk through here in a second and then walk through the spots here in the next 10 minutes. We’ll get through this. But if we stay in drift for too long and we stay in our vices for too long, that leads us to the last of the four paths, which is failure. And failure is the spot where you could kind of see it as rock bottom or the business

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (25:51.562)
Is failing or your fitness is failing your spiritual your spirituality is failing or your relationship with your wife or your husband or your kids your business partners failing partially because you’re frustrated of life you’re drifting up in your often your vices you’re letting your vices control too much of your mind of your brain of your energy and The way we get out of this is this mic to get back above the line There’s another D We need to design We need to get clear again

That question I asked before, what have I hired my business to do for me? We need to get clear again of why I did this in the first place. What does good look like for me in this part of my life? What does the business look like that I would dream of? What does the ideal fitness or the ideal relationship or my ideal faith look like? We design it. We sit down and close our eyes and say, man, wave a magic wand in my ideal average day. What does this look like? And we write that down. The next D then, Mike.

that helps us to get above the line is we’ve got to then make some decisions. I realized what I just wrote was not English, but I think people can get the idea. We make some decisions. The thing that gets us below the line, and this is my vices in decision, is we don’t make decisions because we were successful at one time, we didn’t want to rock the boat, and we got into another D, which is default mode.

Default mode is when we stack up ideas, we stack up some things, we had some success, maybe it still is successful, but we’re not willing to go up into design, ask ourselves, am I clear and where I want to go? Do I want to challenge that? Do I want to think bigger or differently and then make decisions to change things when we don’t make decisions to change things, it goes to indecision, frustration, drift, failure, and then we get a chance to go back up above the line through design. Okay, so let’s go back to momentum meter.

When you’re in this spot right here and you’re in burnout, you’re going from distracted into your vices to busy work, distraction, busy work, distraction, busy work, distraction, busy work. It’s hard to get into your, your, your, best type of work where you’re producing real value, selling things. Well, you know, just really driving things forward if we’re always in busy work. So we go to our, go to Instagram, then we go to our email, go to, and we go to YouTube, then we go into Slack and catch up. We go into whatever your vice is.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (28:21.065)
Overeating alcohol drugs pornography Binging on Netflix for four hours a night because you just don’t have any energy after you get home And you’re just like man. I just need a binge in this for four hours Okay, the way that we get out of burnout is just what we mentioned before you’ve got to identify your number one vice What is your number one vice that you find yourself going to? for me Doom scrolling on Instagram dude like that that that was the vice

And then what I want to challenge you guys to do is in order to get out of the level of thinking that got you into it, you’ve got to eliminate the vice that is trapping you where you are. That vice is a trap. It’s not healthy. It’s not going to get you where you want to go. And a question that I’ll challenge people that I work with it on is I say, great, if that’s your vice, what is your life going to be like in 10 years? If you continue stepping into that vice every single day, just like you are. And every single time they think about it, like, damn that yeah.

I don’t want it. Then I’ll ask him another question. I’ll say, what if your children saw you stepping into that vice, even the secret vices you won’t tell me about, the ones that you’re ashamed of, what if your children see you stepping into that vice every day? What influence is that going to have on them? And would you want them doing the same thing? And every single time it’s like, no, I want to be a better example. So I want you to ruthlessly eliminate the device. So for me, my device for probably six to eight months this past year,

I got to a spot where I was out of momentum. You know, my, my dad was going through his health journey and, and, and all the challenges that go with that. And I started to kind of leave some of my practices behind that gave me energy. And, then before, know, you’re kind of in this spot where just things don’t feel good. And I would find myself going to, to news any news. would, literally twice a day, the morning and the evening, I would pull up this on type Google news, and I would get to the bottom of the newsfeed every time twice a day.

Mike Hambright (30:04.33)
Mm-hmm.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (30:16.333)
Dude, insane. I’d never done that in my life. And for six months I did it. The next thing, Mike, is on Instagram, because I had no restrictions on it other than screen time on Apple, which is really easy to get out of. If you know your code, you just type the code and get out of it every time. Right? So I would go to Instagram for a real reason in my mind, and I would be there for 30 minutes, doom scrolling. And I would get to the end of it like, damn, what happened there? And I would justify, was only 30 minutes. It only 30 minutes.

What happened is when we do that every day, it reprograms our mind. We can’t focus. We can’t get up into our best level of thinking. So I got an app called Opal. O-P-A-L. I’ve got the paid version, a hundred bucks a year. And probably through three or four iterations of me locking stuff down, dude, I got out of my vice, my brain completely mentally reprogrammed. Two weeks is all it took. Two weeks for Instagram, Instagram, Slack.

I don’t have tik-tok X There’s probably another one Facebook I have 45 minutes total per day on my phone all cumulative and I can only unlock my phone up to five times to go into one of those apps a day for 20 minutes at a time max Dude, it’s amazing because I now use it as a utility not as a crutch Eliminate device. Okay step two guys once the vice is gone We now Don’t just put our head down to work more. We don’t go great. I’ve got more mentally

mental focus, I’m just going to work more. We actually, you actually do the opposite. You actually add things back to your life that give you energy. Because if you’re growing this business right now, and you can’t give yourself the permission to enjoy life today, you will not do it when your income doubles or triples. You won’t. You’ll just find more ways to work. You’ll find more justifications to eliminate your hobbies, eliminate your relationships, eliminate your friends, eliminate those things. Okay.

And so the first thing I want you to add back in is something that gives you physical energy. I’m talking daily. one of my clients was asking Trevor, how often do I do these things? Every damn day, every day. the question I asked him, said, how often do you want momentum and energy and clarity every day? Probably right. Well, every day. Okay. Then you do them every day, every day. These are your, you, you create your five daily non-negotiables. Okay. I’ve got five daily non-negotiables that these things I do every damn day because they keep me in energy and momentum.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (32:38.475)
When I don’t do them, I start to slip off. So for me, years ago, I created a gym in my office, but I do these things with people. Okay. So I’ve got friends who come in and work out with me three days a week. I’ve got a plan that I work out the other four days a week. I work out every day, even if it’s just a long brisk walk, get that in your, in your schedule, physical energy. The next thing that we’re going to add into, when you’re, when you get into physical energy now and you let that pendulum go to the right, that goes up in the work side into your, into production mode.

You’re like, dude, I’m energized. I’m clear. I can get my best work done. Now you’re motivated to go do that work. You’re motivated to pick up that call and make the, make the call you’re motivated now and clear and you can sit down more focused in that, in that time block when you couldn’t focus before your brain wouldn’t let you focus. Cause your vice was pulling you back. Okay. this is where a lot of people will be just happy, Mike. They’d be just happy enough to be in that phase of physical energy and producing. You can make a great living sitting in that.

But when I started to challenge myself on years ago was what if I pull it up even further to the left into rest and being and for me that’s mental clarity. That’s creating a practice every single day that gets you mentally clear. Okay. When I’ll walk you through some of mine, I’ll toss it back over to you, Mike, and then we can wrap whenever you’re ready. Once we’re mentally clear and we have a daily practice, is it meditation? Is it reading a book? Is it reading your goals or your life vision?

Um, you know, is it praying? Is it Bible? Whatever it is sitting quietly, uh, doing that every day. Then that swings to the right into the work side of things of creating your art. Dude, when you start creating your art, the world changes. Like your energy is skyrocketing. This stuff I’m showing you here, Mike, this is my art. This is what I spend my time doing. I’ve creating models and, strategies and things like that for my businesses and for my clients. I love doing this stuff. We’re working on my next book. The crazy thing is this Mike.

When we do these things often and we eliminate that vice, we pull up out of distraction. get into the physical energy side of things every single day. get, have a practice for mental clarity every day. We’re producing our businesses growing. We’re getting more energy from our business because we’re pruning the things off that drain our energy and adding the things that is our art and gives us energy. All of a sudden we snap up into transformation. You snap up into personal transformation first. I’m becoming somebody better. I’m, I’m

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (35:03.189)
You peeling back the the thing that’s holding my my true identity back you transform personally as you transform personally it snaps up and your business transforms

Your business will never outgrow your identity. Your business will never outgrow your identity. If you are a person who believes you can never make it past 300K a year, you will never make it past 300K a year. You need to look at whatever that revenue goal is. You need to ask who, like what are the traits that a person who runs a business like that, what do they have? And then ask what are the traits of a person who runs a business like that and is successful in life and they’re healthy and they have hobbies, what are their traits? And let me step into becoming

more of having more of those traits. When you transform personally because of this momentum you’re doing, your business completely transforms. So I’ll toss it your way now, Mike. The end result of all this to me is those five daily non-negotiables. And mine are this, then I actually will toss it to you. It’s I read 10 pages a day. Okay, when I read 10 pages a day, I’ve never listened to an audio book in my life. When I read 10 pages a day, for me, it’s a forcing mechanism to sit down and be quiet.

to read the pages. I’m learning, I’m growing, it helps me be quiet. I actually do it twice in the morning I read the Bible. I’m usually going through Proverbs because it’s easy. If it’s the 20th of the month, I open Proverb 20 and I write my notes on the right side of that. I’ve gone through it six times this last six months now and I catch something new every time. It’s amazing, life-changing. But then in the evenings I’ll read my book. Okay. Another one is I sweat every day. I don’t have a requirement mic for how long I work out. I just got to sweat. I don’t care if it’s 10 minutes. Sweat every day. Okay. The third thing for me,

Is I read my vision or read my goals three times a day So I have an app on my phone since I can’t get into social media anymore hardly ever I have an app on my phone using shortcuts that pops up an Apple note that is literally my personal identity statement That’s rooted in scripture for me and then it’s got my goals for the year it pops up I can’t get out of it until I recognize it and I read it and Sometimes it’s annoying but it does get it in front of me every day and I’m like, okay, this is why I’m doing it. Okay

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (37:11.241)
One of them is reach out to five people a day. I want to connect with people. really want to. It gives me energy and also creates opportunity. And what is the last one? The last one is on here. it’s a Street Cap. Here they are.

read 10 pages for the pep workout that I read the goals. and then I write, write 500 words a day. And that one, I’m more saying his aspirational at the moment, Mike. I need to work on that more. But, guys.

Mike Hambright (37:41.003)
Let’s use chat GPT. You could write me 500 words.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (37:43.442)
Dude I’ve been yeah, I’ll show you some stuff at some point But it’s it’s I have been leveraging that to get through writer’s block for sure. But guys if you’re feeling this ask the question What did I hire my business to do for me and then say is it doing that if it’s not you need to change something you need to make a Decision like we talked before to get back above the line You need to design what it is get really clear what you want that business to look like for you in your life Get clear on it

And then you need to make decisions. What decisions have I been holding back or being or stuck in indecision on? Make decisions and then change your calendar. This momentum meter requires a decision and a calendar change. That’s it. And that client I was talking with Mike, he said, I have no time for anything. I said, dude, you have you have time to do the things that give you joy. You’re choosing not to. OK, and so I write there, I said, you’ve got to change something. And by the end of Friday next week,

Mike Hambright (38:37.033)
Right.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (38:42.539)
I want you picking two things that give you joy back in your life. He texted me the next day, we’ve got our date mornings, their date nights weren’t working. So they moved it to date mornings like my wife and I did. We’ve got a date morning every Tuesday now. Amazing, awesome, Rodrigo. The next thing is he said, I’ve got it in the books to get my 30 mile or 25 mile jogging, my mountain jogging. Like amazing, dude. Build in life first, business will take care of itself later.

Mike Hambright (39:09.899)
Great stuff, man. This is fantastic. So this model is great. The question I want to ask you is for folks that feel like they’re so overwhelmed, they don’t really know where to start. What do you go do right now? Do you focus on elimination? Do you focus on defining what your vision is? Where do you start?

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (39:32.022)
Yeah, so if I if I’m in one of those moments, Mike, where I’m just flat out overwhelmed, you know, where I’m just like, I know I’ve got to get stuff done. I can’t just go not work today. I’ve got to get something done. I’ve got something I call the overwhelm eliminator. And so it’s it’s a I’m showing it on the screen for those watching the video, but I’ll verbalize it just basically do a brain dump.

Right? So I’ll go, what is on my mind? Before I can even think, before I think I can even think vision. Cause one of the biggest challenges people have is when we’re an overwhelm, we cannot get to a spot where we can think vision. That’s the last thing we can think about. Cause our mind is so cluttered. So we got to declutter. We got to pour all that crap out. So I either go to the whiteboard or I grab this, this worksheet here and I got to, first of all, recognize what is on my mind. Let’s do a massive brain dump. Okay. Get it all out of your mind. Then the next thing is I prioritize.

Okay, I’m going to go through that big list of things and I’m going to cross out anything that can be crossed out first. What can I just say no to you know, going back to indecision? A lot of those things are probably stacked up in decisions. Make decisions. No, not now. Some day later. Yes, today make decisions. You could probably get rid of 1520 % of the things right off the gate where you go. Okay, it’s just not important anymore. If it’s important next month, I’ll pick it back up. Okay, the next thing is then we need to kind of like Eisenhower matrix it.

Is say, okay, well, what actually needs to get done? And then I’ll kind of break it up, right? What is urgent and important meaning? This has got to get done. We’ll put it on, put those, name those, and then put those on the calendar. what is urgent, but not important? Someone’s got to get this done, but man, I just don’t want to do it. Right? That’s delegation stuff that goes in the delegation bucket. And then what I’ll do in that moment, Mike, and I’ve done this, I probably do this once every five, six months is I look at my schedule that day. I cancel the rest of the day.

Give the rest of the days cancel. do this, this brain dump. I go through and start to priors prioritize things. I can’t leave that day without things on the calendar. Like what things are actually going to get scheduled to do versus what am going to do today? Then Mike, I’ll pull up a Pomodoro timer online. Just one of those free Pomodoro timers. And I’ll go, I got three Pomodoros, like have 20 minutes each. And I’m going to go through all of the things on this list that I can get done in five minutes or less.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (41:50.946)
That’s the opposite advice that a lot of people will say. A lot of people say eat that frog, right? Which is really good advice when you’re not overwhelmed. I think when you’re overwhelmed, I can’t eat that damn frog because I’ve got all these little tiny gnats over here. got to figure out first. And so that’s where I do the five minute momentum builders. I stack them up. I might have 10 or 15. It’s that phone call that you needed to make. It’s the thing that you needed to order. It’s the, need to send this to my EA so she can do it finally. And I’ve been avoiding delegating that thing.

Mike Hambright (42:05.32)
Right.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (42:19.485)
Anything you can do in under five minutes, you’ve got an hour in 20 minute increments. I’m gonna jam through as many as I can. And by the end of the hour or two, if you need two stretches, Momentum’s there because you’re starting to accomplish things again, energy’s there. Now I look at the big stuff I need to schedule and I tackle that tomorrow. So that’s what works for me.

Mike Hambright (42:34.197)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (42:37.993)
Yeah, that’s great. I think a lot of people too, I know I’m guilty of this historically, is giving myself too much time. Like I don’t have a lot of time, because I fill it up with stuff, I always fill it up with stuff, just like you said. But giving myself too much time to do something. And I think we do it with meetings too. Like by default, all, if somebody has the access to like Calendly or to book a call on your calendar, they’re like 30 minutes, 60 minutes. Like those could be five minute conversations. But we tend to just fill it up with like, well, just in case it runs a little long. And then we,

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (42:51.211)
Yeah. Yep.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (43:01.964)
Dune, yep.

Mike Hambright (43:07.155)
waste that time that’s left over, or we carry out a conversation for too long or whatever it might be. But if you kind of look at how much time that’s taking you per day or per week or per year, it’s insane how much time we spend on, you know, we just fill the calendar up because it kind of makes us feel good, but it doesn’t take as much time to do some of these things,

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (43:09.133)
Mm.

Yeah.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (43:24.853)
for sure.

No, and dude, here’s the reason that that that would happen to me. So let’s say you’re in this moment where you’re in that overwhelm and you go through this, you know, overwhelm eliminator or the close the loops exercise. Let’s say you go through that. Mike, I used to go through it so that I could get to work faster, right? Like I need to get through this. Now I need to get to more work. What I started doing probably a couple of years ago is I would go through this and then I would go do something fun. I would give myself myself permission to literally get through the five minute momentum builders.

get through that giant list, get things on the schedule to work on and get focus time on for the future. But then I would leave for the rest of the day. I’d like, let me go do something fun that gives me energy. And so the work that I do now.

Dude, it happened 10 times this week with people I’m working with, even an employee of mine. As I said, no, you don’t need to work more. You need to go do something you love and make it on your schedule every week. And what if you did it at the start of the day? Because then the work you’re going to do after that’s going to be better and you’re not going to resent it.

So one of those things for me, Mike, I’ve started to create routines. So my wife and I, for the last eight months, we do date mornings and Tuesdays. Date nights weren’t working just because the kids schedules and all these things. So I dropped the kids off on Tuesday, I go home and from 8 15 till 11 o’clock, we have date morning and it’s been amazing. It’s been amazing. Tuesday or Thursday morning.

Mike Hambright (44:48.811)
Are margaritas involved in the morning or? I’m messing with you.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (44:52.193)
Yeah, mean, not Marguerite is usually coffee and stuff like that, but coffee and we might go to the coffee shop, kind of buy our house or being honest. being honest, sometimes those date mornings are us just kind of getting through and having some of the conversations we just didn’t have time for. And, and it’s, it’s those types of conversations tend to be the things that add stressor to a marriage is life gets so busy. And then we end up, we go home because we’re out of energy.

Mike Hambright (44:59.616)
Yeah.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (45:19.093)
And then there’s no time to have the conversation about when the plumbers come in or whatever, whatever the thing is. And so we might have 15, 20, 30 minutes of those conversations we just hadn’t created time for. And then the rest of the time we get to hang out. But then I added in Thursday morning. So this morning was a cold plunge in sauna with my buddies. Monday, Wednesday, Friday is working out in the gym with my with four of my best friends, entrepreneurs.

You know, men of faith, amazing guys. It gives me energy. It’s the foundation Tuesday mornings with my wife Thursday mornings till 10 a.m. So I cut out of the cold plunges on a little bit quicker got in the shower So I get here by 10, but usually it’s till 10 I’m out there on the river in his Finnish sauna right there on the river cold plunging from 8 15 to 10 then we do three rotations of sauna reason I say this is for honestly Mike probably a decade as an entrepreneur

I always had things out there. I said that vision I wrote, man, when I get to this thing, I can enjoy those mornings like that. And when I started to ask, especially going through things, you know, health things with my dad or other people, or going through those revenue levels and realizing the clouds don’t part the angels don’t sing when he hit every revenue level, I just started going, shoot, it’s a decision in a calendar change. That’s the only thing that’s stopping me from doing more of these things I love. and then

I just looked at my vision. I still do this today. Every month I look at my written vision. And I look at the morning or the evening or the afternoon or some part of the day and I go, man, my day is not like that right now, but I really want it to be. And then I ask the question, why not now? Like, why can’t that happen right now? Is there real reason that can’t happen right now? And usually the answer is no. Guys like you and I who have some money, usually the answer is no. There’s no reason. The only reason.

Mike Hambright (47:03.307)
Mm-hmm.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (47:12.853)
is because I haven’t prioritized it and I didn’t say why not now and I didn’t make a decision to make that priority. didn’t make a calendar change. And so that’s been what I’ve been hard to do this last six months. Why not now? Decision, calendar change, and just general joy is better and I’ve been getting more energy from my work again, which I didn’t have for about eight months. Yep.

Mike Hambright (47:19.967)
Right. Yep.

Mike Hambright (47:32.331)
That’s great stuff. Trevor, obviously, know, folks can go learn more about Karet by going to Karet.com. That’s easy. If folks want to learn more about some of the amazing things, the frameworks and stuff you’re working on here, like where can they go to connect or learn more?

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (47:45.207)
Dude, the best spots price my YouTube channel. just go to go to YouTube, look me up, Trevor mock A U C H and then type in like entrepreneur freedom formula, or I have a podcast called the same name, entrepreneur freedom formula. and I break down all this stuff in it, dude. So it’s like, break down every revenue level, the pain points, the identity shifts we need to make and all these models in there. So entrepreneur freedom formula on YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Mike Hambright (48:10.891)
Cool, we’ll add some links down below. So thanks for joining us today. Good to see you, my friend. Yeah. Everybody, we got into this business at the end of the day to live a better life, and sometimes the business can take over your life if you let it. And whether you love what you do or if you don’t,

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (48:15.849)
Awesome buddy, you too man. I appreciate the invite.

Mike Hambright (48:30.139)
this business doesn’t have to be the thing. It could be the thing that kind of gets you the thing as we talked about is how to live a better life, how to have a life of impact, how to basically get later in life and not ever regrets that the life that you wish you’d lived, right? You got to do that now. So, appreciate you guys for joining us on today’s show. We’ll see you next time. Take care.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (48:32.374)
Yep.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (48:42.05)
Yeah.

Trevor Mauch – Carrot.com (48:46.413)
Thank you.