Build a Business That Lasts: Systems, Boundaries and Burnout Prevention

Jodi Watkins (00:00)
Well, basically I want everybody to take a step back. If you’re listening to this, take a step back and really look at your business and what you’re building. Are you just building something that’s temporary or are you building something that you wanna last? Because if you want it to last, I promise you you’re gonna have to build a foundation. And if you don’t have the foundation, you gotta take some time to build it. So do that first before you do anything else. Everything else will thrive after that.

Dylan Silver (01:58)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today we’re joined by Jodi Watkins, a Florida-based entrepreneur, investor, military veteran, and founder of Lady J Empowers and Break the Barriers Investments. Jodi, thanks for taking the time today.

Jodi Watkins (02:12)
Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Dylan Silver (02:15)
Now, mindset and burnout are very, very real things for folks pretty much in every segment of the real estate space, and something that you help folks overcome.

Jodi Watkins (02:26)
Yeah. It’s something that I’ve experienced personally on more than one occasion. I’m a stubborn one, so it’s sometimes it takes a couple of times, right? But we live in this society that teaches us to go, go, go, right. And and even in the military, I worked on the flight line, like we didn’t really get a lot of breaks, right? Like, what is that? You know? And and so I just got so used to in my life just learning how to work through being tired, being, you know.

Burn out and things like that and just continue to work. And when you’re younger, sometimes you can get away with it. But that’s one of the things that I try to teach people now, especially the younger generations, because you don’t want to wait until you’re in your 40s to crash and burn, which is what happened with me.

Dylan Silver (03:12)
Can be very, very difficult and a painful experience to be dealing with burnout, especially if other people who are doing maybe something similar or the same thing as you seem to be doing pretty well. So when you realize, hey, this is actually weighing on me, what do you do at that point in time?

Jodi Watkins (03:30)
Well, I tell people now, don’t wait. Like I I really didn’t know I did not know that I was falling.

Like I would I operated, I started my first business. I was a personal trainer and nutritionist. But I was, you know, I was getting up at like three in the morning. I was doing bodybuilding, I was powerlifting, I was doing things and and I also had had a few surgeries up to that point. And so I was also kind of taking care of my body, but I was not taking care of my mind. And I, you know, I was going to school and I I was checking all the boxes. Okay. I was checking all the society boxes. You know, go to school.

Get a job, do this, start a business, right? But what happens is some of us are so programmed to say yes, yes, yes, because we’re trying to get the business going. We’re trying to, you know, make sure that we’re successful, right? Whatever that’s supposed to look like now. And that’s what happened, where I literally, I would physically on the outside, I looked fine.

But mentally I was falling apart. I just did not know it. So it actually took me at 2019, the end of 2018, I moved back to the States. So I started my first business. I was overseas in Okinawa, Japan. Moved back to the States, and it took literally me just getting to a point where I was like debilitated. Like I couldn’t move. I would now I would put on the face and get my daughter to school and do do the things, right?

But then when once that was done, I would find myself like on the couch the rest of the day. And that was not normal for me. And that’s when I mean it took a while. I was finally able to kind of get myself out of that rut.

But then it hit me again after COVID in 2021. So 2020, you know, we all had to kind of pull back, but I think a lot of us learned how to shift, which is great, right? You shift, you do the things online. We all got our PhDs in Zoom, right? Like, but even with that, we can be doing too much. We can say yes too much. In 2021, I finally got to a place where I had to do what I tell other people to do: seek help.

I had to finally reach out. And I am a veteran, so I had the ability to reach out to the the VA. And I did. And I I said, hey, I don’t know what’s going on, but I think I need help. And I didn’t know what was gonna happen after, but I took the first step. And so that’s what I tell people, like, don’t wait until you get to the point where there’s there’s might not be a return. I

I talk about I you know I I don’t I know this is not where you’re supposed to go, but I do talk a lot about suicide awareness because that’s what can happen if we wait too long. And so I tell people, I’m like, you know, there’s 988, like reach out to someone, call a mentor, call someone, a friend, because you never want to wait too long. So I always tell people to ask for help. But that’s the biggest thing that I had to do. And then in twenty twenty two, I actually entered the real estate.

Arena. I got licensed as an agent and it hit me so quickly that this was just another burnout place. This was a place where people would get burnt out all the time. And I ended up working with different brokerages on mindset development and burnout prevention. And that’s how that all started for me.

Dylan Silver (07:45)
Now, there’s

a lot of agents, you mentioned it, who have scaled a successful business on the outside looking in, they’ve got it made, right? They’ve got millions in transaction volume and dozens of transactions a year, but they are absolutely tired of the business. And some of them feel like, well, I can’t hang it up because what else am I gonna do? In those situations, you mentioned, you know, going to seek

help and you know, going that route on a logistical level, on a granular level, while they’re doing that, what can folks do in their business to maybe take some of that pressure off of themselves?

Jodi Watkins (08:25)
I just had this conversation today with a client. Ask for help. Delegate. The best leaders. If you want to call yourself a leader, and I I saw some not so great leaders in the military, and I saw some really great leaders in the military. And I learned from both of them. Okay. If you want to be a great leader, you empower those around you. There’s you a leader should not be the only one in the spotlight.

You should have people around you. So if you start feeling to the point, I promise you, there are people around you who are strong in areas you’re not. Ask for help. Mentor them. Empower them. Encourage them. Because then you form a team and you’re not the only one trying to do it all. We get into this lone wolf syndrome where we think we have to do everything all by ourselves. And I’ve been there, I had a chip on my shoulder for a long time. But

We cannot operate like that. Like with everything that I do, I always tell people, like, you get me and everybody around me. I’m not here, I’m not here because of myself. I’m here because there were other people around me and there still are who are helping me in areas that I’m not strong in. So that’s helping me from not being burnt out because I’m not trying to do everything, but I have.

Dylan Silver (09:26)
Yeah.

Jodi Watkins (09:41)
And so that’s why I won’t do that anymore. I will not put a price tag on my piece anymore. And that’s what I tell people, like, you’ve got to protect your peace. I don’t care if you got millions in the bank, but if you’re falling apart and you’re unhealthy and you’re in the hospital because you’re stressed out, is that really, is that really a life worth living?

Dylan Silver (09:55)
It’s not worth it.

I was having this conversation actually earlier today with a realtor, and we were talking about how, you know, it’s

an all-encompassing profession in a lot of cases, especially if you’re building your business and working seven days a week and you know constantly on call and you can’t take a real time off or vacation because you’re gonna get a phone call. But I also see a lot of solopreneurs, you know, agents that are on teams, but they’re really operating

by themselves, even when they have a team who might be able to assist them. Do you see that maybe realtors have a more challenging time delegating? Because it seems to be more uncommon for individual agents to have that type of assistance?

Jodi Watkins (11:20)
Yeah,

It’s a mindset. It it all goes back to mindset. A lot of us grow up with we don’t want to ask for help because we might we feel like we’re burdened, burdening people around us, right? Like these are conversations I have all the time. That’s why it’s so easy for me to talk about it. But you know, we feel like a burden if we ask for help. Well, I don’t want to bother that person. They might be too busy. How do you know if you don’t ask? Right? So there’s a lot of that going on, but there’s also that mentality of, well, I could do it better on my own.

And that’s honestly, that’s where I was when I was in the military. And it took a supervisor calling me out. Like, yeah, but if nobody had taught you, would you be able to do the stuff that you’re doing?

Dylan Silver (11:55)
Yeah.

Jodi Watkins (12:05)
So that was my job. So we had a thing in the airport. I worked on the flight line. If we didn’t work together, the planes didn’t get fixed and the people would, they didn’t get to go where they needed to go, right? So we had to work together. It was teamwork all day long. But if I didn’t delegate, if I didn’t train, so we had this thing where it was train your replacement. Because guess what? None of us know, and I’m not trying to, you know, go down a negative path or anything like that. None of us know when our time is up.

So if we don’t have, if we’re not leaving our information, our lessons learned, our experiences behind to other people, that whole business goes with us. And what is it all for at that point?

So we need to be able to say, hey, let me, let’s look at this. Let’s look at this together. Hey, what are you strong at? Like there’s assessments out there that people can take. I always tell if you’re a team, if you’re a leader, like have your team take this assessment, the strengths-based, the strength-based assessment. See where your strengths are, see where your weaknesses are, and form a team that can collaborate and capitalize on those things. So that way you’re not having to try to do it all by yourself. You shouldn’t.

Dylan Silver (12:45)
Yeah.

You mentioned thinking, you know, that it was better off doing it by yourself. And that can be a gift and a curse, right? Because if you need someone to bear a large burden or a large responsibility for a short sprint, that person’s probably gonna be great, right? But if you keep, you know, working them like, you know, a a

that indefinitely, it’s gonna be very, very, very challenging for them long term. And it could appear like they’re, you know, doing fine, but eventually, you know, usually that person is gonna break down. So how can we in our own minds, if our identity is I’m this person and I’m on my own, like I I’m able to do this and I don’t need help, how do we start to delegate when it seems so uncomfortable for some people, right?

Jodi Watkins (14:02)
Yeah. It you know, it

It took me a long time, even in my my business now. It took me a long time to actually be able to hire a virtual assistant because of exactly what we’re talking about right now. But you know what that showed me? I didn’t have the correct systems and processes in place. So you know what that had me do? Create systems and processes. And that’s what we need to do. So I always encourage people like before you even start your business, and it’s not analysis, paralysis, or anything, it’s literally building a strong foundation. I never had that.

Until I had to, right? And and I was teaching leadership and things like this. And so I was just like, wow, how did I not notice this? But when somebody would ask me, you know, hey, let see this or that or the other, like I had the business plan, I had the the things you’re supposed to have, right? But what about your systems? What about your processes? How do those work? Can somebody just step in and take over for you? If you don’t have that, then you need to pull back from all the the daily whatever being on call 24-7.

And take some time, some admin time, and actually build a sustainable business. So you can actually literally, what happens if you’re sick? God forbid somebody in your family get hurt, right? Like you might have to step away for a week. Who can run it? If you don’t have it, if everything is just in your head,

who is it helping? Nobody.

Dylan Silver (16:06)
Yeah. You mentioned

You mentioned, you know, running and it’s all in your head. And there’s what seems to be a very common trope of a real estate investor who’s kind of a cowboy, right? And they’re doing it on their own. And, you know, maybe they have some informalized relationships with contractors, but you know, they don’t really have a bunch of people on payroll, right? And so their whole business is very much reliant on them. Like if they leave, the business stops.

And th this is a a gift and a curse, right? Because they’re gonna be great in getting something going, but then in scaling that, it can be very, very challenging. How can folks scale once they’ve gotten off the ground and use that same type of cowboy energy to to help them and not help them feel burnt out?

Jodi Watkins (16:57)
Well we have

Amazing tools these days. We have this thing called AI, right? Like, use it, use it, you know, put your thoughts out into, you know, like I I’ve been using ChatGPT for a few years, right? And my brain can be in 50,000 different places at one time. I’m really grateful that nobody can see inside my head most of the time. But when I started using AI, I learned that I could literally type out all those 50,000 things and it would streamline everything for me.

Use

the tools that are available for you, right? If you gotta pay like $20 a month, pay $20 a month, right? It’s so much more budget-friendly, especially when you’re starting out and you don’t have a lot of capital, right? To be able to formulate those things. And what happens is with most of us, and I say us because I promise you I was in the same boat until it finally hit me.

We create jobs for ourselves. Great, we’re business owners. But you know what we actually just did? We created a job for ourselves. And you know what also happens with that? We don’t take time off. We were actually better off probably working for somebody because at least then we got off at a certain time. So you know what I tell people now? You have to create your own schedule. Utilize the fact that you are a business owner. Like when I finally owned that, I was like, wait, I’m not on anybody’s time anymore. Now, do I have appointments? Do I have like things like this? Where, yeah, of course, I can say yes to certain things, but do I have to say yes to everything? No, I don’t. It’s still going to work because if you’re burnt out, you can’t really operate at a high level anyway. So, who are you really helping? No one, including yourself.

Dylan Silver (18:30)
Yeah.

Yeah.

People do need to have the ability to not just time block, but also say no, right? And and sometimes we feel badly about doing that. But if you don’t, you’re not gonna be able to help anybody. We are coming up on time here, Jodi. Any new projects that you’re working on? And then also anything you’d like to mention directly to our audience.

Jodi Watkins (19:02)
Well, basically I want everybody to take a step back. If you’re listening to this, take a step back and really look at your business and what you’re building. Are you just building something that’s temporary or are you building something that you wanna last? Because if you want it to last, I promise you you’re gonna have to build a foundation. And if you don’t have the foundation, you gotta take some time to build it. So do that first before you do anything else. Everything else will thrive after that.

As far as projects, I actually did just publish an action guide for business owners. It is kind of more getting people to kind of step back in. And there’s a lot of things that are programming, you know, based on our upbringings, right? I learned a lot about generational trauma and psychology and things like that. And in a lot of these things that we deal with are trauma responses. So I actually created an action guide. I have an acronym called Step and Shine. And it’s basically, like you said, set healthy boundaries. That’s the actually

The second S. So I help I literally walk people through how to do this because it’s what I had to do. And so that’s on Amazon. And then I did just publish publish a new book called Alone. It’s my journey of finding self and not feeling lonely and kind of separating myself from the noise and chaos of people, people, people, and trying to people please and be around people and fit in and be liked, and just having to understand that hey, I’m not for everybody and I’m okay.

Okay with that. So those are the two newest things that I’m working on. Other than that,

Dylan Silver (20:28)
Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent.

Jodi Watkins (20:34)
Barriers, that’s where the name came from. Breaking Barriers, we’re building legacies here, people. We are not building temporary things. We should be building legacies. I want this to be able to pass down to my kid and her kids and whatever that’s supposed to look like. So again, that goes back to the systems and processes because can we do that if we don’t have those things in place?

Dylan Silver (20:53)
Jodi, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for your time.

Jodi Watkins (20:56)
Thank you. I appreciate your time and thank you so much for everyone listening. Hey, everybody has to start somewhere, but I promise you, if you build that foundation, you will get a whole lot farther.