From Burnout to Balance

Shane and Tonya tackle the cultural obsession with busyness and unpack why a full calendar doesn’t always equal fulfillment. From personal stories to leadership lessons, they explore how agency owners can shift from hustle mode to healthy balance without sacrificing success. 

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Transcript

Announcer: [00:00:00] This is IA Forward, your playbook for success as an independent insurance agent. Here to help you knock it out of the ballpark are your hosts, Shane Tatum and Tonya Lied.  

Tonya: Welcome to IA Forward. Shane, there's a phrase that I am hearing being tossed around a lot, and every time I hear it, I think of you and that it would make your head explode. 

Shane: That's how we're going to start today.  

Tonya: Yeah, so when I'm asking people, how are they doing? Starting a conversation, their answer is, I'm booked and busy.  

Shane: Oh, wow. That's a new one for me.  

Tonya: Yeah, I've probably heard this 20 or 30 times. I started hearing it a few months ago, and I'm hearing it a lot now. It's becoming a catchphrase. 

And first of all, that's not how you're doing. That's what you're doing. But why is this phrase becoming our next catchphrase? Why is this something to be so excited about?  

Shane: I'm not excited about it. It gives me. A little bit of that anxiety that I see throughout [00:01:00] our society today, the business world, this idea that if I'm not busy, then I'm failing, or if I'm busy, I'm important. 

If I'm not busy, I'm somehow falling behind across the peer spectrum. That's what it says to me. And having maybe entered a different time of life over the last couple of years. Where I'm not as busy as I was because of just kids in school and stuff. It's interesting to have fresh perspective on the other side of this booked and busy kind of mindset. 

That's where I go with it, is I wish that I could convince people to see what I see now. But again, I don't. It's easy to tell somebody, give somebody advice. It's easy to tell somebody to don't blink. It goes fast. Pay attention to the moment. Enjoy the journey. It's easy to say things like that. It's extremely difficult [00:02:00] to actually do that while you're going through that phase of life. 

Tonya: That's a phrase that I probably would have really embraced in my 20s and 30s. I would have been the booked and busy girl. And here's the thing. Y'all, I know Shane and his schedule is booked. Don't think that Shane sits around and eats bonbons in his office. My schedule is booked. The difference is that we're not proudly talking about how busy we are. 

This is not our thing. And it goes back to something that I read yesterday, even, that talked about there's no work life balance. There's just life. And work is part of life. Family is part of life. The things you enjoy is part of life. But it's all life, and what really made me realize this was I was at my grandfather's funeral in Pennsylvania, and we were having the visitation prior to the funeral, and I [00:03:00] was having to run to the car four times in the, four times an hour for the two hours prior to the funeral to be on the radio. Like, we were in the middle of a sweeps period. I couldn't have those two hours off for my grandfather's visitation because I was taking the last hour off that we pre recorded during the funeral itself. And I look back at that now and I think, how stupid was I? 

Like it was my grandfather's funeral. I was going to be speaking at my grandfather's funeral and I'm more worried about running back and forth to the rental car to be on the radio. What was I thinking? And how many times in our businesses have we done this?  

Shane: We don't intentionally end up there. It's not like you said, this is where I want to be. I want to be back and forth at my grandfather's funeral. Nobody sets out to that type of end game. What happens is when you don't [00:04:00] have perspective about big picture, when you don't catch yourself in those moments to realize, okay, maybe things are out of hand here. We don't want to admit that we can't control it or that we're out of control. 

We don't want to admit that we Are not capable of managing this. We discard this as an addition and it becomes an addiction. It can become an addiction. Like you thrive on the busyness, and so you know. Think you have to stay there because it becomes this thing that you almost feel bad about if you're not there. 

If you're not booked back to back to back. If you're not constantly busy, you start realizing that. Wait a minute. Maybe I'm not as important as I thought I was. Or maybe I'm not being successful. And I don't think people intend to land. Where your example is, they don't intend to go there. It just [00:05:00] happens. 

Tonya: I did hear one person the other night that added blessed to it. So when I asked her how she was doing, and she said, I am booked, busy, and blessed, and I thought, but how are you like, how are you doing? Are you doing great? Are you sleeping? Well, are you fulfilled or are you just touting your achievement of being busy? 

And maybe that's where I'm thinking of this phrase, and maybe that's why it's bothering me so much, is that it's, it seems focused on this achievement of being busy, and are you fulfilled because of that? And if the busyness is what's fulfilling you, then maybe we need to talk about that.  

Shane: We've been having conversations about that with our account management team off and on for several years, the theme of the marketplace and the theme of busy. Everybody's busy. Everybody's just nonstop and [00:06:00] I just can't come up for air or I'm busy. They fit the booked and busy comment like constantly. Now we've started to normalize this and I'm afraid to your point that starts to become the fulfillment. 

That we don't even recognize that busyness is fulfilling us because we're not getting fulfillment somewhere else in life. And whether it's relationship, whether it's family time, whether it's your faith, whatever it is, we're not getting fulfillment in the right places. So then it creeps in. And I do worry about that because this is the interesting part. 

A lot of the people that I hear that from, they don't want to change anything. Okay, you're too busy. Let's talk about some things we might could do to automate some of these things that you've always done that you probably don't need to do anymore. We've got systems and we've got tools and we can automate a lot of this busy work so that you can be less busy so that you can be [00:07:00] customer facing. 

I don't want anybody touching my stuff. Please don't do that. Please don't do that. So it's like when you start to talk about taking it away, people defend why they need to keep it. They defend why they need to keep doing what they're doing that what they're doing is working yet. They're exhausted yet. 

They're late on deadlines. They're late on something or a customer doesn't get a renewal in time or customer doesn't get the quote back on time or whatever. The reality is, it's like there's no recognition that they're actually failing. They're not doing as well as they could be doing. And that is this addiction busyness that I believe. 

Our personal lives have crept into our business lives and vice versa. We talk about, don't take your work home. The bigger problem today, especially post COVID is we bring our personal to work and we don't have the boundaries for the work side because we've allowed the travel ball schedule, we've allowed the cheer [00:08:00] schedule, we've allowed whatever to come into our business. 

Workplace, even if your workplace is your desk at home, you've allowed that to happen.  

Tonya: We had the best business model in the world. If you've ever listened to our podcast at any point in time, we have talked about that we have the best business model in the world. And one of the reasons that it is so attractive as an agency owner is because you can leave the office and be at that event. 

For your children or be there to support your spouse or be able to go to a family event, a function if you need to, like, we're not trying to say to go against the whole idea that as an agency owner. You can't be at those things. We're encouraging you to be at those things. What we're saying is be careful of the creep of letting the other things overtake your business and [00:09:00] then you're up at 11, 12 o'clock at night, one or two in the morning trying to get to work caught up and then you're so booked and busy that you're not getting the fulfillment from work or from your family or from the things that you love to do. There gets to be a point beyond busy where nothing is enjoyable.  

Shane: Another one of those badges that kind of fits into maybe a subtitle to booked and busy is I can go on four hours of sleep. 

What those individuals don't tell you is that they do have a crash day or a crash couple of weeks when they do that. So you may think because you tell yourself a little lie and you, you trick yourself mentally into thinking you don't need to As much sleep as the average human being and you go and you average four hours of sleep for a week. 

And then what you're not telling the world is that you're absolutely just lethargic on [00:10:00] Saturday or on Sunday or whatever, or you call in sick on Monday or whatever the thing that is your catch up spot some point in time, it's going to catch you. Now, what I would agree. That there's this probably reality is that if I do that for three days, three nights in a row, I'm not making it on the fourth night. 

I'm not making it to the fourth day. There may be other people that can do that for 10 days in a row before they hit their crash their wall. But you're going to hit it at some time, and you're going to suffer health wise, whether that's physical health or whether that's mental. You're going to suffer at some point. 

And it's going to crash and that is where this busyness takes us. And again, we wear it as a badge. We've moved to this place in society where we honor it. Oh, they're amazing. They just are machine. They're not there when he hits his crash day. And so that is [00:11:00] something that. We have to attack. I feel like we're attacking it in our business with our people, with our culture, with luck, don't do this. 

The problem we struggle with is we don't control people's personal lives. So we can basically say, Hey, we can, we're flexible at work. We're this go to that event. Don't miss a ball game. Do all those things. What we don't control is what they do from five o'clock, five or six o'clock in the evening until seven 30 or eight o'clock the next morning. 

And people fill it up. They got to be booked in busy. They got to have, they got to volunteer to run this thing at church or volunteer to do this thing with this nonprofit or sit on this board. Our flexibility sometimes runs into the wall. We're being flexible. But the individual isn't managing that flexibility very well and fills up their non work time. 

And so this is just larger, a little bit larger organization [00:12:00] view. CEO here, somebody works, really works four hours. In a day, but then at five o'clock goes till midnight, nonstop, sleeps four hours, gets up early, has some personal thing going on with kids, shows up exhausted at eight o'clock. Is that right? 

Is that flexibility in your work life balance? If you're not going to do it personally. If you're not going to honor that flexibility, is that a good thing? And that's where I see the world at post COVID. Because now we've let that creep into the work from home, the remote work. And if you're not a self disciplined person around that, Then you're going to struggle if you're not capable of getting up and getting dressed and go into your desk at eight or eight thirty or whenever your work day starts, then you're probably not going to be very productive in that setting. 

And so lots of probably hot button topics here this day in time. [00:13:00] I, uh, I, I, I know that this is a problem societal wise and there's lots of different angles of views that I keep thinking about. Back to one of our core values. Make it personal. I keep trying to put myself in different people's shoes. I keep trying to think about what was it like for me five years ago? 

What was it like for me 10 years ago? What's it like to run a larger organization and see the, the people on the other side, the Michael Dales or the, some of these larger organizations saying everybody's got to come back into the office three days a week, or everybody's got to come back into the office five days a week. 

And, uh, The cry out of the awfulness of that, and there's a view there from the other side that probably has some merit to it, and we're all trying to figure this out. Like, I constantly think about flex time work remotely. What's the trade off? [00:14:00] And we're doing it pretty well compared to what I hear. 

One CEO in a recent meeting I was at a couple of weeks ago, we were at dinner and it was a group of agency owners, software vendors, and everybody in the room, maybe probably 80 percent of the room was CEO. It was president CEO of their organization, and I thought it was really funny because the comment was, Oh, my God, let's please not talk about working remote. 

Please don't talk about that at dinner tonight. I am so tired of talking about that. And so. I get it. That was his view. He runs an organization with a couple of thousand employees and he's in the middle of it really tough spot because they went fully remote. Now they're trying to come back partially and it's, Oh my gosh, what a mess. 

All of this is part of this. Do there's different perspectives and how do you find the right spot? And at the center of this is this badge of busy ness and [00:15:00] addiction to busy ness and busy ness makes me great. Busy ness does not make you great.  

Tonya: There's no way that you could have convinced 20 and 30 year old Tanya that busyness is not great. No way.  

Shane: Maybe a little stubborn.  

Tonya: I was the person that took on everything. I was on the board of 18 different organizations at the same time at one point. Now, I made some different life choices because of that. I didn't have children. I had a different amount of time to focus on other things because I did not have children. 

There's no way had I, had I had children, had I had that family, I would have been able to do that. Now, did that make my decisions wrong? No, it just was different than most people's. And I did pick up extra things because of that. And I worked with organizations that, that. For the most part, I did find fulfillment in being able to give to those things. 

So we're not saying that [00:16:00] you should totally clear your calendar, that you should be at work from eight to five, maybe go to a lunch from noon to one and come home and go to school and watch your kids perform and whatever they're doing, and then spend X amount of time with your spouse. We're not saying that life should be this. 

Go to work. Spend time with your family. Go to bed. That may not be what fulfills you. And so if you don't fit into a mold that it sounds like maybe we're trying to tell you to fit into, that's not at all what we're saying. We're saying to pay attention to what makes it busy. Have some self care. Seriously, the idea, looking back now, that I was going to bed at midnight, 1230, getting up, having to be at the radio station to be on the air at 5 a. 

m., which meant I had to get up at 4, whatever. Like, I was that person. I was that person that [00:17:00] slept 3 12, 4 hours, and I look back, and I can't even figure out how I was functioning. Because it may have been that I was still at, work at midnight trying to do paperwork because I wasn't getting enough sleep to be able to function at the level I needed to be able to function. 

Or I was taking that paperwork home and instead of spending time with my family or the people that I wanted to spend time with, I'm checking my paperwork from the day. So we're not saying don't do the things that fulfill you. We're saying figure out from a priority management perspective, what's important to you. 

It's like when people ask me, what is your idea of success? And I get asked that question a lot because I ask that question of other people a lot. And my idea of success in my 20s and in my 30s, It's different than the idea of success in my 40s and hopefully it'll be different than my idea of success in my 50s. 

I'm proud of how I have evolved as a [00:18:00] human being. Shane, I'm sure you're proud of how you've evolved as a human being, but that evolution. And I don't know if I would be where I am now if I didn't have a different mindset in my twenties and thirties.  

Shane: Yeah, I was super hyper actively busy. I was the yes guy. 

I said yes to a lot of things. I said yes to the boards. I said yes to the committees. I served on our city council. I served on our school board. I served on multiple committees at church simultaneously. I watched that sort of process unfold. About myself and went back and forth. You're going to go back and forth when you try to get a hold of this I've had multiple days and either quit those things stop doing them or Just completely reached a point where as soon as that was over as soon as my term was over I'm not going to re up and I went through that probably three [00:19:00] times over 20 years Where I would commit to something. 

I can't be a hypocrite, but when it came time to re up, I had a choice. You have a choice. You don't have to stay where you are. You can back up a little bit and yes, to Tanya's point, it's about buffer. It's about creating space within that calendar and back to our phrase of the day, booked and busy. Maybe it's booked, break, busy. 

Booked, break, busy, something. You need buffers within your day. Otherwise, you have those days that are non stop where you look back and go, What did I actually do today?  

Tonya: I am a huge proponent of buying yourself time. And my husband finds it fascinating sometimes because he'll come to me and he'll be like, Okay, Tonya, what happened? 

And I said, I ordered Groceries on Instacart last night while we were doing this. They came today. We have a housekeeper that takes care of our house because to me that's more [00:20:00] important to be able to spend the time with the cute boy rather than clean the toilet. I don't enjoy cleaning the toilet. So if I can buy that time back To do the things that I love that works for me and it started to work for our household because if I can create time to do the things I love to do, then I would rather do that. 

I would rather spend some money in those places, put some money back into the economy. With people that need those jobs, and so I'm a real proponent of buying time where you can. I'm a huge proponent of if you need to do errands, if there are things you need to do, make a list. Do it efficiently. Don't go to the grocery store every time you need to go to the grocery store. 

Literally and figuratively, it happens. And, uh, So by time, and then the other thing is saying no has been a big struggle for me and something that I've really worked on for the last five to six [00:21:00] years. And I was, I did that last week. Like I was in a Toastmasters meeting. It came time to do election of officers. 

They looked at me and asked me if I would take on a, an officer role as secretary. And I said, no, I'm not. And the word came out of my mouth that I didn't have to think about it, and I thought, I'm so proud of myself. This was a good thing. Yes, I'm a very active member of the club, but I did not take that leadership role on, and it was okay. 

Somebody else stepped in and did it, and That was fantastic. It gave somebody that was younger an opportunity to learn in a role that I didn't want to do. I had that little mental thing of, do they need me? Is it nice to be needed? Yes, it's nice to be needed. But somebody else will fill that role when you say no. 

And afterwards, I felt so much better because I didn't take on another project. that I didn't really want to do. And sometimes we [00:22:00] thrive on that booked and busy idea of being needed. My talents are needed. And your talents are needed most where you want to put your talent.  

Shane: Something that I've noticed, my wife, who is also our accounting manager, no small task at our organization today, five, Employees report to her several years ago, during the kind of height of our craziness with travel sports. 

One of the things that she recognized was that we were not home on the weekends, in many weekends throughout the year. Sometimes in the summer we were gone for weeks at a time. Back to back tournaments, Colorado, California. Yes. That's what happens at really high level elite level travel sports is they don't really care that you have a job. 

You just have to go to these tournament. We actually left Oklahoma. We first left Texas to go to a tournament in [00:23:00] Oklahoma. We left Oklahoma and went to Colorado. We came home for four days and then we went to California. That was after my daughter graduated high school and was about to go into college to play softball. 

My wife recognized that the lack of weekends, the lack of decompression, the ability to just decompress the ability to just. Be at home. I'm not working at the office on Monday. That was the decision. That was the buying herself time I'm not gonna work at the office on Monday, and I'm not gonna work at the office on Friday That became the schedule and then within the Monday and within the Friday While she was working from home the way she did it is she set herself timers. 

I thought this was brilliant She set herself timers. She would work for Whatever. I don't know. 45 minutes. And then she would be quote off for 45 minutes or 30 minutes. And she would do something that she wanted to do at home, something that she needed to do at home, whatever. [00:24:00] And this is how she managed. 

She still does it today, even though our world has changed and has lightened up, but she works on timers. Which is interesting to me. I teach people, talk to people all the time about their own time management, but I struggle with my own time management. And so I should probably use timers. That would be a good thing. 

The way I do it is I calendar everything and I try my best unless I just have to take something at a certain time. Always have calendars. So I don't schedule things back to back. I do have a 30 minute plan. If I can an hour buffer between things so that I can do the email so that I can take the call so that I can be available to my leadership team if they have something they need and being available to your team is a big part of being a leader and running a business and owning an agency is just being available. 

And so when you, if you're going to be available, you have to create sort of white space, [00:25:00] so to speak, around your day. This was something I watched and observed Julie do really well, is create timers and create white space for her own need to do something at home. If you are a business owner and you probably are working some from home or some flexible scenarios, think about that. 

That's a really good way to do it. Way to force your own time management. And I know that I would not have been able to do that 20 years ago. I would not have been able to do that in my twenties or early thirties to Tanya's point. Yes. Understand that when we're talking about this stuff, we're talking about this stuff because we look back and see what we did or how we did something and go, maybe there was a better way. 

Maybe there was a better way to do that. Maybe it is time of life. Maybe there is something to in your 20s and 30s just being 110 miles an hour all the time. I was. I'm not sure that was right. I'm not sure I wouldn't [00:26:00] still be in the same place if I wouldn't have been that. If I wouldn't have run 110, I would run 75 miles an hour. 

Would I have still made it to this point? Probably. Because you're still going to be successful back to fulfillment back to this is what I got to do to be successful. And I'm not sure that's a truth to yourself. I'm not sure you're actually telling yourself the truth when you make that kind of perspective comment. 

Tonya: I'm going to leave us today with this quote from Arthur Ashe. You are never really playing an opponent. You are playing yourself, your own highest standards. And when you reach your limits, that is the real joy.  

Shane: Attitude's a choice. Make a great one.  

Tonya: Bye, y'all. 

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