17 – Burnout Survival for Web Designers – Stay Sane and Paid

[00:00:00] , What up y’all? Welcome to the Web Design Empire where we share stories and strategies to help you build your web design empire from a side gig to multiple six figs on steroids.
I’m John, and this is Kelly. We’re both full-time freelance web designers who escape the real world, broke up with our jobs, our bosses, our cubicles, our expectations, and our commutes over 15 years ago, and we haven’t looked back. We’re also course creators, web design, business coaches, web design store owners.
Kelly owns Airbnbs. I’m a touring professional musician, which I have a fun story today about that. All that to say, we are building our empires. Today we’re talking about avoiding burnout, realistic productivity, tips for busy web designers. We’ve all been there. But first, how’s it going, Kelly? Well, I wanna hear about this story you have about your touring professional musician.
[00:01:00] Totally. So, We’ve all been there with web design where there’s cool projects that you work on. Right? Like right now I’m working on an MMA gym website, and it’s nice. The guy’s like, I want colors black, white, and red.
And, and I’m using , you know, red in a subtle way where it kind of glows like the new Tron marketing Nice for the new Tron movie. Like it’s a, a lot of fun. And you got these pictures of guys fighting in the octagon. It’s like. Yeah. And then you have a county hospital website where you’re just , you always pick on the county hospitals or you’re like, you know what I, this is not very fun and not very, not very taxing my creative juices.
But it’s paying triple what the MMA gym is. Right, right, right, right. Well sometimes in Band world you have to do that sometimes, you know, we all wanna work on our original music that, that we love. And then sometimes you have to write a jingle for Greg Young Chevrolet. And. And then once they love the little minute long jingle, you’re like, well, let’s do a music video for it.
And then they pay you , a decent budget that you spend some of [00:02:00] that on the music video. And that’s what happened on Monday. Monday we were at the Gretna Airport, little tiny airport on the tarmac. I didn’t even know Gretna had an airport.
All right. Small town Nebraska. Mm-hmm. But they had an airport. Mm-hmm. And the first half of the day was Brian out on the tarmac with his guitar and an aunt behind him singing the Greg, Greg Young Chevrolet, whatever. And this, , Corvette was going around him like drifting, like in a circle.
Nice. And they had a drone shot. They had all these shots. And then, , the second half of the day we were in an aircraft hanger. With like huge American flag.
Ugh. Back behind, behind us. I love hangs. They, they’re the coolest. And then a bunch of cars, like a variety of cars. Oh, cars. No planes, you know. Well, no. ’cause they wanted to, they wanted to showcase all the different vehicles they had. Oh, okay. At their, I forgot what commercial were doing. Got it. So that was my, that was my day, day Monday. It was a cool, , my part playing the drums was probably, maybe. An hour outta the eight hours, but it is how it is.
And so I had my [00:03:00] laptop with me just working away as I was like, , am I needed yet? You know that Gloria Freelancing right there. Do you need me? That is pretty cool. Let’s see, let’s see what I did on Monday. I was not making any music videos. I, I’m pretty sure they’re actually, the kids didn’t have school, so.
My youngest was at, uh,, great Wolf Lodge this weekend with, , one of our neighbors. And , that would be her version of being in a music video. It’s, , that’s her little piece of heaven and I hate going there. So I was happy that I didn’t have to go. , And then , we took my oldest and by we, I mean my husband, took our oldest on her first college tour on Monday, which is pretty fun.
Wow. I know. What college, where was this at? , CU in Boulder. , Oh yeah. Great. She’s really not, really not interested in going to, and I think, I think Casey’s. Grandpa would disown us if she did, but I thought it was, it’s just like a good, you know, like a baseline tour.
A to compare others, yeah. To compare others to. So, and it’s close. [00:04:00] So, anyway, that was my Monday. You’re, you win. Well, one thing I’ll say is it always seems more glamorous than it is, right? So, I mean Oh, I’m sure. I’m sure. Just imagine like standing on the tarmac. I’m tarmac you’re on set for a long time.
For four hour, four hours on the tarmac. There’s no chairs. There’s no chairs out there, no boys. You’re hearing this one minute song probably a hundred times. You know, we kept apologize, like, y’all are gonna hate us after this. You’re never gonna listen to our music again. You’re just gonna have this, Greg.
Yeah. You’re gonna have this, you know, stuck in your head. And then in the hangar , there’s no fans. Blowing on you, keep you cool. It’s stifling in there. You’re wearing like a leather jacket and the tightest skinny pants you can fit in, you know, so you’re just like, you’re just like, this is, I’m sweating, I’m glistening.
Uh, so it’s, it’s not as glamorous as it as it seems. Ugh. Yeah, I gave up, I gave up skinny jeans a couple years ago, so that’s on you, brother. , Rock stars have to wear skinny jeans, I suppose. So obviously you [00:05:00] have, in life, you have these highlight moments and then you have the mundane. Yes. And so same is true in web design. We have these highlight moments, but we have a lot of mundane moments that that could lead to burnout, which is the day’s. Yep. Topic about have we encountered burnout?
Of course we’ve had, we’ve been doing this a long time. Yeah. And then , how do we stay engaged? What helps us stay engaged to get through those times? So, I think first it’s important to point out that, when we talk about productivity as web designers, I think a lot of people equate. Especially people with like side gigs or whatever that equate productivity with like this hustle, this constant hustle.
And I hate that word for a lot of reasons. Mm-hmm. For starters, it sounds , like to me a hustle is like a trick. Like you’re tricking someone into something, you know what I mean? Oh. And I know that’s not , what it’s intended with this hustle culture, but still, , the whole hustle culture crap, is not what we’re talking about here.
Being busy for the sake of being bus, you know, like all No, we’re, we’re definitely in the [00:06:00] business of working, smarter, not harder, and doing and creating the freedom of time as opposed to just staying busy, busy, busy. So we’re not talking about, mm-hmm. You know, working 25 hours a day. That’s not, not in our DNA, . , Stay up an hour later. Get up an hour earlier, everyone has the same 24 hours. What’s wrong with you? That’s kind of that, oh, like have you seen the video of the guy who talks about how he has three days every single day because he breaks up his day into eight hours. It’s like, what are you, man, that sounds terrible.
Whatcha trying to accomplish? Yeah, I know. Anyway, so yeah, we’re not about that. We definitely both encountered burnout in the past, and I think what that looks like , for web designers specifically, is when work starts spilling into, especially freelance web designers, right?
Because it kind of mushes together with your home life. And so when work starts spilling into, in your weekends, or in nights, or even into vacations or times that you swore that you would never work, and then it just starts happening and you feel like you have to, or [00:07:00] when every email from a client just feels like it’s this attack almost.
Mm-hmm. Uh, ’cause you just can’t get caught up and you can’t, anyway. So those are things that I’ve experienced, where I’m like, man, this is not, this is not the way it was meant to be. I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna hate my clients. Of course they need me. Why am I getting.
Triggered by every single email coming at me. My specific ultimate burnout story was, and I’ve told it before probably on this podcast, , when I had three kids at home. Right before I had kids, is, when I went full-time freelance and I was like, oh, I can have this business on the side from home , while making babies and raising ’em, this’ll be great.
Which, which sounds, which sounds great in theory, but it’s, it’s a little,, a little harder than that. So I was home. I had just had my third baby, third and final. She was the baby to end babies. Mm. , So , she was a trip and I was holding her and , my toddler. Was like hanging on my leg.
And then my preschooler was jumping on the couch. And as I say [00:08:00] this, at least half of us were crying. I don’t, it was just this moment of holy cow, and I knew I had all of this work stuff I had to get done and I was just drowning in work, drowning in babies. And it was just , this moment that again, I will, I keep talking about it because it’s so, .
God, it’s just surreal. It was , such a moment that I just realized I can’t keep doing this for, in my head, I had another five years, until , my newborn was in school or something. Mm-hmm. Until I got some kind of dedicated break. Right. And so that was my significant burnout moment where I literally decided I’m making a shift, I’m making a change, I’m stepping back and .
I have to reset up my business in a way that I don’t have this feeling of drowning constantly. And that was actually what initiated , our course, which is Break the Web. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And I got John on board anyway, so that was , my most significant burnout stories. I have, I have others.
There were other moments. It’s not like there’s just this one time I got burnt out. But that was the big one. I’m sure you have a burnout story or too, [00:09:00] John.
I think the moment for me was , I was setting up at a show playing for the scowl named Rachel Scott. And I was just, during setup, I got a few emails and then after we were set up, the time in between set and the show, I was just like feeling overworked. And I remember I counted up all the projects I had and I was in the middle of, and it was like 20.
29 ish projects. Geez. And I was doing everything for all of them, everything. And then I was like, how even just keeping all these folks moving along is a part-time job. And so that was when I decided, kind of like you did, okay, I gotta step back a second. It’s time for a change.
Yeah. How am I going to, what does this look like? And that’s when I brought, started bringing Jake on board. Yep. Well, yeah, let’s go into. Like why web designers burnout? I think, , based on even what we were just talking about, , it’s wearing too many hats, like you just said.
It’s doing, every single [00:10:00] piece of every single project, not only the design and the dev, but the project management and the admin and the behind the scenes stuff. The billing, the invoicing, keeping in account management, keeping in contact , with clients, and moving those projects along not to mention the hosting and the server side. It makes sure sites are staying. So when you’re doing absolutely everything, there’s just this sense of overwhelm and trying to switch between those hats every single day even is such a huge mental load that, , that can lead to burnout real fast.
I think another one is saying yes to everything. And I think this is something that’s really easy to do, when you’re just getting started. So. , Let’s say you have a plans of being, a WordPress web designer, but then someone comes to you with this kind of side project that isn’t in WordPress and you’re like, I can do that.
Or they’re like, oh, hey, I need this print thing done. Can you hand Sure I can do that. You know, it’s like when you take on, wearing more hat. It’s just another hat for every single one of those types of projects. Or, or on the other hand of saying yes to everything is , , like [00:11:00] when you were taking on 29 projects at once, it’s like, okay, I probably should have said no to one of those in there, maybe.
Oh, totally. Maybe 12. So yeah, not saying yes to everything. I think some other ones are like a lack of boundaries. I know this is a significant problem that I’ve had. I think the generations below us, or like half generation below us even are better at the whole boundary thing. Yeah. Not taking on, not taking calls at 10:00 PM or responding to texts after hours, from clients,
or even allowing texts. Like now if a client texts me, I will immediately be like, Hey, make sure you send this . Through my support system so someone will see it, I will not see it on text. Stuff like that. And then I think another big one is having unrealistic expectations.
And this is on both ends, right? So your own expectations for your own productivity as well as client expectations. That your client knows exactly what they’re getting. You need to be upfront and honest about that. And then you need to be [00:12:00] upfront and honest with yourself as far as what you can produce as a solopreneur, if that’s how you’re doing it.
You know me, especially when I was working with three kids at home, I had ridiculous expectations of what I could pull off with three kids, when in reality it should have been probably half of what I was doing. But ultimately , I think one of the main reasons web designers burnout is because it’s a type of job where the reward. For doing a really good job is more work, right? Mm-hmm. You get a referral and someone else sends you another project. And so that’s the reward, and that is how it works. But again, having some systems and processes in place to handle, the workload that comes your way as opposed to just winging everything and saying yes to everything and not having boundaries and, yeah.
Anyway, anything you wanna add to. I’m gonna sprinkle on a few of those. When you’re talking about multiple hats, I mean, folks, if you haven’t read E-Myth, you should read it. That’s the [00:13:00] classic tale of, Hey, i’m working for an ad agency and I’m building websites, and I discover that they’re billing me out at $200 an hour and they’re only paying me $30 an hour, let’s say.
And then that’s when you have the light switch in your brain. Like what? I could do this, but you’re not realizing all the accounting and lead generation and project management. Site launchings, all the stuff that maybe you’re not doing at that job that now you have to do.
Advertising, , not to mention being accountable for absolutely every piece, just everything. Again, just that, that mental load alone is overwhelming. Billing, all that fun stuff that you never had to worry about at that job. Yeah, well now, now you do taxes, stuff like that so check out the E-Myth and they have some good strategies in that book as well on how to get outta that doom loop, let’s call it.
And then when you mentioned. Yeah, I’m doing WordPress websites, but oh, buddy of mine, he’s got a joomla website. I can help handle with that. [00:14:00] Or this person needs a print piece or whatever. And maybe at the beginning just to make ends meet. Maybe you have to do that. But eventually I read this quote once and this guy said, you need to be doing fewer things with great effect rather than doing many things with side effects.
Yeah. And it was like, ouch. That was me at the time, was I really servicing all 29 clients. Well. No, I wasn’t. I was probably, I was putting out fires. and that reminds me of another book Built to Sell by John Warlow, where , the opening chapter, the guy whose name’s on the door of the web design agency is running around, putting out fires, showing up late to meetings.
He’s just too busy. They’re doing a print piece for these branch posters. They’re doing an SEO thing for someone else. They’re doing a logo design for someone else, a website for someone else. And it was just like, ah. So that’s another book to check out. And eventually. Both of those books kind of have the same answer, and I think we’ll have probably a similar answer.
Yeah. And then I, I also put, , why does burnout happen? Lack of goals, lack of [00:15:00] clear goals. Because when you don’t, yes. When you don’t see yourself progressing towards that goal, then you can feel like, what am I doing? I’m just wandering at sea here. Yes. Is each project getting you closer to that goal, whatever that goal is.
To add onto that, , in our course, we talk about our why, which is what John’s alluding to there, like your goal. And the why is kind of like your ultimate, big ass goal. But yeah, if you get to a point of burnout, I think what you need to do is take that step back and remember your why or realize your why. Understand it. And a lot of times, when burnout hits, it’s because your why is out of alignment with how your business is being run.
And so you need to bring it back in alignment. And that why and your goal, whatever you wanna call it, that can shift and evolve. It should. And it will. But, if that’s out of alignment , with where your business is headed, it’s gonna feel really uncomfortable.
So , that’s a great point. One more thing to add to that. When you reach that goal, implement the thing that you wanted to implement when you reached [00:16:00] the goal. For example, I’m sure a lot of people think.
Burnout is only for struggling web designers that barely have enough money to make it. No burnout can happen when you’re killing it, making 20 grand a month, you can get burned out. I think especially can happen. Yeah, you can still get burned out and so then you have to follow through on.
Promises you might have made yourself like, okay, when I hit 20 KA month, I’m gonna hire a virtual assistant to help take some of this load. Or I’m gonna bring in a subcontractor, I’m gonna team up with somebody, which means less money for a little while, but in the overall, you’re gonna do more and make more money.
So I’m sure we’ll get into some of that later, but Yeah. Let’s get into those now. We’ve been doing this for a long time, 15, 20, over 20 years. And so we have some hacks when it comes to productivity and avoiding burnout.
Yeah, let’s, let’s get into those now. I think I like this one being the first one out of my mouth because , it’s something I have to constantly remind myself, is to prioritize. Not everything is urgent. Just because that email hits your inbox [00:17:00] doesn’t mean you have to, pay attention to it right away.
Especially with me, my inbox is basically my to-do list. And so if my inbox gets to over, 50, it’s, uh, my brain just can’t even, it’s I, and I know you’re an inbox zero guy, and the reason you are an inbox zero guy is probably because of this exact concept, right?
You don’t want to see that urgency in your face. So I have a funny story about Inbox zero. So the app that I, the app that I use and Jake use, we both use it. It’s called Superhuman. And when you get to inbox zero, the entire app window is usually a beautiful photo from Unsplash or something. But I could you not, the last three weeks in a row, every single day, it’s been a photo that has some kind of snow in it.
Some kind of snow, whether it’s a snowy road today, it was some hikers, like climbing up a snowy mountain. And so both of us now have sent three or four emails in like, guys, it’s end of April together. We want to [00:18:00] see like hope pictures of spring and summer. It’s getting ridiculous now.
I think they’re doing it on purpose. I think they’re just like, let’s piss this guy off even more. Stop reminding us of snow.
Like stop it. I hear you. Talking about not everything is an urgency. Yeah. I say there’s things for Monday and things for someday. And it’s good prioritizing those things out in whatever your to-do system of, of choices. Right. I think along those lines is, the concept of focusing and planning less and focusing more. I’ve done this, with time blocks. I’ve been working on my own. In long enough that I know when I’m productive and when I’m a slug. And so I will, plan my day around when I know I should be working on, focus work.
And then in slug times, I save my random emails, whatever, just getting back to clients for that or silly edits, simple kind of brainless stuff for that time. And then, making sure I’m leaving time for. Big projects as well [00:19:00] as my own business work, which is always the hardest to kind of squeeze in there.
But if you don’t make time for it, it’ll never appear. You have to just put that on your calendar. I forget what book I read that made me implement this, but focusing on maximum of three. Major tasks to get done in a day. Instead of looking at my entire inbox and being like, I have to get all of these 30 emails done today.
It’s just focus on three main things. And that really simplifies and allows you to focus. I think you have a similar-ish system done. You have a paper writing system? Yeah, yeah. It’s called, gathered by unk and it’s a literally a little recipe card size deal.
So today I have three things on there. Yep. There it is. But you can only write so many things on the card. Right. And obviously other things are gonna come up throughout your day. Right. That you can go tackle really quick. Yep. And then , another thing that I’ve gotten better at over the years is the idea of automating wherever possible, process sizing, we’re gonna claim, that’s a [00:20:00] word, wherever possible.
And then simplifying as well, any time you can simplify processize or automate anything. So, for example, when a prospect reaches out and there’s your first email that you send to your prospect, don’t you dare be
Writing that every single time, or even copying and pasting it for something. Have a system in place where you just bring it up and you can send it, , change the name out, whatever, maybe personalize it a little bit. But for things like that, that you’re doing constantly or proposals have a freaking system in place so that you’re.
Writing a proposal from scratch every single time. Yeah. Mm-hmm. I know you have some tools where you keep snippets, isn’t that even what it’s called? Mm-hmm. Snippets. Mm-hmm. Yep. Code snippets. And then also, , text snippets. I use this thing called text expander, so if I type, late payment one as all one word, then my one invoice is passed to email.
Populates. If I type late payment two, it’s like, Hey, these invoices are past due, and then I can fill in which invoices they are. It’s a whole email. It’s already at the end of [00:21:00] each one. It’s like, Hey, if it’s easier, send me the card information. Here’s the card info I need. I’m not typing that from scratch every single time.
Right. Stuff like that. Yeah, I just chat GPT of course. Or ai of course, where it makes sense, for those same things, I have templates in my literal Gmail inbox. I have templates for emails. And oh, my other email tool that I use is, boomerang.
I use that for follow-ups ’cause that is something I know I suck at. And so I set up a boomerang. So these things come back to, is that kind of how superhuman works? You can, yeah. You can set up like, okay, hey, hit me up on this in three days, or Gotcha. Remind me to follow up. So yeah, if a client doesn’t respond.
In four days, you can just set it, that’ll come back to my inbox, so then I know, okay, they haven’t responded. I need to follow up with this person. Because again, that’s something I know I’m bad at. So now I have a little automated system that does that for me. So there’s a couple ideas for automating processing.
I mean, obviously we’ve have whole episodes that you can check out on, creating processes and, mm-hmm. We won’t dive into all of those details right here, [00:22:00] but , we talked a little bit about, , protecting your calendar. I like that phrase. Um hmm. Yeah. And making sure that you’re creating.
Time, you’re never gonna find the time. Y’all make sure you’re creating time for important things that you need to get done. And I don’t even mean just work. Create the time blocks for your self care, for your family time, whatever. But also for your own business. Those things need to get done.
And a lot of times those are more important than even some of the client work. Obviously you have to get the client work done as well, but if you let that take over your entire life, yeah. Then you’re not ever gonna progress in your business. So it’s important too.
And my calendar’s like my Bible. It runs my life. And so that’s how I have it set up. I just use good old Google calendar and, I have three kids. I have each of their calendars coming in, each of their activities have my goodness, different calendar coming in my husband’s calendars.
So I have this master calendar, which would probably be. Quite intimidating to other people, but that is [00:23:00] how I need to see it all to operate. But anyway, whatever system works for you, I think part of my point of this episode is like, I use free tools. We’re not doing super fancy stuff here.
I use Trello boards for my projects with clients. I know John uses, base camp. We use base camp. Base camp, right. Which makes sense for teams of people working on things. Whatever works for your situation, your clients. But, things like base camp can certainly help to automate and processize and simplify the project process.
And in Superfly, the web design store that we own, communicating with the developer. Each product I have a Trello board for, and it’s like, here’s the features that I want done, here’s the ones that I’m reviewing that you said you did. And then, okay, these are ones that are marked off.
So, yeah, Trello’s great. Then speaking of Superfly, on the design side, it’s finding things that to help your designs go faster. So that way when you are designing that county hospital website, that you don’t have to start from [00:24:00] scratch all the time. So the way I work is I usually don’t build out the entire website.
I build out a homepage. Then I build out a general interior page that these other junior designers then take and build the rest of the site out. So the homepage I always do from scratch, mock up, whatever. ’cause the client’s paying for that, they’re paying extra for this custom senior level, anyway, so I use our Superfly builder for the interior page, our Superfly builder.
Since we use Divi on all our project, it’s a WordPress drag and drop theme builder. There’s all these pre-made sections that are un styled in our builder and I mm-hmm. And I just drag them, Hey, I need a call to action. Drag it over. I need , a team section. Ooh, I need a image thing.
Here’s five different sections I can choose from. Pull ’em over. But we have a bunch. I just download ’em, import ’em in to the builder. It all shows up and it adopts the styling that I set up in the builder. A little bit of tweaking and what took me two hours before for an interior page now takes me like 30 minutes, you know?
So having [00:25:00] some tools. Set up to, and that’s Divi native that you’re using for the builder there. Divi native. The native one, yep. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Check it out guys. That’s the whole point of our Superfly builder is to save time and create efficiency. So that’s definitely a productivity hack for the design process itself.
And I think probably the most important piece of this is, getting help and helpers, , like John’s saying, and, well, he has a whole team at this point, but they each have their own. Roles, you know? Mm-hmm. John isn’t wearing all the 25 hats anymore.
He’s their elite designer. That’s all he focuses on and worries about that. Yes, there’s some strategic stuff that he does , as an owner as well. But they have a support person. They have, someone who builds out the rest of the pages. Once John designs the homepage, they have, project manager. Whole time project manager. That’s huge. That lives in base camp, directs traffic, let’s say. And then a full-time sales guy, full-time person that all they do is sell. Yeah. [00:26:00] Two junior builders, one senior builder, and then myself.
Yeah. And then, for copywriting, we have , an external person that we try to use, you know? Yep. Yep. And so, I’m basically a solopreneur still, but I have, started slowly hiring on, subcontractors for. Basically my least favorite things. And so this process for you could look different than it looks for us.
Right now I have a support person for all of my, random one-off edits that I get sent each month from clients for like, change this bio, add this blog post, whatever. I have someone who does all of those, so I don’t. Even have to look at them. And that’s half my inbox. So that’s great for my, sanity.
My next, , contractor was for the hosting side, which again, these are two things that I don’t really care about and I’m not that great at. Yes, I can get by with the hosting and DNS and all that. It’s not something I’m passionate about and it’s something that’s really easy to offload to someone who’s way better at it than me.
[00:27:00] Right. Totally. And so they’re handling all the, WordPress updates, themes, plugins, , if there’s any conflicts that come up, if there’s any hosting situation, any uptime issue, whatever, they’re gonna take care of that. So that’s off my plate and out of my mind. For one of our, mentoring students.
She wanted to get design off of her plate, and so that was her first go-to for a hire was looking for designer helpers. Whereas that was something that I wanted to keep. ’cause I know I’ve tried to get rid of that before. I hated just being a project manager, so I need the design in my life. I know that now.
So anyway, that can look different for everyone, depending on what it is that you don’t enjoy slash don’t want on your plate. I think everyone, knee jerk thinks of them as like, oh, I can’t afford that.
It’s too expensive. These people should be making you money, literally. And so I think part of that’s just reframing. And then part of it is just math. Because if you free up that time that you’re spending on those things and you can apply that to [00:28:00] projects, it’s really easy to see
how it, makes financial sense, once you get to a certain point, obviously if you have, one project at a time, then something like this, wouldn’t be financially responsible. But when you get to a point where, be before burnout, preferably, mm-hmm. But where you do have a lot of work, it does make a lot of financial sense.
I think step one is identifying why you were burnt out. If I worked at an agency. And every day I had to come up with a brand new homepage for some other company every day. Like, that’s gonna kill me. Right? On the same hand though, if I didn’t do that every day, every day I was just stuck fixing interior pages and billing, then I’d be like, ah, there’s no creativity in this job.
Yeah. You know? Yeah, I know. So it’s discovering that balance that so I still, I still do. Our billing, because I just, I like that part. I like the, I like you don’t like that part. You don’t want anyone else screwing it up. I don’t want anyone else screwing up. I don’t want else screwing up.
Let’s be honest. Up honest. I do like , logging in and seeing the total invoices out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:29:00] No, I get it. That kind of feels good. Sometimes I get it. That’ll be hard to let go of it at one point just because I don’t, I don’t enjoy. What I don’t enjoy is falling on people to pay their bill.
Follow. That’s the part I don’t like. Hey, your card failed again, which I don’t like, bro. How many cards do you get each year? Yeah, yeah. But the people helpers. This I think is a strong point doesn’t just have to be for your business. Okay? Mm-hmm. If you are a parent, obviously getting help with the kids cleaning the house.
Nanny. Yep. Obviously getting help with yes. With the things you hate in home life, which to me is anything related to cleaning and anything related to food Mow the lawn. Yes. I have a good story about this that’s recent, but I started at some point thinking like, this is applying.
Business decision thinking to home life. And so here’s my example. My neighbor was out the other day and she was getting in her car and she had these two big glass jugs that looked like beer growlers to me. It was like a Sunday afternoon. I was like, [00:30:00] you have to get some beer.
And she was like, ha ha, no, I’m going to Whole Foods to get water for our humidifiers. It’s only 47 cents. And my brain is immediately like, okay, whole Foods is 15 minutes away. Yeah, that’s a 30 minute round trip that’s already 50 bucks. If my billable time, and not to mention does Whole Foods water, is it really that much better than the filtered water out of your fridge?
Come on. But whatever. That’s a episode for a different podcast. But, that’s where my mind goes is when people don’t see the value of their time. So that wasn’t 47 cents, that was $50 and 47 cents to me. Right. Not to mention gas and whatever.
It’s stuff like that just blows my mind. They don’t see the value of their time, which just makes me so sad. I would much rather hire something out. So yeah, if a cleaner can clean my house, it’s gonna take me four hours to clean my house, top to bottom. I know that. ’cause I’ve done it and it sucks and I hate every second of it and I’m not very good at it.
, So if I can hire a cleaner to do it [00:31:00] for, 200 bucks. Yeah. I’m saving 200 bucks, in my head. Oh yeah. So anyway, that’s, I haven’t mowed a lawn in 20. That’s a way to apply. I haven’t mowed lawn in 20 years. Well, and see, my husband loves mowing like he used to work on a golf course. So again, like there’s, then there’s situations like that where if it’s something you enjoy and that’s like your jam and that’s your hobby, by all means, spend your time doing that.
But don’t spend your time doing stuff you absolutely hate. I haven’t taken my car to a shop in over 15 years. ’cause you do it yourself Because? Because ’cause it’s a lease. Oh. I don’t have to worry. I don’t have to worry about it. Like I, it, I, every three years I get a brand new car with like under a hundred miles on it.
By the time I turn it in, maybe it’s got 20,000 miles, like nothing breaks and it’s just like interesting. So I haven’t been to an automotive shop outside of an oil change in 15, I was gonna say, still gonna do oil change in, in, in 15 years. That’s nice. You know, if it was Sunday afternoon.
And my kids were falling apart, I’d be [00:32:00] like, Hey honey, I’m gonna go to Whole Foods and fill up these, fill up these water jugs. Well, there you go. I mean, that’s just it. Maybe she’s really passionate. Maybe she loves walking around Whole Foods, in which case you do. You do you. But, I was just like, man, what a waste of time.
And in her head, she’s doing it because it’s only 47 cents. I’m like, really? All right. I have a couple more answers to burnout, including the biggest answer in my world on the planet. But first, let’s talk about today’s sponsor. We’ve mentioned it a couple times, but today’s sponsor is break into web, start or scale, a self-employed web design, business and lifestyle You love, like we have.
Don’t wait until next year, next month, or even Monday. Get started today. Check out, break into web.com, where we will teach you how to start and grow your web design business. There’s technical training on how to get going with the website. There’s also business training, loads of business training from Kelly [00:33:00] on how to start and grow that business. What are you waiting for? Break into web today. Okay. Yeah. You made a big promise there before. My biggest one, one answer I have is have other hobbies, other creative outlets that, that you can do. So for me, obviously you got your band, I got nothing.
For me. It’s music. No, that’s nothing with my dog. Driving kids to activities. Yeah. I don’t know, man. That is something I am admitting to the planet and everyone knows sourdough baking. You have no, you have no, like I got nothing. You have no, uh, I mean the, and the, here’s the problem is this was my hobby.
It, you know, I call, I call web design My hobby gone outta control. So it was, and so it snowballed into this crazy business which is great. It’s great, but it’s also kind of this double-edged sword of, well what should I do in my downtime here? Well, I could do web design. It’s really sad.
I’ve tried to read more books. I don’t really [00:34:00] enjoy that. I don’t know. Netflix binging. Yeah. I, I desperately need a hobby. I am open ideas, y’all., My sports that I did in high school were, pole vault. There’s, it’s not really a lifetime sport. There’s not, , I can’t, I’d die if I tried to do that today. Even my music hobby, I get burnt out then though. I’ll go on these spurts. Isn’t that funny? Where I’ll like eight to midnight is
kind of my free time family’s in bed by then, and so I don’t go to bed till midnight. And some weeks, four or five nights in a row, most of that time is, across from the computer screen here. Behind me, there’s a couple keyboards and some other toys. My wife calls ’em my toys.
They’re music makers. Wow. Drum machines and stuff like that. And I’ll make a bunch of demos and some of them I use on this podcast. And then I’ll just hit a wall where for a week I won’t even touch it. And I’ll look over at the gear and I’ll be like, I know you miss me, but I’m not ready yet.
I’m not ready to spend time with you. You know, we need space. But that’s one thing I say is have other hobbies. Maybe it’s even working out. Maybe it’s, going out for a run and just clearing your head that way, or, or what do you do, like [00:35:00] F 45 or something like that? Yeah, I do that almost every day.
That’s my one piece of structured sanity. I mean, that could be a hobby. It’s obviously a stress reliever and , it’s a way to kind of renew some energy and creative thinking. The naming and conceptualizing of our techstar to funnel happened on many five mile jogs around Homes Lake.
Brian and I would just, I just, I, you know, as you’re talking here, I’m thinking can your music really be considered a hobby if it makes you money? Well, not all my music makes me money, but yeah. Okay. , I have tons. I have, like in Dropbox, I have probably 70 different music ideas that most of them will never make it onto an album.
Aw. Or anything. That’s kinda sad. That’s fine. It’s fine. No, it’s fine. It’s like a little, it, it’s like something I go back and listen to and, sometimes they do one song off our new album. I wrote the demo for it in 2016 and yeah, so almost 10 years ago. But most of ’em you’re just doing it ’cause it’s just fun to do. It’s your outlet. Well, and you know [00:36:00] what’s funny is if someone, gun to my head, I had to answer, what is your hobby? The right answer might be, entrepreneuring. That’s true because that can be a hobby. It’s sweet.
We like to just whip up other businesses, and play with those. We have our web design businesses. We have two other businesses together. John , has a, his funnel that he is working on now. I have real estate stuff. So honestly, it takes up a lot of time and I would almost consider that you’re like decorating. You like interior designing? I love it. Mm-hmm. I love it. But you can only go so far in your own house. Well, but in your Airbnbs though, you, you Interior design house. Oh, well, for sure. Yeah. That was all kinds of fun.
For me, the biggest thing that helps me get over burnout, is you guessed it. Recurring revenue. Yeah. We have a, I have a chalkboard in the closet in my office that every time we launch a website, depending on what hosting level we’re on, they get a point.
Or two. Mm-hmm. Or whatever. I think right now we have 40 points I know each point is [00:37:00] equal to me in about $25 a month of net revenue, profit that I get. And so since I’m so greedy and money focused, seeing that number and knowing that this county website, yeah, it’s not taxing me creatively.
It’s kind of like, eh. But you know what? They’re gonna pay $99 a month, of which our cost is maybe nine bucks, yeah. And Jake and I are gonna split the rest of that, and they’re gonna pay that for five years, if not longer. Mm-hmm. And then knowing, okay, once I get to. X amount per month.
I’m gonna bring in help where I’m not doing this. And that’s why I said earlier, following through on that . And me just imagining like someday that’s gonna be 30 grand a month, 40 grand a month. Imagine the trips I’ll be able to take with my family when my kids are six and eight.
They’re two and four right now. But I know every year, every year like clockwork, I’m adding between 1500 to 2K per month to that. To that recurring revenue. I’ll say this, if I didn’t have recurring revenue in my life through web design, I probably would not be doing web [00:38:00] design anymore.
Agreed. Agreed. So , that’s my number one way of getting over. And not only recurring revenue, knowing it’s there and seeing it grow , as a way to get over burnout, but literally, if you get to the point where you’re burnt out and you’re just like, I am taking the rest of the week off.
You can’t, you can do that. You can do that with recurring, you know? ’cause you’re gonna still be getting paid. You could take three months off. Absolutely. So you could take a year off. You could take an entire year. Well, you might wanna plan for that, but you could. I could, I could. You could. You both of us could take an entire year off and we’ll be fine. The other thing I wanted to say was, and you’ll like this, is if you’re burnt out right now, revisit your pricing. ’cause chances are, if you’ve got 29 projects on your plate, you’re probably not charging enough.
So that’s another way to get over burnout. Start increasing those prices. There probably is a sweet spot and that can go up, it can go down as well. So it’s just something to play with. But yeah, if you’re already burnt out. Revisit your pricing. Okay. Just to wrap [00:39:00] all of it up here. , When it comes to the stuff, productivity to burnout, you can plan for it and attack it all you want.
But you’d need to expect imperfection. I think that’s something important as a freelancer. Your plans will get messed up every single week. You can plan to a t , John already mentioned this, it’s still gonna get messed up every single week and to not think of that as a problem, but that is in fact the point.
Okay. Mm. Like that’s, that’s why you are a freelancer. That’s why you’re setting up a business the way you are is so that you can. Be able to adapt and evolve and to drop everything, to go out to lunch with your husband or to drop everything and go watch your kid get an award at school. Like that’s the point.
Okay. That’s not a problem. The whole work life balance thing is bs. If you haven’t figured that out by now, life always wins. Okay. Life above work always. But yeah, I think being a freelancer for over 20 years, if it’s taught me anything, it’s that [00:40:00] adaptability is such a great strength and to lean into that and don’t fight it.
Don’t try to control everything. It’s not gonna work. Just adapt, evolve, and enjoy or lose your mind. Well said. It’s not a problem. It’s a privilege. Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. All right, y’all. Well, that was our episode on Avoiding Burnout. Thanks for tuning in. Joining us today on the Web Design Empire.
Also, be sure to check out break into web.com. Learn how you can break away from that horrible daily grind of a job. Become a freelance web designer like us, and create the empire you’ve been dreaming of. We’ve done it. We’ll help you. Cheers y’all.
What a, what a ballad. What was that? Good job, Brian. Was that a John special? That was, that’s, that’s, that’s off the new record. It’s off one of the ending of the songs. Nice. Yeah. I [00:41:00] like it. It’s like a, it’s like a, a song to like drive to kind of thing.