26 | Tired? You Might Be a Tim: The ‘T’ Breakdown

What if you could reignite your passion for business despite the constant overwhelm? Join us on this episode of the Annoyingly Optimistic Show as we introduce Tim, the quintessential small business owner grappling with the relentless demands of entrepreneurial life for nearly three years. Through a heartfelt voicemail, we share a framework inspired by Tim's struggles, breaking down the acronym "Tim" to reveal the all-too-familiar feelings of being tired, in need of help, and muddling along. We'll focus on the cognitive load that comes with juggling numerous tasks and responsibilities, discussing how this mental fatigue can drain your energy and enthusiasm. More importantly, we explore strategies to alleviate this burden so you can reclaim your zest for your business.

In the segment "Voicemails to Tim for Business Owners," we delve into how Tim represents anyone who feels stuck and overwhelmed. His story is one of many, making him a symbol of empathy and connection. We encourage you to tap into your inner Tim and become part of our supportive community. Plus, there's an invitation to submit your quirky questions or thoughts at voicemailstotim.com for a chance to be featured in future episodes. Stay optimistically persistent, and let’s turn life's challenges into opportunities for growth and inspiration together.

If you are self-employed or run a small business and feel more like you're self-annoyed then get in touch, visit the website www.theannoyinglyoptimisticshow.com where you can submit a question or problem and start your journey to becoming self-enjoyed! 

The majority of 'business advice' out there isn't aimed at self-employed or micro businesses, following it leaves you frustrated and chasing quick fixes. I specialise in tools, systems, techniques, inspiration and help specifically designed for YOU, the person who has to do it all, who doesn't have a team of people, unlimited resources or the time to spend months learning complicated techniques. 

Transcript

Overcoming Business Owner Burnout

Speaker 1 0:00

Hey there, listeners, it's your annoyingly optimistic host here bringing you another season of the Annoyingly Optimistic Show. Welcome to Season 2, voicemails to Tim. Now let's meet Tim. He's been running his own small business for almost three years now and let's just say he's hit a bit of a rough patch. You know how it is Sometimes you get so stuck, you make yourself busy and just avoid finding the real problems. Well, that's Tim. So, as a good friend, I decide to leave him a daily voicemail, if I can't get hold of him, filled with nuggets of inspiration, insight and wisdom and downright brilliant ideas to help get him unstuck Every day. In just under 10 minutes, I'll share some tips, tricks and a healthy dose of optimism to get Tim, and maybe even you, back on track, because, let's face it, we're all a little tired, in need of help and muddling through. So here we go. Oh wait, never mind Tim's being busy. Here's the voicemail I left him today. Hi, tim, sorry I missed you again. Hope you're well enjoying the heat. Hope you're not working too hard. Working hard is one of those things I want to talk about, and it's something that I've been working on developing, and it's inspired by you, tim, which is why I wanted to call you about this, and what I've done is I've been inspired by you, tim, inspired by what you're doing, inspired by your struggles, and that's a good thing, not a bad thing, and I've put together a framework, an idea. That is Tim, and not in a good way, but you'll see what I mean. What this is about is that Tim stands for tired, in need of help and muddling along. Now you will 100% I've mentioned this before you will get that, you will understand that and resonate with that.

Speaker 1 1:53

But I wanted to delve into what each one of these means. So I wanted to cover tiredness, because there's tiredness. There's kind of like had a late night, had an early morning, had a disturbed night with the, the heat and humidity at the moment, you know, not kind of sleeping well, so there's that general kind of sleepiness, tired. There's that. We've talked about the, the dip you might get at kind of half two in the afternoon and things like that. So there's kind of general tiredness. But there's tiredness that goes beyond that and in the business sense it comes more down to everything weighing on your shoulders. Now this can and does manifest in actually feeling tired, in not sleeping well, and you know that monday morning feeling and things like that. So they're all things that we want to, you know, cover off anyway. What do we improve? We want to get our sleep patterns better. We want to, you know, do those kind of things.

Speaker 1 2:52

But the tiredness I want to talk about today is this tiredness where and I know this is exactly where you are, tim, where you, you know, you've done phenomenal things with your business. You've been running it for a few years now and it kind of creeps up on you that all of a sudden it gets hard. It feels harder, it feels like you're having to chase the new thing. It feels like you're having to have your finger in 101 different pies, learn 101 different techniques, which are changing on a minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day basis. You're just kind of running to catch up and there's always more things that you feel like you have to do, that you should be doing, that you think other people are doing. You need to have better marketing, better promotions, better prices, better social media, better systems to manage all these things. You need to have automation. There just seems to be an overwhelming amount of information and things that you that that are portrayed as being needing them and what this does is this creates a cognitive load, this you are trying to juggle all of these things in the same way as being just a person and running your life and being part of your life and present in your family and looking after yourself and eating and sleeping and exercising and enjoying yourself and, you know, having some time off and everything else and there just is this growing sense of of weight that you're carrying and struggle that that you're struggling with.

Speaker 1 4:24

And that's what I mean when I talk about tired, because it it becomes tiring, it becomes tiresome. That passion and excitement that got you started your business feels like a lifetime ago and feels you lose touch with that because it's just non-stop. You don't feel like you're ever achieving enough, ever doing enough. You don't feel like you can put in, you know enough hours to get stuff done and there's again. That's what really generates this tired feeling. It's just that there's never enough. There's always something else, there's always more, there's always that extra thing and something else you need to learn and more youtube videos you need to watch and things like that.

Speaker 1 5:08

And and this is a horrible, horrible place to be in because it's it's relentless, you know, and when you get that, this kind of cognitive load, this struggle, just in the day-to-day in the business that I said, that causes the core type of tiredness, because it means you're going to bed worried, it means you're waking up worried. You have that dread on a Monday morning because, oh, you've got that client or that problem that you're putting off last week and it just seems never ending and it really zaps you of energy, it zaps you of enthusiasm and passion, and that's what then causes that tiredness, because it just creates a downward spiral. Now I don't want this to be a really, really negative sounding thing, but I wanted you to understand what I'm coming from when I talk about tired, because this isn't the default state, this isn't something that oh well, this is what it's like to run a business. That's one of these things that we convince ourselves to to kind of plod along and to get through this, but not in a constructive how you know, understanding the problems and getting through it, but just to kind of oh well, probably everyone feels like this, it's, it's. It's not just me, you know. I need to, to man up, I need to just kind of get on with it, because it's, this is what running your business is like it's not, you know.

Speaker 1 6:31

No, nobody should have to feel that exhaustion, that tiredness, that zapping leeching into their personal life and things like that. That's not how running your own business should be. It's how too many people end up and it's it's one of those core things that causes too many people to give up, and not even necessarily give up, because that sounds like you just kind of throw your hands up in the air and walk away. It's typically the soldiering through it, the perseverance. But unless you deal with those root problems that are causing that tiredness, unless you're dealing with those things that are really dragging you down, they just compound over and over and over and unless you get a break, unless you have something in there to reset that and get you back on course, then it's not a case of giving up. It's a case of just being so much pressure for so long that you just cannot carry that weight anymore. You cannot carry that burden. And suddenly the thing that brought you so much joy and excitement in your life, your business, this thing you started with such passion, ends up being, you know, an anchor, ends up being something that you're dragging along, and it's, it feels like it's holding you back and that's not how you started.

Speaker 1 7:56

So I wanted to just impress on you that this is not the way self-employed has to be, is meant to be. This is not a rite of passage that you have to feel like that to run a business. This is one of the core, fundamental problems and why I spend so much time talking about and focusing on and wanting to help self-employed people. Because and it's a completely different set of problems than if you're running a big multinational or a company with 100 employees they come with their own problems and big problems, and I've worked with a lot of those and dealt with a lot of those, and it's not something that I enjoy. What I enjoy is that, one to one and when, knowing people such as yourself with such passion and enthusiasm and drive, and not losing sight on that sight of that.

Speaker 1 8:54

So that's, I wanted to remind you that that, that tiredness, that this is not something that you have to endure. This is something that you have to kind of put your hand up and go. Yeah, I'm feeling a bit tired, not because you've had a bad night's sleep that night, but just this feeling of just things are slowly starting to mount up and you're not able to kind of clear them and it just feels like this growing pressure and it's one of the ways that manifests is that you just feel exhausted and tired and drained. If that's you, put your hand up that first step. It sounds silly, but if you start to feel like that, it's about getting the right help at that right time and it's and it's tiny little things to be done to improve that.

Speaker 1 9:41

But as soon as you then move through the other things that I'm talking about, that represent tim, which is in need of help, and muddling along. Combine that with the tiredness, you'll see that this is why it just becomes this downward compounding spiral. That is not healthy. So if that's you I don't want this to be negative but if that's you, if that really resonates, then that's what I'm here here for, that's what I can help with. And over the next couple of episodes look out for them I'm going to be taking you through what in need of help really means and what. Obviously you understand what the work, those words mean. But what am I talking about? And how does what I do help? And then the muddling along. And you, if you see yourself in one, two or three of those. If you see yourself as Tim tired, in need of help and muddling along then what you'll be excited to see is to see what the solution is. And what I've done for you, tim, inspired by you, is is I put a framework together that can help start to make those differences. It can't do everything all on its own, as with most things, but it's about taking you on those next steps.

Speaker 1 10:55

And if you're feeling tired, in need of help and muddling along, we don't want you to feel like Tim. We don't want you to feel like a Tim. We want you to feel like a Steve. Now, I'm not going to tell you what a Steve is yet. I'm going to take you through in need of help and muddling along, and then I'm going to reveal what Steve is all about. And in the coming weeks, I'm going to be releasing a framework to be more Steve, something where you can take little steps to basically start improving the way that you work, how you work, how you see your work, and become less Tim. Now, tim, you stay as much Tim. You're an awesome Tim. We want you to be Tim, but we also want you to be Steve. So I just wanted to focus on the tiredness and really kind of delve into that. And if that resonates with you, if you see yourself in that, if you see yourself as a Tim, then contact me, message me, let me know, because we want to make you more Steve. So I hope that's helped.

Voicemails to Tim for Business Owners

Speaker 1 11:57

Bit of a long kind of rambling one, tim, I know, but I just wanted a focus on that because we touched on it the other day and I want to really kind of nail down because there was a couple of couple of points, couple of size, couple of of bits where I could just pick up there was something underlying and if this resonates, then kind of let me know. But yeah, you've inspired Tim's everywhere, but to hopefully become Steve's instead. So I'll catch up with you again soon. Bye for now, and that's it for today's episode of Voicemails to Tim on the annoyingly optimistic show. Now, remember, tim might be busy, but we're all in this together.

Speaker 1 12:36

Whether you're tired, in need of help or just muddling through, tim is here for you because, well, tim is you. Yes, you heard that right. Tim isn't just my friend, he's a reflection of all of us who are struggling to make it work. T-i-m stands for tired, in need of help and muddling through. So if you're feeling like a Tim, you're not alone For all those ambitious listeners. If you've got a burning business question, a quirky thought or just want to see if you can leave an even weirder voicemail, head over to the website voicemailstotimcom, submit your question and maybe, just maybe, you'll hear your idea in a future voicemail to Tim. So until then, stay annoyingly optimistic, keep pushing forward and remember if life gives you lemons, leave a voicemail about it.