Speaker 1: 0:19

Thank you. Meet Evan Poland, the president of Poland Performance Group. A master in sales coaching with over two decades of experience, evan is not just a consultant. He's a force in sales, focusing on mindset planning and skill development. He's also the co-author of Selling Professional Services, the Sandler Way. Joining him is Craig Andrews, partner and CEO of Beholder Agency. An expert in growth marketing With 20 years under his belt, craig blends marketing creativity with strategy to propel businesses forward, making Beholder Agency a leader in effective marketing solutions. Together, evan and Craig are here to share their wisdom on winning strategies, best practices and transformative insights that will fuel your growth. Get ready to revolutionize your sales and marketing approach right here on the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed.

Speaker 2: 1:11

And welcome to the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed. Craig Andrews, evan, poland yeah, you see, I practiced that my go-to is go toward the wall.

Speaker 2: 1:22

There you go, there you are. Anyway, I'm excited about today's guest. You know, a lot of times when we're putting this show together, you know we're not talking about the business, the revenue, the marketing that it requires and so forth, but we never really think about the other side of this. And I know you like to talk a lot about mindset, but you know making sure we're talking about the other side of generating and making sure your well-being is going. Evan, why don't you, why don't you talk about our guest today a little bit?

Speaker 3: 1:52

Sure, I'm very excited about our guest. Yeah, we talk a lot about sales techniques, marketing techniques, strategy. Quite frankly, if the business owner, if the people in the group aren't firing on all cylinders, aren't feeling good, then nobody's going to be able to implement any of the strategies that we're discussing. And I'm not quite sure how many people in our viewing and listening audience are aware, but my background before getting into sales coaching, sales consulting, was a mental health background. I've got a master's degree in social work. I was a certified employee assistance professional, did counseling for a while before I got into the sales coaching, sales consulting world. So I'm really excited about our guest today.

Speaker 3: 2:42

And our guest today is Rachel Boehm, who's a leading authority on burnout prevention and sustainable peak performance. She empowers decision makers to protect themselves and their teams against the tens of thousands of dollars in direct and indirect costs of burnout. Her services include leadership coaching, team training and culture change initiatives, ultimately enhancing employee engagement retention and client satisfaction. She holds a national board certification in health and wellness coaching, is a PhD candidate focused on business psychology and worker well-being, and I think that a lot of you in our audience are going to get a lot from her today in ensuring that you've got the right mindset and you're doing the right things to make sure that you're personally feeling well, so that then you can perform well in all the different responsibilities that you have. So I am very excited to invite Rachel into our program today.

Speaker 2: 3:41

Rachel, how are you?

Speaker 4: 3:42

Good, how are you guys?

Speaker 2: 3:43

Very good, very good. So we're excited to hear about your take. I know that from our perspective as business owners and we deal with business owners a lot of times the mental health part of the business is something we don't even consider. But being able to make sure that that part of their business is taken care of helps us do our job better.

Speaker 4: 4:09

Yeah, and I mean you're not alone, right? Most don't. I mean something that Evan and I talked about. I think Evan has a leg up on this because of his background, which you know. Every time you say it, I just I feel like you know it, I just I feel like you know, if you were, and I know we're going to dig into this. But to Evan's point, right, if people's minds aren't right and I don't mean a mental health challenge, although that is certainly part of it, but for what we're talking about, burnout is not a mental health condition If the conditions aren't right for you to fire on all cylinders whether we're talking about problems in the workplace or challenges at home or both, as it often is you cannot bring innovation and creativity and take risks and have strategic thinking and properly lead and empower your team. You just you just can't. And so often when I'm talking to sales coaches, business coaches, operations, people, I just simply say I'm you for the people of the business.

Speaker 3: 5:14

So, rachel, why don't we take a step back for a second? How did you get in to being a coach on burnout and productivity for professionals?

Speaker 4: 5:31

It's really the culmination of all of my lived experiences. So you know, a lot of times researchers will joke like me search is research or research is me search. So that all started with my lived experiences. I burnt out in my first industry, very young, very hard. We'll talk about how burnout is a continuum, it's not a switch and I hit the full, full force of it. It took decades to recover. In that time I went into another industry, started seeing some of the same stuff, experiencing some of those same warning signs. This time caught it a little sooner but still didn't know what burnout was, didn't know what to look for, and so, even though I knew something was off, I switched industries again.

Speaker 4: 6:16

Long story short then. Between that and now it's onsite, practical, doing the work in businesses, in organizations, and now the educational too, as you mentioned, finishing up that doctorate. So it's that personal, it's the practical, it's the educational, because through all of that, just a fundamental belief I have is that work shouldn't stop or kill you and we don't live long lives Like. The average life in the United States is about 78 years. If we are lucky enough to be average, it means we're going to live less than 4,000 weeks. 4,000 weeks is a great book, by the way. 78 years, that's less than 4,000. And you know, the first bit of that is like we're learning to crawl and then walk and then run and eat and chew. So you really don't have a lot of time. And for the people that are like-minded that knock on my door and work with me, we don't want to spend all of that just kind of pushing paper right and chasing the grind. We want to bring something a little bit more to that.

Speaker 4: 7:23

It's not about not believing in hard work. It's about not sacrificing yourself in the pursuit of.

Speaker 2: 7:30

So do you ever find that that mindset is generationally different?

Speaker 4: 7:35

Yes and no. Okay, so I'm a nerd, I try to be. I think it's very important to be evidence-based, science-based, so I'll always kind of come back to all right. Yes, what are we hearing on the street? But outside of the street, outside of, maybe, the pop media, what are we seeing in the research? You know, where is there overlap and a disconnect? And what we are seeing is burnout is hitting every generation. What we are seeing is burnout is hitting every generation and WebMD did a recently. They did a really great study using a really excellent definition of burnout and what they found is that between I think it was 2022 and 2024, every generation went up. And if you were to only look at the Gen Z stat, you would go, oh my gosh, it's so high, it's so high with them and people have different perspectives on that, on that. But if you look at all of it and look at the year to year to year, the highest increases- were among Gen.

Speaker 4: 8:47

X and baby boomers. So a lot of the generational differences that people like to talk about are actually not found in research in terms of this generation is this and this is this and this is this? It is true that we're shaped by our world experiences, but we're also not just all Gen Xers, for example, are not the same, so it's kind of a yes and no answer. It really depends. I think that's why it's really important to get someone that can work with you individually, take into account all the pieces that make up you and then look at how is the organization affecting you.

Speaker 3: 9:22

So and Rachel, for people in our audience, what are some things that people may notice or recognize in terms of early stage burnout. And then what are some things that you see if that burnout's not addressed and it gets worse over time.

Speaker 4: 9:37

Yeah, thank you for making the distinction between the early like again, right, it's a. Oftentimes people think, oh, I just like, I'm burnt out. Like it's a again, it's a switch and it's not right. You don't wake up and, having gained 50 pounds overnight, you don't wake up and are just burnt out. There's things that if we can be aware of right, we can catch it at different stages.

Speaker 3: 10:04

So I'll do individuals and then I'll do teams, if that works for you guys just because people could be listening.

Speaker 4: 10:06

For different reasons, absolutely so. For individuals, some of those early signs are going to be overwhelmed anxiety. I don't mean like once, like a one-off, I mean persistent feelings Like how many times have you been saying good, just busy, or when things calm down, right? So persistently feeling overwhelmed, anxious about work, difficulty concentrating, making decisions, being more irritable, impatient, time pressured, dreading work related tasks, communications, not feeling as excited to take on new projects. Expectations not feeling as excited to take on new projects.

Speaker 4: 10:43

Trouble sleeping, trouble shutting your brain off, loss of creativity, like more procrastination, difficulty making those decisions, frequent illnesses so because burnout is a stress response, it can weaken our immune system. So you're going to be getting a cough more like I don't know why I'm getting sick all of a sudden. System so you're going to be getting a cough more Like I don't know why I'm getting sick all of a sudden, more prone to the flu, common cold, things like that In your team or your employees. What you might see is just decreased engagement in projects or meetings. They could be starting to arrive late, absent, taking more time off, planned and unplanned absences, missed deadlines, the work quality going down. Maybe they're kind of withdrawing from social interactions in the office place, they're not as open to trying new initiatives or taking on new challenges.

Speaker 2: 11:33

So, in terms of that burnout that you're referencing, especially for our audience, what are some tips that they could do to get kind of get back on track to that, because a lot of the stuff that you're referencing hits home in a lot of ways. Yeah, the creative side of things. You know me and my team. I might be in a situation I said hey, client came to me and said, hey, I need that design yesterday. Yeah, and I might not notice those, those, those, those, those characteristics right away. But what, what could I do to notice it and get them back on track?

Speaker 4: 12:06

Yeah, so I mean that's the first thing. Right is if you can just start developing the routine of checking in with yourself. Just, it's a good practice in general. Right, like, where am I at? How am I feeling? Like, do you know what your, what your goals are, what your core values are, what your priorities are for this season of your life? Right, um, because that's going to get you in the habit to notice a number of things, not just where am I at on this, like burnout, no, burnout, spectrum from, and then doing that is going to make it easier for you to identify them stages earlier. Right like, oh, I've been more stressed lately because I mean, I, I have coaches, we all need coaches. Even coaches need coaches.

Speaker 4: 12:51

Meaning self-awareness is really hard. Someone wants to describe it as, like I see out not so. We need that objective, objective view. But you can continue to improve your self-awareness to recognize sooner and sooner when that hit of your stomach is dropping. Right, so just checking in with yourself would be the one takeaway that I would give, that I would give Beyond that, recognizing that again, burnout, there is a stigma because we talk about it in conjunction with mental health and, for a long time, the way we talked about it was as if it showed a problem with the person. Right, if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. What we know is that it has nothing to do with an individual's incompetence or weakness. It has everything to do with the culture of the organization, which is like a pro and con for leaders, because it means especially for the business owner. It's like you, you dug your own hole, you know, but the beauty there is that you have the power to change it not just for you, but for your entire team.

Speaker 2: 14:11

So so so the interesting thing here not to cut those, not to step on your toes.

Speaker 4: 14:14

Sure.

Speaker 2: 14:14

Yeah, sure, the interesting thing here is a lot of times we speak a lot about company culture and sales and marketing working together to get the big result. But I think an interesting thing here and, evan, I'm interested in hearing your take. You know, what do you think about the company culture and when it comes to the mental part of this, or the burnout part of it, what's kind of your take in terms of what Rachel's telling us today?

Speaker 3: 14:39

So for me and I was going to ask Rachel about this as well if a business owner is constantly looking at their people and going, I can't understand why none of my people can get this stuff done. I don't understand why nobody understands why isn't anybody working as hard as I am. Guess what you may be a big part of the problem. So Rachel had brought up before the ability to kind of focus internally. A question I want to get to at some point is what kind of mindset does someone need to have to be able to accept the help and to be able to get better? But if someone is just always pointing fingers somewhere else and they can't possibly be the reason why there's an issue with the culture, good chance, they're the main reason that there's an issue with the culture and if that person doesn't change, it doesn't matter how often they change the people, the results aren't going to change.

Speaker 3: 15:37

I don't know what either the two of you think about that.

Speaker 4: 15:44

Yeah, absolutely. I mean and it doesn't mean like you're a terrible person, right, or a terrible leader. It just means it's probably your first time leading, or it's it could be. Maybe this is your second business, but guess what? 2024 is not 2020 is not 2019. You know, this is every time. It's a new thing, right? So don't play this, this the new game, with old rules. This again is not necessary, Like we're not jumping to. You're a terrible person we're jumping to. Okay, you need some new skills.

Speaker 4: 16:11

It could be that you have trouble delegating and maybe you think you're passing on tasks to people. You're assigning them tasks so you think you've delegated. You really haven't. You've just told somebody what to do. You're assigning them tasks, so you think you've delegated. You really haven't. You've just told somebody what to do. You haven't taught them how to do it, what the expectations are, clarified certain milestones, made sure they have the resources that they need and they feel comfortable doing the thing you're telling them to do. Sometimes I see people not delegating at all and then overreacting Right. Other times I see people assigning without the proper you know everything that we just that I just talked about. Then it comes back and it's not to where they want it to be. So then they get mad and they either like take it away, I'll just do it myself, Right, which doesn't make the situation any better for anyone or they micromanage and you're like, okay, do it again, but you have to, you know, do this, this size dot.

Speaker 3: 17:07

Do it my way.

Speaker 4: 17:08

Exactly yeah, when, at the end of the day, sometimes there's a, there's truly one way that needs that, this needs to happen, but more often it's hey, we need to get to the top of the hill. There's four different paths, Don't care which one you do. Just get there and get there by this date. Do you have the? Do you know how to do it? Have you ever done this before? How can I support you in getting this done and recognizing when, if it's, if the deadline is very, very close, that may not be the time to use a delegation opportunity Like it's or it's not. A delegation opportunity is a better way to say that right, Just just do it and then find another time or another task, rather for that, for that person's professional development.

Speaker 3: 17:57

I find a lot of times business owners and managers don't realize that if they delegate and then micromanage, all they're doing is teaching learned helplessness.

Speaker 4: 18:06

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 18:06

And after the second or third time the employee is going to go okay, well, I'm not even going to start, because I know that my manager is just going to swoop in and do it the way they want it done anyway. So I'll just wait a couple of days and they're going to take over whether I get started or not.

Speaker 4: 18:20

Right, and that can reinforce the absolute wrong message yeah, absolutely, or or they'll kind of do it, but they'll um I'm trying not to say a curse word they'll go half ass it I'll.

Speaker 3: 18:32

I'll say it, you go and throw that in the ground I forgot to ask what the rules of the road were.

Speaker 4: 18:37

Yeah, they'll have it right because they know road were. Yeah, they'll have to right Because they know it doesn't matter.

Speaker 2: 18:42

Right.

Speaker 4: 18:42

They'll know. They know it doesn't matter and they're not, then it's not a psychologically safe workplace which people talk about. You know, we know it's important. They're not going to come to you when, when they need you or with an idea, they're going to take it somewhere else.

Speaker 3: 19:04

And we all know that people tend to leave business owners and they leave managers. Yeah, they don't leave jobs and they don't leave the tasks. It's the people around it that either keep them or have them looking for something else. Absolutely so.

Speaker 2: 19:09

Rachel, do you do? Do you do work with corporations? I do so. Give it, give me some idea here of what you could do for a corporation.

Speaker 4: 19:19

Sure, so it depends on what they're ready to do, right? So not everyone is ready to hold up the whole mirror. So, meeting people where they're at which, I'm sure, evan, in your own way, you guys can relate to that but several different tools in the tool belt, a diagnostic there are six areas of misalignment. We'll say that drive burnout in an organization, right? So between the person and or the people and the work, the organization, there's six areas. Where are you? Are all six thrown off? Are you good on five but need to work on one Like you can't?

Speaker 4: 20:00

You can't treat an illness until you know what the problem is. Right, you have to take a second to assess it. The next thing could look like one or several quarterly employee-wide wellness brown bags. Looking at burnout, what is burnout? Burnout 101, this word that we're throwing around all the time now, like what is it really? Why does it matter? How do I know if I have it Right? How does it affect sleep?

Speaker 4: 20:33

And you actually, and all the things that your wellness program is telling people to do and you're wondering why they're not engaged in your wellness program. That's the other thing we can talk about, right? So a little bit of education on the individuals education with HR about how to improve their employee wellness program so that people tap into it and it's more effective and it's really addressing burnout and some of those critical management issues that the C-suite is looking at. And then the other is going to be manager training, because managers are actually more burnt out than individual contributors. They're in that sandwich right, especially those mid-level. So really supporting them, how do they buffer themselves against burnout? How do they protect their team against burnout? How do they create that safe space for their team to come to? And then how do they take it to HR so that HR can step in or provide resources Right.

Speaker 2: 21:40

I think, that's a really good point and I think that ultimately, you know again when you're talking on Evan and I, when we're doing a consultation with customers or. But the difference is is that that could be for us, so I can speak more for myself. For me that could be a real big surprise, because I'll get the. My last guy didn't do that. This is the way the last guy did it and I'll say hold on one second.

Speaker 4: 22:20

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 22:21

I'm not the last guy. I have to reevaluate what's different here and generally. When I can bring that level of calm to them is when I can sit back and go. Trust me I'll take care of it Right, and that's why I think I think I'm speaking for Evan here a little bit. We tend to cater to all business sizes, but usually the smaller ones have less of that burnout issue because of the pressure of the sandwich that you referenced.

Speaker 4: 22:48

They well, they have the burnout, but for different reasons. So they're not in the sandwich because maybe they're like all the hat Right Still, but Because they're all the hats, the stress is so much higher.

Speaker 2: 23:06

Yeah.

Speaker 4: 23:07

And to your point about like I love that you mentioned baggage, because I talk about this a lot. Right, you know our relationship with work is like any other relationship. We got baggage that we carry into it until we deal with it and I mean I can just give, if we have time I can give like an example just of me, like baggage that I didn't realize I was carrying into job after job and it took two jobs and like several years before that was stamped out. And now that I've talked about this long, I might as well just tell you so I had a job. It was my first office job. It's not on LinkedIn, so if anybody goes to look like it's not there, you won't find it.

Speaker 2: 23:45

You made it disappear.

Speaker 4: 23:48

I don't think it was ever there because it was such a traumatic experience, but the I was not allowed to go to the bathroom except on my lunch break, which was mandated to be from 12 to 1. I worked 12-hour days six days a week. I lasted six weeks because when I went to Five and a half weeks longer than I would have lasted.

Speaker 4: 24:18

Thank you. There was a few other things too there. That alone should have been something, but you're new, it's at a different time. It was very much do it or get out. You know, um, that was not only kind of the, the culture of the us, right, it was the culture of this, of this organization, industry, and that. That on top of a few other things. I went to hr and she basically told me if you can't handle it, get out. And so I left the for thinking for years that I was leaving, not because I was standing up for myself, but because I couldn't handle it right so that lasted several jobs, but just the bathroom one.

Speaker 4: 24:59

It was like two more jobs before my boss finally said rachel, you're growing a grown-up, just go to the bathroom. Don't ask for permission, just go. She was so tired of me asking.

Speaker 2: 25:10

Yeah, so, evan, that reminds me a lot of what the traditional sales guy's pressure would be in terms of get on the phones, beat it down, beat it down, beat it down. If you don't do it, you got to get out the door.

Speaker 3: 25:22

Right, well, again and beat it down. Beat it down. If you don't do it, you gotta get out the door. Yeah, right, well, again, you know what? Yeah, and there's movies like wolf of wall street boiler room that will kind of reinforce that. This is how it's supposed to be. Um, and again, a lot of people have that in their mind, um, and don't realize that that's not reality and that we don't have to live in that environment.

Speaker 4: 25:40

Yeah, I think there's also a of you know, because of that and many other things and the way things were done and all that, there's a number of reasons for this. We have this mistaken belief that you have to go until you collapse, that success is only achieved if you have collapsed your way to it, and that's really not at all accurate, nor is it sustainable.

Speaker 2: 26:19

So, as we start to wrap up the show here a little bit, you gave some great points, so let's leave our audience with a summary of what you would get and what kind of bullet points would you have them walk away with?

Speaker 4: 26:32

So just to focus in on a couple burnout is not a sign of your incompetence. That said, there are things you can do, especially if you're not in a leadership position, to kind of buffer yourself. I'll say armor, because it's my armor method, is my armor method that I use. If you are in a leadership position, you have a huge responsibility and opportunity to help protect yourself and your team. Self-awareness and acknowledging the problem is always whether it's a sales strategy, a business strategy or your personal health and wellbeing. That is always where to start. And then, if you can identify the like the, the things that are like, what is your burnout experience? How does it feel for you? Cause it's so personal, it's different for everyone.

Speaker 4: 27:24

If you can start writing down like what you're feeling when you seek support and I please, please do then it will be that much factor for that professional to start supporting you on that road to recovery or transition. And that person I mean obviously I'm here, but it doesn't have to be me, right it could be a mental health professional. It could be, especially if you're feeling like anxiety, depression and mental health condition on top of your burnout. Please see somebody for that. It could be another coach that is working with burnout. Depending on the situation, it might even be a mentor in the industry. It might be all of the above right, so there's opportunities to seek support. So those are the three things Awareness, acceptance, get support.

Speaker 2: 28:27

Well, just as a quick note, because you're on our show, we're going to push you and send everybody to you I appreciate that. So if you can tell everyone how to kind of get in contact with you, Absolutely so.

Speaker 4: 28:39

Just mynamecom. Everything is there, all the socials, my email. You can schedule a consultation. It's free and there's never assumption that we're going to work together. It's think of it as a leadership insights call. It's an opportunities for us to like, check each other out, make sure I'm a good fit. If I'm not the right fit, I will try to find the person who is, but it's a safe way to start.

Speaker 2: 29:04

Awesome Evan.

Speaker 3: 29:05

anything before we take off so, Rachel, we really appreciate your insight. I know that our audience is going to take a lot of these tips really help to bring awareness to it and then help people get the help that they need and start to take the steps to relieve some of that burnout.

Speaker 4: 29:20

Well, I appreciate you guys having me. Thank you so much Awesome.

Speaker 2: 29:25

So you can see the Sales and marketing playbook on YouTube. You can listen to it on any various podcast stream and we all we ask is like follow, subscribe, comment. We'll take comments of any size and any shape. If you have any questions for Rachel, Evan or myself, we're always here to help. So again, enjoy the sales and marketing playbook unleashed. I'm Craig, that's Evan to the wall. That's Evan and Rachel's on the other side of the wall. How about that? Until next time, Bye-bye now.

Speaker 1: 29:59

Thank you for joining us on this exhilarating journey through the world of sales and marketing. Remember, the playbook is in your hands and the possibilities are limitless. Keep exploring, experimenting and innovating, and watch as your business reaches unprecedented levels of success. Don't forget to subscribe to the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed on all major podcast platforms and follow us on YouTube, facebook and LinkedIn for even more exclusive content. Until next time, keep hustling and keep winning.