Podcast Episode 102 – Avoid Burnout in your Amazon FBA Business

Burnout, and avoiding it, is an important topic if you are wanting to run your business long-term. Building a long-term business is like running a marathon, not a quick sprint, so it’s vital to your business health and personal health to find a way to avoid getting burnt out, and that’s exactly what we’re going to be talking about on today’s show.

We’ll be speaking from our own experience of burnout and what we were able to do to overcome it and how we plan ahead to avoid it in the future. It’s important that you avoid getting to the point where you have no desire to work on your business, no creative energy to come up with new solutions, no desire to learn new things, and no desire to even work on your business because it’s just too much. Join us as we share five things to remember in order to stay on top of things and stay energetic about your Amazon FBA Business!

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Key points from Episode 102:

• Five things to do in order to avoid burnout in your Amazon FBA business.
• Number 1: Don’t do it all yourself.
• Number 2: To avoid burnout or recover from it, you need plenty of sleep and rest.
• Number 3: Focus mainly on the next few steps, not the final destination.
• Number 4: Find a great support network to lean on.
• Number 5: Remember your why.
• And more!

Links and resources mentioned in this episode:

• Podcast episode 10: Make More Money by Doing Less in Your Amazon Business
• Benefits of Outsourcing to a Prep Center
• Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less
• Sleep Smarter: 21 Essential Strategies to Sleep Your Way to A Better Body, Better Health, and Bigger Success
• Podcast episode 101: What to Do Next in Your Amazon Business
• Meet Up – Make connections of like minded people
• Full-Time FBA Facebook Group
• Start with Why
  • Tell us your “why” in the comments below!
• Leave a review for The Full-Time FBA Show
• Sourcetember – FREE video based sourcing training for the month of September.

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Episode 102 Transcript:

[WELCOME]

[0:00:01.8] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Full-Time FBA Show. In each episode, it’s our goal to help you turn part time hours into a full-time income, selling almost anything on Amazon. Now, your hosts of the show, Stephen and Rebecca Smotherman.

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:21.4] STEPHEN: Welcome to episode number 102 of the Full-Time FBA Show. Today, we’re going to be talking about how to avoid burnout in your Amazon FBA business. Because, you know, there’s a ton of stuff to do in your Amazon business and we want to make sure you don’t burnout and here with me to talk about it is Rebecca — are you burning out, Rebecca?

[0:00:38.4] REBECCA: Not currently. I mean, I feel like I have in the past at different times for various reasons but right now, I think I’m doing okay.

[0:00:44.8] STEPHEN: That’s good, we’ll have, speak from our own experience of experiencing burnout and what we were able to do to overcome it and what we plan ahead to avoid in the future and we’ll do that on this episode of the Full-Time FBA Show.

[DISCUSSION]

[0:01:00.9] REBECCA: Let’s get right into it, we’re going to be talking about how to avoid burnouts today and specifically, how to avoid burnout in your Amazon FBA business. This is a topic that really is important if you were wanting to run a business for the long term, if you’re not in this just for a sprint, for a get rich quick type idea but you’re really wanting to build a business, you’re running a marathon, not a sprint, then you want to find ways to void burnout. Avoid getting to the point where you just have no desire to work on your business, no creative energy to come up with new solutions, no desire to learn new things, no desire to even work on your business because it’s just too much for you.

Those are some of the things that you can experience when you reach burnouts and it is totally possible to build a business, to run that business and not experience burnout over the long term, if you set it up correctly. We’re going to talk about some of the ways that you can do that. These are all preventative measures that you can be taking right now today to avoid this situation in the future or that you can put into plays, if you’re already starting to experience some of these burnout effects, you can start working through some of these suggestions that we have today and you can see a reversal in that burnout.

[0:02:19.7] STEPHEN: Today, we’re going to be discussing five things that you can do or maybe not do to avoid burning out in your Amazon business and the very first one is don’t do it all yourself. I mean, if you create your Amazon business, sure, you might be doing everything at the beginning when you’re first getting started but don’t make everything depend solely on you.

When you are the one who is doing everything, then you’re not going to be able to get everything done, it’s just not possible for you as you grow, you can only grow a certain amount by yourself and if you want to continue to find that growth and you still want to enjoy doing it, you need to begin to outsource, you need to find ways to have other people help you to use tools or resources, to help save some time and energy, whether it’s maybe signing up for a prep center, to have a prep center put all your inventory together, you got the stickers off, probably bag it, bubble wrap it, get it shipped to Amazon for you. Things, like that.

Being able to offload different areas of your business, we have a podcast episode on outsourcing, we can put some links in our shownotes but don’t make everything depend on you. One of the hardest parts about outsourcing, it’s starting, I mean, you’re like, I’m already so busy and so now I’m going to add outsourcing to what I’m going to do but I guarantee you that once you make outsourcing a priority and work on that, yes, other areas of your business might slow down a little bit but if you just focus on outsourcing, it will help get you out of that loop because the working really hard, not having enough time to outsource, it’s just a loop that you continue to – you just have to keep doing all that work and if you never outsource, it’s all going to depend on you and you’re going to end up burning out.

That’s the first thing, don’t do it yourself because you’re just going to burnout if you do.

[0:04:04.5] REBECCA: Yeah, your time and your energy are limited so you can only do so much. You’ll hit that wall and not be able to grow your business any further if you aren’t outsourcing. Along the same lines, the second thing that we wanted to talk about today is that in order to avoid burnout or to recover from it is to get plenty of sleep and rest.

This is a huge one, I think. I think this is often overlooked in the business world and especially when it comes to entrepreneurship, running your own business, starting up a business. It is huge. We hear a lot today about you know, making sure that you are hustling or you know, you’re grinding or whatever word is popular right now.

That’s a myth, the myth of hustle is really detrimental to your health for the long run. There are so many proven, scientific benefits to getting plenty of sleep to getting some rest, sleep every day allows your body to process what you’ve been doing that day, allows your body to recover physically, mentally, emotionally and if you’re not getting enough sleep or you’re not taking time off to do other things besides work on your business and getting some mental rest from that then you are really missing out on a huge part of what – first of all, what life is all about.

Second of all, you’re missing out on a big part of what can make you successful in the long run, which is taking care of yourself. Sleep is really the fuel that you need to accomplish your goals. If you aren’t getting enough rest, if you are staying up too late or, I’m not saying you have to go to bed early. I’m saying, you’re a night owl and get more done and need to sleep late, whatever.

I’m saying, if you aren’t getting enough sleep, whatever it is that your particular body requires, then you’re running on fumes the next day that runs up a sleep deficit so that over time, you are less and less benefiting from the amount of sleep that you’re getting each night, your body’s not able to recover and it truly affects your mind as well.

If your mind isn’t in tip-top shape, then you’re not going to be able to problem solve, you’re not going to be able to pivot when you need to, you’re not going to be able to really get the benefits of working on your business and building your business up.

Be sure that you’re getting that sleep and be sure that you are not buying into the myth that you just need to work harder, you just need to sacrifice more and sleep is one of the things that you need to sacrifice, especially in the early days of building your business, that’s just not true.

We’ve got a couple of resources that we recommend that are great for learning more on this topic and for really inspiration on this topic, one is the book that I read a couple of years back, I don’t know, three or four years back. It’s called Rest. It’s by an author, Alex Soojung-Kim Pang and we’ll putt the links for these books in the show notes so that you can find them. Rest is a really great book that kind of goes into some of the reasoning behind why you should get rest but it also – one of the things I loved is it has lots of stories from highly successful people throughout history, from different fields and industries and how they took naps or they took long breaks away from their work, from their research, from whatever business they were working on.

It’s super inspirational. I highly recommend it, I read it and was like, I’m taking naps every day because apparently, that is when you do your best mental work is right after you get up from a nap so read that book and tell me if you are not convinced to take a nap.

[0:07:36.1] STEPHEN: Another resource that could help you out in this area is a book called Sleep Smarter by Shawn Stevenson and this is – this book is a really quick read, gives a lot of real great practical ideas on how to be able to find rest and find more time to sleep to help your sleep become a lot stronger.

There’s certain nights where you might not sleep very well, there’s strategies in the book that can help you sleep a lot harder and get a lot more out of your time that you set aside to rest and sleep. Highly recommend that book, check it out, Sleep Smarter. Got great practical advice and also the science behind it.

A third strategy that we use to help avoid burning out is when you are deciding on what you’re going to focus on, focus mainly on the next few steps, not the final destination. Now, it’s good to know what the final destination is, that’s how you come up with your path on how to get to what your main goal is and the destination you’re trying to work for.

A lot of times, you can see, if you’re only focused on the final destination, you see every step along the way and that could be very overwhelming, that could be very frustrating and it could cause like an overload of your emotions and deciding, I don’t’ know what to do next, there’s just so many things to do, I don’t know what to do next.

Well, if you do that, if you’re in that position, listen to last week’s episode. Episode number 101, we’ve talked about how to figure out what to do next in your Amazon business. When you’re focusing on what you’re going to do for the day, just focus on the next few steps, not the final destination. Think of it as a roadmap or you’re out driving, you have a roadmap, you know where you want to go but you have the headlights that are showing the way.

You don’t’ have to see the final destination, you just need to focus on what’s right in front of you, your next steps and when you’re deciding, you need to learn something new for your Amazon business, focus on what can you learn now that will have the biggest impact.

Do just in time learning, don’t just say, “Oh I want to learn this someday.” You know, focus on learning the things that will help you right now, don’t get distracted with anything, just focus on the very next steps and that will help avoid that overwhelm that which leads to burnout.

[0:09:36.6] REBECCA: The next thing that we want to recommend to you so that you could avoid burning out in your business is to find a great support network to lean on. Having a group of other people to connect with and celebrate your wins and process your losses to think through what you are doing right, what you’re doing wrong, what you wish for in the future, what you regret about choices you’ve made recently or in the past that have affected your business.

All of those things are important to the process through with somebody who understands and there are ways to find other sellers, other business people that you can connect with who are going through something similar as you and really living life in a community where you are able to connect and not feel so alone is just another great way to increase your longevity in the business and to avoid burning out, to avoid getting disappointed or wanting to give up completely because it’s just too overwhelming.

You may have a really great network of family and friends who are wonderful to lean on for celebrating wins and losses in life but who have a limited understanding of selling on Amazon or doing business in general, so having them as a support for your business doesn’t necessarily work the same as it would for other areas in your life. You might also know some local entrepreneurs, you might be part of some meet-up groups who can help you with the support you need for running a business in general and those are really great.

We highly encourage that. Stephen meets with different business people in the local community on a regular basis here where we are because it is just good to have people in your life that you can talk to about running a business and what it’s like and encourage each other and they are great for general business purposes and so they have a better understanding usually than just your average family and friends group would but they’re not necessarily going to be able to identify with specific things that you are dealing with, with an Amazon business.

Really, one of the best ways to get people around you who have the best understanding of what you’re going through as an Amazon FBA seller is to connect with other people online and we have a Full-Time FBA Facebook group that is great for this purpose. If you go to fulltimefba.com/Facebook and we’ll have that link in the show notes as well, you can join our Facebook group where we have over 10,000 other FBA sellers who have been through different stages of the business.

Probably you will find more than one person that you can connect with there, who is at a similar stage as you or has been through the similar stage as you that you can really connect within mutually encourage each other. This isn’t just about finding people that you can ask your questions or finding somebody to mentor you but it is about finding people who you can connect with and mutually encourage each other.

Mutually celebrate, mutually process things that you need to process and work through and so we highly encourage that, finding other people that you can lean on as a support network.

[0:12:40.7] STEPHEN: A support network can help fuel you and keep you going to help you avoid burnout. Getting some good rest and sleep can help give you the fuel you need to avoid burnout. Another thing that can help fuel you is remembering your why. When we start our Amazon business, when you start anything in life, there is a reason why you did it. Most people say, “Okay, let’s just so I can make some money and have an income.”

Well, why do you want to make money? “Well, so I can support myself and support my family” or to pay off debt or to save up for a house or a lot of different reasons. What is your why? What is the why that got you started and have you lost track of that? Have you lost sight of that? Sometimes it is good to refocus on what your why is, whether it’s, “I wanted to work from home so I can spend more time with my kids.” There is a lot of different whys that are legit.

In fact, I would love to hear your why if you want to leave a comment on our shownotes page, fulltimefba.com/102. I’d love to hear your why but when you figure out what your why is, it really is a lot of fuel to help continue to push you and help you avoid that burnout. Why did you get started? What’s fueling you? If you don’t have a why, a great resource to help you out is a book called Start With Why and it helps you kind of breakdown why you’re doing what you’re doing.

Because when you really can connect with that, it can really help you go further with whatever goal you are setting out for and so I highly recommend the book. You can find it at fulltimefba.com/startwithwhy and again, I’d love to hear your why so please let me know what that is.

[0:14:08.9] REBECCA: Yeah and you may be listening to this right now and thinking, “I don’t know what my why is. I can’t really pinpoint something other than I want to make money” and you know, making money is great but most of us that’s not really like our purpose for being alive or the reason why we’re really doing what we’re doing. There is something else behind it that is more important than just accumulating money in the bank.

We highly recommend checking out that book. If you don’t know your why, if you need to be reminded of it or if you don’t know it and want to figure out, “Why am I doing what I’m doing?” it gives your life a lot more purpose and it helps you to really stay focused in your business on the things that are important.

[0:14:47.5] STEPHEN: Absolutely.

[0:14:48.6] REBECCA: That wraps up the main things that we recommend every seller keeps in mind so that they can avoid burnout over the long-term in their FBA business. Be sure that you are not trying to do everything yourself. Be sure that you are getting plenty of sleep, taking some breaks, getting rest. Make sure that you are focusing just on the next few steps not trying to figure out every step to get to the destination right now.

You don’t need to – you can have a long-term goal somewhere out there that you don’t have every step planned out. You just need to know the next few steps then also make sure that you have a support network that you can stay connected to and depend on them for encouragement as well as contributing to them your own encouragement and then remember why you are doing what you’re doing.

We hope this has been helpful, these are things that we personally take a look at from time to time. If we are ever feeling that we are being stretched too thin, if we are feeling overwhelmed, these are the things that we take stock of in our own business, in our own lives. Are there ways we need to be outsourcing? Am I getting enough sleep and am I spending enough time focusing on why I’m doing this rather than, “Oh, I just need to get up and make some more orders because I need to make money.”

Why do I need to make money? It’s because we’re supporting a family and we are trying to reach some goals personally and in our family that require money so that’s why we’re running our business. We hope this has been helpful and we hope that it will encourage you to make some choices evaluate how you’re doing well and how you might need to improve in some of these areas so that you avoid burnout or that you can reverse that burnout if you’re already feeling it.

[CLOSING CONVERSATION]

[0:16:30.0] REBECCA: Thank you once again for joining us for The Full-Time FBA Show. We are always glad when you download and listen to these episodes. Just a reminder, as always the show notes for this episode can be found at fulltimefba.com/102, that’s the number 102 because this is episode 102, yehey.

[0:16:49.8] STEPHEN: Woo-hoo.

[0:16:50.3] REBECCA: In the show notes, you’ll find any of the links that we mentioned, the resources that we were talking about in this episode, as well as the transcript for the episode if you would find that helpful. We also wanted to share with you a review of the podcast from Patrick and he says, “Great Amazon FBA content. The Smothermans really know their stuff concerning selling on Amazon. Always cool golden nuggets to help you propel your business to the next level. Five stars.”

We really appreciate these reviews. If you would be interested in leaving a review, please do that at the podcast player where you listen. It helps other people find the show and helps them to learn more about how to make full-time income using part-time hours on Amazon FBA.

[0:17:32.3] STEPHEN: Next week on the show, we’re going to be discussing our favorite Google Chrome extensions for Amazon sellers. We’re going to be talking about tools that you can use to add to your Google Chrome browser, some work with other browsers too and that will help you save a lot of time, make more money, make better decisions and make life just a little bit easier when it comes to online arbitrage and even wholesale sourcing.

We’ll talk about that next week on The Full-Time FBA Show.

[OUTRO]

[0:17:59.0] ANNOUNCER: That is all for this episode of The Full-Time FBA Show. So head over to fulltimefba.com/podcast, where you will find the show notes and links from this episode. While you’re there, subscribe to our newsletter where you’ll get several free downloads of our popular and helpful Amazon FBA resources. Now, take action on what you have learned today so you can find success at turning part-time hours into a full-time income with Amazon FBA.

[END]