Burnout to Business Success with Lance Knaub

Dr. Lance Knaub is our guest today. At one point, Lance was a burned-out entrepreneur, but he overcame those challenges and ultimately built a 7 figure multi-office Physical Therapy company.

Ask yourself, do you run your business, or does your business run you? If you feel run by your company, it’s probably because you don’t have a clear sense of boundaries. Our guest today is a big believer in taking care of yourself before you take care of your business.

Meet Lance Knaub. Lance is a business coach and consultant who helps entrepreneurs scale their businesses but also create the lives they love while protecting their health, especially during times of extreme stress. Lance is the founder of Breakthru Physical Therapy + Fitness, a growing multi-million dollar company with a mission to be the community’s choice in physical therapy and fitness offerings, with over 50 employees and 5 locations.

He’s also the founder of Denali Consulting, which helps entrepreneurs build businesses around their lives, not the other way around. His book ‘The 4% Break-Thru’ which became an Amazon Best Seller, shares all of Lance’s hard-earned lessons about balancing life and business.

Lance believes that entrepreneurship is the ultimate personal development tool, and if you want your business to thrive, first, you have to take care of yourself.

In this episode of the Think Business with Tyler podcast, we chat about entrepreneurial burnout and how to avoid it, the importance of self-care in entrepreneurship, why you need to take strategic action instead of just jumping straight to action, and how to create healthy personal boundaries.

If you want to hear more about the do’s and don’ts of entrepreneurship, tune into this episode to hear more about Lance’s hard-learned lessons.

Guest-At-A-Glance

💡 Name: Lance Knaub

💡 What he does: He is a Business Consultant, the Founder of Denali Consulting, and the Founder of Breakthru Physical Therapy + Fitness.

💡 Noteworthy: Lance’s first publication, ‘The 4% Break-Thru,’ an Amazon Best Seller, shares all of his hard-earned lessons with entrepreneurs and leaders to help them save years of time, avoid burnout, and overstress.

💡 Key Quote: “Running a business is the ultimate development tool, both personal and professional development, so learning by doing and rolling up your sleeves is great.”

💡 Where to find Lance: LinkedIn

Key Insights

What is entrepreneurial burnout? The life of an entrepreneur is never boring. It’s full of ups and downs, passion, and freedom. But even though entrepreneurs love what they do, they often experience burnout.

Extreme stress is the dark side of entrepreneurship that we don’t talk about enough. Unfortunately, most entrepreneurs decide to sacrifice their personal lives and give themselves entirely to their businesses. Lance explains,

“I think most entrepreneurs compromise some of the basics and some of the fundamentals. We don’t really protect our most important things, whatever they may be, when we decide whether it’s ourself and kind of the oxygen mass concept or whether our family, and our partner, our spouses. […]

We’re so committed to our businesses, and we’re generally all in, and whenever something else has to go, has to happen, we just give up the easiest thing, which often is sleep. So yeah, that’s kind of my answer. We’re not organized enough. Don’t have a framework. Don’t have a plan. We say yes way too often.”

Take care of yourself before you take care of your business. Despite what many business owners think, your business shouldn’t always come first. And when you compromise your health and personal life for your business, you’re not doing yourself a favor. Quite the opposite; you’re actually hurting your business. Believe it or not, taking care of yourself means taking care of your business. Lance says,

“It’s interesting, even when I do this with entrepreneurs, they want to jump straight to step two, which is their company mission and reason, and talk about that, but they don’t think about themself and what’s important there.

So, I think that is a critical step to decide what’s important to you and then to build off of that. […]  I have people list their top five or 10 priorities in their life to see if that matches up with the words and their personal mission. And then step two. We really decide what their organization, their heart, and soul, the reason, the cause of their company is.”

Take strategic action instead of jumping straight to action. One of the biggest mistakes that entrepreneurs make is that they jump straight to the action in everything they do. As much as this jump-first mentality comes in handy in entrepreneurship, some decisions require strategy. If you want to make your dream a reality, you shouldn’t rush important decisions. Instead, stop, think, and then take strategic action. Lance explains,

“The biggest tip would be to take strategic action. You often hear the recommendation for entrepreneurs just to take action, and just like we talked about in this JOLT framework of jumping straight to the action. Take some time to do some introspective worth both for yourself and on the business, and then break that down to a month, a week, and a day and make sure it all lines up, so you’re actually taking strategic action.”

Create healthy personal boundaries. If you’ve ever felt like you don’t know where your business ends and your personal life begins, that’s because you don’t have a clear sense of boundaries. Your personal boundaries are your personal limits. They are the rules you set for yourself and others. The question is, have you set clear boundaries for yourself and your business? Lance says,

“Create some boundaries for yourself. Create what I call a ‘Success schedule.’ It’s chapter five in my book, ‘The 4% breakthrough’, and it’s where the rubber meets the road. After you’ve done all this introspective work, it’s where you commit to it. You put it on paper so that you are making time and prioritizing your priorities. You’re making enough time to sleep. You’re carving out time to exercise. You’re carving out time for your most important relationships. You’re carving out time for yourself.”

Top Quotes

“I was able to power through that and build a freestanding business and develop our best people and take on some of them and partners and do a lot of exciting things with coaching and consulting that we’re going to speak about. But my passion is helping entrepreneurs stay healthy while they’re scaling their business and creating a freestanding business that’s healthy.”

“Let’s just acknowledge that maybe in the startup phase, you really have to grind in Gary V’s words. However, I do think you have to have a plan to get beyond that. So I think what I believe is step one is really getting introspective in deciding what’s most important to you.

And that’s the first chapter in my book. It’s the first step of what I call my jolt process, which is a fast and functional business plan. So it’s your first mission, your cause, your reason, your why, and you have to know that and, and really then all your other business and life planning decisions build on that.”

“Fortunately, running a business is the ultimate development tool, both personal and professional development, so learning by doing and rolling up your sleeves is great.”

“The healthy balance depends on that person, at that time in their life, so it’s going to be customized. […] We would see the difference when someone before they had children and when they had children, and their balance was different at different times. And we had to listen. As leaders, we have to be great listeners and listen to that, respect that. So, I think that that’s unique and will vary.”

“Once you’ve gone through each of these steps, and only then do you take actions that line up with each one of those lenses or steps because one of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is jumping straight to action.”

“The entrepreneurs deserve to get paid for the roles they have in the business, and then profit is beyond that. And it’s got to be healthy, double-digit profitability depending on your industry.”

Links

The 4% Break-Thru by Lance Knaub

The Gap and The Gain by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

Get the Companion Guide to Lance’s book at Denali Consulting Resources

Get a PDF of the JOLT Process at Denali Consulting Strategy

Contact Lance at DrLanceKnaub@DenaliConsultingTeam.com

Instagram

Resources

How To Avoid Burnout As A Business Owner In 12 Steps

How Do Business Owners Find Work-Life Balance

How to Work Less And Live More – Sam Kabert

Defying the Odds – Shawn Walchef