The Weight of Caring Too Much: Protecting Your Energy

Welcome to the Sole Proprietor podcast.

I'm Kirk Kempton.

And I'm Melody Edwards.

Each week we dive into the ethical questions that keep entrepreneurs awake at night.

Whether you're building your own company or exploring life's big questions, you are welcome here.

Welcome, Melody.

Welcome as well unto you.

Kurt, how are you today?

I'm doing really good, actually.

It's a beautifully bright and sunny out there today and I'm feeling pretty chipper, to be honest.

Same.

I'm feeling good.

I just took a week off.

I took a week off at Christmas time last year and then I was sick the whole entire time.

I did not get out of bed.

It was horrible.

And then I went right back to work, so that wasn't the best.

And then I realized like, I.

Besides traveling or doing little things or whatever, like, I have not intentionally taken space away from the business in quite a long time.

I don't know if this ever happens to you where you just get caught up again with the day to day stuff that we're all trying to rise above as entrepreneurs, but I got right.

Sucked back in.

I took a week and it was like the best because I have two new nephews that I got to hold and lovey.

And it's all about babies.

Yeah.

In my life, the old no vacation.

Vacation.

Those are hard.

Those are hard because you're like, well, I checked it off the calendar, but I did not check it off my heart, you know, and, and that's.

Yeah, you know, I honestly did not think about the business at all because I trust my team.

Not that I didn't think at all.

It was more of like, can I get away with doing this for like a month right now?

And part of it is probably not.

We're going to have some changes coming up or, you know, trying to transition to doing part time or product project based work, which is going to be a transition for us.

Not, not hard or anything, but it's new and so I.

The team is great, but my goal is to take pretty much the month of August off, maybe part of September as well, maybe forever.

That leads us really nicely into a conversation I wanted to have with you today.

The topic today that I want to really dig in with you on is, is it possible to care too much?

Okay, podcast over.

I think it's interesting with you talking about needing to take so much time off and, you know, the burnout that comes from the amount of caring that you do.

I think it is an obvious, yes, it is possible to care too much.

The problem is that you And I, and I think people like us have a lot of value wrapped up in our ability to care, our capacity to care, and our inability to not care in certain situations.

So I want to dig in a little bit with you on that today.

And I'm curious what our listeners might be able to say about their own struggles and carings and so on and.

So forth, or if they don't care.

I dream of such a thing.

Just to be clear, it's not about not caring about the work we're doing.

I have a friend who just sold his business.

He was, it was automated, doesn't even live in the country in which it operates.

Whatever you're doing, you know how some people have reoccurring revenue and they're just like, I don't even think about it.

And other people manage.

I can't do that well.

I can't release the feeling that I own this thing.

And therefore it is my.

Like, I need to care about the thing.

And it doesn't mean I'm like a micromanager or that I'm in it every day.

But even if I'm not in it, I still care too much.

Yeah.

And, and it's tough because you hire people to care about a specific thing department, you know, part of the system.

And, you know, ideally, in an ideal world, I don't think any entrepreneur would disagree with this.

I think this is what we're trying to do, is we.

We're trying to hire someone who cares and is more knowledgeable than we are and maybe cares more than we do about a specific part of our business.

It's the one that's got their name on it.

It's the one that's got all their fingerprints all over it.

So the part of our business that they're the most qualified to elevate, and in that, there's this power that comes to you as an entrepreneur.

But there's this other dangerous part where we, as the entrepreneur say, you're not doing it right.

Get back to me.

I'm going to let you stand there while I pay you, and I'm going to take this back over because I, I don't want this to come out any other way other than the way that I would imagine it.

And that's different than caring, by the way, that is micromanagement, which we talked about before, you and I.

But the caring is sort of the root.

So if the micromanagement was like the leaves, this care, it's a, it's a.

You can't talk about caring without Talking about what you care about as far as in business, like, do you care about the systems?

You care about the people who operating those systems?

Do you care about your customer?

Do you care about the end result?

You know, and when you have 100% care on every single thing, that's a hard balance.

Yeah.

I guess I think of micromanagement as control.

And care is not control, but it can lead to that.

Like, if you care too much, you can end up in.

In a feeling, a sense of like, this is my baby, this is my thing.

And it must be like.

And I'm not like that.

I used to be like that.

I learned my lesson over the decades.

I am able to release and trust my team.

I actually don't care as much about the final output because I've learned that we do really good work in our company and that I can trust the team.

However, that doesn't mean that I'm not worried in the back of my mind at times about, are our clients happy?

What's going on with our clients?

Because I have no control.

I don't know.

I've never met some of our clients.

Right.

Remember when you used to know every client, Kurt, and now you don't know all the clients anymore.

It just wouldn't be possible.

Yeah.

How do you stop caring even if you know them or not?

It's like more of a generic, like, then it becomes like a customer as an avatar almost that I care about, even though I care about every single one.

It's.

Yeah.

Like, do you experience this care too much?

I know you do.

Yeah, I do.

But you're.

You're right.

It's interesting when you start thinking about em less as a person and more of a Persona.

Yeah, but.

But there's the care.

You know what I was talking about earlier is you care about your employees, you care about your company culture.

You care about too much.

But yeah.

And so you.

Something has to give.

Just like you can't know every customer at a certain point.

Something has to give.

And what.

What are you going to give?

How's it going to go?

Well, you.

It's the vision.

Like, in my view, if they're following my vision, whatever that means, and we've talked about that too, then I feel safe to release things I say with my words right now.

However, on the day to day, I am still thinking about my employees.

I'm still thinking about the agency vas we work with, who I never see.

But I care.

Like, I'm like, are they happy?

Is my team doing good for them?

I care about the clients and the prospects.

Did I get back to that person or.

It's just too many people things, and it's carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders.

I think a traditional business person who's really good at the business of business would not be able to care like this.

Yeah.

You know what's interesting?

I, I.

You've got me thinking all of a sudden about something.

I think we've had this, we've had a similar discussion before, and it's popped up a few times outside of the podcast in my mind is that when we talk about control or care or just whatever the world sees, one of the first things we need to do is just understand, are we caring for us or are we caring about how we look to other people?

They're very different.

What I care about, if it ends there, you know, that's the nerdy stuff that, like, you, you care about, but you don't want anyone to know about you.

And then there's this other outward thing that we care about because we want to be seen perceived a certain way.

Integrity.

Well, okay, that's my most important thing.

Let's take integrity, because that's, that's a perfect example of someone who cares about integrity for the sake of integrity.

And then there's the person who cares about integrity because they want to be seen as an integrity, a person with integrity with more.

And I'm going to use the word selfish, which I understand I'm stretching a bit here with the word integrity.

No, you're not.

But is it because I couldn't stand the idea of other people not perceiving me as someone with integrity, which is more of a selfish line, or is it because I genuinely care about it and just to contrast it with something different, like, I really care about.

Well, I care about mountain biking.

Right.

And if somebody I'm talking to really cares about mountain biking, I'll nerd out with them really hard and we'll talk about trails and bike parts and all that.

I don't, like, lead with it.

It's not like if someone didn't know I was a mountain biker, I wouldn't be, like, mortified.

Right.

Because I just care about it.

For me, now, I understand integrity has different application.

And certainly in the business world, this can be an interesting litmus test as we talk about anything that we care about.

Because if we're doing it because we care about the way our employees perceive us versus we care about something for our employees, it's motivated, different.

Yeah, but like, I've always considered integrity to be my most important thing to hold on to.

I think back to when the guy tried to steal my business and I repossessed it.

He filed a police report and then the story he told was that I had broken into his house and done all of this horrible stuff.

My integrity was on the line.

I knew I was in the right because I had the law on my side and they had to do the whole thing of going through it.

But I thought of those customers who I'd spent years building relationships with.

And business is about trust.

Like, I want people to trust me because it's important to me.

It's like my values.

And so that felt like I don't want people to think I don't.

That I suddenly lack integrity.

I don't think that's selfish, though.

If integrity is a big part of your value system.

I don't know what I'm talking about, but I've always thought of it that way.

It means something to me.

I want to work with people who have integrity.

You know, I think people who have it are worried about it a lot of the time, and I don't know if it matters if they're worried.

I don't know.

People who have integrity just worry that they will.

And that's over caring, actually.

Because if you have integrity, you shouldn't really be worried about, not about losing it or something.

It's just kind of like innate.

Maybe that's not right.

No, I think, I think you're on the right track.

This is kind of the fun part of this podcast is your ability to sort of get introspective and just think about, you know, where am I putting my energy and does it align with what I actually want and what are my intentions for putting my energy there?

And I don't think that just in the course of natural day to day activity that the normal person will like really take their mind to these places.

So this is kind of fun to just explore.

Yeah.

Can I give you a quick example?

Sure.

Yesterday or a couple days ago, online in One of the AI groups that I'm in, somebody had said how ChatGPT was a great therapist and had done all this stuff.

And I was like, I made a quick comment because it's not.

It says what you want to hear and it really wants you to like it.

So it just says what you want it to hear.

Even when it's being mean to you, it's not mean enough, like, because it just wants to be liked.

So I just said it's actually Not a great therapist.

It's going to tell you what you want to hear.

And then the Internet, well, in my mind exploded because how dare I?

I don't understand AI.

Like, if I can't understand this, then I shouldn't even be in the group kind of stuff.

And I didn't care.

You know, that's younger Melody.

However, I wondered why I felt compelled to say that in the first place and why I was, like, annoyed that people were.

So then I used ChatGPT actually, as my therapist to ask it why I cared so much about what people thought and because I wanted to prove it wasn't a good therapist.

But it told me what I wanted to hear.

But it actually gave me great information and insight into why I would care.

And it talked about integrity as one of the things.

I'm looking for it really quick because I want to understand, just for the purpose of this.

You understand the layers of Inception going on right now, right?

No, that's the thing.

This is like blowing my mind.

Well, listen, I said I'm testing this combo because I, you know, blah, blah, blah, people on the Internet were triggered.

They think I don't understand what AI is capable of, but I'm way ahead of them in my knowledge and education with AI.

They have pushed my ego button.

I don't like that.

How can I be more mature, not care what other people think or say to me on the Internet?

Why do I care if they use AI as a therapist?

That's their problem, not mine.

But I felt compelled to write it.

So what's going on here now?

The reason I made this is because I wanted to go meta, right?

Yeah, you did.

Succeeded.

But then it actually said you're witnessing misuse or over trust in a tool that you deeply understand.

And it triggers a protective response.

I want people to be ethical and responsible and it's challenging my identity.

And so it hits my ego and my sense of purpose when it comes to, like, you know, keeping up on this because I care.

And it said, you don't want to control them, but your brain thinks if I don't say something, am I letting harm happen?

This creates an inner conflict.

Values versus boundaries.

This is AI telling me this.

That's it.

Like, that's the first thing I thought of is that that's Melody stepping in and going, hey, Internet stranger, I just want you to be safe.

And if you really need a professional to talk to, AI is not it.

Basically, AI can be helpful.

And I think that.

I think that if you didn't say that, there Might be some helpful stuff in there.

You may have been missing some opportunity.

Because AI is not.

It's not like, nothing.

Yeah, yeah.

It's.

You have to understand psychology.

You have to understand, you know, you have to be a critical thinker and be emotionally aware in your interactions with this machine robot.

So I worry about people in that way, but I also felt this thing where I was being something that's important to me, not AI, but like something deeper was being triggered.

And so it's not that I care what these strangers think of me that I don't care about.

It's.

I feel a sense of needing to protect the world, which is a lot of a big burden.

And that goes back to caring too much.

Yeah, well, because that's today's topic.

Yeah, let's sort of circle that.

Because you said something that just really, like, resonated with me, and that was when you said I.

Integrity.

People who have integrity worry a lot about integrity.

And I think that that's true of anybody who really values anything.

If you had a diamond ring that you cared a lot about, you might worry about it.

Like, is it clean?

Did I leave it by the sink when I did the dishes?

You know, just.

You would think about it a lot.

Just things that are precious to you.

Get more brain space.

But to go back to my example, I think there's some value in going, am I wearing this ring for me, or am I wearing this ring to impress other people?

I don't know if it's worth getting super finite and engrossed in it, because it can be for both.

Like, you can love the way the ring looks and you love the way people look at you when you wear the ring.

I think that might be fine.

If you're fine with that, that's cool.

Here's where I get really bothered when I'm doing a business deal with someone who's a Christian, and they make sure that I know that they're a Christian by telling me, not showing me, but by telling me, and by taking every opportunity to let them know, let they let me know that they're a member of my church or that whatever I call that behavior, punching people in the face with the Jesus ring, meaning you will do business with me because I'm a Christian.

I have the fish on the back of my car.

I've got the ring that proves it.

I wear the cross around my neck and I talk about Jesus every chance I get so that I can get the best business deal possible.

That's a great.

I love that visual by the way, because I can see the Jesus ring punching into somebody's face.

And then there's a fish on your forehead.

Yeah.

And indentation ring.

That's right.

But it's like I'm wearing this ring to make sure I get the most deals closed or make the most profit possible or to profit off of Jesus any way I can.

Now, I know that in this podcast we talk about spirituality, religion, and I realize I just did a religious version of this, but I. I want it to be.

I want you to sort of think.

Think in your mind about your motivations for different things, because I think that you might reevaluate something.

Some things about yourself.

And that's all this is about.

If.

If you decide to move on because you're authentic with yourself in every area of your life, how cool is it to know that you moved on intentionally and about something that really is true about yourself?

I think that's super valuable.

You know, the cool thing about truth is that I say this to people all the time.

Jesus can handle you questioning him.

Jesus can handle it.

He's, like, all powerful.

Right?

So if.

If Jesus can handle you questioning his truth.

And I. I know that there's some people who would say that's very not the case.

Like you.

You can't question truth.

You can't question the Bible.

You can't question.

Well, I would say that that's not faith anymore.

That.

That blind faith would just be more like.

Like a cultish behavior, which we've talked about in our previous podcast.

But I think that there's so much value in saying, yep, I've.

I've looked around that corner.

I inspected it, and I really like it.

I really like that about myself, and I feel that way about my integrity.

I feel like I've scrutinized, I've really dug into it.

But that all said, we have a tendency to believe that whatever we value, everyone else should value.

Yeah.

And whatever I care about, everyone else should care about.

So let's do a little experiment here.

I want to.

I want to play a little game with you, Melody.

Some people say that we have lost our way as a country in the United States of America.

And I think that to acknowledge everything is not great in this country is probably fair.

Not probably fair.

I think it's definitely fair.

It's not perfect.

And I don't even know if anyone would challenge me on that.

It'd be interesting to do a survey to see what percentage of people think that this country is perfect.

But let's say that we all disagree about what it is.

That's imperfect.

But what if I told you that the founding fathers, they believed in religious freedom and we need to get back to religious.

Like bones.

A Christian, sort of like Christian values.

Which is what is lost in our country now that we've let go of all of those values.

Chris.

Good Christian values.

Okay.

Okay.

So my question to you after that first is, which Christian dogma is the one that needs to be the forefront?

The white one.

Oh, Melody.

You see how we know.

We just took a big old slide down this slope, like.

Yeah.

It is the slipperiest of slopes to say we all need Christian values.

And I choose the church of X to be the church of our country, our state, this country was founded on religious freedom, not religious control.

The distinction there is, is that people say we need the freedom.

And I think we all agree that, like the freedom to do what you need, but therefore homosexual people should not be allowed to get married.

Because my dogma, the religion that I believe in, says, no, we don't need it or we shouldn't have it.

Another way of going about it might be to say we need to.

I should say this.

Anytime a religion has been mixed with state, the teeth of that state of that religion automatically get removed.

Because people are there not for their own reasons.

They're there for some sort of forced or sort of contrived reason.

So religious freedom and religious control are very different.

And as I think about this, one of the things that comes to my mind is that the things I care about.

What is the first thing that I think needs to happen when I care deeply about something?

That it needs to be that way.

Yeah, it needs to be that way.

And everybody should agree with me on it.

Yeah, but you care deeply about God, and you also understand that our country should not be all about God.

Yoga.

Because it's not about.

That's not.

Yeah, yeah.

It's the balance.

So that's what I'm getting at is, is that I think human nature is.

Is that if I care deeply about something, I get.

I conflate two things that.

That really aren't the same.

One is, is that because I care about it, I'm right.

Which is, you know, everybody thinks that.

They think.

Right.

Like, that's why you think it.

You think it's right.

But then we learn the ability for other people to think for themselves.

The freedom for other people to care about things that are different than you is the goal.

That's the treasure.

But we think that because we're right Everyone should be right, like us.

Yeah.

And by the way, you've said a lot of we's and I's in this as you gave examples.

And I just need everybody to know he's not saying we believe in this.

He's just giving examples.

Just to be clear.

Yeah.

I'm saying that human nature will tend to lead us a certain way and it's up to us to find the right way.

So bring it back to business for a second.

Are you saying that if I care too much because I don't want to let people down and that that permeates through the whole company, you know, Because I have made that the thing, like, I hate disappointing people, especially people who pay us money.

And so the area that I don't think it's a problem to care too much about, I think it's healthy to care a lot about the thing you're delivering to people that they pay for that.

I think it becomes a problem when I'm in a business.

But I give.

I care so much that I give things away that I'm not making a healthy profit, let's say.

Or I'm not like, and I'm not saying that's the case.

What I'm saying is like, it gets in the way of running this entity, I guess I would say.

And oftentimes that over caring in that missionary heart that I was raised to have leads me to give things away.

And that doesn't help my company and it doesn't help my business or my family or me.

And that's the caring too much part.

That's just one specific example.

But giving my time away, giving my systems away, whatever it is, like, it's just.

I've done that too much my whole life and I'm tired of that being my go to melody.

I think we're getting into like, there's like mountaintop worth of like information here, like lots of different things that we could discover.

One of the things that I just thought of as you were saying, that which I'm curious your thoughts are on this is do you wonder if sometimes the fact that you care so much that you give it away, but it's valued differently by the recipient, does that affect.

Does that affect your.

I don't know, I'm going to use the word burnout, but I don't think that's actually the right word.

But we get sort of burned out on helping people.

Yes, whatever sense.

What contribution of disparity between your care level and someone else who's receiving it for free Care Level.

What does that play into the feeling that you're feeling right now?

Oh, I think I give it to the wrong people sometimes as well.

I think because I'm a giver and we've had, we have had this conversation I'm remembering now.

I've been like my whole life has been about give, be of service, give, give, give.

Like I feel like that's kind of how you faith your religion.

Like you talk about that.

Two years of service.

Right.

And we don't have a time limit on ours in I guess in the evangelical world.

No.

And nobody ever dedicated me to that except my parents and that just hearing that on repeat over my whole life, it's just a part of who I am almost.

I don't like that part of myself.

Like it and I don't like it and I think it a lot to my burnout and also like it's a selfish need that I need to help people, to serve people, to it makes me feel great.

Much harder to, to receive.

I'm thinking of my, my sister in law who I would hold her baby all day right now and she's always like, so thank you so much for being here so long.

I'm so sorry.

Like there's so much female apologizing that we do and I don't know, I just, I know I just went all over the place, but I get, I'm mad.

I'm 48, I know a lot of women like me, by the way, and men who do this thing where we love helping, supporting, giving.

But that's not what business is supposed to be about technically.

Like it's about creating value and then charging for it so you can make some profit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It does feel like when I was going like what's your motivation earlier?

Like it feels dirty when your motivation is profit to someone who feels like I should give because my human ability and maybe even God given ability, depending on what your tradition says.

But I think that if I was to unpack some of the other stuff that you said and I talk about several mountaintops worth of pieces of this, is that there's certain things that we as a business owner must care about and transmute to our customers or throughout through our business.

Like our business becomes this mouthpiece or megaphone or some sort of propagating device is probably the best way of putting it where we take our care.

And we can expand it much further than we could on our own because we have more resources like other employees or tools or email lists or Facebook posts.

Our reach is just Further, there's a certain amount of like, we care so much about what goes through that megaphone that we have to like, you can't just say, oh, I care too much, I'm gonna stop caring.

I just don't have the energy anymore.

No, you gotta find the energy.

You gotta make it happen.

So there's that.

Then there's the part where we were just talking about the reciprocation, like the fact that like, I'm giving and giving and giving, but you're receiving as like with no skin in the game.

And it's frustrating, I know for me, like, I just gave you 10 years of my life and you just took it like it was candy on Halloween evening and put it in your bag to never look at it again.

Like, how dare you disrespect me.

And of course I know that's more personal and selfish, I'm sure, but I gave it to you selflessly and then you just took it selfishly like it's some sort of like, trivial thing.

Well, also, like, there's social media.

I think there are so many people who talk with great authority about everything and we are giving our input.

They're giving input in like a two minute reel.

That makes it sound like they have that decades of experience when they might have like three months at this point.

And when we give it, we've lived it, we've died for it.

We, you know, it's, we've suffered for it.

And when it's like a gift of like, take these 10 years of suffering and lessons and don't do that, I want to gift you with that knowledge.

And maybe it comes off sometimes as sounding the same as all of the other noise everywhere.

Well, I think I can make that one real simple.

And we've all experienced it.

You know, the kid who got the car given to him by his parents, you know the other kid who bought his car with his own money and worked really hard for it and knows the value of a dollar and knows that when they crash it, they have to figure it out.

They make their insurance payments or gas payments and they treat it different.

So like, that's so simple to understand.

It's just hard because like my first reaction is to give everyone a car or whatever the equivalent of that is.

Yeah, I'm a real Oprah in that way.

I, I, I actually think I'm getting a pretty fine point on this.

And this is where I'm starting to have some kind of fun, like, personal thoughts about going forward.

When we talk about the ability to Care, but I just can't do anymore.

There's like this burnout that builds and then there's also something that is just capacity.

Like burnout is I've been at over capacity for a certain period of time and I am not going to be able to sustain this forever.

Then there's another version which is I have two hands, two feet, one mouth, two ears, two eyes.

You know, like, I can't look at six things at once.

I am out of bandwidth.

I have two hands.

It's not that I'm out of strength, because burnout is, I think I'm out of strength.

Capacity to care is.

Or I don't have the ability to, to get into this and care.

And a business can grow to the point where I just don't have enough hands, eyeballs, feet to be where I need to be doing things I need to do, looking at and solving the problems I need to solve.

And so there is like this whole thing where you go, okay, you could give 100% of your attention to something, which means that you're giving 0% of your attention to something else.

If we now, strength is different.

Strength is hard to measure.

Because if I gave you 100% of.

My strength, can I say it's energy instead of strength?

Because I really do think that's what the burnout is.

The reason I'm using strength is because I can visualize that in terms of like lifting something heavy.

And I don't mind turning it to energy, energy in a minute.

But just for the purpose of like, what I'm trying to illustrate right now, let's say that I can lift 250 pounds off the ground.

I'm strong, and I can lift 250 pounds off the ground.

Once I get that off the ground, it's got to go back on the ground as soon as possible.

And I'm not going to be able to lift £100 for the next 10 minutes or an hour or whatever it is, right?

Or I can run as fast as I can run, right?

Whatever that strength is that takes me to do it, I'm out of that strength in a short period of time.

So there's capacity of like what I can do and then there's like strength.

Like I can only be in one place at one time, but I can also only run this fast.

And then when I do so in cycling, I apologize to anyone who is like, this guy always uses cycling.

But in cycling we have something called your FTP.

It's your functional threshold power.

That means that in theory, the hardest you can go for one hour in terms of wattage power that you put out is a number.

You can measure that.

And for me, that number is 290 watts for one hour.

The way I measure it is I go as hard as I can for 20 minutes.

So for 20 minutes, I go all out and I'm super focused.

I do not my mind wander and I am suffering the whole time.

And then at the end of 20 minutes, I multiply the amount of average wattage that I put out by 90%.

So now I know what I can do for one hour.

Now a lot of you are like, dude, I didn't know I was listening to a sports podcast.

You're not.

What I'm telling you is that once I know that at 290 watts, I can look down at any given time on my cycle computer and I can see how close I am to 100%.

I operate at 110, 120 even.

I can operate at 200% of my power.

I can go harder than I have the streng to do for a whole hour in short bursts.

But the only way I will be able to continue to ride for an hour is that I want to drop significantly below different times.

So if I'm climbing a hill, I might go ahead and go 200%, but when I'm going down the hill, I'm going to be going at like 10, 20%.

I'm going to recover.

We're back to business.

So business, family life.

When we take our care, what we care about and how much we do.

This is the fine point that I feel like I'm getting now, is that you can care at capacity only 100%.

I only have the ability to watch this and that and this.

I just can't do everything else.

That's why the person 10 doors down from you, when they die, your heart doesn't break because you never met them before.

Like, they live in your neighborhood and you feel bad that they died.

I do.

My heart does break.

Oh, well, okay.

When someone you don't know dies, it doesn't feel the same as when your grandma dies because you just didn't have the capacity to get into that person's life to the depth of your grandmother.

A hundred percent is a.

You can operate at a hundred percent of capacity, but as far as energy now, I'm going to tighten back to energy.

Now instead of strength, you can operate for a period of time.

Time over 100%, you can't sustain it.

So you're gonna hit burnout.

If you go beyond.

And that is where you can care too much.

And in fact you can run into limitations.

Like, I just.

I wish I could do more for my community and for the girl Scouts and for the, the church and for my kids and for my spouse's mom and dad and for my brother in law and sister in law and for the next door neighbor.

But there's a certain period where like you're only gonna go so deep on so much.

And then there's how many loaves of bread can you make and how many feet can you massage and how many employees can you pull aside and tell them how great they are and then cor.

When they're wrong, like you run out of that.

That strength and that capacity, that energy and that capacity.

That is where you have to figure out, where am I going to if I can only give 100%?

And I know it doesn't really break down to numbers in terms of care.

Care can't do that.

But if you can at least kind of get your head around that mental model, what is it that I can care about and where is I can put my energy?

You're good at boundaries, Kurt.

You've made a really good buffer around you for people to never be able to find you, contact you.

You're not on social.

I have the plan to not make myself available to people.

But when.

Because that's when I give away a lot of things.

Like if you put somebody in front of me, I just want to give.

It's a natural instinct.

And to let go of that instinct has been.

And I'm.

I'm so much less caring than I used to be.

I've worked really hard to be less caring.

That sounds hilarious.

Anyway, there's a problem of like in the moment.

I think that's really always the problem, especially with neurodivergent types.

Adhders.

We are like quick thinkers.

We're impulsive.

That's the real struggle is I know my family's more important.

You know, other people might be.

I know like the order of importance of things, but in the moment I don't.

In fact, I don't think about any of that stuff at all.

And then it goes back to like, oh, we just need to be disciplined.

Like business people always talk about discipline.

Well, that would require thinking in a moment less impulsiveness.

I'd have to put a note, like a post it note everywhere that says don't forget to be disciplined.

You know, like that's how my.

So there's like the theory of it is I agree with you and I feel like I honestly, I always admire how unreachable you are.

I think you.

I don't know how you've done it and still grown a company, but I'm very reachable.

Even with my buffers in place.

I don't have the energy for it.

I can't do it because I don't have the energy for it.

And I have to be intentional about it.

I think you're bringing up the point though, which is to do the audit.

And that's sort of where I feel like this whole podcast has come to is are you caring about things you have no control over?

Right.

So you're putting a bunch of energy.

It's going to just vampire suck it right out of you, but with no return.

Because I think that's an important part of this audit.

Are you caring about things that are inconsequential?

You have a lot of control and you can spend all your time and energy pouring it into things, into this relationship it doesn't have.

It's not commiserate with the energy you put into it.

And if you have finite energy and bandwidth, you need to evaluate like, well, where in my life am I not hitting it?

And by the way, this is a moving target.

I have a son who needs a hundred percent of my attention numerous times a day, but guess what?

He has zero of my attention right now.

And so this moving target is another thing is being in the moment.

But I think it's the idea of being able to recognize I'm spitballing.

This is just coming up to me as we're having this conversation, as we talk, I'm thinking to myself, when I start feeling really zapped at the end of the day, there's that good zap where it's like I poured into the things that mattered.

And like, I have employees, I meet with them.

I'm so glad I poured into that person and I'm so glad I stopped and didn't pour out that I stopped and let them pour in to me.

You know, there's.

There's a lot of.

Because it goes both ways.

People care about you and all that.

But if you reflect on what we've just been talking about, I bet you that you could find several things that are taking your.

Your time, your abilities, and then there's other things taking your energy.

And if you haven't already thought of some, then maybe you are already sort of spending your energy.

Gotta.

I've got my ideal calendar mapped out.

We know exactly when my energy is at its peak and I only do certain types of things during those times.

But I was in a prospect meeting today.

That's something I'm g away the sales.

It's supposed to be a 45 minute meeting.

I was there for an hour and a half.

And it's because I love that in the moment, right?

Those are the kinds of things, Kurt.

It's also, I think about the people who have given so much to me, who did not have to do that.

I know they're way busier, they have way more, and they took time to give me something.

That's where I think I tend to come from.

A lot of like, it's almost like karmic in a way of like, people have given me so much time, attention, energy, advice, wisdom.

I want to be able to pay that back, backwards, forwards, you know, but.

And they, and they value their time.

These are people who are high level.

They value their time.

Their schedule is tight, they know how to say no.

So it's a, it's always going to be a struggle for me.

I, I'm not gonna lie, I don't think I'm ever gonna get this one right.

But I always have more things in place to help me do better with it.

Well, one thing that I think that you've got going for you, and hopefully anyone listening to this podcast does too, is that as long as you know, you can care too much.

Because I think maybe I'm wrong about this.

But I think you and I know for sure.

Me, I've worn for a badge as a badge of honor that I care about everything more than anybody.

I guess I shouldn't say everything.

The things I care about, I always wore as a badge of honor that no one can care harder than I can.

And it leads to sorrow and sadness.

But the more you wear that badge, it's like the juggling or the one man band that's got all the things.

Like at some point you see this person who's like this juggler with 500 chainsaws and you go, bro, you can't get out of that anymore because that's like you signed yourself up to this.

Now every single one of those chainsaws is relying on you to catch it.

And if you don't catch one, there's a good chance you don't catch 99 more.

Because it's like that whole like chain reaction of dropping and it's a tough place to be.

But these like altruistic, really nice nirvana that got you there to lead you down the road.

So I almost would be willing to say that after all this analysis and discussion.

I think the simple thing is, is as long as you know that it is possible to care too much, then you give yourself this permission to sort of back out and maybe not go down the road too far where you feel like.

Like there was a time I can't get burnt out.

I can't get sick.

I have to.

And when you live that way, that's.

99% of entrepreneurs right there.

I don't live like that.

I can walk away from my company, and I do walk away from it if I want.

It's all me.

It's all about me.

It usually is, right?

All about us.

I'm very lucky in that, you know, and you are, too.

We have teams of people who do care enough to make sure that our vision is moving forward.

I would say I can't speak for you, I assume for you as well.

And that's what really matters to me ultimately, when I get down to it, is if I know that I've given the vision to the team and they know what the values are that we have, like, but we actually live them, and they know what their expectations are and their, you know, the metrics and whatever.

Like, we've put everything in place.

There is no reason for me to be involved after that, except for coaching advice, things like that, like encouragement, the goal, at least.

And that is possible, but.

And I'd rather.

I guess I'm just feeling frustrated because I remember I'm almost coming on five years of having conceived of home service va.

Didn't know what the company was back then, but, like, we had thought of it and it's four and a half.

And I remember thinking when I first started, like, melody, you better be a millionaire by the time you get to, like, five years in.

There is no reason for everything about business that you need to know.

And you can mess around for the first year to figure things out, fine.

But you are not allowed to not make big money in this.

And I forgot that like that.

Just because you tell yourself something doesn't mean you're gonna listen.

I've once again taken the hardest route.

Not as hard as in the past, but I always seem to do it from internal feeling.

You know what I mean?

Like, and not the actual knowledge that I have necessarily.

Like, I always do it the hard way, Kurt.

I don't know why.

Yeah.

And.

And if I was a psychologist, I'd probably be in a position to answer why that is.

But I do know it's.

It's ubiquitous.

Like, I feel like it's one of those things where it's not a question of knowing what to do.

In most cases, it's not a question of knowing what to do.

It's the fortitude and the focus and the strength to do what you know you need to do.

Yeah.

Or just to make decisions as they come fast and, you know, we can get stuck.

And even knowing, knowing that even like 80, if you're having 80% success rate with your decisions on the fly, like you're like way ahead of the, of the curve, like, like knowing that you're going to be wrong and just being okay with that.

It's a huge help.

Yeah.

Well, and there's a lot of lessons in that.

I, you know, this conversation came up because I'm feeling frustrated with myself, as sometimes I do in a moment.

I don't feel like this all the time because I really do.

I appreciate what I've given put into the world.

I feel like I can live with what I've done and how I've helped people.

Both of us have changed businesses, changed business owners, lives in, in the work that we've done.

And I guess I wish I was more grown in my, I wish my journey was a little bit more forward than it is in my personal growth, I would say, because I've been working on the same things for, for years.

And I can say it's stop caring as much.

It's really probably more like boundaries and you know, it's not discipline.

I know how to be blend.

But like making myself do the things is.

I don't know.

I think that as I've gotten older, I've put up more boundaries and that's been incredibly helpful.

And I've gotten burned out enough times.

Also been burned enough times.

I think that's another thing.

You burned out and you go, man, it's not good to operate at 110%.

It's not good to operate 140%.

It's just not.

Ends up hurting everybody involved.

And if you drop one chainsaw and you know there's more and then you get burned by others and you go, well, people aren't reciprocating back.

Like, I care so much about this relationship and they're not pouring into it the way I am.

But the key I think here is to not let it jade you to the point where you start becoming too numb.

You have to make adjustments.

You know, you've got to make adjustments in order to put your care in the right spots, put your energy into the right spots.

But there's a couple ways it can happen.

The first is, is, well, nobody else cares, so why should I?

Hi, I just met you.

I shook your hand.

You're the next person to burn me.

You know, I haven't even met you, and I don't trust the word you're saying because everybody's a lia.

You know, I've already encountered several liars in my life.

I'm thinking of very specific people in my life who think that way, and it's not me.

I'm an entrepreneur with.

We are both optimists with a bad memory.

Yeah, I think that's the key is, like, just learning and making adjustments.

But that pendulum of over caring.

I've experienced it.

Wanting to go the other way.

In fact, I'll just be honest.

I've had it swing the other way.

I didn't like the way I felt.

I knew it was wrong, it wasn't a way to live.

And so I had to make some very conscious decisions to say, no, I'm not going to be reactive to everything and let my.

Let the scar tissue be.

What's in charge of this?

I'm going to actually intentionally continue to care.

What's the saying?

Trust if you must, but verify.

I think that that's sort of the approach I've taken to a lot of the care.

Like care if you must, but verify.

Always have a default, I think, to care.

It's.

It's a part of my heart now that psychology is kind of.

I feel like with TikTok and all of the other things, like, people have a tendency to be able to flip what I have always thought of as being good altruistic traits.

And now there's a negative side to all of the traits, which has really been a very complicated thing because I didn't need another thing to have to think about to overthink about.

Right.

So if you're a good person, are you really a good person or do you just want validation?

Yeah, I. I think it's worth thinking about that stuff, but it's not worth overthinking about it.

Right.

I love overthinking as.

As we can tell from episodes like this.

Well, I know I almost made an entire episode without bringing up my wife.

You reminded me when you're talking about your, you know.

And I think this is a primarily a female trait that is the ability to, like, care so much about something that I just can't understand.

Like, you're holding my baby.

Oh, I feel bad that you're holding my Baby.

Like, for me, it'd be like, why?

She just said that she likes holding your baby.

Like, she just said that she is here.

I came here.

It's that guilt.

It's almost like you're looking for places to feel guilty.

I'm so exhausted with everything I've got going on in my life.

I can't even imagine adding perpetual guilt to that list.

Like, perpetual guilt is maybe bigger than what I gotta deal with.

No woman is looking to feel these things.

It is ingrained in society that we.

There's mother's guilt.

There's.

Maybe it's ingrained, drained in our.

In our beings, our souls.

Who knows?

Not everybody feels this, but I will say, like a majority of my friends, we really feel way too much guilt about things.

We worry about things that really don't matter in the end.

Talking to a friend who had never left her husband and kids in the last, like, 15 years, she had to come down here.

And I was like, you know what?

Like, if you died right now, they would be totally fine, but it would be a lot more chaotic and less organized.

Like, that's what happens if somebody.

If a woman isn't around.

Like, appointments get missed and things.

Toilet paper doesn't exist anymore.

And, like, they don't eat good food.

Like, but we don't have to worry as much as we do.

It's not like men aren't capable or, you know, our families aren't capable.

We just have this thing where we feel such sense of ownership.

We carry the weight, the emotional mental load of the world on our shoulders.

So hard to undo.

My wife, this is a while back.

Fourteen years ago, Baden was born.

Our youngest son was born.

I remember someone brought us a meal.

My wife, like, spent, like, the rest of her life trying to pay this person back for sending us a meal.

I'm like, they made us a meal.

And they wanted to.

They did, on their own volition.

No one asked them to.

They just did it to be nice.

It was sweet and so kind.

And you successfully turned this into some sort of, like, horrible vendetta like that.

You.

You have got to constantly.

And so I think for the men listening probably don't statistically experience this.

It's super real, that care.

I just would, you know, what are you going to do?

You can't really fight biology.

Whatever God's reasoning is for wiring women this way.

I think there's a lot of special reasons.

This nurturing, this maternal, like, nesting.

I'm sure it just all goes hand in hand.

And it's super special and important.

But for those who do experience that, I just go back to where I say, how much of your energy and how much of your bandwidth with.

Is going into something that isn't.

It's just not worthy of it.

I don't want this to sound like, so turn it off.

Because I know, like, it's like telling someone, someone who's depressed, you say, stop being depressed.

Someone who's got anxiety, stop being anxious.

I am not naive enough to believe that you can just say it and stop it, right?

Like, my brother, when he was gay, like, our religious leaders told him, like, hey, you just gotta pray to stop being gay.

He's like, oh, good, I know how to do that.

Like, so he.

He's like, but I've been praying since I was a little boy, like a very young boy, that there's danger there.

I think there's real, true danger in taking that approach.

However, I do think that it is worth saying that if your energy is being poured into things that are sucking it away from you, whether you do it with a professional or whether you're able to do some conditioning on your own to, like, condition yourself, another way to recognize something and maybe just move the needle a tiny bit.

Like, I just think it's.

Maybe someone needs to hear this.

Just know, like, hey, take your energy back.

Take your care back.

You know, it is possible to care too much.

It will burn you out.

It'll put you in a bad spot.

I know from personal experience, but I don't know.

I just got done saying I don't know from the extreme experience of certainly mother's guilt.

But there's business owner guilt.

There's father's guilt, there's brother's guilt, there's son.

If you're a son or a daughter, you know, you can feel these types of guilt.

They can creep in.

There's customer guilt.

You have customers who can guilt you into feeling a certain way about something that's not even your problem.

But like.

Like, they just gift it to you as if, like, you can solve all their problems.

So the ability to recognize and sort of just try to be intentional with that, with that energy, I think it's important.

It's been an eternal journey.

My whole life has been spent trying to.

Since I became aware of this, I think the second half of my life, I've really spent trying to.

To be cognizant of not giving too much.

Okay, maybe after age 30 and really having my husband come into my life, he has really big boundaries and he has taught Me a lot about boundaries because of that.

But it's always an eternal, like, little inch at a time movement in.

In our growth.

And sometimes it goes backwards.

But you know what, Kurt?

After this conversation, I just don't care anymore.

You gotta start over.

Caring is one of the most important things that we as humans can do.

And it's that connection that we can make with one another through caring.

It's truly where the deepest joys can be felt.

So it.

Maybe I'll just.

I'll say this.

When I was growing up, I remember my dad said, o, rock is a wonderful thing.

You know, And I. I used fire with my kids, teaching them.

He said, a rock is a wonderful thing.

When you're building a house out of it, it's strong, or you're building on top of it or whatever, that it can provide so much strength.

But you throw it at someone's head, it's the worst thing in the world.

So I think the same thing.

My kids, when we were talking about pornography and, you know, the sexual creative power, it's truly the greatest thing.

But like fire, you know, you put it in a fire pit, it makes things warm.

You put it in an oven, you cook stuff with it.

You can use it to.

To, you know, make steam and make an engine go.

Fire just can do so much stuff.

You could put it.

You can use fire when you're.

When you're making a bullet, you know, and you can shoot a thing that you know will feed your family, or you can use to shoot someone that you love.

I mean, so fire can burn your house down.

It's.

It's powerful.

And I think that's what it is.

Like, that's the message today, is that your care and your energy is powerful.

It must be harnessed.

It's just one of those things that you're gonna have to master in this existence is how do I use this power in a way that's.

That's powerful and good?

You kind of brought it back to Harry Potter in my mind.

How do I learn to use this magic wand for good and not evil?

I don't know if that's what it's about, but.

And my power is my ability to not care or care and give it to the right people.

I kind of get it.

Well, I care about you, Kurt.

And I care about you, Mel.

Thanks for spending some time with me today.

This has been an absolute joy, like always.

Thank you.

Yeah, me too.

I thought it'd be a little lighter.

Let's leave it light.

Let's just tell all of our listeners today, as you go throughout your day to day, I would love for you just to find one thing, one thing that's taken your energy that you wish it wasn't taken.

And maybe there's one more thing that you wish you could pour.

And I think your guilt is probably doing a good enough job telling you where all the different places you could just find one thing.

What's one thing that you can just identify that you don't have to build a boundary right now, but just something like, hey, I think I want to put a boundary around this.

And what is one more thing that you're like, if I did have a boundary on that, what's one more thing that I could just pour just a tiny bit more energy into to.

Honestly, if you get a quarter of a percent better every day, like you're.

You are a tour to force, no.

One can stop you, that's like 3,000 million percent over the course of time.

Yeah, that's right.

Well, that's a great way to leave the episode, end the episode.

Kurt, thank you so much for this, Sam.