#14: Working Through Burnout with KC Rossi

Intro

Sean Weisbrot:
Welcome back to another episode of We Live to Build podcast.

Today’s guest is KC Rossi, a certified business and mindset coach on a mission to help female entrepreneurs overcome mindset blocks and create thriving online businesses.

KC has been a serial entrepreneur for almost three decades and has started multiple six and seven figure businesses from scratch and bootstrapped them to profit.

I loved our interview because we have a similar way of seeing and experiencing the world. We talked about experiencing burnout, understanding when you have burned out, how to start developing a self-care routine, the things that we do like meditation, nutrition, exercise, and why we do what we’ve chosen to do.

If you’re passionate about taking care of your mental and physical health, then you’re going to love this episode.

Let’s give a warm welcome to KC.

Have You Experienced Burnout? (1:55)

Sean Weisbrot:
Welcome to the show KC, it’s nice to have you on. You are a business and mindset coach and today I really want to talk with you about something you love to talk about with your clients, which is how to avoid burning out.

KC Rossi:
Awesome, sounds great Sean. I’m really happy to be here.

strong>Sean Weisbrot:
Have you ever felt burnt out before?

KC Rossi:
Absolutely, in fact I spent the majority of my entrepreneurial career burned out and for the beginning years, I really didn’t even know that you could do business any other way. I thought that that was just natural. I thought that hustle was a part of the grind and in order to be successful that feeling like, you know, exhausted at the end of the day was a sign that you were doing really good work. So, even after getting like live blood cell analysis and, you know, things from the doctor that I was in adrenal fatigue and that I, I was officially in burnout, I still kept pushing myself. It wasn’t till years later that I was like, oh wait, it gets to be another way.

Sean Weisbrot:
I’ve definitely felt burned out a few times, the first time I was aware of it was what I was doing my first business. I was doing probably eighty-hour weeks, I didn’t have a salary from it. I didn’t know how to make it make any money. I went broke doing it, and I, I think I may have ended up with PTSD in terms of like not wanting to ever organize an event ever again.

KC Rossi:
Wow, yeah, I believe that. I, I believe it. It’s, it’s something that you don’t forget and it, it really sticks with you, because it depletes you at such a deep level and it takes a very long time to bring your system back. The adrenals are, even though they’re small little walnut size glands, they take a long time to restore and get back to a, a homeostasis so it definitely leaves its mark when you’ve experienced burnout.

Sean Weisbrot:
I spent a long time trying to figure out how to handle my own burnout. I think I’m very fortunate I’ve learns to be self-aware of my own systems and how I think and feel and act and. So, I can tell when I’ve had too much, and I think though it’s probably one of those things that you have to experience before you can learn how to understand it. So, when did you first realize that you were burnt out?

KC Rossi:
I was getting regular migraines and they were just again kind of part of the, the weekly ritual so to speak and this was back when I had my confections company, so we were very busy. We had 25 employees, and we were selling internationally, so it was like we were on seven days a week, and when I first started being like Hey this doesn’t feel normal, I still was like, I don’t have the time to go home and like sleep this migraine off. So, I ended up putting a small little couch in the back of my office because I would end up losing my eyesight, I would get visual migraines. But you’re not gonna be able to work through blurred vision, because you can’t see anything. I couldn’t read, I couldn’t see my computer screen, and they would last about 20-25 minutes so I was like okay well I’ll just put a little couch in the back and close my eyes for that twenty minutes until my eyesight came back, and then I went right back into it. So, I was a little bit more of a hard nut to crack, I don’t recommend that way that I did it and that’s why I’m so passionate now really helping people understand the signs of it, getting help in like exactly like you said, recognizing your system to nourish it before it gets to that point where you’re crossing the line and where it definitely takes longer to rebound so.

Now I feel like when you can tune in and really start to kind of embody and be aware of certain symptoms that come up even edginess or mood swings or even physical symptoms. it’s like okay, what’s my tool kit here, what do I need to do for self-care, what do I need to say no to, where do I have to put some boundaries in, and so now I am very aware of it. Like I said, it really took years in that process, until I realized like this isn’t sustainable and I had people around me saying like you know you could have a stroke you don’t understand how far and hard you push. I’m a Taurus, so it’s super easy for me to bull through things, and so it really just took you know several warning signs and people saying, hey, you’re gonna have to change your life. I remember my acupuncturist said, I don’t care what you do, like go live in a tent, but you have to do something. You have to change how you barrel through life and business.

Sean Weisbrot:
I’m not one of those people that goes morning, noon, and night, because I’ve hurt myself before. So, I know that my limitation is ten hours in the day that I can sit and work. I build health into my day so that the work revolves around the health now.

KC Rossi:
Perfect.

Sean Weisbrot:
Because what I’ve discovered especially as I got into my thirties, I’m now almost I’ll be 35 next year, it’s a lot harder to rebound. Like, what I found is when you lose a layer of health, it, it’s almost impossible to get back.

KC Rossi:
I think that when we deplete and go into our reserves, we go deep into the well, and it takes a while to it to restore, and so I love that you build in health. In fact, for our pre-chat, I was so inspired that you took me for a little walkabout, right? So, I was like man! And I really left our conversation thinking like we get to do business any way we want, whether it’s conventional or unconventional like whatever lights us up and I love that you put movement in, because to be, you know, frank like, most of us are getting, you know, a little zoom fatigue from sitting a lot and having all of our meetings virtual, so I love that aspect that we get to create our business in a way that’s gonna feel great and also bring in some circulation. I think that that also boosts our creativity.

Self-Care Routine (7:38)

Sean Weisbrot:
Let’s go a little bit deeper into that. So, I’ll just share real fast what I do as my daily care routine and then let’s see what you do. So, I’ll wake up about 5, 5:30. I’ll meditate for 30 minutes. I’ll spend 20 minutes mobilizing my joints, so that’s like you know rotating your wrists and your shoulders and all that stuff, kind of get the blood flowing. I’ll drink about half a liter of water and then I’ll get ready for the gym. I’ll go do about an hour of high intensity interval training I’ll come home, I’ll have a protein shake, so I’ll have my first meal then with like some handful of cashews and almonds, get some fats going after the work out, and then I’ll sit down and work for a bit, and then I’ll go on a walk for like a mile or two, and I’ll come back and I’ll work, and then I’ll have lunch, and then I’ll get up, and I’ll go for another one to two mile walk and I’ll go back to work, and not so I basically I try to walk five or six miles a day, make sure I’m getting the right meals, a certain amount of fats and protein, and try to limit my carbs so that I can burn fat because I, I’m clearly a fat person unfortunately. Being in Asia, I ate really well in my 20s, because I wasn’t aware of my nutrition, you know. I gained about 50lbs living here.

KC Rossi:
Wow, and it’s so interesting because we think of Asians as being so like slim.

Sean Weisbrot:
We had really oily food it was amazing anyway so how does your thing compare? So, I have the meditation, the exercise, the water, so you’ll see I’ve got 700mL bottle of water. I drink about 5 of these a day.

KC Rossi:
That’s awesome, well very similar, actually. I’ve been a longtime meditator. I’ve actually been meditating every day for 30 years and so that’s the very first thing that I do when I wake up is meditate. Really, it is something that grounds me and kind of set the stage. I also do a practice of gratitude and that has really been transformational for me to really be settling in to every little thing that I’m grateful for and gratitude that goes beyond like the top three of like and grateful for my health and grateful for my family and grateful for my kids and really get super granular about every little detail that I’m grateful for. And then I do a manifestation journaling of really putting all my desires out in writing as if they are already, um, they’ve already occurred, so it’s not necessarily a future paste way of writing but it’s really like all the things that I want to call into my space I journal it out as if it’s already happened whether it’s the amount of money I want to make, how I want to feel, what my relationships look like.

So I, I do that it’s not a long practice I would say you know you can really get the writing in like ten fifteen minutes but that’s something that I, I feel allows me to step into the woman that I want to be right now and not have the consciousness of it’s going to be when and then you fill in the blank you know, when I get X per month, or when I lose X pounds or whatever. So, it really helps me step into that leadership role and I get into that mindset of like what would a leader do today? How would she act? Who would she talk to? What would she eat? So, I, I really kind of prime my, my mental space first I’ve been vegetarian again for that same amount of time, so I’m big into health. I love health food and veggie food, so when you said protein shakes, I’m all about that. Avocado toast is my very favorite and I’ve done like different seed toasts as well. Um, so yeah, I love to cook.

My biggest thing then from like eight to noon as I carve out an energy block for work because that’s when I have my most creative space, so I really like to use either the pomodoro method to get those pompoms of bursts of times spaces then. I don’t know if you’ve ever used that method, Sean but I find that that helps keep, keep the focus and I tried to get my kind of biggest return on investment activities done between 8 and 12. And, then I generally have lunch with my best friend and we alternate back and forth so we, we cook for each other on every other day and we generally get into meditation together again at noon time. So, I take a two-hour break at the top of that day and kind of recap our game.

I come back and do you know not the real intense brain work from two to four but more kind of admin, social media, email stuff because I just know that my energy isn’t as strong as those real intense morning time block session. And then at 4:15, I walk with my bestie and we walk around the winery here in upstate New York, which is a beautiful walk and it’s something that we consistently do for an hour and kind of recap our day and release mentally and get the juices flowing physically, so. A lot of the same things in your routine, I think that those are kind of like the cornerstones of good mental and physical health yeah, I love routine so as much as I like to mix things up and be a trendsetter, there is some security in routine as well.

Sean Weisbrot:
The army or any military in the worlds will force people into routines. While they may sound crazy to people like us who have never been in the military, when you step back and actually look at what the routine stands for and how they’re basically building up discipline, it’s a fantastic routine came to mind.

KC Rossi:
What came to mind was James Clear and his book Atomic Habits. It really defines discipline and habits and the repetitiveness of where your brain actually then serves you to drop into a routine verses your mind kind of like kicking and screaming that it doesn’t want to do what it wants to do for fun.

Sean Weisbrot:
My fiancé has a problem with establishing routine, like so some mornings she’ll meditate with me, some mornings she won’t, some mornings she’ll get up and she’ll do yoga and stretching or she won’t. I’ve tried to impress upon her the importance of establishing routine, but she’s only 23, so that’s something that’ll come in time for her, um, but it’s something that I’ve learned and so at least I can give her the benefit of my experience.

KC Rossi:
Yeah, 100%. It has to be self-initiated or won’t stick.

Sean Weisbrot:
She enjoys it, but for some reason she just can’t bring herself to make it a routine. I don’t think she’s ever had a routine, you know, she has to learn how to understand the process of developing a routine and putting it into action and that’s something I think everybody has a problem with in the beginning.

KC Rossi:
Yeah, definitely. I mean the one thing that you know you had a good reminder was the water that’s, that’s something that I have not been super consistent with so thank you for that reminder again.

Sean Weisbrot:
When I was living in China it was extremely hot all the time basically unless it was winter and so if you went outside for a walk you could very easily end up dehydrated. I decided to just start buying 1.5L bottles of water and carrying it around with me wherever I went and that was something I started thirteen years ago.

KC Rossi:
Yeah, absolutely. It’s such a great routine.

How to Establish a Routine (14:30)

Sean Weisbrot:
How can we establish a routine then, that is meant to create self-care so that we can minimize burnout or hopefully even prevent burnout?

KC Rossi:
It really is for me it was a retraining you know and really feeling the difference like a physical and mental difference of kind of being on that go, go, go frenetic energy and just thinking that was the normal way of life. So, definitely a stillness practice is something that can help you flip the script and allow you to realize, oh my gosh, like this is such a better way, and whatever that is for you, whether it’s meditation, or you know, journaling, or yoga, but something that definitely stills the mind and brings in more of a silence and a stillness that we can go within, I think that that’s really step one we all have intuitive wisdom but we can’t necessarily hear it when there’s chatter in chaos going on all around us. So, the very first thing is to create that space, because that’s really the magic is and that’s where we can start to re-condition what feels good to us and what is our normal so getting a baseline of normal is so important.

I think the second thing Sean is boundaries, and learning to say no, and learning to be able to be like does this serve me? Why am I truly doing this? I do a lot of work with core values and once somebody really kind of embodies their core values, their decisions come so much faster, so they’re not on the yes train, but they can actually be, um, more conscious of what they say yes to you, and also be super aware if they’re saying yes to something they are also saying no to something else. And we only have so much chi in our life and energy to sustain us so I think really a big way to get balance is to understand what we accept and let into our life, whether that’s people, places, or things, you know, and to shift from obligation consciousness into, I get to do this, because I think you know when I look back at my own personal experience I had a lot of got two statements. Oh my gosh, I’ve got to do this, and I’ve got to do that and I’ve got to get back to these emails, lickety split, and now it’s like, okay wait, actually part of going into business was that I get to be the rule creator or even the rule breaker, and I get to design my life in a way that’s going to make me feel good and fill me with joy.

And by no means am I perfect, this is absolutely a practice, like are there weeks where I’m just like holy crap, I’m burnt out, how is this happening? I’m not in alignment. I help people get out of burn out. Yes, absolutely. So, I want to be super clear about that because I think a lot of people feel like it’s like a once you get it, you magically never get burnt out again, and that’s not the case because these patterns are old. And I think the root of a lot of them is people pleasing, unworthiness, and that’s something that that so many of us struggle and that we use working, overworking, and overdelivering to mask the core underlying emotional things that don’t just go away overnight.

Silence is Wonderful (17:46)

Sean Weisbrot:
Technology is all around us to a point where there’s almost always a little buzz in the background noise of every place that we go to, that we live in. There’s been one time in my life that I stopped hearing the buzz, that was when I was going to the great wall of China in Beijing. We took a bus three hours north of where all of the tourists go. When we got there, all we could hear was the wind. That buzzing that we hear at all times becomes this kind of soundtrack to our life that we just become so accustomed to it, that when it’s gone, it’s like wait a minute, what the hell, what’s going on? What is this? Silence, it’s, it’s strange.

KC Rossi:
That’s such wisdom Sean, and I, I believe that people sometimes have anxiety when they get to that stillness, because it does feel foreign. And I see even the younger generations with like my nieces and nephews, where they always are plugged in, and they got that Tiktok on their phone, they have some soundtrack going, or they fall asleep to, you know, something on YouTube. And so, they really have not cultivated that, that silence in space, and I, I do think that you can do it incrementally if that happens to you where you start to say, hey, there’s something to this, I’m hearing about morning routines and meditation all the time, let me try it. And then all the sudden you tap in, your like, oh gosh, this feels awkward and weird, this isn’t for me. I would just you know invite them to go slow and maybe it’s literally a two-minute mindfulness practice or you know it can be small you don’t have to go to this huge extreme where it’s so uncomfortable it’s not going to be sustainable, so I do think to your point, I love the way that you phrased the buzz because even right now the light that’s you know in front of me it has that buzz. And you know we get used to that soundtrack as normal and there is a frequency.

We are energetic beings and so there is this you know kind of rumbling and buzzing going on all the time, and so that stillness I think, can be abnormal feeling even though that is our true center. I’m lucky enough to be on 6 acres and it has trees like the picture behind you. They’re 40-foot spruce trees, and so my favorite time where I can tap into that true stillness that you’re talking about that you experienced in Beijing is when the power goes out, and it’s just me and my land and the trees and there are no buzzing’s of anything. And I think, oh wow, this is really, really beautiful, like I’m OK if it doesn’t come back, you know, it’s like there’s this sense of, we get to choose and I see you know I can completely relate to why homesteaders choose like live off the grid, because there is a sense of peace that we don’t really have.

Survival Skills (20:40)

Sean Weisbrot:
There is this book that I read a long time ago called Emergency. The author was trying to figure out how he could survive a systemic failure of the system, no electricity, no water, nothing. Basically, what do you need to do to stay alive for the first week. He realized that we’re basically screwed after two days. He actually cut off his own electricity and he figured out how to survive.

KC Rossi:
I have a big interest in survival skills and I think that that should be like basic knowledge that our children are taught, you know, I mean really like all the fundamentals and essentials. How do you build a fire? Like, how do you purify water? Like what do you do if you don’t have electric for X amount of time?

Sean Weisbrot:
Well, it’s something that your grandparents knew, it’s maybe even something that your parents knew, but because technology is so ubiquitous and because electricity and water are, are taken for granted, we’ve never learned these skills unless we were in like Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts so it’s kind of like when I look at it young kids now, they never had a financial literacy background. Their parents never taught them about finance or wealth generation or portfolio development and diversification. Schools never taught it. Society doesn’t deem this to be something important. Um, there’s a lot of different things like that, that the average person just doesn’t know because it’s not necessary to know.

Forgotten Skills & Changing Societies (22:11)

KC Rossi:
I don’t know about you Sean, but I mean I have several people in my life under 18 that don’t know how to tell time unless it’s on their smartphone.

Sean Weisbrot:
Call me old fashioned, but I can look at the sun and tell you what direction we’re walking in.

KC Rossi:
Nice, were you a Boy Scout?

Sean Weisbrot:
No, I just have a good sense of direction.

KC Rossi:
Nice.

Sean Weisbrot:
And like I can also kind of have an idea of what time it is. So, when I was 12, my parents taught me how to open a bank account, how to write checks, and balance a checkbook. Obviously, those things are not really necessary anymore because in Asia we don’t use checks really. Well, so when I was in high school I was the treasurer for my youth group and we did fundraising and we actually you know raise like a $1000 USD, I was like 13/14 years old. So, we raised money and we used it for arranging like social good, you know, charity events and things like that. I was managing the money for this this group at the age of 13/14 because my parents taught me. I went back as an observer of the group, and they took away the right for the kids to manage the money. These adults that run the organization took this right away from the children because they were afraid that they were gonna, you know, steal the money or whatever. Basically, they’re robbing these kids the right to learn financial literacy.

KC Rossi:
They are lessons, yeah absolutely.

Sean Weisbrot:
Not to mention the fact that these kids didn’t know how to have a conversation face to face.

KC Rossi:
Yeah, absolutely and it’s not just the children. It’s interesting how our social media consciousness is changing how we relate to people and true connection and authenticity. I mean, I ran into a friend the other day at our local bagel shop, and I was like, oh my gosh, it’s so great to see you. And she’s like “I’m already up to date, I stalk you on Facebook, I know everything going on in your life.” And it was like, wow, like is this what we’ve come to like, what about connection? What about warmth? It kind of blew my mind and it really sat with me.

Sean Weisbrot:
I don’t post to social media, my thinking is if people care about me, they’ll just call me, but they don’t, so my thinking is if you’re not on social media you basically don’t exist anymore.

KC Rossi:
You’re right. Unfortunately, I think that that is where people are getting their information and they feel completely up to date and many people live vicariously through other people’s feeds. It’s become a very distorted reality.

Sean Weisbrot:
And that’s another reason why it’s extremely important to not be on social media and focus on yourself and so part of my self-care is just not looking at social media. Not posting on social media, not engaging with trolls, nothing like that.

KC Rossi:
It’s so interesting in part of you know my business is visibility and that’s what I help my clients with. So, I have a little bit of a flip to, to your philosophy however I respect you and not posting and sometimes in the entrepreneurial world, especially now in the global pandemic, that is where people are going to get information. And we can’t not exist if we want a thriving business and so there has to be this balance and I do work with people that tend to lean more towards being an introvert and so that visibility piece is a pain point. That’s something that they’re like I don’t want to contribute to the noise I don’t necessarily want to put myself out there. I do think that there is a mental health aspect to the comparison of other people and that’s where you see imposter syndrome come up. Especially with entrepreneurs and so I think again it’s, it’s boundaries, it’s time limits, it is being laser focused on what your objectives are. Why am I doing this? Why am I posting this? Who do I want to reach? How is this going to improve my business? And really using it like you mentioned social good using it as an outlet to spread your message and positive vibes because I think in the entrepreneurial space if we hide then no one will know us no matter how great our products or service is.

Sean Weisbrot:
Yeah, in my first business I was the face of the business. I was extremely public about everything I did, and I wrote a lot of content and I had people trolling me in creating memes about me all sorts of nasty disgusting. I was a non-profit after all. I was just doing good for the city and for the country people, were still trying to hurt me for no reason it was really sad the worst thing was it wasn’t even Chinese people doing it. It was other like Western people living in China doing this to me. They were probably jealous of the success that I have.

KC Rossi:
Yeah I’m sorry that happened to you, and I can see where that would leave a mark. I mean, we’re human, and even though people I think feel that they can say and do things a little bit more incognito, it still hurts us on the other end like we’re human we have emotions and especially when you’re trying to put your heart out there and it feels like it get stomped on that definitely can leave a mark. Absolutely.

Sean Weisbrot:
Well, that’s why I decided with Sidekick that I’m leaving all of the content to the team. I’m not the mouthpiece of the company. The team was like, “oh you should tweet, like you should establish your personal brand to help the company.” And I was like, “I’m gonna make a podcast,” and they’re like “no, no, no, we just want you to tweet,” like no, like “I’m gonna start a podcast because if I’m going to put anything on Twitter, it’s gonna be a link to a podcast if people want to know me, they’re gonna have to go and listen to my podcast.”

KC Rossi:
I love podcasting. I think it’s an excellent medium I feel that it’s only going to increase in interest and momentum in impact as we move into 2021. I think it’s a very intimate platform. you literally have your message in people’s head with their ear buds, and I just, yeah I, I love it. I think it’s a fabulous way to connect and share your message.

KC’s Advice (27:34)

Sean Weisbrot:
You have a podcast too, no?

KC Rossi:
I do, Women Developing Brilliance.

Sean Weisbrot:
Okay, what made you want to start that?

KC Rossi:
You know, it was interesting. I felt at the time that I really needed to increase my visibility. I definitely hit behind the introvert label myself, that’s probably why attract those people and can help them through. It really took me an entire year to press the go live button on Facebook. I was terrified of video and putting myself out there and I was afraid of judgment like you, you know, having your own personal life. And so, I thought well how can I, you know, have a bigger impact, and also stay in alignment if I’m helping other people increase our visibility that I have to be visible as well. So, it was an integrity thing for me, and I felt like how can I do this and not feel so exposed, and so I started doing interviews first. And I interviewed over a hundred female entrepreneurs and it was an excellent way for the conversation to be there and to provide value and then literally just this year I was looking through my social feed I was like, wow ,I look like a PR agency, and I realize that I have still been playing small and being the cheerleader and not the leader and so this is kind of this new iteration where I’m doing more solo cast and calling myself out.

And as I change, my audience changes as well, and so I’m seeing as I start to step into my own leadership that I’m attracting more leaders who want to up level. So, I love how that happens and it’s been, you know, a great process to really see how we all have such similarities because through being able to interview over a hundred female entrepreneurs that really are leaders in their own space, we talk very candidly about the journey. And the ups, and the downs, and it’s not like an Instagram highlight reel, it’s literally like what are your biggest lessons and what do you wish you knew, and you know really being vulnerable about what this current struggles still are, because it’s not a piece of cake.

And I think because of that people don’t feel broken when they listen to it and they don’t feel alone that I thought it was just me that I didn’t have 10K+ followers, or I thought it was just me that I was struggling with this they can hear real stories from other people and go, oh my gosh, I can self-identify, and they got through it. They push themselves, they developed a routine, or they created boundaries, or they realized, wait I can be spiritual and profitable at the same time. Like, whatever the limiting beliefs were, we can talk about them, shine light on them, and say Hey people got to the other side and you can too, so I think it’s just it’s really just a fabulous way to connect and yeah, like I said just be super real.

Sean Weisbrot:
One of the reasons I started We Live to Build is because I’m inspired more by the, the obstacles that they overcame or the things that they learned about themselves in the process of getting to their hopefully success, than the, than the success itself.

KC Rossi:
Absolutely, and I think that you know, we’re not alone in that. People want to know all of the chapters. They don’t just want the Tada moment of you at the peak of the mountain, and they want to see the struggle in the and, and, and also get inspired of, of how you overcame those challenges. So, I’m absolutely right there with you and, and I think that that’s, that’s the beauty of learning and growing.

Sean Weisbrot:
So how can people connect with you online?

KC Rossi:
They can head to my website kcrossi.com. Also have a free audio that I would love to get your listeners and it’s 7 tips to really soothe the fear, to overcome fears so you can store in your business and life I think that that like and when we got back to the emotional route when we can learn tips and strategies to overcome the things that hold us back so I have an audio and that link is a https://bit.ly/kcrstore.

Sean Weisbrot:
And all of that that’ll be on the website welivetobuild.com/podcast.

KC Rossi:
Awesome.

Sean Weisbrot: All right thanks for joining us today, it’s been a fun call.

KC Rossi:
Absolutely Sean, thank you so much.