There was a moment over Christmas where I just shut down. Literally shut down mentally and physically. I couldn’t wake up easily, I didn’t want to work out (in spite of just completing the #basementofchampions), I didn’t follow up with emails, occasionally didn’t even leave the house for the entire day, and had a couple extra glasses of wine or bourbon each night.

2015 was a tough year. While not only building and moving into a new house, selling the old one in a down market (Edmonton is very closely hinged to the price of oil, which saw a 70% price decline in the past 24 months, and lead to a doubling of the unemployment rate of Alberta as a whole), I traveled for 10 different workshops or conferences, trained over 1200 sessions, and launched 2 products (High Tensile Strength and also Advanced Core Training) while also developing 2 others.

It was busy.

Financially, it was the best year of my life. Professionally, I had growth opportunities that had never presented themselves to me before, and I had a slew of new options to figure out how to take advantage of effectively.

Personally, I was tired. This wasn’t as much fun as it once was. Maybe I could just tell myself to suck it up and hustle harder. That seems to be the trend in the world these days, especially among the entrepreneurial set. My workouts were lacklustre and not overly focused, my nutrition wasn’t up to par, my sleep quality was low, and I wasn’t excited to go to work like I once was.

It took about 2 weeks to reset and to figure out what was important to me, and to realize that this year would likely be the last of a lot of travel. I mean, I’ll likely still get out and do the odd workshop, but it won’t be at nearly the same pace as the past 3 or 4 years, where I was teaching seemingly every second weekend. It sounds glamorous, but the routine of airport –> hotel –> venue –> hotel –> airport tends to become monotonous and less than thrilling after a while. Instead of 10-15, it will likely be 3-4.

Also, developing products or programs tends to take a lot of time, effort, personal sacrifice, and to paraphrase Hemingway, bleeding all over the paper. In many ways, I’m just a one-man show, so most if not all of the stuff you see is directly from me doing the work. Over time I’ve been fortunate enough to outsource some things like filming, editing, and website setup since I have no idea what I’m doing with any of that, but I still coordinate, write, and arrange everything else.

To give an idea, to put together High Tensile Strength, which is a 6 month program with over 280 month-long programs and over 300 custom coaching videos, the total time invested into the project was 674 hours, not including the time spent thinking about it while not working on it. Most of this work was done between 8-10pm after working 12 hour days, and on Sunday afternoons.

The frequency I was writing for this blog suffered. My workout frequency suffered. The quality time I could spend with my wife and friends suffered. I’m sure the quality of service I gave to my clients suffered as well.

I appreciate everyone who can go full throttle every day and seemingly never run out of energy. From what I’ve heard, individuals like Gary Vaynerchuk are very much like this, and highly value the act of the hustle in propelling their business forward. I’ve been in this mainframe and can say it’s entirely invaluable to seeing success, but in many cases it has to be mitigated or somehow balanced in order to see the kind of results you’re looking for without burning out.

Many trainers get into a burnout state early in their careers when pressed with the concept of 60-90 hour weeks, researching to stay ahead of the curve, dealing with client demands, and then also ensuring they’re taking care of their own health and wellbeing.

However, as I’m sure many professionals and entrepreneurs can attest, there comes a point where you have to slow down. While we can say that everyone has the same number of hours in each day, how we spend our energy in those hours can make the difference between having productive time and still meaningful non-work life and working all day while not enjoying yourself at all.

Now I could always do something like hire someone to manage social media, blog posts, product development, and other concepts of business that could make me less of a requirement on my time while still allowing expansion of my business, but then I would have to worry about having someone on staff, giving them enough work to do, and all of the other fun stuff that comes with employees.

I don’t really want to do that.

Sol Orwell wrote a really great piece for the Globe and Mail  on how he’s managed to make Examine.com a massive success without looking for any money from investors, and one of the key lines which he saved for the end, at least in my opinion, shook me hard:

I’m here to make a dent. I don’t need to dominate.

Keeping the accelerator floored can work for a little while, but eventually you have to coast and even come to a complete stop. I don’t doubt I could hire a staff, create a plan and develop some systems to see further expansion of the Dean Somerset “brand” (which is just squats, stories of Starbucks stuff, and showing people how to get their workout on), but to be honest I don’t really want that. It’s great for the people that do, and my hats off to them, but that’s not me.

I discussed this while cruising through Florida last May with both Pete Dupuis (business manager for Cressey Sport Performance) and also Mark Fisher (head unicorn of Mark Fisher Fitness). They both asked whether I would open my own place and I said I wasn’t really interested, as I knew there were so many elements involved that go unnoticed and I sincerely wasn’t interested in taking on that stress. They both nodded in agreement that it’s something you seriously have to want to do, and no one expects it to be like it is when they open their own places.

The same goes for developing an online business. I know a lot of people who run very successful domains and have massive niches carved out for themselves, have a team of people working for them and seem unstoppable.

That’s great. I have no problem with that, and am always proud of seeing my friends crush it and do big things on the regular.

But that’s not me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ox0KBeKAL6s

I want to be able to sleep in on the weekend to the ripe hour of 8am. I want to be able to work out every day without worrying about how many tasks I still have left to complete before I can exhale. I want to have dinner at home with my wife each night.

This might seem like a sort of cop out to many, but in honesty, I’ve worked hard since I was in high school. I went to school, studied, played sports, and worked part time to pay for sports and to put gas in my car. When I was in university, I took full course loads, and worked part time to pay for food and internet access, as well as books. When I graduated and started working, I routinely put in 90 hour weeks and only started to reduce hours within the past few years down to 50 hours, and now down to 45 hours a week.

As I decreased my in-person coaching hours, I slowly ramped up the hours spent on distance coaching, teaching workshops, writing, and developing my business. I would still say I work around 70 hours a week, but it’s spread out differently.

Now it would be very easy to simply follow the money, realize that I’m making twice as much income from my business as I am making from coaching clients and decide to stop coaching and focus solely on building my business and brand further. However, I think this would take away from some of the legitimacy of my offering, as I still primarily coach people. There’s no replacement for having a hands-on directive, and the information you can get from working with someone directly, which I feel translates into how I write and how I present at my workshops.

Plus, I like working with people compared to interacting through a screen.

Additionally, expansion isn’t always a sign of success. Sure it brings more money, which is in many ways the view of success, but at what point does the quest for more tend to start interfering with other elements of life? If I’m working 80-100 hours a week, making money hand over fist, but have no meaningful relationships, or ways of spending my money on personal interests because I have no hobbies, does that benefit me at all? Likely not.

In terms of looking for more success, I don’t really need any more. In terms of money, I have what I need and then enough to be comfortable. Getting more money won’t change my lifestyle in any measurable manner, other than to simply have more money in the bank. I technically don’t need to work harder.

In the end, my concept of success is giving my best, sleeping well each night, and having enough money to do what I want. More than that provides diminishing returns, unless the cost associated with it is low enough to validate it. I can choose to take on a new client or not. I can choose to teach another workshop or not. I can develop a new product or not. For the time being, I’m enjoying having enough time to workout every night, do the workshops I have scheduled for 2016, and getting back to writing some more for this site as well as others, and reacquainting myself with a few hobbies for personal enjoyment.

If you’re looking to see what you can get from this post, the big question to you is what you define as success in your life? Is it maximizing time with your family, spending hours in the gym, or fly fishing on a Wednesday afternoon? Do you try to get in 4 rounds of golf a week or want to make a million dollars a year? Each person will define success differently, so be willing to acknowledge what that means to you and then work towards it.

Maybe it’s just me, but the concept of out hustling everyone else in the room is one that doesn’t seem as necessary as it once was, so I’m happy to continue to make my dent. If you’re goal is to dominate, I’ll cheer you on from the sidelines.