Entrepreneur
Key Takeaways
- Burnout isn’t solved by big resets — it’s solved by one small, repeatable commitment.
- Progress starts when you stop carrying everything alone and create a place for problems.
On December 27, 2023, I was sitting alone in my fiancée’s motorhome.
It was a good motorhome. Comfortable. Clean. A tiny desk tucked into the corner where I could work if I needed to. Nothing about it felt broken or chaotic.
That was the problem.
I should have been inside with family. Laughing. Being present. Enjoying the quiet stretch between Christmas and New Year’s. Instead, I was sitting alone, staring at my phone, feeling completely overwhelmed and strangely isolated.
From the outside, my life looked like progress. The business was growing. People depended on me. Momentum existed. But inside, I felt like I was carrying everything myself and slowly collapsing under the weight of it.
When moments like this happen, my mind does something familiar. I stop feeling like an adult entrepreneur and suddenly feel like I am 13 again.
That kid who stuttered when he got nervous.
The kid who felt dumb even when he was not.
The kid who got made fun of for speaking up, so he learned to stay quiet.
That voice does not say, “You are overwhelmed.” It says, “You were never that smart.” It tells me I fooled people and my luck is about to run out.
That night, that voice was loud.
I had been trying to outrun it. Literally. I started running every other night, convincing myself discipline would fix everything. I would run five miles, feel proud for about ten minutes, then undo it all with Chick-fil-A. Motion without progress. Effort without clarity.
Sitting alone in that motorhome, I finally admitted what I had been avoiding.
I was burned out.
Not tired. Not stressed. Burned out in the kind of way that makes even small decisions feel heavy.
So I made the call.
I called my mentor, Vaughn, and told him the truth. I was exhausted, and something had to change. I did not have a strategy or a plan. I just knew I could not keep going like this.
For years, we had talked about EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System. I had read the books. I understood the concepts. Vision. Traction. Metrics. Goals. Weekly meetings. I knew what I was supposed to do.
When he suggested it might finally be time to launch EOS, my chest tightened.
My mind immediately spiraled. Quarterly rocks. Scorecards. Long-term goals. Accountability charts. It felt like being handed a checklist with thirty items when I could barely manage one.
I told him I did not have it in me. I meant it.
How would you eat an elephant?
He paused, then asked me a question that caught me completely off guard.
“How do you eat an elephant?”
I remember thinking, this is not why I called. I told him I did not know.
He said you eat an elephant one bite at a time.
Then he said something that changed everything.
Do not launch EOS. Just launch a weekly meeting.
Same day. Same time. That is it.
No perfect rollout. No system overhaul. No pretending we had it all figured out.
Just one bite.
So that is what we did.
The first meetings were messy. We did not have scorecards. We did not have rocks. We did not even really know what we were doing. Some weeks felt productive. Others felt pointless.
But we kept the meeting.
That consistency mattered more than I realized at the time. It gave the business a place to put problems instead of storing them all in my head. It gave us rhythm. It gave me room to breathe.
Over time, one meeting led to clarity. Clarity led to metrics. Metrics led to priorities. Priorities led to long-term thinking.
Not all at once. Not perfectly. One bite at a time.
Internal changes lead to external success
Two years later, we fully run on EOS.
We have a ten-year goal that actually guides decisions. We have three-year and one-year plans that align the team. We run structured meetings. We track what matters.
But the biggest change was internal.
I stopped equating overwhelm with failure.
I stopped believing struggle meant I was not capable.
I stopped trying to fix everything at once.
Here is the lesson I learned the hard way.
Most entrepreneurs do not fail because they do not know what to do. They fail because they try to eat the whole elephant in one sitting.
When you are stuck, you assume the solution has to be big. A full reset. A major launch. A perfect plan. That belief keeps you frozen.
Progress does not start with confidence. It starts with one small action you can repeat.
If you are a new business owner or an entrepreneur who feels stuck right now, I want you to hear this clearly.
You are not broken.
You are not dumb.
You are not behind.
You are overwhelmed.
Do not launch the big thing yet.
Do not rebuild everything.
Do not wait until you feel ready.
Pick one small commitment. One meeting. One habit. One conversation. One decision.
On December 27, 2023, sitting alone in that motorhome, I did not need a new system. I needed permission to take the first bite.
If you are reading this and feeling that same knot in your stomach, here is my challenge.
What is the elephant in front of you?
Take one bite today.
Key Takeaways
- Burnout isn’t solved by big resets — it’s solved by one small, repeatable commitment.
- Progress starts when you stop carrying everything alone and create a place for problems.
On December 27, 2023, I was sitting alone in my fiancée’s motorhome.
It was a good motorhome. Comfortable. Clean. A tiny desk tucked into the corner where I could work if I needed to. Nothing about it felt broken or chaotic.
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