Jay Papasan:
Hey, gang. This week we’re talking to my good friend, Mallory Rowan. She’s a super successful entrepreneur. She’s launched multiple businesses starting in her twenties and now has a brand new thing. But what we’re really gonna talk about is burnout. She hit it hard. She hit a wall. She had walking pneumonia. And she realized then that she had to make a difference.
So, we’re gonna cover how do you identify if you’re approaching burnout? How do you avoid it? If you’re already in it, how do we get out of it successfully, reclaim our health and our sanity? And then, how do we design our business to avoid it in the future? So, for all of you gritty hard workers out there, this is the episode for you because what we want for you is to not only avoid burnout but also have huge success.
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Jay Papasan:
I’m Jay Papasan. And this is The ONE Thing, your weekly guide to the simple steps that lead to extraordinary results.
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Jay Papasan:
Mallory, welcome to The ONE Thing Podcast.
Mallory Rowan:
Thanks so much for having me.
Jay Papasan:
I want to dive right in the deep end. You’ve built this amazing power lifting apparel business with your now husband, and you hit a wall, burnout. What were the first signs that burnout was announcing itself into your life, and did you even hear them in the beginning?
Mallory Rowan:
I definitely missed the early signs. So, the sign that I caught was going to the doctor for something as simple as a prescription refill, and she asked how long I had this cough for. And the thing was, I was so used to slowly deteriorating that my answer was, “I don’t know, maybe a year?” I am asthmatic. So, sometimes, I’m like, “That’s a good caveat of ‘It’s not crazy for me to have a cough.'”
But just from a listen, she said, “You definitely have pneumonia. I’m going to send you for a chest X-ray.” But hearing this just broke that wall for me, where (1), it felt so shocking to hear there was even something wrong with me when I had just been continuing to push through; and secondly, I found this major sense of relief in that, which disturbed me a little bit because I had been going so hard, and hearing that I had something as serious as pneumonia felt like a permission slip to take a step back in certain things, like an upcoming power lifting meet that I was dreading because my body had been falling apart. So, it was this really surreal moment where it was the best and worst news I could have, is that I had pneumonia.
The signs that I definitely missed in hindsight were all the mental and emotional things that come before the physical burnout. So, they say if you don’t listen to your body when it whispers, it’ll make you listen when it screams, and I think that was very true for me because when I look back, there were periods where I just didn’t feel like myself. I felt so easily irritated. I’ve never been an angry person. But sometimes, if a team member of my-
Jay Papasan:
I can’t imagine you angry. Honestly, I just can’t. Okay.
Mallory Rowan:
I’ve had my car broken into, and the police were surprised at whose car it was because of how chill I was. But I did find that for my team members, they would make a small mistake, and I felt this really quite big anger inside of me, so irritated, and I often felt like I was losing my personality. I think for me, it was an interesting time just because of the life phase I was in. I was coming out of university, coming into adulthood. And so, a part of me was maybe convincing myself this is just adulthood, that I’m less fun, that I’m less interesting, less of a good time to be around. So, it wasn’t until I really got that diagnosis that I realized there was so much happening behind the scenes.
Jay Papasan:
You’re running this big business, this power lifting apparel. You’re also competing. You’ve got walking or lifting pneumonia, depending on how we want to put it. The fact that you’re competing with pneumonia, people are gritty, right? We say “know how to do hard things,” and going and lifting heavy weights is one of those places that reinforces that in our identity. That works until your body starts screaming at you. So, your reservoir of patience, it sounds like, got exhausted. So, you were more irritable. Were there other warning signs that you just didn’t hear?
Mallory Rowan:
Yeah, I would say if the wrong song came on and you start crying in the car. I can get emotional on a good day, but I think there was this underlying sense of being just on the brim of a mental breakdown at all times, whether that was coming through emotionally or just the mental fatigue of carrying it all. But definitely for me, the irritability and the just lack of personality I felt. I really felt myself dimming.
Jay Papasan:
So, that makes sense to me. We write about willpower in The ONE Thing, and it is something that you can exhaust. It’s incredibly powerful when you have it, and you use your willpower to focus on things you don’t enjoy. We use our willpower to make ourselves do things that we don’t necessarily want to do. And if you’re in that phase of I have to, I have to, I have to ’cause you’re doing all of these things at once, and I forgot that you were also coming out of university. So, you’ve got your closing studies, you’ve got this big huge business, and you’ve got your competition going on. There’s a lot of have-tos in your life. And if you’re using all of your willpower for that, just your executive function and control around little things.
Like one of the actual documented cases for draining down willpower is not crying in a sad movie. That’s one of the tests they did. They would make them watch sad movies and tell them not to cry to see if it was measuring their willpower and it shows up. And if it’s exhausted, good luck. The faucet’s gonna turn on.
So, you get this diagnosis. It was a relief ’cause now you’ve got this permission card. Of course, you can’t compete with pneumonia. Of course, you have to slow down. What did you do next?
Mallory Rowan:
So, we had, kind of, our provincials. So, similar to a state competition. So, the first thing I did was withdraw from that. When we talk about willpower, I think an interesting one is, showing up in those times. We often think the hard times are when we have to push through the business deals or things like that, but sometimes the hard times can be admitting when we do need an out.
And for me, I could have got a medical leave. That’s something that’s allowed in power lifting to go straight to nationals. And so, I had to give myself that quiet permission to say, “We’re actually not even going to do the medical leave,” because if I don’t do provincials next month, that means that four or five months from now, I’m not allowed to do nationals. And I just knew the state that my body was in, I needed that black-and-white rule that I will not be allowed to do it. I didn’t want to just be pushing off a decision. And so, I think that was a really important decision I made was realizing that our body can deteriorate so quickly, but then the repair phase can be so long.
Mallory Rowan:
So, I think that’s a very important step is actually recognizing. It’s like anything, right? We have to admit we have a problem first. But recog-
Jay Papasan:
Hi, my name is Jay, and … yeah.
Mallory Rowan:
Exactly. So, realizing that it was going to take a minute was really important for me, and finding that thing that I could hold onto that was the reason, even if it’s just to give other people the reason of, “Yeah, I’m not doing provincials or nationals this year because I had pneumonia and won’t be able to compete,” it was really important to give myself that period.
The other thing I did is start relying more on the support system in my life. I do pride myself on an ability to push through, but I think recognizing and pulling back where I could. We had events, we were traveling a lot for events with this business to promote the brand. And so, actually, actively choosing to, for the first time, not attend the event, have my team do it fully, and just be at home figuring out those next steps.
And for me, that also looked like hiring professionals because I think once it gets to that physical point, there’s a very large uphill battle, and it’s important to know that’s a support system, too. We often think of a support system as the people we naturally have around us, but actually the people that you hire are such an important support system too, whether that’s a health coach or a nutritionist, naturopath, so many different options.
Jay Papasan:
And just a few more dollars per hour can get you a completely different level of professionality that shows up, right? Especially in the beginning, if we’re trying to be really thrifty to manage our profit and our resources, we often compromise on things. And it just sounds like you entered a phase of healthy boundaries. I’m going to set some boundaries around what I’m going to say yes to now and in the future. I’m going to set some boundaries of what I am going to allow myself to do, and I’m also going to ask for help, whether that’s hiring help or asking for help.
And our former guest, Dr. Robyne, amazing, amazing person, she taught me that burnout, a lot of people think they burn out because they’re weak. That’s their internal monologue. And she said it’s the curse of the strong. It’s only the strong that press forward to the point where they do hit the breakdown. So, it only happens to people who tend to be disproportionately strong and gritty because their nature is to break down the wall. Let me kick in that door and make sure that what I want is on the other side. And so, breaking that cycle is huge.
A lot of people… now that was a lot to get to this question, a lot of people listening are going to really struggle. They could maybe hit pause. They might be able to set some boundaries. Asking for help is a hard one. Did you struggle with asking for help?
Mallory Rowan:
I think, for me, it had reached the point where because there was a physical component of attend this event, drive to that other city or not, it really forced me to realize I couldn’t push my body any bit further. So, on my team side, it was easier to delegate. I think when it came to actually finding that support to hire people to help me, I think that’s sometimes where we’re so used to figuring it out on our own, and it also feels like another project, right? We already have the business. We already have maybe this other side thing we’re doing. We have our personal life. And so, we’re adding another project.
But I also think the qualities we have that are so good that you mentioned in someone that wants to push, we often have these milestones or these forecasts we’re trying to hit, whether that’s in business or with fitness, right? We’re trying to lift a certain amount of weight that we’re just bulldozing right through those. And you can almost take that same tool and use it for good of saying, “Well, if I can have someone who’s leading strategy for me when it comes to my health and helping me hit these milestones and work towards these milestones that are actually really healthy milestones for where I am right now,” I think that’s a way that we can take that ambitious self and really use it for good of, “Hey, I’m going to give myself the gift of that structure of support.”
But it also doesn’t mean it’s easy because I definitely had experiences where I asked for that support and it didn’t immediately solve it. Shocking. And so, that can be difficult of realizing, “Okay, there are certain scenarios, like anything in life, where we have to continue to seek out new versions of support.” And so I think continuing to advocate for yourself in those times can be really hard. It’s just that active choice of, “I don’t want to feel how I’m feeling right now for the rest of my life,” is really what was pushing me to find those solutions.
Jay Papasan:
You got a really good source of motivation. When you were describing bringing on a strategist, it sounded an awful lot like you hired a health coach. Is that who you hired? Was that one of the people you brought in as a health coach or a strategist?
Mallory Rowan:
Yeah. I hired a health coach, did some different testing, had to do elimination diets. We talked about the pneumonia, but for me, I was also experiencing hair loss. I was getting unexplainable rashes that allergists couldn’t solve. And so, a lot of the times, what happens with burnout, which others listening might have experienced is it’s so systemic inside of us that it’s really hard to pinpoint when we go to the doctor’s office because we’re saying, “I have this weird rash that comes sometimes on my face, but I can’t really explain when it’s coming. Sometimes, I bloat with certain foods and sometimes I don’t. I feel like I’m experiencing hair loss, but it’s also a hard thing to gauge.” And so, they can run all these blood tests, but it’s not always going to show.
So, that can definitely be a difficult part of it. But for me, it was bringing on a health coach that could look at all aspects of it. What am I doing in my exercise and movement, in the kitchen, and then what kind of tests do we need to run for what’s going on inside?
Jay Papasan:
I love that. And I just recently read, I think when a doctor is looking at stress, stress contributes to everything, right? So, if you have a cold, stress will make it last a little longer. You just add it to everything. But when they’re diagnosing that stress is the problem, they have to eliminate everything else first. So, they know that it’s there, but if it’s the source of the problem, then they have to do a lot of those tests to make sure that it isn’t congestive heart failure or hypertension on something else. Is stress the root cause?
Your journey sounds right. You do need an expert to guide you through that and make sure that it’s not impacting areas that you wouldn’t expect. I’ve seen adrenal failure. I’ve seen people’s immune systems go wacko. If you’ve got all these things, yes, go see a doctor, go on that journey, and also start finding ways to actively lower your stress, because even if it’s not the root cause, it is a contributing aggravation to everything else.
So, before we wrap up this first part, since that power lifting apparel business, you’ve built multiple other businesses that have gone into high six figures. I don’t know if they’ve made seven figures or not, but I think of you as a serially successful entrepreneur. When you were designing your next business, did you go about it differently saying, “This is the next thing I’m going to do, and I’m gonna approach it completely differently now.”
Mallory Rowan:
Yes, absolutely. So, a few different pieces of it. The first one being identity. So, that was a big one for me, being a competitive powerlifter and a young entrepreneur or just a business owner in general. Those are two pretty heavy identity pieces that are really fun to grab onto, right? They’re exciting things about yourself, and I definitely loved those things about myself.
And so, one of the things I did when going through that burnout was really separate myself from my work more than anything. The powerlifting piece happened a little bit naturally of when you can’t really train that way, you’re not necessarily actively powerlifting. But it was the work piece for me as well that I really had to exercise. Okay, can I separate who I am, who I introduce myself as in a room, who I know that I want to be in this world, from my work? Because it’s really easy for us to use those labels and grab onto them. But the more I got comfortable in, saying to someone, “I work in marketing,” instead of fully explaining what I do or even mentioning that I own a business, the more I realized I was really comfortable with the identity, regardless of these things that we grab onto that often are such a source of stress. So, that was definitely the first piece for me.
Jay Papasan:
That it put you to the test.
Mallory Rowan:
Yeah.
Jay Papasan:
“Hi, Mallory. Nice to meet you. Tell me a little bit about yourself.” Like, where do you go? ‘Cause I know most people say, “Oh, I’m a realtor,” or, “Oh, I own a fitness business.” The default for everyone is to tell what you do, not who you are.
Mallory Rowan:
One thing I love to do is to throw it right back to someone and say, “Well, what would you like to know about me?” And then, that can be really fun because it also pulls out what they’re actually interested in. But you can also just talk about what you’re doing in life. I might say, “Hey I’m from Ottawa originally. I’m currently living in Toronto. Right now, I’m really into this interest and this hobby, and I’ve been really enjoying doing this with my summer.” And if they’re like, “Oh, cool, what do you do professionally,” right? Yeah.
Jay Papasan:
You’re telling people where your attention is directed, and you’re not making identity statements. Because the thing we forget a lot of times is when we say things, good or bad about ourselves, our brain’s always listening, and it can attach ourselves to that identity. So, that’s great. So, you started describing your identity in different ways. So, you weren’t gonna wrap your identity into your work. It sounded like you were also… were you building space for hobbies too? What else were you doing?
Mallory Rowan:
Yeah. So, I would say a subpiece of that was coming to terms with the seasons of my life. I’m someone where I’ve always loved change. I say I get bored easily. And I also think as those people that can be so ambitious, sometimes, when we grab onto a thing, whether it’s the next business or even something like, right now, we’re seeing so many people compete in HYROX training or marathons, triathlons, we really grab onto them, but it’s also important to realize, maybe you don’t do marathons for the rest of your life, and it’s okay that this could be a season of that.
And once I started letting go of that, I found this thing I love forever because that was really hard to come to terms with. With power lifting and even the business, it was like we hadn’t thought past a year or two. We were just loving the sport and running with it, which I think is so beautiful. But now, recognizing those seasons, it means I’m allowed to get bored.
So, for my business, I decided instead of trying to pretend I’m someone else who’s going to find this business that I’m gonna love for the rest of my life, I’m gonna build boredom into the business. So, for me, that looked like starting with some one-on-one coaching in a group program, but knowing that I would want to change that into a course and use that material to turn it into a self-led program because I just know that I get bored repeating the same information cohort after cohort, where someone else might love that, right?
So, for me, it was really accepting how my brain works, and then that really translates into my body. So, knowing that my brain loves the dopamine hit of something like a live workshop where there’s a start/stop to it, and actually giving space for that in the season, or knowing that I love coaching, but I might not wanna scale it into a coaching business where I have coaches under me because that takes away the thing I love about it.
Jay Papasan:
You’re designing for future flexibility, right? You’re not gonna lock yourself into anything. And it’s funny, I was chatting with Coach Jordan, who’s been on this podcast a lot, and who you know, he’s also in our mastermind together, the thing that we observed is people in the moment often envision the way they are and the way they feel is almost permanent. Like, “I’m a grownup, this is who I am,” but all you have to do is roll back five years. It’s like, did you feel this way five years ago? And what about five years before that?
We’re always evolving, but the person we are right now rarely acknowledges how often we evolve and change. And so, I think it’s super healthy that you got really in tune with that, and you actually leaned into it, knowing your nature, and you’re building so that you have a lot of choices in your future, and you don’t get locked into things that you’ll get bored. And doing things we don’t enjoy is, again, part of the recipe for burnout.
Mallory Rowan:
Yeah. A quote that I really grabbed onto is, “You’re holding on awfully tight to your old life for someone who said they wanted a new one.” And I think it’s so true, where we look back and we’re so proud of where we came from five years ago, but it’s so hard to process that to be proud five years from now, it’s going to also require changes that happened, and really, that come inevitably.
Jay Papasan:
Thank you for just punching me in the gut. Yeah, we all need to hear that periodically, right? That’s one of those that will… I’ve got versions of that on my wall, where I just know those are quotes that I have to address, right? You can’t grab the new thing without letting go of the old, and it’s really hard to sometimes see that we’re holding on.
That’s another reason I love having a friend, my wife, or a coach in my life to point out, it’s like, “Hey, for someone who says you wanna go there, \you’re really not moving in that direction right now. You’re actually actively resisting it.”
Mallory Rowan:
Absolutely. That was a Post-It note on my computer all of last year. And that’s something that I’ve – even though, like I said, this was almost seven years ago that I changed how I was running my business, still six years later, I needed the reminder again that it’s okay to move into that next chapter. And so, I think that’s a really big part of it.
And then when it comes to building that business, once you’ve figured out that side of it, you’re left with looking at, what do I actually really want? And I think when you start to accept that things can be seasons, you accept that your identity is not just in your work, it’s already done a lot of that first work of removing the pressures of what you think you want. But the biggest thing I find holds people back, and you and I have talked about The ONE Thing, I’ve used it so much in my business, in my transition from burnout, when we look at what’s that one thing for us, I think often people are not taking the time to actually figure out what the one thing is for them because we’re jumping to, “I want success,” “Okay, my one thing is, building a seven-figure business,” and what’s the one thing that’s gonna build that business? And we’re not taking the time to go, “Actually, what I want is time freedom.”
And so, I do something called the toddler test, where the same way a toddler asks you over and over again, “Why? Why? Why?” And trying to get to that root, right? That’s what I do with myself of asking myself, “What do I really mean by that?” So, you and I could both be building a business for time freedom, and we could mean entirely different things from that, right? A new mom could mean being able to be present with her kid or pick up the kids from school at 3:00 and be off the clock with work. You might mean that you could travel all year round if you wanted. And maybe for me, it’s that I can take three months off at the end of the year.
We all mean different things by it, but often what we do is we see someone else building towards something like time freedom or financial freedom, and we go, “That looks like something I might want.” So, we grab on. But we haven’t really done the work to figure out, what do I really mean by that?
And I find when you go further and further, and you get to that root thing of what it is that you really want, all of a sudden the options open up. And so, you’re able to actually figure out, okay, I better understand what I want. And now, I’m deeply connected to this, so I can get there usually faster because it’s clearer to me of what needs to be done.
The second scenario is you realize, “Okay, this is a path. The path that I’m currently on is a path I could take to get this thing but, also, now, I could explore other paths to get there. Or lastly, you realize, “I don’t even really care about this thing. It’s something that maybe got put on a pedestal. Maybe I saw it on social media. Maybe it was passed down from a parent or a sibling or someone that made me feel like I should want this thing.” And in those last two scenarios, the doors really open up for you to get honest with yourself and start exploring what you could actually do from there to solve it.
Jay Papasan:
Oh my gosh, there’s so many places. I was always taught that the truth comes out between the fourth and the fifth why on your toddler test.
Mallory Rowan:
Yes.
Jay Papasan:
Right. Is that the first few answers are usually the easy regurgitated ones that may not even be yours. People have to think the third time you ask why. And then, they’re going beyond reasons and usually into, I find, identity, to wrap up identity into the conversation again. “Oh, and I really want that time to drop off my kids and pick them up from school.” “Why?” “Because my mom didn’t.” “And why is that important to you?” “Because I really wanna be a better mother.” Or I’m just making that up. But you’re like, “Oh,” so like this is like an identity thing. You’re trying to avoid a mistake that you felt had happened in your past, and you want to not have regrets around it. It’s much deeper. So great.
What are other things you could do to feel like you’re living that identity, and it may be a lot less hoops to jump through? I wanted to unpack it with a little bit of an example because people think, “Oh, I wanna own my house free and clear.” There are a lot of ways that you can live without a mortgage payment, but we have to get to the ground truth of what is it you actually want and why. And then, we can say what are actually my options? Why am I fixated on this one there’s an easier path or a faster path out there?” So super wise. I love your toddler test.
Mallory Rowan:
Yeah. And especially when we’re, at a point at something like burnout, it’s even harder to see through all of the noise of what it is that we actually want. And so, it can feel really hard to stop and think about it. But so often, we just get to this point where I’m just pushing through and doing these actions because I think it’s what I’m supposed to do. And we might even decide, I wanna leave my business and I wanna quit and go off on the island. But if you can actually get to the root of, “I’m not enjoying how I spend my day-to-day, I’m not feeling happy at the end of the day,” we can explore all those options.
And maybe the answer is that you end up quitting and pursuing something else. But it could also be delegation. It could also be bringing in a new team member. It could be working more in hybrid. It could be having really great non-negotiable boundaries around your work, or it could be adding things too. It could be adding a hobby on the weekend or realizing that you need to go out on a weeknight to feel a little more alive.
And so, I think all of that brings us to more optionality. And the more options you can bring towards yourself is the more power you have in choosing the one that feels right.
Jay Papasan:
Love that. I was working with someone, and I wanna keep this really vague, but their approach was going to be how they’d been taught to do it was basically you make a bunch of calls, and you make a lot of direct ask, basically. So, it was like a lot of sales mentalities can be. That was the school that they came from. That was what they were taught. And they thought in order to be successful, they had to do that. And it was the kind of activity that was soul-sucking. This is a person who’s really strong in relationships, but the moment we identified the goal here is to acquire this many widgets, and the way you think you’re gonna do it is this way, can we explore some other ways that actually fit your personality that are maybe more relational. Sometimes, it’s just about choosing a different approach.
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Jay Papasan:
All right, so I want to fast-forward a little bit. We’ve gone from your burnout. We now know that you’ve figured out how to design your businesses around who you are, who you want to be, so that it’s not really an option. We’ve established when you’re in a burnout, you’re already working too much. If you don’t take regularly scheduled breaks, you will get an unscheduled one. That’s where you are. Congratulations. You’re building something new, FunClub.co, and I love this. I got excited. Can you unpack a little bit of what you’re doing with your brand-new business for this season to help people not just design their work life, but their investment life to support their life?
Mallory Rowan:
Yeah, absolutely. So, we just launched a community that’s all for people that want that work optional type of financial freedom. And we really want it to be a space where people can figure out how to earn more and make their money earn more as well. So, we bring in guest speakers that cover a variety of investing strategies because what I realized was all of the successful people around me are doing all of these things in the background. They have stock market investments. They have real estate. They’re buying businesses. They’re investing in businesses. They’re building their own. But there was no room where all these conversations were happening together.
And when I look back at how I changed my business after burnout and how impactful that was for me in creating future security, I realized that that was at the heart of it, is really how can I create optionality for myself in the future based on the decisions I make today?
And so, in my first business, right at the same time as my burnout, it felt like we had zeroed out financially. We started to take bigger risks in the business, which was important, but at the end of the day, we were still around 23, 25-ish at the time. And so, it was new waters for us. And feeling like I was zeroing out financially in the business and having to almost get back on the horse and start what felt like from zero, even though we had a really strong brand and we’re working with the top power lifters, I was like, “Ooh, this feels like a lot of work after how much it just burnt me out.”
And so, for me, it was looking at, how can I create something that makes sure I’m always moving forward in the background? And so, I can go chase my dreams, but I know that I’m creating that future stability that we don’t get guaranteed as entrepreneurs. We don’t have pensions, we don’t have an employer matching our contributions or anything like this because that would just be us matching ourselves, right?
I think so many ambitious people wanna take those big risks in business. They’re passionate about the impact they have, and sometimes the compromise or the trade-off is that they are really risking it all, and that includes their health and their wealth. So, for me, I use investing as a channel to make sure I was creating the future stability that I needed, and it comes back to knowing how your brain operates. And for me, I knew that I like to feel safe. You and I have joked about this. We’re scaredy-cats together which other people might not see us that way. But for me, I feel like I know that I want to feel secure. And the more secure I feel, the more comfortable I feel building something bigger.
And allowing myself to have those rest periods or those pivot periods where I know I wanna follow my heart. So, as you said, right now I’m in one of those pivots where I realize I really wanna talk about this more with people, and I wanna create a space where they can do it too. And it’s been something that I can afford to pivot and transition into because I feel that I have that safety net of having those future investments. So, it’s something that I’m so passionate about because a big part of not burning out, we’re chasing for something, we want more, and those are often good qualities, but it shouldn’t come at the cost of our health or our happiness, there’s no point of having all this money in the bank or this massive business that wins awards if you’re not even around to see it or if you’re too unhealthy to be able to really experience it, and then if you’ve reached a point where you’re no longer even happy with it.
Jay Papasan:
So, I’m listening to your journey. You want the independence of being a business owner. You want the optionality of choice. You’re willing to do the hard work, but you want to have some variety within it, and you want to have a big opportunity on the other side. And so, what you’re doing is now providing options for people who also want that opportunity on the other side, and the optionality of work. When you say work optional, how do we define that for people? Do you just look at your current income and you try to replace that with mostly passive income? What does that look like?
Mallory Rowan:
For me, I look at what’s the lifestyle I wanna live 10 years from now, because if I’m just looking at right now, it might not necessarily be representative. So, I look 10 years from now, what do I feel I actually want to live off of, and can I create an investment portfolio that could pay me that passively in order for that to be my baseline to cover my needs?
It comes from the FIRE community, which is known as financial independence retire early, but they never talked about work optionality. They always talk about retiring early. And we found ourselves and also the community of people who have joined us, we didn’t relate to it too much because the implication of it was be frugal now so you can stop working but still be frugal later. And so, I knew that wasn’t necessarily appealing for me.
And so, when we looked at it, I love to work. It’s something I’ve realized even more over the last few years. I love to build. I love to help other people. And so, I still wanna be able to do that, but I don’t wanna be running myself into the ground doing it, and I wanna be able to change that work over time or choose where I’m working. One thing I feel really fortunate as an entrepreneur is I only work with people I love. I sat down with some nine-to-fivers the other day, and it’s so tough to hear people talk about in the workplace the different people that they have to put up with every day. And so, I think the more we have that optionality for ourselves, we can choose, “Hey, I love this role, but you know what? The team’s not gonna cut it. I’m gonna move to another job.” Or as an entrepreneur, we can build the thing we’ve always been thinking of, but we don’t have to have that starving artist approach to it where I’m gonna put everything on the line, I’m gonna risk it all. You can still, I think, even do it better when you have that safety and security. I think you can fly even higher.
And for me, it’s a way to also see, like what is my full potential when it’s not coming from a negative place, when it’s just coming from a place of how can I live the most extraordinary life, have the most impact, and really experience it all.
Jay Papasan:
To tie back the safety thing, when I feel like my future is mostly protected, my needs certainly, and hopefully my wants, it does buy the freedom for people who are a little bit risk-averse. And I think a lot of people would say, “Oh, but y’all own 19 doors and all these businesses. That’s very risky.” I think it’s all relative, right? I also work with a lot of crazy, crazy entrepreneurs where I’m like, “No way am I doing that.”
But I do think that when you’ve laid a better foundation for your future, it does free you up in the present. It frees you both from the worry about the future, and also it knows that you can take a chance. Take a chance on yourself, you can take a chance on an idea, and you can explore things that you might not give yourself permission to do otherwise.
One of the other things that you said there, and I just wanna pull it out, and I know this philosophically, it’s true, the fastest way to save a dollar is not to spend a dollar, period, end of story. If you wanna have more profit in your business, every dollar of expense you cut becomes a dollar of profit, whereas every dollar that you add, it bases on your margin. If you have 50% margins, you add a dollar of income, it’s only 50%, 50 cents of savings. So, the math works the way the FIRE community talks about it. But you also are coaching people to raise their incomes while managing their expenses, so that they can invest in multiple ways to prepare for their future.
So, I like that, ’cause I think a lot of people who listen to this podcast, they’re ambitious, and they’re building their own businesses. Their opportunity to shorten the timeline by growing a business faster allows them to get to that optionality faster.
Mallory Rowan:
Absolutely. I think coming back to those seasons, I had a season of, I am going to funnel as much as possible into my investments. And by making an active choice like that, it also lets you negotiate with you and future you of it’s okay to do things that maybe aren’t, I say sustainable, I don’t just mean that from a health perspective, I mean it from a scaling perspective.
Like for example, my coaching, right? Okay, maybe I can’t one-on-one coach 100,000 people. That’s not the goal. But if I can keep certain coaching clients and that gives me extra cash flow to invest, that works really well for this season. And I think sometimes, we get such good advice around scaling that it can almost get in the way of we’re so quick to cut off things of what’s the business model that’s gonna scale to seven figures, to eight figures.
And it’s also okay to have these seasons of, hey, I have an opportunity in front of me. See it a lot with realtors, for example. I’m making good money right now. If you can continue to be in a place where you’re okay doing those extra deals, it feels really good, but it’s going towards funding that future vision, the optionality you buy yourself with every year you do that is really impactful. But knowing that you’re setting that limit of when I get this much invested or when I hit this age, that’s when I’m going to transition to this other phase of my life where it’s more about building something sustainable, which is what I’m doing with Fun Club.
Now, it’s quite funny to look back and see, and this is why it’s so good to do that work of accepting the seasons beforehand. Before I would’ve told you I love those workshop phases where I have a whole project with a clear end date. I can push really hard, and then it’s over. And in this phase, that feels really exhausting to me now. It doesn’t fire me up the same way. I am excited by continuing to build and build on the one idea and continuing to make that community even better.
And so, now, I’ve shifted to a business that’s still in the same space but can really support that next season, both from the investment perspective of, hey, now I am gonna focus on building the business and maybe make different choices that could have higher expenses, maybe a bit lower profitability, but I’ve already done that work to make sure that future me is there.
And I think there’s just such a belief that taking an anti-burnout approach or focusing on self-care is a trade-off of your ambition or success. And so, I really wanna show people that majority of my success, especially financially, has come post-burnout. It isn’t something where I did a $10 million exit, and now I’m here to tell you “Hey, health is important,” and you’re like, “Easy for you to say,” which yeah–
Jay Papasan:
You got your personal chef and your masseuse and…
Mallory Rowan:
Yeah, yeah.
Jay Papasan:
I know.
Mallory Rowan:
I went from $30,000 in savings and burnt out with a business zeroing out to over a million dollar net worth in five years after that burnout just by doing it in a completely sustainable way where I have had to have really fun life experiences. I have never burnt out since that day. And so, you really can do it in a way that’s more sustainable as long as you’re intentional with it.
Jay Papasan:
And I’ll point out, ’cause you’re not a bragger, that you were a net worth millionaire before you were even 30. So, you did it all at a very early age when a lot of people, nobody was giving you handouts, right? You had to figure it out for yourself, and people were… Like you just built it from the ground up. So, it’s very admirable. Congratulations. I love that you’ve not only built it for you and Josh, but also you’re teaching other people how to build this for themselves.
I could go down the rabbit hole of seasons. I started crossing my fingers when you were talking, ’cause I could go into mine and Wendy’s journey on when we lived on one salary and invested the rest. We made trade-offs early so that we don’t have to make trade-offs today. I like that mentality. I find it more appealing than how you describe the FIRE movement. I’m willing to be frugal in the future if that allows me to be free, but I’d also like to be free, but also have some financial wherewithal to enjoy more things.
So, what can we leave our listeners with? If we were gonna give them one small challenge from this episode, we’ve covered a lot of ground, where would you take them?
Mallory Rowan:
So, that toddler test I mentioned earlier, what I would say is take the thing that you think you want right now, break down all the way to that bottom root reason where you feel like you can’t ask anymore, “Why do I want this?” or, “What do I really mean by this?”
And then, once you find that thing, you’re gonna do something I call the six solutions theory. And so, I actually got this from a real estate investor indirectly, where we were learning from this real estate investor, and he said, “I always make sure I have three exits for a building I’m going to buy.” And so, I really liked that approach, and being the extremist that I am, said, “Let’s double it.”
And so, any problem that we face, especially the problems where it feels like there’s only one solution, I want you to challenge yourself to think that there’s actually at least six solutions because similar to what you said with the toddler test, those first three solutions are gonna be the thing that any peer or friend might throw at you, or the first thing you could write down immediately after this episode. Once you start going into those next three, you have to start getting more creative. Are there solutions outside of what I’m even looking at? Maybe you’re only looking at growing the business, you’re looking at adding a new product, building a team, changing an existing product, and maybe you need to look at something completely outside of the business to solve what you want, right?
So, I think go through that exercise, figure out the root of what you want, and then challenge yourself to come up with six different paths. And I promise you one of those last three usually ends up being something where you get that little excited feeling in your gut, that permission where you’re realizing, “Hey, I actually have always wanted to go this way and didn’t realize that maybe it could actually be that easy, and it could be that simple of a solution for what I want.”
Jay Papasan:
I love that, and I just wanna highlight the expanding your options. I think most people are fast to pick the best available option that’s in front of them, and it’s rarely the best. It’s just the one that’s most visible to you right now. But when you force yourself to look around and maybe ask other people and really explore, there’s almost always a vastly superior option out there.
People will talk about how they hired this amazing person, and they’re one in a million. I’ll be like, “Well, how many people did you interview?” “Two.” It’s like that’s actually one in two. I hope they’re that great.
Mallory Rowan:
I love that.
Jay Papasan:
But you didn’t actually really interview a lot of people to pick the best from a large group of people. You just picked the first good person that showed up, and we do that with our options.
So, I love that. Ask yourself the why. I’m gonna tell people at least five times, because that’s where you start getting to the root of what it is you truly want. And then, six options based on Mallory’s wisdom to double down and really expand the options for how to get there, and you might surprise yourself, and you might find that thing that will help you avoid burnout, too. Thank you so much, Mallory.
Mallory Rowan:
Thank you so much for having me.
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This podcast is for general informational purposes only. The views, thoughts, and opinions of the guest represent those of the guest and not ProduKtive or Keller Williams Realty LLC and their affiliates and should not be construed as financial, economic, legal, tax, or other advice. This podcast is provided without any warranty or guarantee of its accuracy, completeness, timeliness, or results from using the information.
