How to Avoid Burnout as a Gym Owner with Ben Pickard

[00:00:00] Hello, my friend on today’s episode, I’m with Ben Pickard and we’re talking about burnout. We both share some of our stories about being burnt out as a gym owner. We talk a little bit about how to avoid burnout and the steps to take once you’re in burnout. And so if you want to learn how to better navigate the nasty feeling of being burned out, this is a great episode for you.

So keep on listening.

Welcome to the Business for Unicorns podcast, where we help gym owners unleash the full potential of their business. I’m your host, Michael Keeler join me each week for actionable advice, expert insights, and the inside scoop on what it really takes to level up your gym. Get ready to unlock your potential and become a real unicorn in the fitness industry.

Let’s begin.

Hello, fitness, business nerds. What’s [00:01:00] up. Welcome to another episode of the business unicorns podcast. Before we jump in quick reminder that we’re going to Toronto. For two whole days for an amazing unicorn society retreat, and you’re invited it’s March 21st and 22nd. We have at this point of recording this, maybe a handful, I think less than five spots left for people who are not unicorn society members to join.

And so this is your last call to get our early bird rate. Our early bird rate ends on February 10th. So if you’re listening to this before February 10th, go ahead right now. Click the link down in the show notes. I think it’s going to direct you over to Instagram or you’ll DM us the word Toronto. Just let us know that you want to come and we’ll get you all the information and save you a spot before we run out, but come join us two whole days to learn with me and the rest of the business unicorns team, really talking about sales and marketing and you don’t want to miss it.

Don’t want to miss it. Then I’m excited about Toronto. How are you feeling about it? I’m super excited. I’m pumped for coming to Canada. As I’ve said many times, retreats are one of the highlights of the year for me. I’m, I’m [00:02:00] stoked. Yeah. I mean, honestly, if they weren’t so much damn work to put together and they weren’t so frigging expensive to run, I would do treats all the time.

It’s just so fun to bring together a community of bad ass gym owners, truly, truly, and really, and get to see each other face to face, get to work on our businesses, share great ideas, have meals together, hang out together. I mean, it’s such a, it’s truly the highlight of our years and we only get to do it twice a year.

And so anyway, I hope you all can join us. We’re looking forward to it. How else is your 2025 going so far, Mr. Pickard? It’s going great. We were just chatting before this, my workouts are going awesome and I feel really good about it. I signed up for this awesome continuing education course that officially starts tonight as of recording this tonight.

I’m really excited. It’s about bigger finance in fitness business, which is an area I’ve got a gap to close. And like overall, like life is good despite the mountain of snow that I’ve got in Guelph, Ontario. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Life, life is good. I think I’ve [00:03:00] mentioned before on this podcast that I’m really honing on and building hilariously enough new health and fitness habits in the new in 2025 is going to be my year of health.

And so I’m doing all kinds of fun, new things. Including starting to do some like healthy meal prepping, which I haven’t done in a lot of years. And so that’s been really fun. I bought a new meal prepping book, which is a blast. I also love a cookbook. So, so many fun, personal development y things I’m working on right now, which I’m sure we’ll share in podcasts in the future, but for now, it’s just kind of fun to, to, to plot and plan new habits in my life.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, let’s actually, that is actually a very good segue to what we’re talking about today. One of the topics, well, the thing we want to talk about today is. Burnout. We want to talk about burnout. We want to talk about how do you successfully manage and lead a small business like a gym, which is very time consuming.

You wear so many hats, you’re pulled in many directions. You’re kind of expected as a gym owner to kind of be, be a Jack or Jill of all [00:04:00] trades. You have to know a little bit about. Finance and marketing and sales and HR and legal and fitness and nutrition and you name it, the list goes, the list is frigging endless.

You have to know a little bit about a lot. And because we’re pulled in so many directions, burnout is so rampant. This is not just true for gyms. In fact, I’ll share your stat, which is a 42 percent of small business owners say they’ve been burned out in the last past month. That’s almost half of business owners when surveyed small business owners say that they’ve been burned out in the last month.

24 percent report that they’re currently experiencing burnout at the time of being surveyed. I mean, it’s kind of fucked up. That’s two thirds. Of business owners are either burnt out or have been burnt out in the last 30 days. Most of them. That’s most it’s most right. And so, you know, Ben, let’s talk about this a little bit.

Cause I know you have some, we both have experience with this. Of course, if you ran a small business for more than a week, you’ve experienced some sort of, you know, some sort of burnout, honestly. But let’s talk with a little bit about our personal experiences to [00:05:00] kick things off. What about you? Yeah. What about my partner?

Yeah. Pre COVID, my gym had like a very nice rocket ship growth, which looks really good on a spreadsheet. It doesn’t look so good when you’re looking at what my calendar looked like at that time and my stress levels, let alone anything else. Yeah. We went from like essentially zero to three quarters of a million dollars in, I don’t know, three or four years, which is like a lot very quickly.

Don’t get me wrong. From an optimizing from money standpoint, we were winning, but for optimizing for anything else or even money. And anything else? I remember like a friend wants to get together and it’s like, cool. I’m available three Tuesdays from now at 7 PM, just the worst. And luckily, you know, the whole story, but luckily I had you in my corner to help me learn how to manage this.

And I was actually saying earlier today that like my gym is running like. Honestly, it feels like it’s the best it’s ever been in the last, I don’t know, a couple years. And it took me a while to realize what [00:06:00] was going on. It’s like, why am I unhappy? Why am I tired? Yeah. Sure. You noticed the signs of burnouts in me ages before I did.

And I want to, I’ve been thinking about this actually, because it was top of mind yesterday. I’m intentional about the phrasing. It’s not, I got burnt out. It’s I burned myself out. Yeah. Cause I committed to those things. I said yes to them. I do believe everything is a choice. And I say that kind of tongue in cheek, cause it bothers me that I believe that a little bit.

Sometimes nice to have somebody to blame, but of course, and yeah, I just did too much too fast. And I, to your point, I had to know all of the things you mentioned and more, at least at a level of like. What appears to be competence. And that just means like you’re on all the time, especially when your gym opens at 6 AM.

And I know some gyms open at like 5 AM. Those are the real. Yeah. And then you’re open until like 8 PM and people expect that if they can train, they can also like complain about stuff and ask you questions and phone you on your personal cell phone. Cause I didn’t know enough to get a [00:07:00] business number on day one.

Again, these are all the things that I did to burn myself out. And I was quoted on the lift the bar podcast and I think I still mean it like I wasn’t being facetious. Like I would have sold my gym for 50 bucks. I was done. Yeah. So the reason my wife started helping out at the gym was because I was going to lose my mind.

And she’s like, I can coach part time so you don’t have to, because it’s worth it for me to coach five or six hours a week for you to not be miserable seven days a week. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. We’ve all, we’ve all been there. And the fact that you had the wherewithal to recognize and accept. That you needed help.

The way I was able to recognize you needed help and then were able to like, actually accept it. Right. It’s huge. That’s often how people, I mean, maybe it wasn’t as smooth as I just made it sound, but you did. Listening to this. I was from grimacing as he said that I’m sure it took me like a year to actually come to terms with that.

It wasn’t like, Oh my God, I need help and I’m receptive to it. Yeah. I’m, I was fighting my goal tooth and nail. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. Well, you got there, right? I think is the, the end point is [00:08:00] that often how we get out of burnout. One of the ways, and we’ll talk more about strategies for avoiding it in the first place, but when you’re in it, one of the ways to get out of it is actually recognize that you need help and then find the right kind of help, right?

Because sometimes you’re, you’re stuck because you have overcommitted because you have been in a silo of your own thinking. And decision making you need that external either inspiration or a voice of reason or a kick in the pants to help you break the cycle of just completely overwhelming yourself.

Yeah. I mean, I have so many stories of this over the, over the years. I think the most recent one that comes to mind, I think won’t be a surprise to a lot of listeners. The last time I really, truly felt like I was burnt out. And like, I really was like, do I even want to do any of this anymore was right around COVID.

Right around COVID. I think it was just, you know, it was a stressful time for all of us. So there’s an anomaly, right? In some ways, but really the things that stress me out about COVID are things that we all experience all the time, right? That period of time for me was about having to make a million and one [00:09:00] decisions that all felt so important.

In many, in many decisions we had to make around COVID all felt existential, like every decision really fucking matters, right? From like, what cleaner do I buy to, can I find enough toilet paper to, to, to what, how am I going to fix my HVAC system to, you know, to, to, to make it fit the regulations of our local city or whatever, you know, to, you know, what staff do we keep and how do we do layoffs.

At that time, we were also at MFF struggling with having to close our Bowery, our second location because the landlord wasn’t working with us. So stressful. Well, at the same time, Business for Unicorns was fully up and running during those years and was mainly staffed by me. So at that moment, I was still running Business for Unicorns, which was obviously a very different operation back then.

And was pulled back into MFF to manage a lot of these decisions and projects and try to figure out what’s coming next. And that was for me, just a recipe of completely overextending myself. [00:10:00] So the similarity to your story here is that I just said yes to too many things. I said, yes, I’ll help with that.

Yes. I’ll help with that. Yes. I keep doing that. And there was nothing I said no to. It was a boundaryless time because I thought that’s what was required. And I don’t know, looking back, maybe it was, but it wasn’t sustainable. Right. Saying yes to all of those things I could maybe do for a few months. Right.

But I think by the time, you know, late 2021 or the 22 to 22 came around, I was like, I was toast, right? I was, by the time we were actually reopened at MFF in New York city and our other location had been closed, I was. Toast, like I just needed to actually walk away or else, you know, I was, I didn’t look forward to coming to work every day.

And so I think, you know, to, to kind of zoom back out from my own experience, I think the overlap we’re seeing here, some of the signs that burnout is coming, some of the signs that you’re about to burn out. You know, pull back are things like mental and emotional exhaustion, right? Like, you know, feeling super [00:11:00] stressed for weeks, days, if not weeks at a time.

What are some other symptoms you saw, Ben, that you include you in that, that burnout was coming? Yeah. The biggest one for me was the feelings of resentment and dread and being ineffective. Like this, I feel like I was carrying. I don’t know, it felt like I was atlas carrying the world, even though I’m aware I wasn’t carrying the world, but it felt that way to me and it was like, I dreaded going back into work.

I actually kind of like, I realized I was burnt out when over COVID, I was like strangely happy that I didn’t have that much stuff to do, but I didn’t have that much stuff to do because my business was on fire. So it’s like, well, the firefighters are here and hopefully it doesn’t all burn down, but I guess I can just sit here and watch.

Obviously I did my best, but like there’s only a couple hours of work to do when you have a fraction of the clients that you’re used to dealing with. And then add in, you know, sleep problems. And I’m not like that angry person, but one of the symptoms is angry, outbursts, especially in meetings. Yeah, I find that that was true for me as well.

Like, I think I’m, I like [00:12:00] to say this and in the comments, anyone I know, correct me if I’m wrong, but I’d like to think that I’m known for someone who’s for being pretty steady. Like I’m not someone who has huge emotional swings. I’m usually pretty steady, even during times of real stress and anxiety. When other people are spinning and spiraling, I’m usually the one that’s pretty grounded and big time.

Yeah. Okay. Good. Not delusional. And the, the, during this time, when I saw burnout coming, I found myself getting a little snippy with people where I just like kind of my patients was the first thing to go. Cause yeah, I’m not, I don’t think inherently a patient person. I’ve had to work at being patient. And so I think during those times when you’re super stressed and burnout is on the horizon, um, those things you have to work harder on just get even harder.

And I was just really not patient with people at a time when patience was critical, you know, and so I’m sure I ruffled some feathers and piss and I know I did during that time, which is I’d like to think unusual for me, you know, and [00:13:00] that’s a good, good sign that things are coming. So, okay. So now. Let’s just kind of keep the ball moving forward, which is, we talked a little bit about why Jim owners experienced this, that we all do.

All, all small business owners experience burnout. We shared our own stories. We talked about some signals that burnout might be coming. So now let’s just chat about like, what the fuck do you do about it? So you find yourself at a place where, where, you know, burnout is upon you. You’re starting to really feel all the things we were talking about and you recognize this in yourself.

You know, there’s a million things to do, but like, let’s just pick a few things that have worked for us. What about you? Yeah, well, I mean, what I’ve learned about this has actually come from you and it’s, I believe you’ve learned it from Dr. Bratsis, and it’s four categories of mindfulness, hope, compassion, and play.

Yeah. So, there’s many things you can do, but they fit under mindfulness, hope, compassion, and play. Yeah. To kind of Bring you back from burnout. Yeah. Well, let me, let’s, let’s, let’s all attribute this to, to, you know, so, uh, Dr. Boyotsis, Dr. Richard Boyotsis, he has an author he often writes with, Annie [00:14:00] McKee.

Their, I think, probably most famous book, I think this is fair, is Resonant Leadership. Resonant, like resonance. And so for all of you book nerds out there, This book probably came out, I don’t know, maybe 10 plus years ago at this point, but it’s a great one. They also have a workbook that goes with it called Becoming a Resident Leader.

It’s been a favorite for me and Mark for many years, in part because they really address the fact that being a leader in any context creates this kind of chronic stress environment, especially being a leader in a small business where you wear so many hats. And they’ve identified these kind of four categories of things that help you really kind of avoid burnout in the first place, if we’re being honest.

This is even a thing you do. It’ll help you get out of it. But more importantly, these four things actually help you avoid being burned out in the first place. So let’s go through them a little bit again. So you, the first thing you mentioned, what is a mindfulness? So just say more, Ben, what does this look like, or what could this look like for anyone who, you know, wants to avoid being burned out or climb out of burnout?

Yeah. Well, it starts with self awareness. So like, what do you need to be mindful about? I feel like [00:15:00] mindfulness is one of those words, like fitness that kind of gets, this is my perception of it gets tossed around and like, what is good fitness? It’s like, well, it’s. That to do the task, but there are specific behaviors before we get too philosophical about the etymology of the word.

One of them is to start a meditation practice, which I say a little bit tongue in cheek, cause that’s something I’ve had resistance to for a very long time. Yeah. Um, the second one is to start a daily reflection journal, which I can actually attest, I started this about a year and a half ago, and I think I’m, I’m probably 10 to 20 percent happier and less stressed just because of the two minutes a morning I spend writing in my journal and it’s the most bad journal ever.

I’m not. Writing a story. I’m like bullet pointing it. Yep. Um, making time for self reflection in one on ones and team meetings. There’s lots of tools for this type of thing that you can do, but like even quarterly reviews that we recommend start with a self reflection and then kind of evaluating another or giving feedback to another that starts with reflection.

Yep. Noticing and naming how you’re feeling ideally at least [00:16:00] once a day is huge. Being able to be, you’ve talked about this before and I’m going to butcher it. So please interrupt me whenever having a better vocabulary to describe your emotions. It’s not, I’m angry. I’m happy. I’m sad. Like there’s, there’s much more descriptive words that we can use in there because sometimes I’m not angry.

I’m actually just frustrated or being impatient or maybe a little bit anxious about something and being able to name it. It’s super useful. And I say this as the typical kind of jockish straight white guy who like, isn’t in touch with his feelings, or at least wasn’t years ago. And it’s now learned how to like label and accept them and change them.

Yeah. Good for you. And you nailed it. That was a great description. Yeah. I think that was, that was it. And I think, you know, all of this, this whole mindfulness category is really, you know, you put it in like, maybe this is biblical terms. It’s like, it’s know thyself. Right? Know, know how you work, right? I mean, we all have feelings every day, all day.

That’s how we are hardwired to be. And [00:17:00] for you to be more in touch with how you feel about yourself and other people and the world around you is really useful to avoiding burnout or getting out of burnout because you know what makes you tick, right? And I think, you know, obviously many of you know that I’m a big nerd about mental health.

And one of my areas of study is mental health at work. And, you know, there’s a definition of burnout. of mental health that I’ve been a big fan of recently. This is by a woman named Dr. Lisa Demore. She really studies mental health for teenagers and her def, her, she says mental health or being mentally healthy is really about two main things.

It’s having, having the appropriate feelings given the situation and the ability to manage those feelings. Right. And so mindfulness is about that, right, is a tool for mental well being and mental health, right? If you can learn to have the right feelings given the situation and when you don’t have the feelings that are appropriate for the situation, that you learn how to manage them in a way that mediates that.

Right? So let’s just say that, you know, you’re in a meeting and someone [00:18:00] does something that really shouldn’t piss you off to that extent, but every time they do it, you actually want to punch someone through a wall, right? We can all agree that’s not like the ideal feeling to have given that situation, right?

So the question then becomes, well, how do you manage your feelings when that happens? Do you have the tools to do it? Do you learn how to take the deep breaths or go walk away? Or have a conversation about it or what skills do you have to manage your own feelings? I think mindfulness is one of the tools we use to get better at knowing ourselves handling, naming, managing our emotions.

So I think these all go hand in hand, right? These go hand in hand. Sorry. A bit of attention, but I thought that was awesome when I kind of heard in there kind of someone who hasn’t read that researchers work. It’s kind of the gap between the action and the reaction. It’s not what happens, but how you respond to it.

And if you can actually manage that gap, so it’s more than a microsecond and you jump into. You said punching people through a wall and rage that you can actually be [00:19:00] like, Oh, why is that landing with me that way? And there’s something to explore and getting curious with yourself. You can probably have a much more.

Yeah. Stiff reaction than violence. Cause that’s it. Cause you think about mental health is that it’s not about being happy all the time, right? Being mentally healthy is not synonymous with ongoing happiness, right? You’re going to have negative emotions. The question is just like, is the emotion you’re having appropriate given the situation?

Is that how you want to feel when that thing happens? And if not, what do you, what can you do about it? What tools do you have? What skills do you have at your disposal to change that? Right? I, I often, I, that happens to me from a regular basis where I’m like, you know what, I am so fucking pissed about this thing.

I don’t want to be. Like that’s, that’s not how I want to feel when this thing happens. So what can I do to change my relationship with this thing to make sure that I can have like the appropriate emotions at the appropriate time for myself. You know, I’m going to put like appropriate in air quotes that you all can’t see, but, but you know, you know, and it’s going to be different for each person.

There’s not a right or [00:20:00] wrong here, but we can all agree that wanting to punch someone in the face in a meeting is not in feeling anyone else wants to have as an example. Right. Your point about it’s not being happy all the time. Like let’s flip that coin. We’re all pretty much guaranteed to experience some version of tragedy in our life.

It would be possibly incredibly unhealthy to be in a period of extreme happiness when a loved one passes away. Yes. Like it would be, it would be normal. I find it odd if you weren’t like this. Mourning. Exactly. That’s what we talk about. We say like, you know, part of mental, being mentally healthy, right? Is the ability to have the right emotions, um, given the situation or the appropriate emotions given the situation and the ability to manage those emotions, to have some, you know, conscious control over deciding.

You know how you want to feel right. And I think that that’s exactly what therapy does for most people, right. Is helps them build new [00:21:00] connections for, for their situation and their environment and their feelings. But let’s keep going. Cause mindfulness is just one piece of this. Maybe we’re not got through many others, but let’s at least share what are two more kind of buckets from this.

So hope was the second one. Let’s talk about it. So behaviors to help you flex your hope muscles. I like that. Um, One is to write a hopeful vision for your company, which I also I love I didn’t I never actually labeled this stuff as hope But I like all these things The second one is to do the same thing.

Hope write a hopeful vision, but for your life Like, even more powerful, we are not our work. Our work is a thing that we do and can change over time. Like, and I say that as someone who loves the work that I do, but I’m aware that like at some point in my life it may change. I hopefully will live a very long time so I can experience those changes.

Here’s one that’s near and dear to the heart because we do it at literally every meeting to the point where it almost gets old, but we still do it because there’s value in it, is starting each team meeting and one on one meeting with celebrating successes. So we call the term gains from Dan Sullivan’s gap in the game, but It’s as easy as just putting [00:22:00] gains at the top of every meeting agenda and everyone has to share a win before you dive in.

Works as a great segue too. Asking your clients to create hopeful goals for their fitness. You’re probably doing this in a strategy session or consultation process anyways, but there is huge power in there to give clients hope so they don’t feel like they’re constantly failing. And asking your team to create a hopeful vision of their personal and professional growth.

Obviously we can only lead a horse to water. We can’t force people to take the next step in their path, but chances are, if you’re listening to this podcast, you believe in supporting the people who work with you, not just using them as like factory robots to pump out factory fitness. Yeah, I think that’s a great list of really practical things you can do when you want to connect more with hope.

And the reason hope is one of the kind of four pillars here of, of, you know, of avoiding burnout is, is that hope gives us, gets us out of the present moment. Right. Cause it’s out of the present, often spiral or stuckness and gets us thinking about a positive, brighter tomorrow. Right. And to be hopeful about the future is, is [00:23:00] really one of the most powerful feelings you can have.

Right. I mean, you know, it’s talking about it. Yeah, you are, you are smiling as you were talking about it. I mean, I mean, not for nothing. I mean, yeah. It’s so powerful. I mean, one, one, one could say that, you know, presidencies in the United States were one on, on the promise of a hopeful future, you know, and Barack Obama, you know, had the word hope underneath all of his posters underneath his face for a reason, right?

In Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, which is incredibly dark, he was talking about how he could tell which people in the POW camp were going to die next because they were the people who smoked their cigarettes. Because the cigarettes were the currency, and by smoking your currency it means you’ve given up hope.

And it was like, he labeled like those people gave up hope they’re next to go. And we’re talking like the darkest possible scenario a human could be in. And that was the thing that kept the people going or not. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a powerful thing. And I think often in business, we don’t take enough time to do that kind of [00:24:00] future visioning, that kind of hopeful thinking about how well could things go?

What’s the brightest future we can chart for ourselves. So I think that’s a really important one. All right. In the interest of time, let’s do this. I know there’s two other categories we could talk about. Maybe we’ll have another podcast. We come back, but the other, just to wrap things up, compassion is another really powerful thing to, to try to wrap your arms around in, in all the time to avoid burnout or get out of it.

That sense of caring about others and play the sense of like spontaneity and creativity. Like those are the four things that you can always wrap your arms around. And bake into your day, like bake them into your processes and the way you do things, you know, to make sure that you’re always connecting with that sense of hope, that sense of compassion, that sense of play, that mindfulness, those are the four kind of, you know, things that at least the research shows are really helpful to avoiding, avoiding burnout.

One other kind of practical thing I’ll say, just as this resonates with my own experience is. Once you’re in burnout, I think one of the, the most important [00:25:00] tools to get out of it is boundary setting, you know, and now we’re gonna have a ton of time to dive into this topic at great length, but I think you all know what I mean by that, right?

Which is, is boundary setting is, is, is creating, is defining the conditions under which you’re willing to be treated. Right. Defining the conditions, right? And so I think that oftentimes, you know, and often defining those conditions under which you’re, you, you are willing to be treated starts with you. In both Ben’s example and my example, we’re the ones who mistreated ourselves.

We’re, we’re the ones, I’m sorry to throw you under the bus with me, but we’re both under there. We’re the ones who didn’t have clear boundaries with ourselves for what we were willing to do or not do, or the kind of sleep we needed or the kind of, you know, whatever the case may be. And so I think that, you know, boundary setting is not just about holding your arm up and pushing someone away.

It’s also, it starts with yourself. What boundaries can you set with yourself? What expectations can you have with yourself for the way you want to be treated? Anything you would add to [00:26:00] that? Yeah, just like. I know it’s been said before, but we, our own internal dialogue says things to ourselves that we wouldn’t be caught dead saying to another person.

And it totally is the can’t serve room empty cup thing. And like, I know this horse has been beaten to death, but it still is a message I think people need to hear. It’s even more important when you’re in a leadership role, because your team is going to pick up on your energy. They’re going to know you have a good or bad day the minute you walk through the door.

You don’t want them feeling like they’re walking on eggshells. If nothing else, like we’ve chosen to be in a leadership position, even if we don’t feel like we want it anymore, because we’re fried. Like I, not to be on a high horse here, but like, I feel like we have a responsibility to do a good job of this because we’re people who have other’s livelihoods in our hands.

Yeah. Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. I think that with leadership comes the kind of responsibility to lead by example and go first often. Right. And I think that means showing people how to take care of yourself. And if you’re not taking care of yourself, right, it’s going to be [00:27:00] hard to inspire other people to do the same.

And so I think that’s a great place to a great note to leave it on. So thanks, Ben. Great conversation. We got deep here today. We got deep. Yeah. Like let us know. Cause then we’d talk more about this type of thing. It’s Yeah. I find this incredibly interesting and have probably more mistakes to share than lessons, but you have to say the thing that’s resonating with you, like, please let us know so we can keep pulling this thread.

Yeah. 100%. I think topics like burnout are critical. We’re all going to experience it and we need to have some tools to navigate it. So thanks for sharing your story, Ben. Um, yeah. Listeners final reminder, uh, early bird ends on February. So, if you’re listening to this before February 10th, go click the link in the show notes and let us know you want to come to Toronto with us.

Again, the dates are March 21st and 22nd, but it’s your last chance for special early bird rates. After that, the rates go up if we even have any more spots left. So come join us in Toronto. Hope to see you there. Thanks again, Ben. See you on the next one. Thank [00:28:00] you.