Breaking Hustle Culture Burnout and Building a Business You Want with Tasha and Brandon Skillin

What Hustle Culture Burnout Really Looks Like for High Achievers

Leah Bryant [00:00:03]: So you're doing the work, and by that, I mean you're showing up, you're building something that's real, and yet there's still this low hum in the background that some things may be a little off, like you're productive and busy, you're hitting some of the marks that you set for yourself, but that feeling underneath it all doesn't match that effort that you're putting in. If that resonates even just a little, I want you to stay right here. Because my guests today work with people who are exactly where you are. High achieving, deeply committed, and quietly wondering if they're chasing the right thing. We're going to get into what it means to want what you want, what gets in the way of that, and why. The tool you probably dismissed as a quote, unquote craft project might be one of the most strategic things that you're not using. I'm Leah Bryant, and this is the podcasting problem Solver. My guests today are Tasha and Brandon Skillin, a married coaching team that help business owners break hustle culture patterns so they can build a business that they can actually sustain by becoming unshakable in their boundaries, in their capacity.

Leah Bryant [00:01:17]: Tasha and Brandon, welcome to the show.

Tasha Skillin [00:01:20]: Thank you so much. We're excited to chat.

Brandon Skillin [00:01:22]: Thank you so much.

Leah Bryant [00:01:23]: Yes. Thank you so much for being here. I am so excited. And before we dig in, I would love for you to share your story because I think it's really impactful and it will help shape and set up our conversation for today.

How a Health Crisis Exposed Their Hustle Culture Burnout

Tasha Skillin [00:01:39]: Yeah. So Brandon and I had been married and had some kids, and we're doing life working businesses independently. We were both entrepreneurs, grew up in entrepreneurial families, and one December, I got sick, and it just never got better. It was almost three years later that we finally got a diagnosis. But those three years were rough. The business that I was running at the time was the majority of our household income. And I, month after month, year after year, was able to do less and less in the business. And so Brandon was working by the time I got my diagnosis, three jobs taking care of me and both kids at the same time.

Tasha Skillin [00:02:15]: And I was bedbound. And in those few months where I was bedbound, within two months, I lost both businesses that I had spent 14 years building. And we were really at a crossroads of, like, what are we going to do? Obviously, financially. And although Brandon at that time was making enough money to cover our bases, it was not sustainable what we were doing. And in the evenings when I was after 22 hours out of the 24 hours a day, laying in bed in the dark because I couldn't do anything else because of my me. Brandon would come in and lay in bed and sit with me just for a few minutes before he had to rush off to do all of the cooking and the kids and all of those things. We lay there thinking, what's happened? How do we get here? And through week after week after conversations, we figured out that a lot of why we were doing what we were doing had been because of the expectations and the rules and obligations we were trying to meet from our family of origin, from the industries that we were in, that were very demanding and required you to abandon yourself in terms of how you take care of your health and how you take care of your sleep, and you just work through eating. And so we were looking at that in our businesses, but we were also looking at it in our family life.

Tasha Skillin [00:03:25]: The expectations that we kept having to meet with our kids, and the expectations of holidays and just rules and just how to be a person each day, how to be a woman, how to be a husband, how to all these parts. And we just kept thinking, why are we doing this? What is happening? I think one of the catalysts, too, is we were watching our kids start to shrink a little bit at that time. And for both of us, that was a hard stop. And that really caused us to pause and question, what's happening? And through that, Brandon designed this incredible room for me to rest in. He made a beautiful and colorful because if I was gonna be in bed all day, he wanted me to have something beautiful to look at and be inspired to keep going. And in that, we realized the environment that you're in when you are in these high stress situations has a huge impact on you. And so we just kept building these elements and trial and erroring a lot of things that did not work at all initially and figured out that when we got out of this situation, we had to help other people not be where we were. We had to help as many entrepreneurs not land where we both were, because Brandon ended up ultimately burning out from taking care of me for all those years and our kids and working all those jobs.

Tasha Skillin [00:04:36]: And so we just decided that when we got out of this, we would do something about it. And it's taken many drafts and many iterations, But a couple years later, after a lot of hard work from both of us and a lot of research and trying a lot of things, I started recovering. And that's when we started building the first iteration of Rules and Rebellion, where we were having conversations about perfectionism in the clubhouse days when that was a thing, and really seeing around the world how many overachievers were operating from perfectionism patterns. And we started having conversations openly about how we worked through that together, how we worked through our own flavors of perfectionism that did not work for each other and triggered each other. And we just were really open and honest about what we figured out worked and what didn't work. And ultimately, over the last six years have helped, you know, over 300 people not continue down that path. Save their businesses, save their marriages. Some people, you know, left the relationships, but ultimately changed the trajectory of their family.

Brandon Skillin [00:05:33]: And people started building something that they really wanted to live in rather than something that they felt like they had to maintain or keep going. When you go through something like we went through, it's really challenging to not look at the world and go, what am I doing? Like, the both of us, like, how is it that we made this other stuff more important than our own well being? And for me personally, when Tasha was bedbound, like, Tasha and my kids were literally the only thing I cared about. And when people would ask things of me like, you are crazy if you think that I'm giving any time and attention to anything other than these things that I'm actively right now losing because of the illnesses that they have. And when we started to create rules and rebellion, we really wanted to make sure that the people we work with knew that we saw that their life was individual and complex and complex and that the rest of the world didn't. And that's the problem. It's not that you can't do the things. It's that the rest of the world is not acknowledging the complexities and the uniqueness of your own situation.

Brandon Skillin [00:06:45]: And you can have two people side by side who have the exact same thing going on, but because of the stuff that they bring with them, you parent different than I parent, and you're married different than I'm married. And recognizing that just because we're married and we have kids does not mean we have the same experience moving forward and being able to unpack that and really start to look at how perfectionism is playing into every decision you make and every outcome that you have is something that we just grew very passionate about because of the amount of impact it had on our life and what

Tasha Skillin [00:07:22]: it turned into and the freedom and the relief and the fullness that all four of our family members were able to experience after we stopped following those rules.

Leah Bryant [00:07:31]: Yeah, I mean, I hate to hear that you had to go through all of that. But also, I mean, I hope this doesn't sound bad, but me saying that, I'm glad that you kind of went through that, because look at the work that you're doing now and, like, all the people that you're helping.

Tasha Skillin [00:07:47]: Well, and I wouldn't have stopped if I. I mean, it took the metaphorical freight train to stop me. And that was the only way that happened. And it had to, because now we get to help people around the world. And honestly, we're setting a better example for our kids to do things differently, give them more options and more freedom to be truly who they are without the limitations that so much of society demands of them and everybody else.

Brandon Skillin [00:08:08]: When we have the marriage that we have and we have the relationship with our kids that we have, because we were forced, abruptly and violently, to stop thinking the way that we had been trained to. And so our life is more beautiful for it. And it was just hard for a while.

What High Achievers Get Wrong About Goals and Building a Sustainable Business

Leah Bryant [00:08:25]: Yes. And I love this, because all this is gonna lead into my first question where we're gonna talk about, like, the work itself, because I think that, like, you're pointing to in all of it is something that a lot of business owners feel that maybe haven't quite named yet. So let's go there. Most of us think we know what we want. We've got, you know, our goals written down, a revenue number, maybe a client count, some version of the quote, unquote, the vision, but you actually point at something different from that. What's the distinction that you're making?

Tasha Skillin [00:09:07]: One of the things that we see with high achievers and ambitious professionals, business owners, creatives, healers, guides, podcasters, is that they have been taught to focus on the one thing. Right? Focus on one goal. But the reality is that anybody that we've met who is highly ambitious, either when they focus on that one thing, they look back a couple years later and realize how much focusing only on that one thing cost them relationships, health, even financially in the long term. Or they can't get themselves to focus on the one thing. And then so they feel distracted and shame constantly because they are going in a million different directions and dragging themselves back to this one thing, but also in that, depleted. And so the distinction we like to make is you're a whole person. Like, whatever your goals are that you think you want, there's a lot underneath of it and a lot surrounding it that it's often left out of the conversation that influence and impact how you experience not only the goal that you want, but also why you want it and also how you get there. And that is something that has been missing from every conversation that we've seen from the professional development world and self help and business success strategies for the last two decades.

What Changes When You Get Honest About What You Actually Want

Leah Bryant [00:10:23]: Gosh, yes. I'm curious, what do you think it looks like, though, when someone finally gets honest about this? Like what they want versus what they think they want, like what changes in the room when that happens to be

Brandon Skillin [00:10:41]: as plain as physically possible with that answer? The answer is happiness. When you strip back everything that you have been working towards that you should be working towards, and it can be anything. There has been a societal expectation put upon every individual human being and every individual person sees that differently. So some people, myself included, for the longest time, because of the fact that I had young parents, I was really overwhelmed when I was in my early 20s that I wasn't anywhere close to being married and starting a family and on my way. So that was an outside expectation that I had. And working towards any kind of those kinds of goals when they're not really yours. You develop coping mechanisms to manage the stress. You develop coping mechanisms to manage the discomfort.

Brandon Skillin [00:11:35]: You develop different tactics to try to, like, get a leg up or get a little further, a little faster so that you can get to where you need to go based on what you've been told either you should have by a certain time or what you feel like you're supposed to be doing all of the time when you can remove that and you are truly working towards things, whether it is a singular thing at a time or multiple things at a time, that is actually yours. This is when the cliche of it's about the journey, not the destination, is a real actual thing. It was somewhere in the last five or six years that I heard that statement, and for the very first time in my life, and I was like, oh, it's this. Because even before Tasha and I started doing Rules of Rebellion, I've never really done anything I didn't want to do. You're not going to find me doing things because people tell me to do them. And so, like, I had a 20 year career as a professional artist and loved every second about it. And there were a lot of expectations on what I was doing that weren't mine that made that journey not nearly as fun as it could have been. And when Tasha and I started Rules of Rebellion and we started like really being honest about what we wanted, even when it looked like our world was on fire and nothing in the business was going the way we thought it was going to.

Brandon Skillin [00:13:02]: Nothing about parenting felt easy or smooth. Like, from an outside perspective, it looks like I should have been miserable because of the fact that every day I was showing up to put effort and time and attention and passion and desire into things that I wanted to. None of it faced me in a way that it would have in the past. I was tired, for sure. And I was a little heartbroken from time to time about not hitting goals or not hitting milestones or whatever. The reality is, is that every day I was getting up and I was doing my life that I have a finite amount of in a way that I wanted to towards things that I cared about. And so the setbacks and the quote unquote failures and the missing the mark just by a little bit, like, it was just another day I got to do the stuff that I wanted to do. And when you're living your life like that, like, you're almost invincible.

Brandon Skillin [00:13:58]: And the hard stuff becomes so fun because it's about you're literally living your goals rather than waiting to cross the finish line or, like, waiting for a lottery ticket to hit.

Leah Bryant [00:14:07]: Yeah. And that makes so much sense, I think, too. Like, if I'm hearing you right, the answer isn't just simply, oh, it's a journaling exercise. Because we've all heard that before.

Brandon Skillin [00:14:21]: Yeah. Well, and it's also not about getting up every day and winning. Like, you're gonna have hard stuff. The whole point of having aspirations is that you're doing new things. And inherently new things are challenging. Cause you don't know what to do.

Leah Bryant [00:14:33]: Yeah.

Brandon Skillin [00:14:33]: Like, if you knew what to do, you'd have it already. And so it's not like every day you're crushing it. But the difference is, even when you're not crushing it, it's a lived experience of embodying your full purpose, rather than a lived experience of, if I check all of these boxes off later down the road, I'm going to reap the benefits of something that I've been told I want. Like money or a title at a job or the picture of a perfect family or whatever it may be that you've been conditioned to believe you're supposed to have.

How to Close the Gap Between Knowing What You Want and Actually Doing It

Leah Bryant [00:15:07]: I love that. So let's say that someone gets clear on what they actually want. And what would you say would be next? Like, because knowing and doing are very, very different. And I think a lot of people stall in that gap, speaking from experience.

Tasha Skillin [00:15:32]: Well, we all have. And part of that gap is one acknowledging that that is a messy place to be.

Leah Bryant [00:15:38]: Yes.

Tasha Skillin [00:15:39]: When you have that clarity of, oh my gosh, I now see so much of what I want and now I can't unsee it, which is both beautiful and terrifying. And I now have to let go of the things that got me where I am now. Because old decisions are gonna get old results. And so you have to start making new decisions. The gap that we are constantly closing with our clients, that we had to do the longest, hardest way possible ourselves first is understanding where those micro moments are where you're choosing, I'm gonna do the old thing or I'm gonna do the new thing. And so, you know, you have this clarity of where you're going and what you want. It's reverse engineering. What does that mean? Right? And this is the question I've been asking for, you know, since I was bedbound.

Tasha Skillin [00:16:20]: What version of me do I need to become to have those things that I want and need in that situation? I was telling myself, that's not the same girl that got us here. And so what does she need to do? Who does she need to become? What skills does she need to develop? What does she need to master? What habits does she need to make? Non negotiable. And they're just automatic and reflexive. And this is the missing piece. Oftentimes, what is the environment that is going to make it inevitable for those skills and habits to become so reflexive and so refined and so natural that also propels you towards that vision of what you want. And it's closing that gap because so many of us have been told and taught to like just, you gotta work harder. Yeah, doing what? Like doing what. And for those of us who have this chronic hyper productivity stress response of doing more, doing more, doing more.

Tasha Skillin [00:17:08]: Because that's what we've been told. You just gotta put in the longest hours and do the most and that's how you'll achieve your goal. A lot of us are spinning out our wheels, touching a bunch of stuff and not finishing it and then burnt out because we have been running on urgency and panic and pressure rather than being really strategic about those three things. And this is something we call the she method. But like the skills and the habit and the environment. If you reverse engineer anything you actually have right now that you wanted, that's what got you there. All the other stuff was just busy and chaos and time filling and energy sucking. But when you look at what it is that you want and you start focusing in that swamp, which is what we call that place between where you are and where you want to be, that Swampy, messy.

Tasha Skillin [00:17:49]: I don't know who I am, but I also, and I know I'm not those things. When you start focusing on those three factors, you can become the version of yourself who naturally and easily and comfortably has what you want. And it doesn't feel like you're jumping over hurdles or you're pushing yourself or you're having to at 2 o' clock in the morning, problem solve and stress strategize about how to make it happen. Because it's not about force, it's about becoming the version of yourself, about preparing for that goal. And that's the foundation of all that we're doing in our work with our clients.

Why High Achiever Perfectionism Keeps You Stuck Even When You're Trying to Change

Brandon Skillin [00:18:20]: I know I said I wouldn't add something, but I just want to add something here because I think it's so important to give people permission that stalling that you were talking about is something that Tasha and I remind people is part of the process. One of the biggest things we do with our clients is help people work through perfectionism. And if we are approaching how to live life in a new way, but we're bringing perfectionism with us by expecting just, I'm going to set these goals and I'm going to do it 100% in a new way to get a new outcome. We're really just really putting off the old result for a little later. And so for your listeners and for you specifically, since you said me too, stalling is part of it. And it's okay that it's part of it because if you, like I was saying earlier, when you're doing new things, you don't know what you're doing.

Leah Bryant [00:19:11]: True.

Brandon Skillin [00:19:11]: And so we need to give ourselves permission to be walking down the road going like, I don't know where I'm going next, but at least I'm going further away from where I was. And along the way I'm going to maybe trip or I'm going to accidentally take a side street that I didn't mean to. And taking the pressure off of the journey, being this one really intense straight line is part of opening it up to, oh, I'm actually doing the thing rather than have I done the thing yet.

What the Swamp Is and How High Achievers Move Through It

Leah Bryant [00:19:38]: Oh, I love that. I want to revisit the swamp that you mentioned because I think that's where it goes deeper than most goal setting conversations that I've been in, because it's not just at this point about mindset. So I would love to know how does that show up for the high achieving people, specifically when you're working through

Tasha Skillin [00:20:08]: all of this A swamp.

Leah Bryant [00:20:09]: Yeah.

Tasha Skillin [00:20:10]: Yeah. So this one's rough because the high achievers are used to being the go to. They're used to being the yes person with leadership and with expertise and valid accolades and, you know, magnetism and charisma and all. I mean, all those things that high achievers often have. The part that's tough in the swamp is reorienting your identity. Reorienting where you are feeling safe and where you are defining who you are, knowing that a lot of what got you to this place where you're in the swamp was necessary. Right. The survival mechanisms that we developed to become the high achiever in the way that we have, in the perfectionism ways that Brandon mentioned were necessary because that's what you were handed.

Tasha Skillin [00:20:59]: And so you were doing what you knew how to do to get where you needed to go. Because and honestly, this is the. And that we're always talking about, like you had these stress response patterns of perfectionism, the people pleasing, the procrastination and the hyper productivity, among others. But you also have that ambition and that drive. And so it's important that we take a moment and that we encourage all high achievers to do this because we've had to do this in each big goal that we are moving towards. Take a moment to acknowledge how much work got you to here. And this isn't going to get you to the next place. So where can you remove those roadblocks? And so that's what it is for the higher achievers who are in the swamp saying, there's a goal that I see that I want personally, professionally, whatever it is.

Tasha Skillin [00:21:41]: And in order to do that, I have to reorient what I'm going to show up as. And in that the most, probably the loudest part is I have to be okay with disappointing people that I refused to disappoint before. Right now I have to be okay with disappointing someone other than myself in this next season.

Leah Bryant [00:21:58]: Love that.

Tasha Skillin [00:21:58]: And that part is brutal. When you are having to do those initial steps, we work with our clients in this through a framework that makes it less brutal, that feels more authentic and actually deepens the relationship. But the moments where you realize, oh my gosh, I have to tell my mom, I'm not doing this thing, or I have to tell my kid I'm not doing this thing, or I have to tell my sisters or my partner, we have to change how this has been happening. That moment can be paralyzing for some people if you don't know what's on the other side of it. You don't know how to move through it with nervous system regulation and how to stabilize your nervous system. And those parts and pieces. You don't know the wording, the identity stuff, the core value stuff. But that part, the identity reorienting, is how high achievers move through that swamp from who they were to who they need to become to have the goals that they have now seen that they can't unsee.

Why Nervous System Regulation Is the Foundation of Building a Sustainable Business

Leah Bryant [00:22:47]: Wow. I think that reframe, that's powerful.

Tasha Skillin [00:22:51]: It was for me, and it has been for our clients as well. Yeah. The ability to see that there's nothing wrong with you, but what got you here can't take you to the next place. One of the things we started saying a couple years ago, just within our own relationship for our personal goals and business goals, is old decisions are gonna get old results. And so we're constantly looking at each day saying, okay, what new decisions did we make today? They don't have to be huge. Just, what new decision did I make today? And that gives you the sense of confidence and peace and ease and relief. Like, I made a new decision today. That means no matter what I'm scared about happening that's happened in the past, it's not gonna happen that same way because I made a new decision.

Tasha Skillin [00:23:26]: So the math doesn't math to the same results. That's just impossible. And you build that, and you build that, and you build that, and you start realizing, oh, I've made a whole lot of new decisions in the last week and last month. I don't have to be scared about going backwards. I don't have to be scared about having old results that I don't want anymore. I get to move forward with enthusiasm because I can trust myself, because I keep seeing that I'm doing new things in a new way that's aligned with where I want to be and who I want to be.

Leah Bryant [00:23:49]: Well, I think, too, like, as high achievers, we sometimes look like we have it all together, Right? But internally, there's still, like, this wiring running in the background or story that could be working against us or is working against us. Right. So for those of us who still have that story that's working against us, what happens when both of those things are finally visible at the same time? Like, what shifts when someone has both pieces together? Like, they know what they want and they can see what's been blocking them? What does that combination give them?

Brandon Skillin [00:24:35]: So two things. One is for high achievers that look like they have it all together on the outside. I don't want to take any power away from all the work that went into that. And so you have it all together for other people, and that's where the exhaustion's coming from.

Leah Bryant [00:24:49]: Mm, Good point.

Brandon Skillin [00:24:51]: So, like, I'm working like crazy. All these plates are up in the air. That's for other people. Those are other people's expectations and obligations that we are working to meet. And so you do have it all together. Just, it's depleting because you're not giving yourself any time to recover or reclaim capacity, and you're not giving your own physical body or your emotional self any airtime to say, like, this is actually, like, wiping me out. What do I want to do instead? What do I want to do next? What is going to refuel and recharge me? The adrenaline that we get, because everybody in this conversation is a high achiever of being able to do that tricks you into believing I'm doing what I want.

Leah Bryant [00:25:38]: Oh.

Brandon Skillin [00:25:39]: Because it feels so good. And I'm the one they call, and I'm the one that is really great in a crisis. Right.

Leah Bryant [00:25:47]: Wow.

Brandon Skillin [00:25:48]: And so we've got to manage that. We've got to understand, like, yeah, I'm really good at it, but is this what I want? And when we have those pieces together, when we see this is what I really want is this. And what's really happening is this instead. That is where nervous system regulation comes in in the hugest way, because where Tasha was talking about the swamp, and we're meeting all of these new things that we know because we're intelligent people. New actions equal new results. Old actions equal old results. We also have to do that at scale. Like, if you just drop yourself into a country with no money and no resources and you don't know the language because you're like, I just want to move, you're not going to survive.

Brandon Skillin [00:26:34]: Your nervous system is going to completely shut your whole thing down. Naturally. We know, like, I've got to, like, over time, learn the language, and I've got to learn how to buy food, and I've got to do all these things.

Tasha Skillin [00:26:45]: It's called preparation.

Brandon Skillin [00:26:46]: Right. So you're preparing yourself. When we're doing new things, when we see what we want and we see the converse of what's really happening, preparing ourselves to move forward is actually about preparing your nervous system to be able to make the new choices. So that when you do get the text from your family member saying, just like every Sunday we're going to do this, and you're like, not this Sunday. We're not you actually are able to send that text, make that phone call, have that conversation without either going so far past what you really want to say, because you're just. You need to shut it all down. And then you backpedal and apologize or freezing and being like, well, I guess I'm doing this for the next 20 years of my life, because I don't know how to say no. We have to first really practice regulating your nervous system in low stakes, low metrics so that you're integrating rather than completely just flipping your entire world on its head, because that's not sustainable.

Brandon Skillin [00:27:45]: One of the biggest things that Tasha and I run into when we're working with high achieving clients who do amazing things, the people that we work with are incredibly accomplished. Where they burn out the most is I am sick and tired of doing things the way that I have done. I'm completely changing everything, and now I'm burnout, and I don't know why. Well, because you have literally removed every familiar safety mechanism that you have in your life, and now you're left with nothing but panic. And so we need to slowly integrate a regulated nervous system to new experiences so that you can begin to introduce more of what you want and release some of what you don't, so that the transition is smooth and you're actually, like, walking into your new life rather than feeling like he got dropped from outer space. Does that answer your question?

Leah Bryant [00:28:40]: I mean, my mind is so blown. I just feel like mic drop, episode over. Except we're not, because we haven't even gotten to the tool yet. And that's exactly where we're going in part two. But for now, that's a wrap on part one of this bonus series. And if your brain is a little full right now, that is by design. Tasha and Brandon just gave you a lot to sit with. In part two.

Leah Bryant [00:29:06]: We're getting into the tool they use to hold all of it together. And I promise it's not what you think it is, and you will not want to miss it. It'll drop tomorrow. Until next time.