Season 1, Episode 13

Overcoming Burnout And Learning To Live

Join Diane Cassel and Lyle Leads as they discuss the best techniques to network with a sense of purpose and how to overcome burnout as an entrepreneur.

In this episode we will cover:

How your lifestyle affects you as an entrepreneur

–  How to overcome burnout

– How to network with purpose

– How to say “No”

Lyle Leads: Hello, welcome to Optimize Profitability. Today, we’re here with Diane Cassel, she’s the CEO of Cassel to Castle.  They are on a rescue mission to help people live a healthy lifestyle and reduce risk of illness, teaching them how easy it is to build a strong immune system while on a budget that’s important to her. Her goal is to help others build residual income. And she’s one of my favorite people, I’ll just be honest. And I invited her and I told her I was like, I can’t believe I didn’t get you before today. Diane, thanks for being on here with us today.

Diane Cassel: Thank you so much. It was out of the blue that Lyle reached out to me yesterday and I was like, “wow, I haven’t heard from Lyle in a long time.” And it’s always good to hear from an old friend.

Lyle Leads: Diane, tell us your entrepreneurial journey, what’s brought you to be the successful person you are today?

Diane Cassel: Oh, my goodness. Well, I’m going to try to do the Cliff Notes version here. That’s what I call it because I love to make people laugh more than anything. So, you’ll do a lot of laughing in this episode. I hope and pray, but I am a recovering mortgage loan officer and I say it’s recovering because it nearly killed me, literally killing me living in the corporate world. And that’s my message to people and how I left that world and came to be an entrepreneur.

But being a mortgage lender was a twenty four seven gig. It was a tremendous amount of stress, the last company that I worked for was probably one of the most stressful companies I have ever experienced in my life. It was the epitome of how not to treat people, that kind of environment. And so that coupled with the stress of the job, the twenty four seven demands on you led me to have nearly a nervous breakdown. And my husband, my dear husband, for those of you that will get to know him and Lyle Leads met him before, is he’s my savior, my knight in shining armor because he actually rescued me from that.

He said, you are going to retire and retire early from that profession. And it really did save my life. It really did truly save my life. And so I was retired for a while and then I got a call not too much longer, and I was going on business trips with him. My plan was to go on business trips with him and he had most of the country. And so we were going to go and have fun while he worked.

I was going to go to the spa or hang out at the pool and read. I got a call from a friend of mine that I had met 30 years ago. And she said, “I’d like to introduce you to this network group and I want you to be part of it.” And so there ended my retirement. It was over in a flash.

Lyle Leads: A good flash, right?

Diane Cassel: It was a very good flash. And through that network group, I met my business partner. And my business partner was involved in health and wellness, and it resonated with me personally because I had watched my parents go from vibrant, healthy people to very sick people. And it was all due largely in part to their lifestyle and to their belief system. And so I watched them go to the doctor because they had a little ailment and the doctor would prescribe a big pharma pharmaceutical drug and that drug would give them another side effect.

And it was like a snowball, Lyle. It was like one illness led to another, and then they put a Band-Aid on that illness and then it just was it was never ending and I watched them disappear from me.  The people that I knew and that I loved. And so I vowed to myself that I was never going to take drugs, I was never going to take any pharmaceutical drugs, and I was just going to learn how to live a healthy lifestyle.

I also learned something interesting. I thought that if you were genetically inclined to have heart attacks, cardio disease or cancer in your family or dementia or anything like that, that you were just destined to that that was going to be your life. But what I learned is that it’s only 10 percent genetics and the rest, 90 percent is your lifestyle and your choices. That is what brought me to entrepreneurship. That is what brought me to do the research to find a company that I could back their products that I could back and that I could go out and share with everybody and impact their lives.

And that’s why I’m an entrepreneur today and my husband is still in the corporate world. That’s just his gig. He loves it. It’s his wheelhouse. But for me, he allowed me to do this. And it just has made such a huge difference. Not only my life, but everybody that I’m able to reach God puts before people that he wants us to meet every single day. It’s my job, my duty as a servant of God to share what God has taught me.

And I don’t believe in any accidents. I don’t believe that I met Lyle by accident. I believe that God introduced us for a reason and that we, the both of us, have the same belief system. And we go out and we teach people that they do make a difference in this world and how to make an impact in this world and how to help prevent you from illness.

Lyle Leads: I ask a question right quick before we get on this call, you talked about burnout. How did you go from burnout to being excited about life once again? Tell us what that journey looks like to you.

Diane Cassel: Oh, wow. Well, if any of you have been in the burnout phase, if you’re in the burn out phase right now where it’s a very lonely place to be, and I want to talk specifically to you, because I think if you’re on this podcast right now and you’re listening to this, that it’s not by accident.

And so if you’re feeling burnout and you’re feeling overwhelmed if you’re getting into your car and driving from your office to your house and you pull up in your driveway or your garage and you don’t know how you got there. That’s burn out that is it and that’s a scary place to be, because you kind of go through what I call a blackout where you’re trying to remove yourself from the situation that you’re in because you don’t like it. You’re trying to protect yourself.

I’m speaking directly to you if you feel that right now. And so what did I do? How did I transition? I took a break. I think you need to take a break. I took a break, I surrounded myself with people that would lift me up and tell me the things that I needed to hear, not the things that I wanted to hear. Right. So they steered me in the right direction. They held me accountable.

But most importantly, they showed me love and that that is how I started the path back to wellness. And then from that point, I pivoted and I really said, “I am the sum of the five people that I hang out with the most. Who do I want in my close circle?” I call it kind of like in the in the old days, you know, when you’re out in the wilderness and you start getting attacked by whoever is attacking you and you’re circling the wagons, you’re circling the wagons, and it’s time to bring in the posse of circle the wagons and protect yourself.

Who are those five people that are going to help you, lead you to where you want to be, show you the path of where you want to go and help you get there. And that’s exactly what I did. I reached out to a person that I looked up to before and she led me. It was like a domino. She led me to people that she knew that had helped her. And that is what I recommend for each one of you.

The message that I send to each one of you today is circle yourself, surround yourself, circle the wagons and bring your posse close to you, the people that are going to protect you the most.

Lyle Leads: That’s a good word. I appreciate that. So what are you doing right now that you feel like is really helping you to win in life and win as an entrepreneur?

Diane Cassel: A couple of things I learned how to network with purpose. I don’t know about you out there in the audience, but I didn’t know how to network and people say, well, is that a skill? Well, actually, it is, because I was out there, I started with the Chamber of Commerce networking back when I was a lender because I didn’t know any different. And it was a great place to start. I met some incredible people at the Chamber of Commerce that are still my dear friends today. If I called them, they would be there for me.

But did they really give me business? No. Did I waste a lot of time? Yes, most assuredly. There was no structure. And it was just kind of like pushing cards at people and not really creating relationships, and so I went from that to a lot of other network groups and again, I felt like I was spinning my wheels. A lot of times I felt like I was meeting a lot of great people in the community.

But was I doing anything for myself in my business to elevate my business? And that’s really what you’re there for, to network is to make sure that everybody knows who you are and what you do and why you do it. I felt like I wasn’t doing that. And all I was doing was going from one meeting to the next to the next to the next. My calendar was filled up. I was busy. I kept telling people I’m very busy, but I wasn’t producing and I wasn’t feeling accomplished.

I didn’t feel like I ever accomplished anything. And then when I learned how to network from a dear friend of mine and I joined a network group with purpose, a network group that really taught me a network group that is a training and development company masquerading as a network company. So every week I go to that meeting and I learn something new. I also learned that transactions are not sustainable, that if I got a new client, if I didn’t take care of them and nurture them as a client and treat them as a friend, that they would not come back and do business with me again.

What I learned at my network group is that relationships are sustainable. That’s the only thing in this world. And if you don’t treat your relationships like a friendship and nurture them like a friend. That you will not grow your business, not the way you want to grow it, you want retention, you want customers to keep coming back to you. You just don’t want one and done right. And that’s what I learned. Networking. It is an art. And I love teaching people how to do it with purpose. I love teaching people how to pick the right network group that fits their needs.

And then when they pick that network group, what do you do then? What’s your next step? You don’t just show up at the meeting. And so I love training and teaching. That’s the biggest thing I think that God gave me is that he gave me that gift of teaching people and listening. God gave us one mind for two ears. And unfortunately, most of us get that backwards. Networking probably is the biggest thing that you can do for yourself.

The other thing that I’m doing for myself is teaching myself how to say no. And that’s hard because when you are well known in your community people constantly call you.  They call you because they need something. Because you’re a resource, you have a huge sphere of influence and they want your time. They want to learn from you, and that’s the biggest compliment when somebody calls me and says, “hey, Diane so-and-so told me to call you because you knew how to do X or you knew how to steer me in the right direction.”

Well, here’s the thing. I do know those things. I’m old enough to know those things and I’d love to share those things, but I have to learn how to say no. When somebody calls me and says, hey, I want you to work on this project with me. And while it might be a great project, I love the person that’s calling and asking me, and I feel very honored that they’re calling and asking me. And I know you guys feel the same way, too, because there’s a lot of volunteering efforts out there right now.

There’s a lot of good causes out there right now. But sometimes the cause has to be you. Let me repeat that, sometimes the cause has to be you. And you have to take care of yourself first, right, it’s kind of like being on the airplane. And the flight attendants instruct you, if you lose cabin pressure, oxygen masks will drop down. And you as an adult, if you’re traveling with a small child or an adult that needs help, you’re supposed to put your oxygen mask on first and then help them with theirs.

The same is true here in entrepreneurship. You’ve got to put your oxygen mask on first. You have to insulate yourself first. And I love teaching people how to do that. But you’ve got to say no because and tell them that you’re honored that they asked and then say, you know what? I’m going to think about somebody that would be really good for this and I’m going to connect the two of you. But if you don’t say no.

To a lot of things that come your way, that means you’re saying no to the things that you’re supposed to focus on, right. And those are the things that I recommend. Those are the things that I’m implementing in my life right now.

Lyle Leads: That’s great, and what’s one tip you give an entrepreneur about networking or about saying, no, a lot of people have trouble saying no. So what would be a tip? You would tell them how to say no in a nice way that they can do that feels comfortable to themselves.  Sometimes people feel like when they say no, they’re letting someone else down that self pleasing factor.

Diane Cassel: Absolutely. So when somebody calls me and asks me to jump on board, I’ll give an example, recent example. Somebody called me and asked me to jump on board a volunteer effort. They wanted to put together a fundraiser, a golf tournament for this non-profit. And they knew I had lots of experience with that they’d see me in the community do many of those efforts, they know that I’m a control freak and I’m a bossy redhead.

So I lead the pack. Right. And I get things done, but even though this was a good effort and certainly a fabulous non-profit that I believe in. I had to say no. I didn’t want to feel bad about it. And so what I said to them was, “You know, I am honored, I’m really honored that you called me and thought about me.” Because, yes, I love doing those things. I love giving back to the community that I live and work in, and I believe it’s so important for us to get back, saying, “Right now. I am not able to do this. Because I feel like I would if I accepted this offer. That I would be shortchanging you. I don’t believe that I could give it my all because I’m involved in too many things, I put too much on my calendar.”  I give it back to me like it’s my fault. But I put too much on my calendar that I need to clear my calendar. And I just wouldn’t be able to do a good job for you now. I want this to be a successful event for you. “I’m honored that you asked me and what I’m going to do is I’m going to sit and I’m going to think about the people in my life. That this would be a good match for. And I’m going to introduce you to that person or those people.”

Those are some powerful words. Because it validates them right? But it also validates me and it also makes me vulnerable. I show my vulnerability by saying I just couldn’t do a good job for you right now, but I’m going to help you.  I’m not going to let you down. I’m still going to help you.

So I hope that resonates with some of you, because I know it’s hard to say those two letters. And it’s big , it’s big, it’s a big word to a lot of people. Sometimes it’s a complete sentence. However, sometimes, depending on who is asking, can be a complete sentence, and you don’t have to give a reason. I think people that are reaching out to you for a good reason that it does require a reason and an explanation. It makes sense and if you do it that way, it just it’s warm. It’s just right. It’s not a negative. And hopefully that helps you learn a little bit more about how to say no.

Lyle Leads: Yes, that’s a good tip. I think you give them that warm factor. I love that concept. So we’re going to continue this conversation. We’re going to take a slightly different direction. We’re going to talk about how to live a healthy lifestyle.

It’s not your typical just get up and exercise type thing. There’s more to it than that. We’re going to talk about how to take care of yourself a little bit. We’re gonna have a fun conversation about a serious topic called health. Join us over at OptimizeProfitability.com. Before we leave out here, though, Diane, how can we get in touch with you?

Diane Cassel: You can get in touch with me a couple different ways. I’m going to go ahead and give you my cell phone because I believe in the power of connection. And so here you go. My cell phone is nine seven two. Six five eight four zero three five. Again, it’s nine seven two six five eight four zero three five in my email address is pretty simple. The name of my company, it’s Diane at casseltocastle  dot com.

It’s a little play on words that I came up with a friend. We brainstormed and it’s from my home to yours teaching you how to live a healthy lifestyle like that.

Lyle Leads: Real quick before we get off there. You gave your cell phone is OK for people to text you before they call you or you just wanted to call you directly?

Diane Cassel: Either way, probably texting is going to be a better way for you so that I know the reason for your call and how you found me. It’d be really important for you to text me and say, hey, I heard your message on Lyle Leads podcast, or Optimize Profitability. And that will help me and Lyle with our marketing efforts and our tracking.

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