Executive Burnout: A Testimony

Hi, I'm Chuck Wooten and I'm a burnt-out executive. There, I said it. I wasn't always like that, and hallelujah, I'm no longer like that! The journey through the stages was arduous and at times felt utterly hopeless, but having gone through it, I'm glad I did.

How does one become burned-out? I really don't know. Even in hindsight, it's difficult for me to put my finger on anything that caused it, except decades of "striving to thrive." I am hopeful that this piece will shine a bright light on the phenomenon and better yet, offer a little hope to anyone who may be feeling as I used to.

I'll start from the beginning. Growing up in an Air Force family brought some extraordinary challenges beyond a "normal" upbringing. Being a "brat" as we're called meant a variety of things, including our being so flexible, Gumby had nothing on us. We could literally pick up and move with little notice to a land where nothing was familiar and by the end of the first week, we had gotten used to the food and could speak some basic phrases in another language. Being a brat and living in a rigidly-structured environment kept, for some of us, an unhealthy level of pressure to perform--all the time. We had to excel at home, at school, at sports and really were given no time or freedom to let our guard down.

That was my personal experience. I was that kid (a middle child) who grew up feeling the weight of the world. I remember feeling pressure from the beginning. On the journey through high school, I added pressure to myself without knowing it. I tried out for sports I knew nothing about (cross-country, tennis & soccer), accelerated my completion of Air Force Junior ROTC, and had a looming relocation from Germany to the States after my Junior year. Starting a new school in your Senior year simply sucks, but I did it.

What does that have to do with burn-out? One would think that having navigated a high-pressure childhood, everything else would be easy. Far from it. Right after high school, I enlisted in the Air Force. My first experience of not being in a home with demanding standards was awesome. I was able (when my duty schedule allowed) to go where I wanted, eat when I wanted, and relax when I wanted. My first 3 years was fun! What I found though, as fun as it was, I wasn't very successful. It appears I may have relaxed a bit too hard. I was only promoted at the mandatory times for the lower ranks, and was passed over repeatedly for the rank that required scoring well on two large exams. I wasn't into studying and the result proved that. I fell behind my peers. At one point, it took extreme, public humiliation brought by a concerned supervisor to convince me that if I were going to remain on active duty, I was going to have to "pull my head out and study." I did and that pressure got the result and the behavior change I needed to propel me through a career of rapid promotion all the way to the top of the org chart.

After retiring from the Air Force, I faced a brutal reality in transitioning from military to civilian life. I was forced to start at the bottom. I chronicled this in some detail in another article you can find on my LinkedIn profile entitled, "From Basic Training to the Board Room." I encourage you to read that as well.

In that transition, I felt intense pressure as someone who had created tremendous success in the Air Force, to duplicate it in the corporate world. Even being knocked down from "big cheese" to front-line supervisor, I felt intense personal pressure to knock it out of the park every day. I won't bore you with the blow-by-blow details, but the result was that in only 5 years, I earned promotion to the Director level, 4 years later to VP, then 4 years after that, to CEO. That pace, at least for me, came at a price. I didn't realize it at the time, but when you have a sustained focus that intense over such a period of time, it changes a person. I believe it changed me...and not necessarily for the better. Somewhere along that chaotic path, I'd forgotten how to really live and how to really enjoy time with my family. In retrospect, I really missed out on the fun I had as a young Airman.

In 2014, I did something I strongly believed in but it made zero sense to most anyone looking at me from the outside. I accidentally fell into my "15-minutes of fame" when I wrote an open letter to a Congressman I had an issue with. Never in a million years would I have guessed it, but that letter went massively viral, I ended up on a very well-known national news program, syndicated radio programs and countless articles were written about me and my letter. There were some local political groups that wanted me to run for Congress. I did. I lost but came in a strong 2nd. It was the toughest job interview in the world. Pressure to perform every minute of every day--for an entire year!

In 2015, after the dust from the campaign settled, I was looking to reinvent myself and an opportunity to be the COO of a large, global ministry came up. I had never worked in anything like that before, so I took the plunge. It was a huge job in a difficult environment. That job ran its course in a couple of years and I was again looking for somewhere I could finally go and stay. I remained in the ministry Operations area for 6 years and quite frankly, without me realizing it day-to-day, it was eating me alive. I found it to be "mission impossible" for a variety of reasons, which I'm also writing about as we speak in a book with a working title of, "The Business of Faith." I hope you'll check it out when it is released.

I knew it was time to leave my latest COO role when I was hired to run operations and improve everything but not allowed to change anything...chew on that for a minute. I stupidly clung onto that job for 11 months longer than I should have, but I just couldn't force myself to make yet another change--not at age 62! The job became intolerable and I was miserable. As much as I tried to mask my feelings at home, it didn't work, then my wife became miserable...because I was. It was time to move on, but to what?

I spent all of 1 day lamenting the circumstances of the last assignment and then forced myself into some soul searching...something I'd neglected for quite a long time, mostly because I was too busy "jobbing." I held up a mirror (figuratively) and forced myself to answer some pretty tough questions:

• How did I get myself to this place at this season of my life?
• What would I like to do, if there were no limits?
• What will it take to bring fun and happiness back into my home?

These seem like simple enough questions, but they really caused me to ponder, rationalize, and mostly force me to be honest with myself. Until that time, I discovered I'd been too easy on myself and just glossed over my feelings and moved on. It was during this introspective period that I realized a few things:

• I had been in charge of myself for so long, I really sucked at being an employee. And beside that, I just didn't want to work for another boss.
• I love helping people...that's what I've come to learn as my purpose. I've been doing that most of my life, but never really shouted it from the rooftops. I considered coaching/consulting franchises but found them way too costly and the business models were not profit friendly.
• I had been silently suffering from burn-out without really realizing it. That was the "aha" moment of aha moments! Now that I knew what its name was, I felt like I could deal with it intentionally and head-on.

In the month or so after leaving my last job, I decided that I needed to do something to keep busy while waiting to discover the next big thing that will get me to the finish line. My wife had earned an insurance license and was in the beginning stage of selling life insurance. In full disclosure, neither of us had even a slight interest in that industry, but at our age, the barrier to entry is extremely low (pass a test, get a license), so she took that plunge. She experienced tremendous success at the beginning and even earned an award based on her sales during her first 2 days!

I knew this type of work was not her calling and even though she was successful, inside she was struggling with the type of "grind" that insurance work is. I was doing nothing else except figuring out what I wanted to be next, so we talked and I decided to help her with her business until the right thing came along. I passed the exam and got my license and almost immediately, I hated that work. Insurance work is absolutely brutal in too many ways to articulate here. God bless insurance agents, I'm glad they're doing it, but it was not for us.

After about 2 whole weeks of being brutalized by the "prospects," even though I'd sold a few policies, I woke up one day and decided I was done. That morning, during my quiet time, I cried out to God to bring me something to do that would get my motor running again. That afternoon, a gentleman I do not know, contacted me on LinkedIn via InMail. His message was simple, he saw I was open to opportunities as wondered if I'd like to discuss something with him. We exchanged a couple of notes and set up a brief call.

He and his wife had started a home based business by partnering with a global Personal and Leadership Development company. I asked them many questions, got very specific information about the business model, compensation (which is ridiculously great), and my wife and I did what we do...we prayed about it and decided that's the lifestyle we could get behind.

As it turned out, that one InMail was a game-changer for us. While I spent years staring the insidious burn-out in the face without even recognizing it, I'd let the "job" steal my family, my joy, my fun, and my calling to help people. When we took a deep breath and said, "Yes, we're in," everything changed. We decided that being "all in" meant not intentionally having a Plan B, too. No crutches, no safety net. We purposed in our hearts and minds that no matter what, this was the success we were searching for and doggone it, we were going to build it. We had the excitement of learning new systems and processes, we have more freedom than we've ever had--we only work 4 hours per day (if that's what we choose) and we do what we do from wherever we are at that moment. That's freedom!

I only wished I had known about this 10 or 20 years ago. I saw the benefits immediately and have been intensely motivated everyday. This is an endeavor I do not see ever retiring from. It's been around for several decades, has a global market and there's no selling, no cold-calling (like insurance), and before you ask, no, it's absolutely NOT MLM.

Burn-out for me is a thing of the past. I have finally arrived at that place nearly all of us want to be, financially secure and have the wonderful freedom of time. So, my message to you is simple, if any of this sounds a little familiar, it just might be time to ask yourself some tough questions. Brace yourself for the answers and know this, if you're silently (or not so silently) suffering from burn-out, be encouraged there is a cure. There are many non-traditional work opportunities out there, you just have to sift through them to find the one that's right for you.

Or better yet, this article could be your InMail. Should you want to know more, I'd be honored to help you. Drop a comment, I'd love to hear from you.