How I Built A $4.5m Company And Felt Completely Unhappy

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He who works the most wins.

At least, that's what I believed.

I grew a company from negative $500K to $4.5 million in revenue.

On paper? Success.
In reality? I was completely falling apart.

I lost my passion.
I lost my mind. Literally forgot how to open my own trunk.
I lost my will.

And I didn't even see it coming.

In this video, I'm sharing what burnout actually looked like for me. Not the Instagram version, the real one. The walks with my husband where all I could say was "I'm just so unhappy." The moment in a coaching session where it hit me like a ton of bricks.

And then I'll tell you what I did about it.

I took a 4-month sabbatical.
No email. No Slack. No meetings.
Just rest. And it terrified me.

Because when your identity is your work, stopping feels like dying.

But here's what I know now:
Rest is not weakness.
You are limited. And that's actually a good thing.

If you're running hard right now and something feels off, this video is for you.

Stop grinding. Start resting.

I'm Dr. Kimberly Beam Holmes. After a decade transforming marriages at Marriage Helper, I've realized that the greatest tragedy isn't a failed relationship; it's the person who stays stuck and never experiences the fullness of all God intended.

The Way You Show Up is for the high-achiever who is tired of "fine."

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Transcript

The Hidden Cost Of Overwork

SPEAKER_00 1:29

You've heard it said that he who works the most wins, but what if actually he who works the most loses? Let me explain. 12 years ago, I started working at a company and that year we lost$500,000. I then was able to lead that company and help it grow to four and a half million dollars a year of revenue, which on paper sounds amazing. But in actuality, I was losing my mind. In actuality, my husband and I would start going on walks and he would say, What's what's wrong? What's going on with you? And I remember my constant answer back to him was, I'm just so unhappy. I know that life isn't all about happiness, but here's the thing: I felt like I was running on a treadmill, running on a hamster wheel that I couldn't get off of and I didn't know how. Because everyone else was saying, this is what I should do, that I should be working long hours, that he who works the most is the one who wins, that you can outwork your competition. These are the things that you hear in the business space. And when you're a type A, high achiever, get it done kind of person, you feel it even more because to stop feels like failure. And it's not even just stopping. In fact, working a lot is a badge of honor in some of the areas of our lives, especially for go-getters like you and I. You want to win. In fact, working a lot is a badge of honor. Never taking a rest day, always being there when other people aren't. It's something that we begin to find our identity in, at least I did. And maybe you can identify with that too. In fact, rest to me was a four-letter word. Rest. I didn't need rest. I needed to work, I needed to produce because my identity was in the production. It was in the outcome, it was in the results. If I wasn't working, who was I? What was the cost though? What was it costing me in order to grow to this milestone, to run a company, to achieve all of the things at what cost? I have a friend, we were talking a couple of weeks ago, and she told me a story about when she ended up finding out she had a heart condition. And what was happening inside her body was that her heart was double beating all the time, constantly, double beating. That's like you're constantly jogging, constantly on the elliptical, constantly riding your bike. 24-7, there was no stop, there was no resting. And what ended up happening was her heart began to fail. The capacity for her heart began to wear out, to where they said, if we don't do something about this, you're going to go into heart failure. Just like my friend was experiencing how her heart was running out. What I realized, thinking back to when I was overworking all of the time, completely on the edge or at burnout, was that the heart for what I was doing was running out as well. So what I want to share with you today are the three signs that I had that I was burning out. And then I'm going to tell you what I did about it. Here was the first one. I lost my passion. I completely lost passion for what I was doing. I remember there were days I would wake up and just think, do I have to go to work today? There were times that I would look at my emails, look at the things that were on the to-do list, and just think, there was this weight. It was this heaviness on my shoulders and on my chest that I just felt like I was trying to perform. I was trying to meet other people's expectations because I was so caught up in me. I was so caught up with the wrong focus, with the wrong vision that I didn't have passion anymore. And it was actually very scary because I loved the work I was doing at its core. I loved the lives being changed. I loved everything that was happening as a result of the work that I was doing. But the actual work I was doing felt heavy. It felt really heavy. I lost my passion. The second thing that happened was I lost my mind. Now, some of you were thinking, we knew that a long time ago, Kimberly. But in actuality, I remember that there was a day I was so overwhelmed. I was so just caught up in how my life was work, work, work, work, work that when I finally began to take a break, I went to go pick up groceries, like I normally do. And then when I got to the pickup spot, I parked my car. They came to my window and they said, Do you where do you want us to put this? I couldn't remember how to open the trunk of my car. I couldn't remember because I was so cognitively overwhelmed and burnt out. I just, I, I just looked around and I had this moment of terror thinking, I think something is actually legitimately wrong with me. And I looked at the guy and I said, I guess just put him in the backseat. And the whole time I was freaking out thinking, I've lost my mind. It was because I was so stressed out, I was so burnt out, and I wasn't able to rest. And then finally, I lost my will. There was a specific moment when this happened. It was February of 2024. And I was sitting in this chair right here, having a coaching meeting with my business coach named Luke, who I've done videos with before. He's amazing. But as we were sitting here, he was talking about how he realized he was burnt out. He was telling me his story about how the company he had been at, he had been there 14 years, and he just he he felt like he was losing the vision of what he needed to do in that role. And there was a lot of big projects coming up, and he just didn't feel like he had the capacity to carry it forward. It's when he knew that there were pulls happening to get him to do something new and to do something different. And as he was talking, I was sitting here in this chair and I was looking out the window, and it all hit me like a ton of bricks. Kimberly, you need a break. And honestly, it was terrifying. I ended up going home and got my husband and I took him into the bedroom and I said, Rob, I think I'm gonna take a break from work. And I think I'm gonna go for four months. And I kept trying to bargain it. I started with, well, maybe I'll just take like two weeks off and then work a week and then two weeks off and then work a week. And then I thought, well, maybe I'll just do a full month or a full two months. But what I really knew I needed was four months off. And as I was telling him, I was I was crying and I couldn't quite figure out why. But what I ended up realizing was the thought of not working was so absolutely terrifying to me because I had wrapped my whole identity in my work. Who was I if I wasn't working? Who was I if I wasn't producing? And the thought terrified me. And honestly, what terrified me even more was that I would walk away and everything would be fine without me. What if I wasn't even needed? And so as I was sharing all of this with my husband, he said, absolutely, you absolutely need to take this time off. He was 100% behind it. I prepped for it, I prepared for it, and starting in April of 2024, I took four months off of work. And that first day, I had no email, I had no Slack. I told people, do not talk to me, do not contact me unless something is literally burning down. And when I woke up that Monday morning, I didn't know what to do with my life. I didn't know what to do with myself. And what transpired and unfolded over the next four months was some of the most healing, transformative time of my life. There were emotions that I had been running from and not allowing myself to process or feel. I was just covering them over with work. There were family issues that I had to work out. There were just things about myself that I was believing about myself that weren't true. That during those four months, it's not like they all of a sudden went away, but I began to realize that life was more than work. I napped. I never nap. I hate napping, but I would nap every day around 2 p.m. as I was just sitting in my living room reading a book. I took time to purposefully read God's word, to purposefully seek out, God, what is it you want me to do? And I think maybe that was the first time I had done that in forever. I don't know that I had ever actually seeked what God wanted me to do with my life until everything else was stripped away. I was able to be there with my husband, I was able to be with there with my kids. If you're a working parent, you know how hard it is, the guilt that we carry all of the time of not being at all of the things, not being there when they get home all of the time, not always being able to cook breakfast. But for those four months, I was able to be fully present. And my kids noticed, my husband noticed, I noticed. I don't think I truly knew what rest was until I took that time. But it was scary. It was truly scary. But here was the takeaway for me, and what I hope is the takeaway for you. Rest is not weakness. Rest is not a four-letter word. And just like my coach told me, Kimberly, you are limited. And I hated when he said that. I'm not limited. I can do it all. No, I can't. I can't. My favorite movie is Wicked. Don't judge me. I love these movies so much. I love Wicked One and I love Wicked Two. But here's the thing: even if you've never seen it, the very end of the first Wicked movie, you have these two witches, right? So we have Elphaba, who is the Wicked Witch of the West, although she's not actually Wicked. And then we have Gelinda, who is the good witch, who everyone loves. And they end up becoming friends in the first movie. But at the very end, Elphaba is fighting for a cause that she believes in. And no one sees it her way or her perspective. They all see her as the enemy. And finally, she sings the amazing final song of the first movie, Defying Gravity. And at the all through it, she's saying unlimited. And she's talking to Glenda and she's saying, Together we're unlimited. There's nothing that we can't do. There's nothing that I can't do. She fundamentally believes she is unlimited, that she's gonna get her way. And her way is a good thing. She's wanting a quality for all the animals and all the things. But what we see happen in the second movie is that people like the way she's doing what she's doing isn't working. She's not getting the results that she's hoping for. And towards the end of that second movie, there's a second song. And at the beginning of that second song, it's Alphabet again singing, and she's saying, I'm limited. I am not unlimited. I am limited. And she passes on the baton to Glenda to take over what she ultimately realized she couldn't do. I love that picture. I love that character transformation and formation in Alphabet because I think in many ways I have felt that way. I started out in my career working hard, trying to do all of the things, and there became this really terrible place and time where I believed I was unlimited, where I believed that I had this Midas touch and that everything I would do would work. I had pride that I didn't realize I had. For my own, for my own shoulders. But when I had that pride taken away over some things that happened through the business, when things ended up not going that way, I realized, Kimberly, you have had the wrong mindset, the wrong heart set, and you've been putting wrong priorities in place. And so the sabbatical was a natural outpouring of realizing I am limited. And of course, because of my faith, I knew like I during those years, I always knew that God was the one who would bring the provision, but I wasn't acting like it. And over the past several years, and especially with the time that I took off work and rested, it's been a constant and continual reminder of submission to his will, not my own, but also to the fact that I am limited, but he is not. The more that I was putting all of the faith and hope in what I could do, the more burnt out I became. Now I'm in a season of work where things are crazy, things are hard. These are things that if I was facing this pre-sabbatical, I would be losing my passion, losing my mind, and losing my will. I don't know how I would face every day. But that time off taught me the purpose and the blessing of rest. Do I still rest perfectly? No, I don't, but I am way better. I am so much better at cutting off, at taking weekends off. There are some weekends I need to work, but I really try and protect that time because I no longer see rest as weakness. And I know even when we look at our physical bodies, rest isn't weakness. We shouldn't work out or push our bodies seven days a week. That's actually how we get injured quicker, how we can't recover from things and how we can't do our full ability. The more you train too hard, the less hard you can train. We know that from our physical bodies, but it absolutely translates to our intellectual, our emotional, and our spiritual lives as well. I actually created an assessment that you can take for free, where it will ask you several questions. I think there's about 48 or something like that. And at the end of it, you're gonna get a graph to be able to see the areas in which you are struggling, physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually, and the areas that you're doing really well. And one of those areas, just to let you know, is rest and regulation. Because if you're struggling with your rest and regulation, it could absolutely be impacting your emotional health, your spiritual health, even your mindset. So you can see the link to that in the show notes. I hope you take it. But the bottom line is this rest is not weakness. You can look successful on paper into the world and still be completely unhappy. And while the goal of life is not to be happy, when you are drained and burnt out, and that's what's leading to your depletion of energy, it will show in what you do. You're not going to be able to show up to your maximum ability and to live the life that God has called you to do in the way that He has called you to do it. We are weak, he is strong, but even if you're not a person of faith, what I hope you hear me saying through this is you are limited. And that's okay. It's not just okay, it's actually a good thing because it shows you that you can't do it all alone, that you need other people, and that you need a strength outside of yourself, which I believe is God. I would love to know if this video hit with you. Leave a comment, tell me about your story. And actually, what I really want you to do is rest. Find some time this weekend, this evening, make a plan. Turn off rest.