I want to tell you about the worst morning of my career.
I had just landed a $100,000 video project — the single largest contract I'd ever signed, with one of the biggest companies in my industry. This was the kind of deal I'd been working toward for years. I should've been celebrating.
Instead, when I pulled my chair up to the computer to start working on the videos, I felt sick to my stomach.
Not nervous. Not overwhelmed by the scope. Physically ill.
Days passed and I couldn't even sit down at my computer without feeling nauseous. I'd stare at the screen, knowing I had the skills to knock this project out of the park, but my body would revolt.
I started to panic. I thought I might have to refund the entire $100,000 and walk away from the project completely. The more I worried about it, the worse the anxiety got, which made the work that much harder to begin.
What was wrong with me?
The myth we've been told about burnout
If you're an entrepreneur who's burning out, you've probably already tried the obvious fixes. Better sleep. More exercise. A vacation. Maybe you've even read a book or two about productivity or work-life balance.
And none of it worked, right? Not really.
That's because burnout isn't just a lack of rest.
It's not because you're working too hard.
Burnout is an alignment problem.
You're not burning out because you lack grit or discipline. You're burning out because you've been forcing yourself into work that drains your natural energy — and nobody ever told you there was another way.
We've been sold this idea that if you're good at something, you should keep doing it. Push through the hard days. Hustle harder. The discomfort means you're growing.
But what if that discomfort is actually telling you something more important?
Strengths aren't the same as motivation
This is the thing that changed everything for me, and it's the thing I wish someone had told me fifteen years earlier:
You can be genuinely great at something — squarely within your wheelhouse — and still feel completely drained by it. That's because strengths and motivations are two completely different things.
Knowing you have the skills to do something exceptionally well is not the same as the deep sense of fulfillment you get when you tapped into your intrinsic motivations.
Think about it. You probably have things in your business that you're objectively good at. Maybe it's sales calls. Maybe it's operations. Maybe it's content creation or managing your team. You get results. People praise your work.
But when you're honest with yourself... does that work actually energize you? Or do you just power through because you can?
There's a massive difference between "I'm capable of doing this" and "this is work that lights me up." Most entrepreneurs have never stopped to ask which category their daily work falls into. They just keep grinding, assuming the exhaustion is normal.
It's not.
What was actually happening to me
Eventually, I managed to muster the grit to complete that $100,000 project. On time. And objectively, they were some of the best videos I'd ever produced. The client loved them. But it was clear that something was off, and the one thing I knew for certain was that I never wanted to experience that feeling again.
It wasn't until months later that I finally figured out what had gone wrong.
I'd become paralyzed by perfectionism.
Over 14 years of creating video tutorials that were widely praised as the "gold standard" for software tutorials, I'd raised the bar on every single video I produced until it had gotten so high I could barely attempt it again.
But that was just the surface problem.
The deeper issue was that I'd been doing work that used all of my skills but never actually tapped into my deepest motivations.
Right around that time, my friend Chris Lema suggested I take an assessment called Motivation Code.
Now, I'd taken plenty of personality tests before. But I was desperate for change — so I took it. When I got my results, I just sat there staring at the screen.
It turns out, my strongest motivation is to Make an Impact — to make a genuine difference in people's thoughts, feelings, and behavior. And critically, I need to see with my own eyes that my work is making that difference.
Fourteen years of creating video tutorials for WordPress. Millions of views. Podcast interviews and articles. Industry awards. Yet, I could count on one hand the number of times someone said that my work had actually changed something in their life.
Without that visible impact, the work wasn't just unfulfilling. It was actively draining me every day.
The praise never fueled me
My MCode results revealed something else that hit just as hard.
Even though my tutorials had been referred to as the "gold standard" for software training videos, that recognition never really motivated me. Turns out, the motivation to Evoke Recognition — to capture the attention and interest of others — was way down near the bottom of my list of 32 possible motivations.
All those years of people praising my work, and I kept wondering why it felt empty, instead of energizing. Now I knew. That kind of recognition fuels other people. But it doesn't fuel me.
And that's the part most people miss: What motivates one person drains another.
The work that makes your business partner come alive might be the exact work that's slowly killing your enthusiasm. There's nothing wrong with either of you.
You're just wired differently.
How to spot this in yourself
So how do you know if you're stuck in skills-without-motivation mode? Here are three questions worth sitting with:
What work do you keep avoiding — even though you're good at it? Procrastination on tasks within your skillset is one of the clearest signals that motivation is missing. You don't lack discipline. The work just isn't feeding something that matters to you.
When was the last time you lost track of time while working? Not because of a deadline, but because you were genuinely absorbed. If you can't remember, that's worth paying attention to. That feeling isn't random — it shows up when your work aligns with how you're wired.
Do you feel more drained at the end of a successful day than an unsuccessful one? This sounds counterintuitive, but it's common. When you spend an entire day doing things you're skilled at but not motivated by, the exhaustion actually gets worse as you accomplish more. You're spending energy without getting any back.
If any of those hit close to home, you're not broken. You're misaligned.
You don't have to stay like this
After I discovered my MCode results, I restructured my entire career around what actually motivates me.
I actually sold my company and joined the team at MotivationCode.com.
And today, I coach entrepreneurs and business leaders through the same process — helping them understand exactly how they're wired so they can reshape their work around what genuinely energizes them.
Every single day, I get to see firsthand the impact of my work on people's lives. And I feel more energized and fulfilled than I have in years — because my work finally fits how I'm wired.
The shift isn't complicated. It starts with understanding your unique motivational pattern — the specific threads that have been present your entire life, explaining why some work lights you up while other work (even work you're great at) leaves you empty.
Once you see it, you can't unsee it. And that's when everything starts to change.
If you want to discover your own personal Motivation Code, I'd love to help! Grab a time on my calendar and we'll dig into what's draining you most — no strings attached. No pitch to follow. Just a real conversation with someone who'e been right where you are.
You'll walk away with absolute clarity about what's behind your burnout, whether we end up working together or not. How does that sound?
When you're ready, let's talk!
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