In this industry, the phrase work-life balance sounds like the punch line of a joke: We aren’t 9–5 people, we are 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. people! Even so, I do preach work-life balance to our employees. I try to make sure none of our team members are feeling burnt out from too many hours or too many difficult or demanding projects.

However, I never seem to listen to my own advice. I try to plan what I can get done in a week, which usually amounts to about 50 hours of work, and then somehow 10–15 more hours fall into my lap. It’s usually the little things like something we finished needs an adjustment, or a marina/boat dealer we do a lot of work for needs another favor. Sometimes another boat owner on the same dock as a boat that we just finished working on wants a quick quote, and now I’m still there an hour later. The next thing I know, I’ve put in five 12-hour days and staring at more work to get done on Saturday. I have a feeling this is a familiar scenario to other fabricators! 

Creating work-life balance can mean making difficult choices. For instance, I made the tough but necessary decision to step away from my role as part-time assistant track coach at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh after the 2024-2025 season. Our little boy was turning one at that time and work was getting busier. Despite what coaching has meant to me and its positive impact on my life, something had to give. 

Burnout also looks different depending on what work you are doing. A few years ago, just before COVID-19, we were building a new shop and had a busy workload. Those few years were tough trying to do it all with the same size team and I really felt the burnout from carrying too much. That felt like more of a physical stress. 

Now, we have several more team members and I am feeling a similar but different type of burnout that I would say originates more from mental stress. More of my “extra unforeseen hours” come from administrative stuff, customer contact and emails, and all the hidden tasks you don’t think about much. The source of stress is different, but the impact is the same.

We love this industry because we take pride in working with our hands and making high-quality products. Most of us didn’t get into this business because we are good at or know anything about running a business, and that can contribute to feelings of burnout.

How to combat burnout

Here are some of the things we have tried at the various stages of our business growth to manage the stress:

• Set some boundaries between you and your business. Don’t give out your personal cell phone number; instead, consider having a business-only cell phone that you can leave at the shop. The same goes for your email address. Have separate emails for your business and personal stuff so you can choose to not look at work items when you are “not working.” 
• For me, these ideas sound great, but I’m also a massive hypocrite. After years of having only one email address, I finally created a second one, only to have that inbox on my phone anyway. This is advice I could stand to follow more closely myself!
• Consider your business hours. You don’t have to be open 60 hours a week, especially if you are a small company or a sole proprietor. Consider being open for business only Monday to Thursday. You can still work some on Friday, if you choose, but make it a day when the doors stay locked and the phones don’t get answered. 
• You could also be like our shop and only have your phone ring between certain times of the day while you are open and outside of those times it goes straight to voicemail. When you don’t have any distractions, work goes so much smoother and is more efficient.
• Control your schedule. This is one of the hardest ones for most small business owners, especially in a relatively newer business that is trying to grow. As you are taking on jobs and adding them to your project list, it is very important to under-promise and over-deliver when it comes to time frames and scheduling. There will be issues, delays, or 5 million other things that come up every week that you have to find a way to fit in; if you give the customer a completion date that starts as a tight time frame, you have only doomed yourself from the beginning. 
• We have developed a rolling schedule that we use to determine how far backlogged we are for new jobs coming in.
  We can give customers a more realistic time frame and we don’t have to kill ourselves working what amounts to two full-time jobs to try to stay on schedule. You can also plan for some much-needed days off or extended vacations this way.
• Take advantage of your networking relationships with peers and others in the industry. This is honestly one of the most important ones for me personally. Our company has been involved with Advanced Textiles Association and its member group Marine Fabricators Association (MFA) for more than two decades, as well as a couple of other trade organizations that serve our industry. The people I have met along the way are some of the most important benefits I have ever gotten out of those trade organizations. I’ve met these folks while attending several of the national and regional events organized by the MFA and am happy to call them friends. 

It is oddly relaxing for me to be in a room surrounded by others that are stressing over the same things or dealing with the same ridiculous customers, even if it’s just sharing our stories over dinner and an adult beverage or two. It is helpful to connect with a group of like-minded people who actually get it and ask questions, see how they handled a problem, or just simply laugh at our unfortunate problems. 

Camaraderie makes stress easier to manage

If you’re dealing with burnout, rest assured that you aren’t alone. We all have gotten to that point where we wonder why we do this year after year. We work in a seasonal industry and make hay when the sun is shining. The boaters either don’t have a clue or just don’t care about our sanity, and our summer finally starts when the phone stops ringing off the hook. 

Wherever you are in your yearly mental breakdown loop, I hope things start to level out for you and you find that light at the end of the tunnel approaching fast. If you need a sponsor for “Canvas Workers Anonymous,” give me a call or shoot me an email, and I would love to chat more about this and see if we can share ideas to keep each other accountable. 

Kyle Van Damme, MFC, is the owner of Marine Tops Unlimited in Omro, Wis., and sits on the Marine Fabricators Association advisory board. Contact him at Kyle@MarineTops.com and +1 920 420 2677.