Signature Series - Growth Without Burnout | Vol 2. The 5-Year Owner Burnout Curve

The 5-Year Burnout Curve — and How to Stop It Before It Starts

By Dave Fairburn, Co-Founder of CrewHero and North Point Outdoors

If you’re feeling more stressed the more your company grows you’re not imagining it.

The longer I’ve been in this industry, the more I see the same pattern play out. A good owner builds a solid business. Clients are happy. Revenue grows. The team expands. Then, instead of things getting easier, everything starts getting heavier.

I call it The 5-Year Burnout Curve.

It’s subtle at first. But over time, you go from motivated to maxed out. And unless you fix the real issue, your systems won’t just fall behind, You will.

What Is the 5-Year Burnout Curve?

It’s the point where your operational burden outpaces your capacity to hold it all together.

Here’s how it usually unfolds:

Year 1 – “We’re Growing!”

You’re winning new work. You’re on-site, in the field, managing the details, and it all feels exciting. You’re in control.

Year 2 – “Let’s Add a Few Crews”

You buy more trucks, hire more team members, and bring on new jobs. CRM helps you track clients, but you’re still managing dispatch, time off, and repairs with a whiteboard or texts.

Year 3 – “Systems Are Getting Stretched”

You notice breakdowns. Crews don’t have info. Repairs get forgotten. You’re solving the same issues again and again. But you’re still the one everyone comes to for answers.

Year 4 – “I Can’t Keep Doing This”

You start working weekends just to catch up. You’re remembering PTO requests, chasing truck keys, updating route changes, all in your head. Stress turns into short temper. You stop enjoying the business.

Year 5 – “Something Has to Give”

It’s no longer sustainable. You either burn out, scale back, or start thinking about selling. And the wild part? To everyone else, your business looks successful but inside, it’s breaking you.

The Burnout Isn’t About Hard Work.

It’s About Being the Failsafe for Everything.

Most owners I meet are incredibly capable. That’s the problem.

You’re the one who notices everything. You fill the gaps, you think ahead, and you care more than anyone else. But that only works up to a point. If every process depends on you to make it work, you are the process. And that’s not scalable.

Burnout doesn’t come from growing too fast, it comes from not upgrading the systems that support your growth.

What Should You Do Instead?

Here’s what I wish I had realized earlier:

1. Delegate the Execution, Not the Memory

Most owners delegate the “task,” but not the “thinking.” You need tools and systems that let someone else manage the entire process, from start to finish without constant check-ins.

2. Operational Maturity = Tools + Process + People

It’s not just hiring more staff. Your team needs workflows they can rely on. If your PTO process lives in your text messages, or your repairs live on sticky notes, you’re going to feel buried no matter how many people you hire.

3. Start Tracking Chaos Like It’s a KPI

Missed dispatch times. Forgotten equipment. Crew confusion. These aren’t just annoyances, they’re operational liabilities. The more of them you have, the more likely you are to fall into the burnout curve.

CrewHero Was Built to Break the Curve

We created CrewHero because we hit that 5-year curve ourselves.

At North Point Outdoors, we scaled fast. And it was working — from the outside. But internally, we were relying on memory, goodwill, and late nights. So we built a system to:

• Simplify dispatch

• Make time-off and repair requests trackable

• Put accountability in the hands of the field teams

• Get the chaos out of the owner's head

That’s what broke the burnout curve for us.

Final Thought

If you feel like you’re doing everything right — and it still feels wrong — take a step back and ask yourself this:

“Have my operations matured as fast as my revenue?”

If the answer is no, don’t wait.

The 5-year curve isn’t a maybe — it’s a when.

But the good news?

You don’t have to hit the wall.

You can start climbing out now.