Why I Walked Away From a Seven-Figure Landscaping Business (And What Burnout Taught Me About Real Wealth)

About five years ago, I was deep in it.

Fourteen staff. Multiple seven figures in turnover. A business that, on paper, looked like success. I was working hard, grinding, building something solid. From the outside, it appeared like I was doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing.

But internally, it felt hard. Heavy. Relentless.

At the time, I didn’t know how to name it. I didn’t yet understand that I was living from a very narrow definition of wealth. I was pouring everything I had into one bucket, the financial bucket, without any real awareness of the others.

Time.
Health.
Relationships.
Spirituality.

They existed, but they were always secondary. Always something I’d “get to later.”

The Hidden Cost of Business Burnout

I now see that I was running almost entirely on stress hormones. Cortisol. Adrenaline. Constant urgency. Constant pressure. Constant doing.

I was addicted to the grind without knowing it.

I told myself I was being responsible. Being a provider. Doing what a man does. Doing what I thought I should be doing for my family. I wore exhaustion like proof of commitment.

But my nervous system never got to stand down.

There was always another job to win. Another problem to solve. Another fire to put out. And no matter how successful the business became, it never felt like enough. There was no real sense of arrival.

Just more.

The Wake-Up Call I Couldn’t Ignore

One night, Alana said something that stopped me in my tracks.

She told me she felt like I loved the business more than I loved her.

I remember feeling shocked. Defensive. Hurt. In my mind, everything I was doing was for our family. I genuinely believed I was sacrificing myself so they could have everything they needed.

But what she was pointing to wasn’t effort.

It was presence.

I was there, but I wasn’t there. My body might have been home, but my system was still at work. Still braced. Still switched on. Still unavailable.

That conversation was a wake-up call. One of many. But it cracked the story I had been telling myself about what love, responsibility, and masculinity looked like.

When Burnout Becomes a Full Shutdown

Not long after that, my body made the decision I hadn’t been willing to make.

I found myself curled up in the fetal position on the bedroom floor. No capacity. No function. No ability to return to work.

This wasn’t tiredness. This wasn’t stress that a holiday could fix. This was a full system shutdown.

It was six weeks out from Christmas. The busiest time of the year. We still had a work Christmas party planned. A team relying on me. Clients waiting. Deadlines looming.

And I couldn’t go back.

That moment stripped away any remaining denial. I knew, very clearly, that something had to change. Not be tweaked. Not optimised. Changed.

Discovering Breathwork and Nervous System Healing

I pulled right back for a while. No clear plan. Just space. Silence. And a lot of confusion.

During that time, I reached out to a breathwork facilitator I had come across years earlier. I don’t remember making the decision logically. It felt instinctual. Like something in me knew I needed support that went beyond talking or thinking my way out of it.

When we spoke, he told me about a facilitator training retreat coming up in the new year.

He said, “You need to come.”

And I listened.

That retreat marked the beginning of my breathwork journey. And I don’t say this lightly. Breathwork saved my life.

From Surviving to Actually Living

Through breathwork, I began to come back into my body. Back into myself. Back into something that felt alive instead of just functional.

For the first time in a long time, my nervous system learned what safety felt like. What rest felt like. What presence felt like.

I began to see just how depleted some of my buckets had become. My health. My relationships. My connection to meaning and purpose.

I had always been around my family, but I wasn’t truly present. Breathwork didn’t just change me. It changed the way I showed up at home. It changed my relationships. It changed the energy in our family.

And slowly, as I reconnected with myself, something else became clear.

Purpose Has a Way of Reordering Everything

As I healed, I started to reconnect with a deeper sense of purpose. A remembering of something that had always been there.

I grew up in housing commission. When it came time to leave school and get a job, all I wanted was for someone to give me a go.

That desire never left me.

Through my landscaping business, I put on apprentices. I gave people opportunities. I wanted to help. I wanted to give back. I wanted to be the person I wished I’d had when I was younger.

What I realised through my breathwork journey is that this thread, helping others, creating community, offering support, had always been part of me.

I just hadn’t been expressing it in a way that was sustainable.

Untangling the Trauma From the Truth

As my connection to purpose deepened, my alignment with the landscaping business slowly diminished.

If I’m honest, there was a trauma response in that. I held the business responsible for the position I had gotten myself into. Even though, ultimately, I was responsible for my choices. For my inability to say no. For my lack of boundaries. For the way I drove myself.

I can see that clearly now.

The business wasn’t wrong. But it was no longer right for me.

What was once my dream no longer was.

Redefining Wealth and Success

Today, I see wealth very differently.

I see five buckets. Financial, yes. But also time. Health. Relationships. Spirituality.

I don’t fill them all equally, all the time. Life moves in seasons. But I’m conscious of them now. I listen to my energy. I notice when one is being neglected. I course-correct earlier.

There is still a debt I feel I’m paying back from years of imbalance. But there is also a deep sense of harmony I never had before.

And from that place, I know this.

Walking away from my landscaping business wasn’t failure.

It was alignment.

It was choosing a life where I am alive and thriving, not just surviving. It was choosing purpose over pressure. Presence over performance.

The dream didn’t disappear.

It evolved.

Now, my work is about helping others come back home to themselves. About sharing a modality that didn’t just change my life, but changed my family’s life and the lives of those around me.

That is why I walked away.

And that is why everything I build now is built from the inside out.

Chris