entrepreneurˌ
ɒntrəprəˈnəː/
noun
-
a person who sets up a business or businesses, taking on financial risks in the hope of profit.
exhaustion
ˈzɔːstʃ(ə)n,ɛɡˈzɔːstʃ(ə)n/
noun
-
state of extreme physical or mental tiredness.
Entrepreneurial Exhaustion
Entrepreneurial exhaustion occurs when a combination of causes increase the pressure to achieve success. Ultimately, your business will suffer and can fail if not addressed.
How are you feeling?
Are you feeling tired and avoiding going ‘all in’ on your business? Is it because you’re suffering entrepreneurial exhaustion? Are you losing sight of your passion, trying to meet your income goals? Only two-thirds of all small businesses survive past two years. While many factors come in to play, entrepreneurial exhaustion is one of them. Messaging, social media, niching, visibility, business goals, client management, marketing, income, blogs, business models and SEO are all sucking the life out of you if you suffer from entrepreneurial exhaustion.
Exhaustion can result in the following ways:
- loneliness
- self-doubt
- lack of confidence
- fear of the unknown
- the what-ifs
- mind mess (brain fog)
- creative block
- reduced results
The feeling of fatigue extends past our business, and manifests itself emotionally in the following ways:
- irritability
- reactive emotion
- anxiety
- sadness
- resentfulness
- stress
- depression
and physically:
- the lack of intimacy
- the lack of sleep
- nausea
- poor relationship with food
- lack of concentration
- strained relationship with self, family and friends
How do we create boundaries, when we set our own goals and are writing our own destiny? Knowing we want to create success, but thoughts of commitment and making sacrifices can be a recipe that creates fatigue. The obvious reason for this fatigue is overload. The harder we work, the more successful we will be right?
The abundance of information that is accessible in the online world can quickly tip into negative territory. Information is accessed so easily that we can become overwhelmed. We listen to many experts and how they have been successful, which can create problems with our own decision making, creates a lack of strategic thinking and the loss of our own “why”.
Another cause of fatigue is when business hands us a lemon. We need to remember and understand that negative outcomes don’t mean failure.
An additional reason for stress and fatigue is when our partner and family don’t understand what we do or don’t appear to value our work. This increases the pressure and the feeling that we are doing it alone, creating more burnout.
Overcoming Entrepreneurial Exhaustion
Exhaustion comes from living life, and we must take a holistic approach to overcome burnout. Self-care includes looking at the different parts of your life. Including the physical, mental, dietary and different relationships can contribute to burnout.
Focus
Identify your triggers and take steps to cut them out, even if it means more work in the short term.
We all suffer from stress and decision fatigue from time to time. After all, we are inundated with information, anxieties, and stresses in almost every aspect of our life. Breaking the process down into a few steps, evaluate the situation, and make that decision quickly and confidently. Here are the three simple steps I use:
- Determine whether or not the situation at hand is consistent with your core values. If it isn’t consistent, don’t do it
- Identify the likely outcome and worst-case scenario. If you can get comfortable with how you think things will play out and can accept the worst-case-scenario, move forward.
- Determine how the decision will impact your resources (time, people, and money). Is the benefit worth the cost? If you think it is, move forward and don’t second-guess yourself. You might end up being wrong, but worrying about past decisions will only drive you crazy.
Preventing Entrepreneurial Exhaustion
In business, the key to understanding and preventing Entrepreneurial Exhaustion is to identify, understand and prevent causes that will increase your stress beyond an acceptable threshold. Knowing your purpose and why becoming an entrepreneur is your passion. Understanding your own ‘why’ for what you are doing. When you think about what it is that makes you feel ‘I’m changing my world’.
Once we Identify our why, we need to decide who we are and how we want to show up. Stop signing up for challenges, blogs, tools, newsletters, webinars and all the rest of the information out there if it doesn’t feel like you to begin with. If you do sign -up and it’s not for you – simply unsubscribe. We are business people and are happy for you to be our client, on your terms and when you are ready to consider deleting this sentence – is it saying what you want it to say?). Own your decisions around the source/s of information that you need to operate your business. Separate the opportunities into Self-development and business-development and schedule accordingly.
Scheduling is very important and creates boundaries. Business hours are business hours. If your clients don’t understand the boundaries you create, are you the right person to be working for them?
Example: One of my values is family. If you work with me you will know that I value your time also with your family. I will honour your time with your family and schedule accordingly and also be adaptable to your family needs.
Time should be valued as; Investment+Purpose=Return
Visibility
The constant worry about being visible in your business can be one of the biggest stressors that cause exhaustion. Whether it be in an online space or face to face, we all have the need to feel accepted. Appearing as yourself and being aligned with your branding makes the overwhelm less. Your clients will align themself with you and your why. As no-one can do you better than you and visibility is all about who you are and the trust factor you share.
If you don’t respect someone’s boundaries, does it give you a glimpse into your thoughts around boundaries? Planning needs to include; client time, preparation, social media, review, bookkeeping and coaching. Anything to do with your business should be done during your business hours. When creating your business hours and available client time, scheduled to include all of the above. Sit down and work out a time to schedule for your family, home, partner and self. You can have everything, but not everything at one time. If you are exhausted from trying to be visible all of the time, once again separate groups into business and self-development. What groups do you have to be a part of? What benefits will the group offer? (This needs to be scheduled into your business hours) What is your return of interest?
Decision Making to prevent Entrepreneurial exhaustion
Simplification is a great tool for today’s exhausted entrepreneur.
“There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers.” -Ronald Reagan.
Simplify your decision-making process to avoid fatigue and burnout. Actively strip it down to its most basic aspects. Shedding extra information helps you to focus your thoughts, get down to the point and simplify the decision-making process.
Take away any information that has been presented to you about making the decision that doesn’t matter. What are questions about the current decision that is important? Which ones are not? (Do we need to know who is involved, when it will happen or the how it will happen to make a decision of our involvement).
There are many ways to become an exhausted entrepreneur, remember though you may feel alone there are many of us around. It is okay to be an exhausted entrepreneur, it is okay to have symptoms of an exhausted entrepreneur. It is important that you connect with others and share stories and get support from those that align with your values. If they don’t, they aren’t your network for business or yourself at this moment.
Here is my link if you would like to chat how I can help you with being an exhausted entrepreneur.
