To Succeed As a Business Owner, You Have to Be Tough
Hardheaded!
Self-motivated!
Driven!
If you’re an entrepreneur, these qualities almost certainly describe you. To succeed as a business owner, you have to be tough, focused and willing to carry the entire weight of the enterprise on your shoulders. It goes with the territory.
But these key ingredients of your success can also lead to personal pain and business calamity if they’re allowed to get out of control. Then, instead of success, you find yourself courting that bane of the hard charger: burnout.
“Our weaknesses are always the excesses our strengths,” says Barbara Reinhold, director of career and executive development at Smith College in Northampton, Mass. Reinhold knows what she is talking about. She also has a private counseling practice where she treats victims of job burnout.
When the pressure’s really on, and the risk of burnout is at a peak, she says, many entrepreneurs respond by doing absolutely the wrong thing. Instead of reaching out for help, they become even more self-reliant and insular in their thinking and behavior.
“They say ‘I’ll do it myself’ and are more likely to push people away. They get in a ‘Don’t mess with me; I’m the boss’ posture.”
If the spiral is allowed to continue, stress becomes burnout, which Reinhold defines as “a lack of resilience, the inability to pick oneself up and keep on going.”
The good news is there are ways to tell if you’re headed toward burnout, and to reverse the process if you are. More on those in a minute.
An all-too-common problem
First, though, it’s important to understand how very common the problem is, and why the entrepreneur is at much higher risk that the general working population.
A 2001 survey on stress in the workplace found that 82% of workers felt some stress in their job, while 42%, reported that job-related stress was interfering with one or more of their personal relationships. Tellingly, 35% said stress was jeopardizing their physical or emotional health.
The survey was conducted by Harris Interactive for The Marlin Company, a workplace communications firm in New Haven, Conn. The survey focused on employees, not small-business owners. Take away the security inherent in working for someone else, or being part of a larger company, and the potential for stress ratchets way up.
If you’re an entrepreneur, “you don’t have one thing which an employee has, which is a paycheck. That sets you up to be more anxious,” Reinhold says. Along with potentially greater financial insecurity comes the daunting realization that, for the entrepreneur, there is no higher court of appeal.
“It’s definitely a fact that the buck stops there, there’s no one above them,” says Ruth Luban, a psychotherapist in Santa Monica, Calif., who sees many small-business owners in her private practice.
Luban says that personality, type of work at home job, immediate work environment and the larger economic and political environments as factors that help determine whether an individual will face burnout.
Entrepreneurs typically have personalities and do the kind of work — creating businesses and keeping them running — that by their very natures promote stress. The fact that in recent times they’ve had to cope with a sluggish economy, war, the threat of terrorism and other global uncertainties has only tightened the screws.
Recognizing the symptoms of burnout
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Irritability. “When you find yourself getting a little crabby, it’s a good sign you’re headed toward a situation of low resilience, which correlates with low productivity and low creativity.”
Fatigue. This is a chronic lack of energy that occurs when entrepreneurs “get used up” and lose their resilience.
Sadness. A major symptom of depression as well, this can be the nonspecific feeling that “something is wrong.”
Self-doubt. Somewhat counter intuitively, this symptom can manifest itself as excessive bravado.
Illness. Says Reinhold: “When someone gets the flu for the third time, they’re probably bringing it on themselves.”
For a systematic self-diagnosis of burnout, check out the “Burnout Barometer” on Luban’s Web site. There, you’ll be asked to respond “yes” or “no” to a series of questions aimed at pinpointing the level of stress you’re under. An answer key helps you interpret your score and determine whether you’re experiencing smooth sailing in life, are showing preliminary signs of stress or are in the burnout stage.
Prevention and treatment
There is a way to gird yourself for the rigors of business battle that will increase your ability to ward off stress and burnout. Reinhold likens it to the preparations of a marathon runner.
Proper rest, good nutrition, adequate exercise and recreation are essential ingredients. So, Luban says, is a “decompression ritual” that allows the entrepreneur to separate work from the rest of his or her life. “A driven person who does not know how not to work, in good times and in bad, gets in trouble,” she says.
What to do if you haven’t taken the necessary preventive measures and find yourself a victim of burnout? The critical first step, experts agree, is to get a little perspective by talking to someone.
“Talk to somebody, anybody,” Reinhold says. “You don’t have to go to a shrink if you don’t want. Talk to a friend or your spouse. But start with someone away from work.” That can be a tough step to take, she says, because entrepreneurs frequently equate asking for help with weakness.
Find a good sounding board
Other business people who can relate to the challenges and problems you face are particularly good sounding boards.
Sharon Miller, chief executive officer of the Renaissance Center, a business incubator in San Francisco, says entrepreneurs who take part in the center’s programs are taught the benefits of networking and that “when you want help, you have to ask for it.”
Small-business owners can find networking opportunities throughout the nation. A good place to start is the Association for Enterprise Opportunity, a national organization that among things offers references to small-business groups in different parts of the country.
Sometimes, of course, all that’s needed to get back on track is a change of pace.
Says Reinhold: “They come in saying ‘My customer base fell 25%, what should I do?’ I’ll say, ‘You and your wife should go away for the weekend.’”
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