You start your business. You are excited. You have discovered your passion. Energy is flowing. Fast forward a few years later. You don’t want to get out bed. You are avoiding phone calls. Everybody is irritating you. You wonder if you made a mistake. Most of all you wonder if there is something wrong with you. The business could even be successful but you still feel this way. The thing is nobody actually told you that there would be days, many of them in fact, that you will not want to get out of bed. That the thought of facing the world would be too overwhelming.
So many of us go through this agony sometimes bordering on mini depression quietly. We think the way to get through it is to just move on and will ourselves into action. And we do. But the slump will hit again and again. When this feeling is happening often enough, it’s a sign to hit the stop button and reflect. Maybe there is something to it. No, there is nothing wrong with you. You are a normal entrepreneur. It’s just that not many people talk about this aspect of the journey so a good starting point is to get yourself into circles of people who can relate. I have been talking about this syndrome for months with some of my entrepreneur buddies and these are a few of the reasons we have uncovered. You may relate or at the very least get some perspective that you can use to discover your own reason.
You are simply burnt out. You have been going on and on without a break. You may think this doesn’t apply to you because you went on holiday last month. But did you actually get a break? This means getting your mind off work not just physical distance. Stop the phone calls, emails and try not to think about work. Your mind has been on overtime and problem-solving mode for years and you need a real break. Stop thinking every so often. This leads to the next point.
Maybe you take on too much. You are the be all and end all to everyone at work. Many entrepreneurs find that they have become their employees’ ‘employee’. You pay people to do a job. Instead, they come and load problems on you. You rise to the occasion and fix it for them. You get the ego trip and they get off easy. It becomes the expectation. For example, if a member of your team has a problem with the customer, you pick up the phone and call the customer and resolve it. Everybody is happy but daily doses of this leave you frustrated and worn out. Everything and everyone depends on you. This business is not giving you the freedom you had imagined but has become a prison. Get help and when you do get it make deliverables clear and let people know that you expect them to also handle problems. There are tons of us who avoid the office simply because of the queue of people waiting to transfer responsibility and thinking to you.
Try to understand the season or stage your business is in and your role. You cannot be doing the same role or tasks you were doing five years ago and expect to feel excited about the business. There was probably a season where you did it all because you needed to learn the ropes. Maybe now you need to focus most of your time on particular areas. As your business has evolved, you have also understood who you are, what you are good at and what you are not. There is nobody who thrives on going to work on their weaknesses day in day out. For example, if you know you are not good at administrative tasks, delegate. It could be the season to be bold and change your role completely. Maybe you need to let go of day to day activities and hire the person who can run it (like a CEO or COO) and focus on the strategy.
Last but not least, many of us keep feeling like failures because we have a belief of what success looks like and our circumstances don’t quite match up. Success is always round the corner, just not the corner you are on. Bigger revenues do not necessarily mean success. More money did come with more risks and more obligations. You may want that or you actually get there and find you are more miserable than ever and spend more days in bed.
The reasons we enter this slump are more than can be covered in this article but I’ll end with this observation. A lot of the internal struggle comes from trying to fit into what we think a business should be and how it should be run? Remember you are different and your business is too. Take time to reflect and discover what works and is sustainable for you. It is also just OK to just take the time – a day or so to feel bad.
Through Centonomy I run programs on Entrepreneurship, Personal Finance & Career Growth with registration currently open and ongoing through our website centonomy.com For more information get in touch with me through waceken@centonomy.com /Facebook-Waceke Nduati /Tweet @cekenduati