8 Ways To Avoid a Burnout When Starting Your Small Business

At one point or another, we’ve all felt burned out. Working ourselves too hard results in the feeling of total fatigue, both physical and mental. Founders of small businesses dedicate their lives to creating a lifestyle of independence and be their own boss, that does not come easy.

When small business owners love what they do, they consider their businesses as their babies. That’s why it can be pretty difficult, even for a little while, to get away from work. This dedication to building a small business is fine for a while. But, you’re likely to be burnt out fast if you continue to work all hours.

Either as a solo entrepreneur or as a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, running and scaling a business requires dedication, persistence, and a lot of energy. As a small business owner, you can build up your strength on the path of entrepreneurship by actively managing your inputs without the feeling of needing to quit or fire yourself as the boss.

A survey of business founders has shown that about half of them worked more than 50 hours a week and some work as much as 80 hours, out of those entrepreneurs, just over 40% have stated that they feel stressed every day. It makes sense that a new business can lead to feeling burnt out. Business owners will often feel that they can’t stop working because that means they aren’t working enough to grow their business. How else can they cover the costs of starting their business?

How To Avoid Burnout

Here are some things that can be done each day if you are looking to avoid burnout.

Get Organized

It can be a major source of stress if you don’t have any control of the day-to-day administrative activities of your business. Disorganization can be nothing more than a distraction when you are working hard and focused. You can save yourself from stress-induced burnout by taking the time to get files, computer, processes, and desk organized.

Divide and Assign Responsibilities

It can be tempting when starting a new small business to be involved in all aspects of the business. Like the saying goes: If you want something done, do it yourself, right?

This is wrong, the startup stage can be the best time to delegate assignments and give up responsibilities. That can mean letting your accountant handle the bookkeeping or hiring a virtual assistant if you are a sole proprietor. You can assign responsibilities to employees if you have any to help prevent any burnout in the rest of your team.

Empower your team instead of micromanaging them, job satisfaction will rise as employees gain control in their positions. You will then see how good it feels to take these tasks off your plate.

Stay Out Of The How

You will start to feel a rush of anxiety throughout yourself when you ask how. For example, asking “how can I get all of this done?” is an intimidating question. This can be a recipe for burnout.

Ask yourself, what needs to happen next? Instead of asking how. This will put you in solution mode. Write a list and prioritize.

You will stay focused on a solution by asking questions around any required actions and avoid burnout from being worried.

Have Your Down Time

When your schedule is packed, there is no chance to take a break or do non-work related activities without causing more stress from shuffling your time. You can schedule this time for yourself as if it was another meeting and make it for a specific activity. After a short amount of time, this will become second nature to you and will start to become the most valuable time slots of your day.

Have Someone To Confide In

You need to be able to discuss any issues you are having with someone, it can be a best friend, business coach, mentor, or even a therapist, preferable someone who can give you advice along the way. This is a major factor to prevent burnout, many entrepreneurs have stated that before they hired a coach for their business they were experiencing considerably higher levels of stress.

Avoid Judging and Comparison

You will likely do one of two things when you compare yourself to other small business owners, either you will think negative thoughts about them or negative thoughts about yourself.

You can avoid any negative self-talk by raising others. Be thrilled for those who are doing well.

You will feel inspired by others who do well and drop the competition once you understand that there is a never-ending amount of creativity and support.

Create Chances to Grow

You can break up the monotony of your days and turn work into play by finding new ways for you and your employees to grow. Help your team understand their path towards bigger and better roles to help minimize burnout for them, this will benefit you as well. A roadmap to success will help your employees power through any slumps in their roles because nobody wants to feel as though they are working a dead-end job.

Stop Being Driven by Fear

Most startup founders are often driven by fear in the first year. They fear that their idea is not big enough, that they won’t be able to get enough clients or customers, that they are inadequate somehow, and it will be a matter of time before someone calls them an impostor.

During the first year, it is totally natural and normal to feel that way. But after that first year, if the business is clearly sustainable and growing, then this is a psychological issue that needs to be handled head-on.

There are two simple and practical steps to take if you’re still being driven by fear. First, take a close look at your strategy, data, and plans, such as marketing and customer metrics. See where you started and where you are going. Second, think very hard about the worst-case scenario. What is the worst thing that can possibly happen? Suddenly things won’t look quite as frightening when you plan for it.

Burnout isn’t always as obvious when you’re feeling disinterested or dejected. You can use these steps to address it once your see that you are suffering from it and come back to your small business with a level head, feeling better than ever.

You can sign up for a membership and talk to our business experts about how they handle burnout within their own business and implement these strategies in your own company