How do you deal with the emotional ups and downs of entrepreneurship? Sometimes I’m manic, over-motivated, putting my head down and working everyday until some major milestone is reached.
But this, in my experience, is far too often followed by burnout, down in the dumps, depression.
It’s natural to go through this entrepreneurial rollercoaster, feeling on top of the world — “if I just get this thing done everything will fall into place!” — followed immediately by burnout, depression, looking for any excuse to watch Netflix in bed.
On the show today we ask: is there a way to balance that out so we don’t go into despair every 3 to 6 weeks or so? Can we even it out so we don’t experience the highs and lows in the same magnitude?
It’s an important conversation for anyone working on their own thing. Enjoy!
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“How do you deal with the emotional ups and downs of entrepreneurship? ”
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Show Notes
3 Common Customer Interview Mistakes
Why Self Help Gets Morning Mantras Right
How a Mastermind Group Will Help You Reach Your Goals
Learn how to set goals that actually stick!
The Top 10 Mistakes in Online Business
Every week we talk with entrepreneurs. We talk about what’s working and what isn’t. We talk about successes and failures. We spend time with complete newbies, seasoned veterans, and everything in between.
One topic that comes up over and over again with both groups is mistakes made in starting businesses. Newbies love to learn about mistakes so they can avoid them. Veterans love to talk about what they wish they had known when starting out.
These conversations have been fascinating, so we compiled a list of the 10 mistakes we hear most often into a nifty lil' guide. Get the 10 Most Common Mistakes in Starting an Online Business here »
Hi guys,
I just wanted to write a quick (hopefully) note to say thanks for today’s show. It came at quite literally the perfect moment for me right now and I feel like it may just have saved me from tipping over the edge.
At the age of 20 I dropped out of university with the hope of doing something “different” with my life. I’m only 23 and I’ve now spent three years trying to become an “entrepreneur”. For my first 3 projects I completely drove myself into the ground each time and because I didn’t really know what “burn-out” signals to be looking out for, I just kept going until the point where I would decide to give up on myself. As Chase was saying, the “I’m worthless, I’m a piece of sh*t,” type of run down.
After my last failure, or rather, give up, last year, I literally spent 4 months saving up to go back to university in October. Suddenly I had a load of money in my pocket and I realized I had the kind of capital I had always dreamed of having for my previous projects.
I slacked off university and went back in the search of entrepreneurial success. I have now been building my business for four months and it’s going really great. I’ve just reached 1000€ – I’m of the European variety ; D – monthly revenue and our month on month growth is great.
Despite this, I’ve run my personal economy into the ground and the pressure to generate profit is building every day. This week my stress levels have been at an all time high. With my girlfriend away for the week, I saw it as the perfect excuse to stay in the office till 11 every night and get back there for 8 in the morning.
Today I suddenly realized that I’m looking super skinny and I’m getting these strange headaches that are 100% down to stress. I haven’t worked out for like 3 months, and my mental state is definitely starting to take a serious toll on my physical health as well.
I called up my girlfriend and told that I felt I had pushed myself a little too far and after getting off the phone I decided to take a bike ride and chill my mind a little bit. I checked out my Iphone to see if I had any new podcasts to listen to and low and behold, yours was at the top.
Basically, you guys just made me feel like a badass again. To hear that you guys also struggle with these problems made me realize I’m not as “fucking useless” as I think sometimes. What I’m doing is actually more like “fucking incredible”. Being able to relate to all the things you were talking about on this particular day of my life was a great boost.
I took a step back from the big picture and realized that I had to raise some capital. The company has growth and I know I can make it work, I just need time. I swallowed my pride and got speaking to people. In the last few hours I have managed to get the funding I needed to take off some of the pressure.
It was kind of a fluke but thanks for being there at the right time today guys. I don’t know what could have happened if you weren’t.
Anyway, that was my “short” note (there’s a definite tone of sarcasm in my head right now).
Keep up the cool stuff you’re doing with Fizzle. You’ve taken something that a hundred other people are doing and made it completely unique and different so congrats!
Best wishes,
Charlie Centa
Wow, made my day, Charlie. What a great moment to find this episode.
Great topic and conversation! It is something I’m often trying to deal with.
I’d like to add something that I think Barrett touched upon the most during the conversation, which is taking care of the physical body during this process. I would posit that possibly even worse than burning out and stopping all together would be burning out and having some serious health consequences as a result.
Chronic illness is an epidemic in this country. Autoimmune diseases, chronic fatigue, depression/anxiety, chronic digestive disorders…the list goes on.
What science tells us is that stress and inflammation play a major role in this process.
Through these up and down roller coasters, our adrenal glands bear the burden. They can cope, in certain individuals better than others, for so long before they just can’t do it anymore.
The adrenal glands and their effects act upon every organ system of the body. More systemically, the immune system is majorly impacted.
My point is that Barrett’s points to giving great care to the basics that support us is so important (proper food, movement, and sleep). If this is an area that already is not given great attention, then burnout and triggering of symptoms/illness can happen much faster.
Beyond the basic foundational habits, there are nutritional supplements that can “feed” our adrenal glands to bolster them when we are overtaxing the system. Coffee, unfortunately, gives us a boost, but it drains the adrenals even further if abused.
So, in all of this, I think acknowledging that there will be these ups and downs is important. I would also suggest having tools that help the body weather the storm, so the work doesn’t have as detrimental of a long-term effect on the body.
I’m biased, as I’m a naturopathic doctor, but I think having an ND, acupuncturist, or other alternative health care practitioner on board that can look at how to support one proactively can be very beneficial. The process of creating our “thing” shouldn’t come at the expense of our long-term health and being able to enjoy the fruits of our labor.
Awesome, Amanda. Thanks.
Hey Chase (and the rest of the Fizzle crew).
This episode came at the exact right time for me as well.The Thursday before it was released was spent mostly in bed binging on House of Cards, of course feeling completely despondent and guilty the whole time because I was missing a publishing deadline for my blog. The energy and motivation just weren’t there that day, and I felt so shitty about it.
Then sure enough, as if sent from heaven above, episode 153 came into my life the next morning, and I came away with something tangible that I can focus on to prevent this from happening as often. The main takeaway for me was to bring more attention and consistency to my general wellness. My sleep, diet, and exercise tend to go down the drain when I’m really in the zone with work, and then sure enough, I always have intense burnouts shortly thereafter.
It’s dumb that it’s taken me so long to connect those dots, but I’m happy that I did because now I have something concrete to focus on every single day instead of searching for some kind of magic bullet. All thanks to you awesome people and your impeccable timing.
Anyhow, thanks again for everything that you do. I can’t even begin to tell you how much value I’ve gotten out of the show, the blog, and in Fizzle itself. You guys rock.
-Robert Hardy
” The main takeaway for me was to bring more attention and consistency to my general wellness. My sleep, diet, and exercise tend to go down the drain when I’m really in the zone with work, and then sure enough, I always have intense burnouts shortly thereafter.”
Glad you got a crew of whiny hypochondriacs like us in your life, Robert! I KID, but seriously, thanks for the note. We’re always far from these moments with our listeners, so we love hearing them. I’ll share yours with the team.
Was this the week you Guys talked about the Cayenne Honey Latte? I listened to three yesterday and am swimming in Fizzle. Well anyway, Steph it has either tremendously enhanced or ruined my life! I just made one and it is so amazing! I even took it a step further and also added turmeric to it. I usually eat turmeric with honey as an anti-inflammatory! I can’t think of a better way to have my coffee and get my cayenne and turmeric too! That’s it ! I got it, it’s health food!
I just listened to this show and I want to say a huge thank you. It’s so important to take care of yourself. I learned that the hard way and ended up in a severe depression that threatened my marriage and career. My blog was the silver-lining that came out of that once I recovered. I love the saying “Be gentle with yourself”. I’m going to stick a post it up on my desk with that.