How To Identify, Avoid, and Overcome Entrepreneurial Burnout

Sep 16, 2022 | Listen

How To Identify, Avoid, and Overcome Entrepreneurial Burnout

There’s nothing like the exhilaration of starting a business. Your to-do list may be long, but it pushes you to achieve that profitable prize. From setting targets to overcoming challenges, entrepreneurs like you will never run out of ways to improve your business. However, the daily hurdles of being a business owner or entrepreneurial burnout can take their toll on your health.

Industry trends, tech, and upheavals are constantly in flux, keeping you on your toes —and sometimes on edge. Your business is now extremely busy and a source of anxiety, robbing you of motivation, self-confidence, and well-being.

Entrepreneurial burnout is real, but you can prevent it and bounce back by managing its impact and embracing its transformative power, so you become a stronger and better leader. This way, you can move forward energized to reach new business goals.

In this episode of Help! My Business Is Growing, our guest Priscilla Stephan shares her valuable insights on entrepreneurial burnout: what it is, what are its signs, and how to avoid and overcome it.



Timestamps for this week’s episode

  • 02:41 What are the signs of entrepreneurial burnout?

  • 06:33 What is entrepreneurial burnout telling you about how you currently work?

  • 10:33 Explore small tweaks to prevent entrepreneurial burnout

  • 17:04 Is it better to pause and take a break from your business during burnout or confront it directly?

  • 31:39 What is the one actionable step to take to address burnout?

“Regarding burnout, I’ve seen really significant physical ailments that start to show because they have far exceeded the body’s capacity to manage the level of stress. And so the body starts to scream, “I need help! This is more than I can tolerate!” – Priscilla Stephan

What are the signs of entrepreneurial burnout?

Burnout is experiencing a deep sense of overwhelm from the amount of work that needs to be done and the stress it all brings.

Some of the signs of entrepreneurial burnout include:

  • Increased Anxiety
  • Increased Pessimism
  • Frequent overworking
  • Lack of sleep
  • Lost motivation
  • Lost self-confidence
  • Becoming highly reactionary & losing sight of the big picture
  • Decreased sense of self-worth
  • Developing blood clots
  • Increased digestive problems
  • Many other pressing physical ailments
Burnout is actually a beautiful fertile opportunity for reevaluation, realignment, and repositioning of your role and the role that you have in the business.

What is entrepreneurial burnout telling you about how you currently work?

Burnout is ultimately an alignment issue: You are out of alignment with how you naturally work best.

It also comes from:

  • outdated beliefs
  • outdated narratives and stories
  • deep-seated trauma responses to survival

It is an opportunity to rethink and reevaluate:

  • Who am I?
  • How am I running my business?
  • What role do I play in this business?

It is also a call to upgrade:

  • How you see yourself
  • Your relationship with yourself
  • Your sense of personal leadership
  • Who do you want to be as a leader?
  • What role do you want to play in this business?
  • How do you want to show up in the business moving forward?

“Burnout is ultimately an alignment issue, meaning you are out of alignment with how you naturally work best.” – Priscilla Stephan

Explore small tweaks to prevent entrepreneurial burnout

Even if you’re feeling overwhelmed and there’s so much on your plate, two strategic, tactical tweaks can help create some room to breathe.

1. Revisit your original vision and ask:

  • Why are you doing this, to begin with?
  • What are we looking to change?
  • What paradigms do you want to change in the world?
  • How can you reconnect to that?

Doing this will reinspire you and breathe fresh life into your work.

2. Start outsourcing and delegating:

To avoid becoming the bottleneck, simply let go and find people you can hire to help you.

It is not a sign of weakness and should not take away your sense of self-worth and self-value.

You can start with hiring someone part-time to manage small tasks and build from there until you hire three or more full time. This will automatically take a chunk of your time off, and you can focus on your zone of genius. Identify the activities that can be delegated and hire someone or get one of your existing team members to work on them to alleviate the pain.

This will almost always 100% result in overcoming burnout and making better decisions as a leader.

Oftentimes, burnout comes from outdated beliefs, narratives, stories, and even sometimes trauma and responses to survival.

Is it better to pause and take a break from your business during burnout or confront it directly?

A vacation would undoubtedly be helpful, provided you can go on vacation and disconnect from work and stop thinking and worrying about what’s happening back at the office.

To achieve a sustainable change in how you work that does not lead to recurring burnout requires a change in the following:

  • your thinking
  • your self-identity
  • your self-leadership
  • the beliefs you hold
  • the conversations with your staff
  • your overall business structure

A vacation, while great, may not address all of these questions.

Dealing with it head-on might not be the best solution, particularly if you are still stuck in the same mental state or fall back into old, familiar, and comfortable thinking patterns.

Finding support, however, is the way to go.

Talk to a coach, mentor, consultant, or industry specialist that can give you a fresh perspective and help you break away from the innate biases that keep you stuck as the bottleneck.

It could be helpful to hear fresh insights, whether with staff that you trust or with hiring someone, even if it’s part-time or temporary.

“Sustainable change that does not lead to recurring burnout requires a change in thinking and self-identity and self-leadership.”– Priscilla Stephan

What is the one actionable step to take to address burnout?

Use your imagination. Literally.

Take time to assess and determine the biggest drains on your time, energy, and resources.

And if you could wave a magic wand, how would you like it to be different? What support would you need to have to make it a reality? How could you make it work out?

This will stop you from running on the hamster wheel for a little bit and even show you different paths and other solutions you might not have been able to see before.


Summary

  • Burnout is the state of negative mental, emotional, and physical well-being due to unmanaged and overwhelming stress from work. It brings numerous physical, mental, and emotional issues, which sometimes have lasting and devastating effects.
  • Burnout is a major sign that you are not fully aligned with how you naturally work best. It is also a chance to rebuild, reevaluate, and reset your current and negative mindsets into something positive to gain success.
  • Going back to your roots, revisiting your original vision for your business, and delegating tasks are small tweaks you can apply to help you avoid burnout.
  • A vacation might not be as restful or effective when dealing with burnout, and acquiring the services of a mentor or coach would be a better solution versus rushing in to deal with the problem even if you are not mentally prepared to do so.
  • Try to imagine or visualize the best solutions to overcome burnout, and build on that to find an actual, realistic one.

Transcript

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About guest – Priscilla Stephan

Founder and CEO

Soulfluent LLC.

Priscilla is an Intuitive Business Strategist, creator of the Soulfluent® Leadership Archetypes, and CEO of Soulfluent LLC.

She helps soul-driven women entrepreneurs create sustainable, world-changing businesses that support the greater good.

Through a powerful combination of practical business strategy and soul guidance in the Akashic Records, she excels at helping people identify their zones of genius, step into powerful leadership, and live their purpose profitably.

Priscilla’s holistic and pragmatic approach to business and leadership allows her clients to live their dream lifestyle while confidently sharing their soul’s work to make a big impact and increase their profit and growth.

Websitehttps://priscillastephan.com/

LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/priscillastephan/

Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/priscillastephan/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/sweetpathgirl

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/priscilla.stephan.1

Priscilla’s book | Soulfluent® Leadership Business Guide: Amplify your Message, Visibility, and Profits by Leveraging your Archetype


About host – Kathy Svetina

Kathy Svetina is a Fractional CFO for growing small businesses with $10M+ in annual revenue.

Clients hire her when they’re unsure about what’s going on in their finances, are stressed out by making financial decisions, or need to structure their finances to keep up with their growth.

She solves their nagging money mysteries and builds a financial structure with a tailored financial strategy. That way they can grow in a financially healthy and sustainable way.

Kathy is based in Chicago, IL and works with clients all over the US.

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