You had a dream.
You wanted to start your own business, be your own boss, create something you could be proud of and, perhaps most importantly, create a better life for yourself and your family. So you took the leap. You started the business. And you succeeded.
The customers came. The work increased. You built a team. You established a reputation. The business became successful.
And then, somewhere along the way, something changed. Four or five years have passed. Maybe more. The business is still going well, but you’re tired. Really tired.
You wake up thinking about the business. You go to bed thinking about the business. You’re answering emails late at night, taking calls on weekends and mentally running through tomorrow’s problems while you’re supposed to be having dinner with your family.
You are successful. But you’re exhausted.
And this is one of the great traps of running a successful small to medium-sized enterprise: the business can become so successful that it consumes the very life you originally wanted it to improve.
When success becomes the problem
When you first started your business, working long hours probably didn’t feel like a problem. You were building something. Every customer mattered. Every sale mattered. Every opportunity mattered. You were willing to do whatever it took.
And that’s often exactly what successful business owners do. They work harder than everyone else. They take responsibility. They solve problems. They put their customers first. They make things happen.
But what works during the first twelve months of a business isn’t necessarily what works five years later. The problem is that many business owners never change their operating model. They continue behaving as though they’re still the person who has to do everything. The business grows, but their workload grows with it.
Eventually, the owner becomes the bottleneck. Every decision comes through them. Every problem comes to them. Every difficult customer needs them. Every staff issue needs their attention. Every important sale needs their involvement.
The business may have grown. But the owner’s freedom hasn’t.
Burnout doesn’t usually happen overnight
Burnout is rarely one dramatic event. More often, it happens gradually.
You start working a little later. You stop taking weekends off. You cancel the holiday because “this isn’t a good time.” You tell yourself you’ll take some time off once things settle down.
But things never really settle down. There’s always another customer. Another deadline. Another employee issue. Another invoice. Another problem. And because you’re the owner, you feel responsible for all of it.
Australian business guidance identifies high workloads, competing priorities and financial concerns, as significant sources of stress for small business owners. (Business Victoria)
The danger is that you can become so accustomed to operating under pressure that you stop recognising it as abnormal. You simply think: “This is what running a business is like.”
It doesn’t have to be.
Learn to recognise the warning signs
Before you can prevent burnout, you need to recognise what’s happening.
Perhaps you’re becoming increasingly irritable. Things that wouldn’t normally bother you suddenly drive you crazy. You find yourself snapping at staff, customers or family members.
Perhaps you’re struggling to concentrate. Simple decisions feel unnecessarily difficult. You can’t remember the last time you had a proper day off. You’re sleeping poorly, but when you do get into bed, your mind won’t switch off. You don’t enjoy the things you used to enjoy.
And perhaps the biggest warning sign of all is that you begin to resent the business you once loved.
These are signals worth taking seriously. Burnout can involve exhaustion, sleep changes, irritability, reduced motivation, difficulty concentrating and detachment from work. (Business Victoria)
The answer isn’t to simply tell yourself to “toughen up”. The answer is to change the way you’re operating.
Stop being the person who does everything
One of the hardest lessons for a successful business owner is learning that being involved in everything isn’t the same as being valuable.
In the early days, you probably had no choice. You did:
- The sales
- The quoting
- The bookkeeping
- The phones
- The supplier dealings
- The complaints
You probably even emptied the bins.
But if the business has grown and you’re still doing all of those things, something needs to change.
Delegation isn’t about getting rid of responsibility. It’s about putting responsibility in the right place.
Look at everything you currently do and ask yourself: “Does this genuinely require me?” If the answer is no, someone else should probably be doing it.
That might mean:
- Training an employee
- Hiring someone
- Outsourcing a task
- Using technology
- Simply deciding that a particular task doesn’t need to be done at all
You don’t have to delegate everything. But you do need to stop doing things simply because you’ve always done them.
Your business should not need you every minute of every day
Here’s an uncomfortable question: if you disappeared for two weeks, what would happen to your business? Would everything continue reasonably well? Or would the whole operation grind to a halt?
If the answer is the second one, you don’t just have a staffing problem. You have a business-model problem, and you need a business coach.
A healthy business should increasingly be able to operate without its owner being involved in every decision. That doesn’t mean the owner becomes irrelevant. Quite the opposite. It means the owner’s role evolves. Instead of working in the business all day, you have more time to work on the business.
You can:
- Think about strategy
- Develop your people
- Build relationships
- Look for opportunities
- Make the decisions that genuinely require your experience
And, importantly, you can step away occasionally without everything falling apart.
Put boundaries around your business
Technology has made it incredibly easy to remain connected. Your phone is always with you. Your emails are always available. Customers can message you. Staff can contact you. Your accounting software can send notifications. Your business is effectively sitting in your pocket twenty-four hours a day.
But just because people can contact you doesn’t mean they should always be able to. Set some boundaries:
- Decide when your working day finishes.
- Turn off notifications.
- Don’t automatically respond to every email at 9.30pm.
- Let your customers know your normal business hours.
- Give your team clear guidelines about what constitutes a genuine emergency.
And most importantly, follow the boundaries yourself. There’s little point telling your staff not to contact you after hours if you’re sending them emails at 11pm.
Business Victoria specifically recommends establishing and communicating clear work boundaries and creating deliberate separation between work and personal time. (Business Vic)
Stop confusing busy with productive
This is a big one. Being busy feels productive. It isn’t necessarily productive.
You can spend twelve hours at work and accomplish very little of genuine importance. You can spend half your day answering emails, attending meetings, solving minor problems and dealing with interruptions. At the end of the day, you’re exhausted. But what did you actually achieve?
As the owner, your most valuable resource isn’t money. It’s your time and your ability to think clearly.
So start asking: what are the three things I need to accomplish today that will genuinely move the business forward? Do those things first. Everything else can be fitted around them.
And sometimes the correct answer is that something doesn’t need to be done today. Or tomorrow. Or at all.
Take holidays before you desperately need one
Many business owners say: “I’ll take a holiday when things calm down.” The problem is that things rarely calm down by themselves. You have to make them calm down.
Taking time away from your business isn’t a reward for finishing the work. There will always be more work. A holiday is maintenance. Just like you service a vehicle before it breaks down, you need to give yourself time to recharge before you’re completely depleted.
And if you’re worried about what will happen while you’re away, that’s useful information. It tells you where the weaknesses in your business are. Perhaps:
- Your staff need more training
- You need better systems
- You need clearer processes
- Too many decisions still sit with you
Use your holiday as a test. If you can’t leave the business for a week, ask yourself why. Then fix the reason.
Look after the person running the business
It’s easy to treat yourself as the last priority. The staff come first. The customers come first. The business comes first. The bills come first. The family comes first. And eventually, you come last.
But here’s the problem: you are one of the most important assets in the business. If you’re exhausted, stressed and operating at half capacity, the business suffers too.
These all matter:
- Sleep
- Exercise
- Eating properly
- Time with family and friends
- Having interests outside the business
- Sometimes simply sitting down for thirty minutes without doing anything productive
These aren’t indulgences. They’re part of maintaining your capacity to lead.
Australian government guidance similarly recommends protecting sleep, exercise, relaxation, relationships and personal time, while avoiding overcommitment and seeking support when needed. (Business Victoria)
Talk to someone
Running a business can be incredibly lonely. You can have employees, customers, suppliers and hundreds of people around you and still feel like you’re carrying everything alone.
Who do you talk to when you’re worried about cash flow? Who do you talk to when you’re considering letting someone go? Who do you talk to when you’re questioning whether you even want to keep doing this anymore?
Find someone. It might be:
- Another business owner
- A mentor
- Your accountant
- A business adviser
- A trusted friend
- A family member
- A professional who can help you work through what you’re experiencing
You don’t have to solve everything yourself. And asking for help isn’t an admission that you’ve failed. It may be one of the smartest decisions you make.
Remember why you started
Perhaps the most important question is this: what did you actually want when you started the business? Was it money? Freedom? Security? More time with your family? The opportunity to build something of your own? To create jobs? To have control over your future?
Whatever your answer was, ask yourself whether the business you have today is actually giving you that thing.
Because there’s a strange irony in entrepreneurship. You can build a business designed to give you freedom and end up creating a job you can’t escape from.
That’s not necessarily a failure. It may simply mean the business has reached the point where it needs to evolve. The systems need to evolve. Your team needs to evolve. And your role needs to evolve. You don’t have to quit. You may just need to change the way you run it.
When you’re exhausted, it’s tempting to think the only solution is to sell the business, walk away or start again. Sometimes that’s the right decision. But sometimes the business isn’t the problem. The way you’re running it is.
Before making a major decision, take a step back. Look at:
- Your workload
- Your calendar
- What you’re doing every day
- What only you can do
- What somebody else could do
- What you could stop doing
- Where technology could help
- Where you need better systems
And look honestly at the amount of time you’re giving the business compared with the amount of time you’re giving yourself.
Then start making changes. Not all at once. One at a time:
- Delegate one responsibility.
- Set one boundary.
- Take one afternoon off.
- Turn your phone off for one evening.
- Book a holiday.
- Have a difficult conversation.
- Hire the person you’ve been putting off hiring.
- Create the process you’ve been meaning to create.
Small changes can create significant breathing room.
A successful business should support your life, not consume it
You didn’t start your business so you could spend the rest of your life exhausted. You started it because you wanted to build something. Something successful. Something meaningful. Something that gave you opportunities. And hopefully, something that gave you a better life.
Success shouldn’t come at the cost of everything else that matters. Your business needs your energy, your judgement and your leadership. But it doesn’t need every waking hour of your life.
The goal isn’t to work less simply for the sake of working less. The goal is to build a business that works without requiring you to sacrifice yourself to keep it running.
Because the greatest measure of a successful business isn’t just its turnover. It’s whether the business allows the person who built it to enjoy the life they built it for.
And if you’re four, five or ten years into your business and you’re starting to feel burnt out, don’t ignore that feeling. Stop. Take a breath. Look at what’s happening. And start making changes.
Your business matters. But so do you.
If you’re ready to make your business work for you, rather than the other way around, we’d love to help. Book a free 30-minute strategy session with Owen Watson at Brick Pig Coaching, or call us on 1300 786 009.
