On the brink of divorce, destitution and despondency: Entrepreneurs share their darkest hours.
Mentally exhausted. Crying on kitchen steps. Suffering in silence.
It can be impossibly lonely at the top, yet this is not the image commonly associated with being an entrepreneur today. In a world where you are your business, where you’re only as good as your TrustPilot reviews, where growth is painted in black (or red) at the end of the financial year, and your public image is under constant scrutiny (thanks, social media!), business owners are faced with mounting pressures of a different kind.
Often boasting 20% year-on-year staff and turnover increases, founders of SMEs are often celebrated as UK growth heroes. Success is everywhere; on the front of business publications (including ours), on social media, at networking events and on brightly lit stages at industry conferences. But what lies behind the flashy headshots and PR sound bites” What is life really like for entrepreneurs juggling their personal ambitions, an indifferent, dog-eat-dog marketplace, and a volatile currency market?
It’s a multi-factorial issue with profound societal context, says Dr Arup Paul, deputy chief medical officer at AXA PPP healthcare. “We live in VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) times. This has had micro, meso and macro effects. Companies and their decision makers are facing pressure, this transmits throughout organisations and becomes an insidious anxiety.”
“In this state, perspectives aren?t clear and become distorted. For example, the definitions of value and return become perverse, such that focus is centred on the wrong things.” ?Dr Arup Paul
#tooreal” 10 darkest moments you may be able to identify with
Founders of some of the UK’s top high-growth businesses have revealed the personal toll that building a successful company has had on their mental health. These are the darkest thoughts and lowest points 10 anonymous entrepreneurs have battled (and won).
[metaslider id=”126883″]A key theme here is how these founders found the resilience and strength to work through these dark times. Knowing you’re not alone may be the first step.
“If I die, please tell the children how hard I worked”
In a recent qualitative and quantitative study by the 100 Stories of Growth campaign,£45% of founders felt under extreme pressure and 25% of them said growing their business affected their mental health but they suffered in silence. AXA PPP healthcare’s own research into mental resilience and entrepreneurship reveals a similar theme. More than a third of a surveyed 500 business owners feel that running a business has, at some point, affected their health in a negative way. Only 4 in ten take time off to recharge, despite 70% saying they struggle with sleepless nights.
The knock-on effect of this has been astounding. 43% feel so overwhelmed and burned out that they’ve thought about giving up.
Many have experienced isolation, betrayal, emotional and mental scarring. Others have shared accounts of broken marriages, bankruptcy, mental breakdown and burnout, while they have been growing their company.
According to the study from 100 Stories of Growth, 53% of founders say building their business has been one of the toughest times of their lives and 45% felt under constant extreme pressure.
A staggering 25% of the entrepreneurs questioned revealed that their mental or emotional health has been negatively affected but they?ve ‘suffered in silence , while a fifth’said they “felt like a burden” to their friends and family. A smaller but not insignificant proportion (8%) have resorted to seeking medical advice due to the notable impact on their mental health. The entrepreneurs in the 100 Stories of Growth campaign collectively employ a total of 14,365 people their headcount growth is an average of 27% a year. In total, these companies have reported £2.76m in their latest annual turnover, growing annually at an average of 23%. 67% of companies export, and 62% of them export to seven or more countries, while 33% export to over 20.
“Working harder?or longer, rather than smarter, becomes a cultural” norm and there is a generational effect too,” Dr Paul tells Real Business. “Decision makers are still often disciples of Jack Welch” there are a lot of unaddressed cognitive biases!”
Founders are increasingly starting from the back foot, reacting to change and external factors than taking on a strategic role. Many become risk-averse as a way to mitigate the shifting environment, which results in what Dr Paul calls a vicious loop of low investment into individual or team continuous development. This leads to a low adoption rate of new ideas and tech, focus on incremental rather than transformative change and a consolidation of outdated values and ideas.
“This then results in misappropriate behaviours at every tier which end up self-perpetuating. Hence, presenteeism: the need to exhibit commitment. And leavism: the need to prove excellence.”?” Dr Arup Paul
Entrepreneur Michelle Morgan features in the 100 Stories of Growth campaign and is the co-founder of six businesses including Pjoys. I physically and mentally burnt out quite violently. As a founder of a business, everything was my responsibility. Weakness wasn’t an option,” she says.
“There’s an ingrained narrative around investment, scaling and growing which is exciting and alluring you get sucked into pushing yourself harder and harder. I worked around the clock for 15 years, putting my leadership mask on became increasingly difficult and in the end, I had to take time off and out. I couldn?t go on anymore.”
“What I noticed was that it was easier to talk about my heavy periods, hysterectomy and the loss of my fertility with my team and investors than my poor mental health. That needs to change, we need to make mental health an everyday conversation.” Michelle Morgan
?We need to speak openly about the hidden toll growing a business takes in order to protect and empower others,” she says.
More than access to finance: What can investors do about it?
100 Stories of Growth launched its ?Don?t Lose It” initiative last month, encouraging all parts of the investment community to have a much-needed and transparent discussion about the pressures of building a high-growth business. The wider investment industry from angel investors to VC funds need to take responsibility for founder wellbeing and be more ?mindful investors?, says Guy Tolhurst, the man behind the campaign.
The ?Don?t Lose It” manifesto will comprise a list of actionable points the investment community can adopt to acknowledge their responsibility and make a positive difference to founder wellbeing something that was mirrored by 26% of founders in the research who would like to see more support from the investment community.
“The reality of scaling a business in the UK can be exhilarating yet bleak at the same time. It’s a big dipper of high-octane peaks of self-belief, followed by plummeting drops to the depths of self-doubt,” Tolhurst says.
As a serial entrepreneur, small business champion and founder of businesses including?Growth Investor Awards,?Intelligent PartnershipAnd Mi:Cap, he believes that entrepreneurs need more support from investors” and not just financially. “In the past, the runway to investment was much longer and founders experienced rollercoaster?like highs and lows before they even thought about taking on financial capital, which builds emotional resilience.”
“Today, there’s more money sloshing around than ever before, just waiting to be ploughed into the next big idea, often run by entrepreneurs with little experience of the pressures ahead of them. Investors hand over a wad of cash and urge the founder not to lose it, but they should be advising the same with mental health in mind. Guy Tolhurst
According to Tolhurst, the SME investment ecosystem needs to prioritise founder education and development about wellbeing and mental health. Meanwhile, founders need to have an honest think about when best to take on external capital, from whom and why; while weighing up the personal risk-reward equation. “Not all capital is created equally and there’s more than simply financial capital to consider emotional, intellectual and human capital all play a part in business and personal growth.
Health and wellbeing strategies risk being tokenistic, Dr Paul warns. Founders, and their businesses by extension, need to develop big-picture perspectives on corporate social responsibility and their role in society as a whole, he says. Employees have a part to play as well. They need to commit their labour with reciprocity or?recognise their own roles in shaping and moulding the values of the ‘society they are part of. “Changes need top-down and bottom-up buy in with a clear vision. They also need measurable parameters of success but these will not be classic ROI scenarios in the time-frames currently considered.”
Building resilience: Talking about it is the first step
Tolhurst’s own wake-up call came when he realised the only way he could get out of bed was if someone would talk him through getting out of bed on the phone. “At this point, I knew I had to start developing habits and strategies to kick-start my day.”
“On the back of a challenging email, I had a full blown panic attack in plain sight at an industry event, unable to see or hear I guided my way to a fire exit where I finally pulled myself back through a clearing technique I learned during mentoring years before.” Guy Tolhurst
At that moment it just came to him, and it has become a coping mechanism he advocates to help people deal with day-to-day anxiety in business life.
[article id=”126519″ title=”Put your wellbeing first”]Here are some of the darkest times faced by UK’s entrepreneurs and what they’ve learned from confronting these issues.
Simon Swan,?Founder & CEO of Hiring Hub
Charlie Mowatt,?Founder & CEO of The Clean Space
Stu Conry,?Founder of Active8
Jonathan Young,?Founder of Man Bytes Dog
Cheryl Hadland, Founder?& MD of Hadland Care Group
Impostor syndrome 2.0: The strain of plastering on a perpetual smile
Impostor syndrome isn’t new. Pop psychology has touted it as the ‘fake it till you make it’ mantra, which may have been originally intended to instill confidence in people thrust into high-pressure environments. The impact of having to ‘fake it’ suggests you don’t have the elusive ‘it’ factor to begin with, and many high performers internalise this as a fear of being exposed for being a ‘fraud’.
[article id=”124326″ title=”Face your inner demons”]Even Einstein had a case of impostor syndrome, yet he managed to change the world. He once famously confided in a friend, “The exaggerated esteem in which my lifework is held makes me very ill at ease. I feel compelled to think of myself as an involuntary swindler.”
Of course, nobody?really?thinks of Einstein as a fraud, yet he still felt insecure about his research and achievements, just as many competent people today. Research suggests that people who report a high frequency of impostor syndrome are prone to constant feelings of depression, suicide, and shame.
They are the business leaders who change the world, public figures that inspire generations and even employees who dismiss their achievements and struggle with bringing their authentic selves to work.
Impostor syndrome 2.0 seems to be a specifically corporate phenomenon that is compounded by the pressures of living a double life on social media. Everyone is a public figure today, and our social networks and how we’re perceived can fuel the anxieties that lie at the root of impostor syndrome. It’s less about dismissing achievements as a result of luck or good timing and more about bring your perpetually happy, fulfilled and wholesome self (as seen on Instagram) to the real world.
Popular Instagram blogger?Chessie King?uses her platform to promote body-positivity, showing the ?true side to each ?perfect” post by showing, warts and all, how lighting, camera angles and editing can change the way we see #goals.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BkOAfj0gnXe/
Peering behind the veneer of smiling successful founders and their fail-proof businesses reveals that the UK’s business community is in need of a very similar #realitycheck. It starts with being uncomfortably raw, real, and a lot kinder to yourself.
If you or someone you know is going through a hard time running their business, share this article and get to talking.
