Entrepreneur Shares 4 Mental Health Struggles
October 10th is recognized globally as World Mental Health Day. On this day individuals around the world are encouraged to spread mental health education, increase awareness of the topic, and advocate against the stigma that remains prevalent within our society. Despite these efforts, the National Institute of Mental Health reports that 72% of entrepreneurs are directly or indirectly affected by mental health issues compared to just 48% of non-entrepreneurs. Like most humans, many entrepreneurs who are suffering from mental health refrain from talking about them even though the journey of building a company increases the likelihood for individuals to struggle with multiple issues at a time.
I have been an entrepreneur for about two years now and my company, Remane, is still an early stage, pre-revenue company. I co founded Remane with my cofounder Ariel Lee when we were both in our third year of undergrad at the University of Texas at Austin. During that time I held two part-time jobs to support myself through school and was consistently enrolled in a minimum of 15 hours a semester as a scholarship requirement. Although I cultivated my skills in time management and learned how to juggle multiple commitments at once, I also dealt with some of the issues that lie on the dark side of entrepreneurship. Burnout, feelings of loneliness and isolation, depression, imposter syndrome, anxiety, lack of focus, and insomnia are common mental illnesses that many entrepreneurs face during their journey, yet there is little data to represent this phenomenon because so many suffer in silence.
Burnout
As a founder, especially in the early stages of your company, it is inevitable for you to wear many hats and perform many roles to run your business. For Remane, there was a tiny leg up because we have two founders. However, we still faced the challenge of being our own social media team, product developers and product managers, grant writers, company recruiters, and business development team. We also had to balance our lives as busy college students and young adults trying to earn some cash to support our coffee and yerba mate habits to keep us going.
A Fortune article states that founders report that 8% of startups fail because of burnout. This is because there is a never ending to-do list full of tasks that are essential and absolutely necessary as well as things you can be doing as a founder to improve your business and processes, making it hard for founders to slow down and stop working. Wearing multiple hats also makes it difficult for entrepreneurs to not spread themselves too thin across all the different areas of their business. This promotes high levels of stress over prolonged periods that eventually result in emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion.
Although it takes a lot of wo(man) hours to build a company from the ground up, burnout does not have to be a part of the process. Setting realistic goals for the week and making a daily to-do list have been two helpful strategies I use to keep myself on track and establish checkpoints along my journey so I clear indication points of where I can stop and take a pause when I need it.
Loneliness & Isolation
“Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being.” Einstein described the dilemma of the entrepreneur head on and so simply put. Founders, whether they develop the skill over time or are naturally gifted, must rely on their ability to be social. This is important when it comes to things like pitching your business, attending networking events, and testing your product out with your users. These scenarios require you to not only socialize with others, but to form deep connections and empathize with others to convey the purpose of your business.
However, these situations only account for a small portion of your time spent as an entrepreneur as the majority of your energy is focused on actually building your product. This is where the feelings of loneliness and isolation arise because you spend countless hours tending to the development and realization of your company and naturally those hours are borrowed from some other area of your life. For me, this meant cutting back on my social life.
As activities within Remane began to pick up speed, I found myself going out with friends less, taking longer to respond to texts, and spending more time alone to recharge from business-focused social events. Eventually I found myself in a hole, experiencing an internal separation from my friends and family and, with the current circumstances of COVID, an external isolation as well. This has been the toughest mental health condition I’ve faced during my journey and although I am still working to overcome it I have taken small steps to better my situation like scheduling in time with loved ones and making it a goal to check in with those I have been distant from at least once a week.
Imposter Syndrome
Entrepreneurs are 50% more likely to report having a mental health condition than non-entrepreneurs however we don’t talk about it. Back when it was just Ariel and I managing everything ourselves, it honestly felt like we were not cut out for entrepreneurship. We felt like we had to uphold this mask of being 100% knowledgeable about our target market, 200% confident that our idea was scalable, and 1000% sure that our skill sets were sufficient enough to bring it to life. Constantly pitching our business and being exposed to so many great opportunities soon spiraled into a shared feeling of impostor syndrome and I remember us feeling like we didn’t deserve the growth we were experiencing because we weren’t finished building our service and we felt like we hadn’t really done anything.
I have met many founders who have shared similar experiences with imposter syndrome. It’s easy to feel as though you're presenting yourself as something that you are not when you’re currently on the journey and have little experience to look back to. I also believe that social media plays a big role in the way that entrepreneurs experience imposter syndrome because most of the time founders only see the wins and highlights of other founders’ journey, so when they experience the challenges that every entrepreneur faces, it can feel like they’re missing something that comes easily to others.
Constantly reminding myself that my journey is my own and that what is for me and for Remane will come has helped me detach from feeling like an imposter. Being open and sharing my failures has also presented itself as a valuable practice because it creates a safe space for other entrepreneurs to learn from my mistakes and reminds myself and others that I am human.
Lack of Focus
I have struggled with brain fog off and on for the past 8 years, however, my condition was at its worst during my junior and senior years of undergrad. My brain fog would make it really hard for me to read and comprehend the academic texts I was assigned and would completely diminish my short-term memory, making it nearly impossible for me to retain any new information. I knew things were getting worse when I began catching myself staring blankly into space, trying to clear through the clutter of my mind to uncover what it was I wanted to remember, and not even noticing how long I had been in that state of unconsciousness.
Lack of focus is prevalent among entrepreneurs due to the mental capacity it takes to form and execute a vision. Like I mentioned earlier, the act of juggling multiple roles requires a founder’s mind to spread across several areas of the company with each of those areas complete with a unique list of tasks that need to be satisfied. Even when ALL of these tasks are completed most founders still find themselves working in their head, strategizing on how they can improve, grow, and scale their businesses to the next level.
It’s important for entrepreneurs to implement grounding practices into their daily routine to help slow things down. Meditation, drawing, and breathing exercises have been helpful methods for me to decompress and slow down my thoughts. I also complete a daily ritual of closing out all my tabs, shutting my laptop down, and placing it under my bed as a way of signaling the end of my workday and taking off my founder hat.
My hope is that as more founders share their experience with mental health, we will begin to catch a glimpse of what the real entrepreneurial experience is like. Hopefully this will inspire others to continue on their company building paths and overcome the challenges that some many of us founders face. Lastly, I hope more entrepreneurs take the steps to open about their mental health issues, share their stories and experiences, and speak and live in their truth.
Written by D’azhane Cook
Header photo by Tirachard Kumtanom from Pexels
