Why Most Entrepreneurs Are Slowly Killing Themselves (6 main stressors).
Summary
Being an entrepreneur is hard because it implies creating something from scratch, going from zero to one without a safety net. This nature of this journey naturally implies a series of stressors that, when mismanaged, can derail even the best entrepreneurs. In this video I'll share what are the 6 keys stressors and, more importantly, how to deal with them.
Transcript
hello friends today i want to talk about why being an entrepreneur is so hard because listen, there's nothing harder than trying to build something from scratch, especially if you are bootstrapped. And that's because there's a series of stressors that only affect intrapreneurs that can make the life very miserable. If you manage a business, you cannot afford to not watch this video scheduled.
Hey, I'm Leon Castillo, founder of Selfmastered , a high performance training company that helps entrepreneurs scale their businesses by solving their solid bottleneck, their own performance, will transform the unproductive overwhelm and focus entrepreneurs into laser focused business athletes that can achieve in one day, what they previously achieved in one week.
Hello, friends. Today I want to talk about why most entrepreneurs fail, I have a strong conviction. And there's a lot of research that backs this up that the single most important cause of failure is the inability to execute them to form a leader left or at least at the level that the business in the market demands. And that essentially comes because they're intrapreneur does not know how to manage himself or herself in the midst of the entrepreneurial storm. And as a result is a lot of time wasted, and unnecessary stress and suffering that could be prevented.
And the average level of performance is just dismal. Only 28% of the average workday is actually productive. The average throughput checks email or instant messaging every six minutes, about a third of the business project failed due to unclear directions or unclear goals. And essentially intrapreneurs are wasting most of their days trying to be productive, but instead are only being busy and that creates a huge personal friction entrepreneurs are twice as more likely than average to suffer depression three times more likely to develop an addiction and divorce rates are 20%.
High all of that, of course result in businesses not lasting for more than five years, you know, 50% of businesses last five years or more and only 25% of businesses survive a decade, being an entrepreneur is hard. But you can make it miserable if you do not pay attention to the six most common stressors that affect each and every one of us. And this video is aimed to provide you the clues to identify these stressors and catch yourself every time that you are entertaining one of these so you can improve your experience.
Now before we dive deep into them here to like, subscribe and hit the bell so you never miss out on any of the juicy videos are released every week. And only because it is the right thing to do. Right you like this channel, you know how we are bringing all this research to other entrepreneurs so they can scale their businesses. So we got to like a struct now starts on number one.
Most entrepreneurs have the wrong definition of success. See, is very easy to get swayed away by the culture of entrepreneurship in which you that says that you are only as good as the company you build. The bigger the company, the bigger the founding rounds. The bigger the team, the bigger the accolades, the bigger the prices, the better you are. So most of them end up identifying with their business. And all markers of success are external, not internal, that leads to comparing themselves with other entrepreneurs who may have raised more rounds, who may have built a bigger business.
And that is a recipe for misery and failure. Because if you've been in business for long enough, you understand that you're only as good as you good you become so working on yourself. And doing all of that inner work is the way of protecting yourself from developing at fragile ego that can lead you to depression. So having the wrong definition of success and comparing yourself constantly to others is a surefire way of bringing misery to illusion of control.
Being an entrepreneur implies building something out of nothing. So you are facing uncertainty. And we normally build dashboards and create systems to be able to systematize everything that we do, hoping to rein in the chaos that come from entrepreneurship. But we cannot do this to the utmost. There's always a degree of uncertainty and unclarity that we need to work with. And so intrapreneurs get caught up in this illusion of control. And every time that something doesn't go the way they want it to go. They just fall into the pressure.
This is why it's very important to really focus on the process and not really care for the outcome because oftentimes you can get shitty outcomes even though you did the right thing. So to illusion of control is a huge one three, filling invulnerable or needing to be invulnerable. See entrepreneurs, CEOs, people that build things are normally sought after for advice. Employees, investors and partners are seeking us for advice and we need to provide an answer to them even though sometimes we don't have it. Oftentimes we haven't wrestled with the same problems that they are asking or advice on but we nonetheless need to provide some sort of guidance, and that creates that impostor syndrome that can eventually become very dangerous for lack of balance.
As you may know, building a business is an imbalance thing, we do not have as much time as others to cultivate relationship and take care of our health. And that is a mistake, because you do the single most important thing you need to do is to outlast your competitors to endure more than they do. And that can only happen if you take care of your health and your relationship in a positive manner.
Five damage by uncertainty. See, as we were saying, number two, uncertainty is present at each step of the intrapreneurial experience. So if we learn how to deal with it, we will eventually remove most of it and build a successful business. But if we don't, we will soon fall prey to it and eventually enter a downward negative spiral. And if you've been bringing new products to the market, making new marketing actions and campaigns that have bombed, you know what I'm talking about, you pour your heart and soul into something thinking that is exactly the thing that will help you reach the next level. But then what happens happens that nobody cares, crickets is the only thing you hear and you back to a squirrel, but not to square one because that's an illusion, but you feel very disappointed. And that is what I'm talking about. Here. I've seen countless intrapreneurs fall into depression, because the big campaign that they have envisioned with the big product and they have built had no traction whatsoever. Finally, six and this one is huge.
We spend too much time outside of the here and now we're constantly seeking something in the horizon seeking to build something in the long term. So you do not seek to enjoy the here and now to enjoy the process. And only those that are enjoying the process, you can eventually win. If your definition of fun is working on your business because you truly enjoy it. Then you've won my friend that is what life is about finding meaning through fun. And this can only happen if you do not disregard the here. And now as most entrepreneurs do. Most of the parents will be happy when they cross 1 million a month mark when they purchased that Lambo when they IPO their company, when they do whatever it is that they said there is so that is a trap, you need to be fully fully present in the now in order to make your future dreams and goals and plans are reality.
So this is the six stressors that I believe affect the entrepreneurs the most one is having the wrong definition of success and comparing themselves constantly to others to having an illusion of control three having an illusion of invulnerability for having a lack of balance that prevents them from keeping their protocols that will make them healthy in the long run five difficulty to deal with uncertainty which is inherent to the entrepreneur experience. And then six spending too much time outside of the here and now which is the only thing that is real to hear. And every time you catch yourself in entertaining a narrative that falls into one of the six buckets stop and rethink why you started this business.
You most certainly wasn't to feel miserable every day of your life. Find your joy. Learn to enjoy the process and the outcomes you desire will eventually take care of themselves