Tips to Avoid Burnout for Entrepreneurs

Burnout has become a painful problem, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, when most people started working from home and found it difficult to separate their work from their private lives. All the same, despite the evidence pointing to entrepreneurs as among those most prone to burnout, burnout is rarely discussed among them.

A manager may seem more in control of their time and their work duties, and we may assume that they can take time off whenever they feel a little stressed or that they can delegate a task to someone else if they don’t feel like doing it. The truth is, however, that the responsibility of leading a company is a heavy burden for many business owners.

Moreover, when you’re passionate about growing your business, it can be hard to notice your burnout symptoms. It can take months or even years of trying to fight back before you notice that your body or mind is completely exhausted.

Tips to Avoid Burnout for Entrepreneurs

The following tips will help you avoid burnout and treat its existing symptoms, such as fatigue, sleep issues, irritability, a weak immune system, and more. However, if you feel that these issues have become serious, it is best to consult a doctor or a therapist, in addition to following these tips:

1. Find a reliable business partner

There is a reason why at least two or three people co-found most startups nowadays. Starting and growing a startup business is a very difficult activity and it can become a daunting task if you decide to do it alone. Even if it seemed possible at first, new responsibilities, needs, and issues will arise as your company grows.

If you are fortunate enough, you will find a trustworthy partner to share the successes and failures of running the business with. If you are doing it alone but want to find a partner, make sure to look for someone who:

• Is trustworthy and whom you’ve already worked with before, either as colleagues or as founders.
• Has skills and character that complement yours.
• Has similar work habits and ethics as yours.
• Takes equal responsibility for the business as you, whether financially, operationally, or even emotionally.

Richards Piks, co-founder of Supliful, said that he and his business partner, Martins, were childhood friends. They had previously worked on several projects together before they founded Supliful. Their closely-knit partnership played an important role when the previous project faced bankruptcy. He said, “When we decided to take out personal loans to save our business from collapsing, we took the same risk and took an equal share of the loan, and neither of us became a useless co-founder.”

2. Define your priorities as soon as possible

When you start a business, your to-do list will seem too long and your plans will appear to be too many. It will be clear that you won’t be able to handle them all by yourself. That’s why it’s so important to define your priorities when you’re a business owner. In other words, you have to take small steps that focus in the right direction.

If your company is still in its startup phase, prioritize tasks that will help you create the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) so you can kick off and start attracting customers. That will be the functional prototype of your business. If you are running an already existing business, consider slowly transferring operational tasks to others, focusing on the company’s goals and other essential aspects of your business.

Jonna Piira, the founder of Kali, had worked on so many projects that she was forced to take a break because she fell down the stairs. That was when she realized she was suffering from entrepreneurs’ burnout. She then decided to look more closely at the list of her priorities.

She also said, “I reviewed everything I was doing, listed all of my commitments from most to least important, then reviewed the amount of time each commitment took each week, and deleted the items at the bottom of my list."

 3. Delegate tasks instead of micromanaging

New business founders run the risk of burnout because they work under uncertain circumstances, so they feel like they should be responsible for every aspect of the business and in control of everything. The more experienced business owners know that it is impossible—and unnecessary—to participate in every process and every decision made within the company.

Instead of trying to control everything, follow these strategies:

• Hire great people, and trust them to fulfill their responsibilities.
• Remember to focus on your priority list rather than constantly checking your team’s performance.
• Schedule weekly or monthly meetings with different teams and employees to stay on top of the most important processes, if needed.
• Delegate simple manual tasks to freelance employees.
• Prepare documents to facilitate the way operations are managed within the company.

Toms Panders, co-founder and CEO of the adtech startup company Setupad, says, “I spent nearly 10 years working in advertising before starting Setupad, so I felt like I knew how to do things correctly, and I wanted to be involved in every decision made within the company. However, since the company was growing so quickly, I realized I had to loosen up a bit and trust my team if I wanted to stay sane and avoid burnout.”

4. Document the processes and guidelines

In order to avoid having to participate in every process within the company, it is best to organize the standard operating procedures for your company as soon as possible. They are the documented processes specific to your field or type of business, describing the steps necessary to complete tasks according to the rules of your field of work.

Standard operating procedures are necessary to run smooth business operations and to prepare and train new employees as quickly as possible. By following these step-by-step documents, anyone can complete tasks and lead essential projects.

When starting a small business, standard operating procedures may seem unnecessary, but as your company grows, you will notice how these documents save your valuable time, which you would have otherwise spent on mentoring rather than taking care of other business objectives. That does not mean that standard operating procedures can replace every human interaction while training and orienting employees and delegating tasks, but it helps a lot and saves time.

5. Use apps that save time and automate tasks

Automation can help scale your business without having to work on boring and repetitive tasks. When you feel like you spend most of your time doing something manually, check if there is an app that can do it for you. It is likely that you will find a tool that solves your problem and automates processes without having to put in a lot of effort and time from you or your team.

For example, there is no need to manually manage, assign tasks, and control everything when there are so many great project management apps out there. Many of these tools offer free trial versions, so you can test them out before you buy them.

Julia Gifford, co-founder of public relations and content marketing agency Truesix, confirms that she saved a lot of time and effort when she replaced creating invoices manually with software dedicated to the same job. It seemed illogical at first, so it took her a long time to make the switch, but the little things done automatically are what made the difference in the end. The invoicing was done very quickly, not to mention that there were far fewer errors.

6. Take care of your life outside of work

Most entrepreneurs have learned the hard way that work itself rarely causes burnout in entrepreneurs. It is rather due to a combination of different external factors, lifestyles, and personality traits.

Your mental health is directly related to the health of your body. Neglecting physical activities, eating unhealthy food, getting only a little rest, and smoking all contribute to burnout.

If you suffer from stress, it is necessary to learn how to deal with it in a healthy way, whether it is through meditation, sports, massage, or anything else that helps you relax. Moreover, make sure you get sufficient rest and exercise, or at least practice walking during business hours.

Armands Broks, founder of the financial technology company TWINO, said that in order to maintain mental health, all areas of life must be in balance. You cannot focus on work and neglect your body or feelings. If you can't maintain this balance, it’s only a matter of time before you burn out.

Most passionate and ambitious entrepreneurs, especially startup founders, find it difficult to slow down and stop working when they still feel they can do so much.

Armends stresses that one of the most difficult decisions he had to make was handing over his business to someone else. He delegated his operational responsibilities and decided to focus on the company’s business strategy and growth plan only. He also emphasized his company's employee safety strategy, with a greater emphasis on mental health.

In conclusion

People who are ambitious and enthusiastic about what they do can experience burnout. In addition, burnout doesn’t only happen in entrepreneurs when things don’t go well; on the contrary, most founders who run successful businesses can be susceptible to this.

On the bright side, the experience of burnout often teaches people a valuable lesson and forces them to shift their lifestyles to more balanced and healthy ones. If you're feeling burnout right now, follow these tips, and you’ll have a chance to come out of this stronger, calmer, and with a new set of priorities.