Surviving Entrepreneur Burnout - Why I Nearly Quit My Business (And How I Got Through It)

I've watched my rainy day fund dwindle, and the numbers are quite scary. It's every day I wake up feeling stressed, tired, overwhelmed. Why is it so hard? It's the first time in 10 years since I set up the coaching practice where I'm really not enjoying the work I'm doing. But whatever it is that you're going through in your business right now, I get it. I'm going through it as well. I've spent probably the last 15 minutes contemplating, you know, going back and forth in my head, trying to decide whether to record this video or not. And obviously, here it is, warts and all. It's really easy to get caught up on on the highlight reel of everybody else's life, especially in entrepreneurship when everybody else is seemingly doing, working miracles and doing all sorts of incredible things and having the most wonderful life and making all of the money. I've found this last month, we're towards the end of September now, I found this last month particularly challenging. And I was like, the reason I was deciding on whether I should publish this or not is because my biggest fear that people will judge me for this because there is this, you know, I have a successful coaching practice from the outside and from the inside, but from the outside there is this reputation which I guess I'm afraid of damaging, somehow damaging that reputation by talking about some of the stuff that I want to just get out of my head and talk about. I'm not going to try and— I'm not going to be trying too much, be too much of a Debbie Downer and moan about stuff too much, but there are times when you just have to have a A little bit of a reality check. But yeah, September has been a really, really hard month for me. I'm the guy who's been in business 22 years. I've won awards. I've spoken on some incredible stages. I've got a number of bestselling books. I've sold tens of thousands of books over the years, helped hundreds, if not thousands, of small business owners with all sorts of different problems and challenges which they face within their their businesses. And this last month has felt— I don't know why, but it's felt particularly lonely for me. I came into September— for me, September has always been one of those months which is kind of a fresh start, a new season. But the biggest difference was the past 2 years, I haven't struggled with getting consultations booked and winning new clients and the business felt like it was just carrying on regardless. This year, however, felt very different. August, I feel like I really took my eye off the ball. I didn't notice that the business was slipping. And now I see myself in a situation where I've spent September on what feels like very much the back foot, and I'm worried. I've watched my rainy day fund dwindle, and the numbers are quite scary. It's gone from, you know, this year, at the start of the year, having £50K in my rainy day fund, And now it's dwindled down to about 15K, and I'm kind of thinking, well, crikey, that can't carry on for too much longer before it's going to start to create a few challenges within the business. And one of those challenges might be, well, can I actually afford to pay myself? I'm sure it will all work out. It always has worked out. I've always managed to figure these things out. But I did not think after 22 years that I'd find myself back in a situation again where I'm up in my head, worrying about where the next paycheck is. And it is worrying. Every day I wake up feeling stressed, tired, overwhelmed, just too much stuff to do and not enough time. I don't know if Mrs. Waite will agree with me, but I am a very hands-on dad. I'm here busy doing school runs and pickups and taking the kids to swimming and stuff like that, and it does eat into my days. And it's really hard when you know that your business At a time when it needs you the most, that you can't actually pour much more time, energy, effort into getting the business back on track. And that's how I feel every day. I'm waking up feeling like, oh God, I'm trudging through trying to get the business back on track. And then, oh, 3 o'clock rolls around, or half past 2, and I've got to jump in the car and go and pick the kids up from school. Rob, the reason you're self-employed, I tell a lot of people, I do this because It means I get to pick up the girls from school. But this time's different. Like, I feel like my business really needs me. I feel like I need to be really hands-on making stuff, and every single thing that I do within my business really matters. And again, I know that a lot of this is stuff that's kind of just rattling around in my head. Some of it may be true, probably a lot of it isn't true, and I'm trying to reconcile a lot of that. But even something simple like, I'm working with a team member at the moment to get some Meta ads set up, just so that we've got a backup stream of leads, you know, in case the website dries up, or if my speaking gigs dry up, or if I can't get the podcast interviews I wanna get. But the one thing Robin's got to do, the one thing I've got to do, is to create some videos. A dozen just short videos, 2 to 3 minutes, that Tate's done a fabulous job of scripting them. So all I've gotta do is punch record, And away we go, just read the script, job done. I can't tell you how hard it is. Why is it so hard? Why is it so hard? I suppose one of the things is, as a coach, sometimes you have to go through these difficult times to be able to empathize, especially as a business coach, empathize with your clients, because they will be going through similar sorts of things. And who am I as well to say that I'm immune to these times when the business takes a bit of a downturn and then you've gotta rebuild it back up again? I'm not immune to those things. I'd hoped by the time I got to 44, I would have more financial independence than what we've currently got. Don't get me wrong, we have a lovely lifestyle. We have nice cars, we have a nice house, we have nice holidays, but 2 nice dogs, 2 incredible children. I have this wonderful studio. I've got all this great equipment. I've got so much. But I didn't think at 44, after 22 years in business, half my life, that I would still be in a situation where I'm kind of chasing my tail. A little bit. And I've had some challenges along the way health-wise. I've had some big lifestyle changes to make with my life over the past, over the past 3 years or so. I wanted my life to be a little bit more easy and effortless, I suppose. And I guess what's going to happen is not a lot will change. I'll get my head down, I'll record those videos. But it has reached a point this week in particular where I'm not enjoying it. It's the first time in 10 years since I set up the coaching practice where I'm really not enjoying the work I'm doing, but I will— I'll just get my head down and I'll get on with it. And I'll, you know, when I get onto client sessions, I will always deliver to the best of my abilities, no matter how hard a time I am having personally. I'm making this video because I don't want people to look at me and think, oh, he's got it easy, he's got all of this stuff going, you know, and everything's like chugging along. It's not all roses all of the time. Look, I've had a good run of it for a good few years. Things have gone pretty smoothly and as I'd designed them to go. It's been a while since I've had one of these setbacks, but having been through 5 dips in my business before— but businesses go in 4 stages and they go through this cycle multiple times of, first of all, a consolidation phase. Then you kind of have this phase where the imposter syndrome, the imposter starts to creep in. How long is this going to— how long am I going to have this good run of things for? When are my team and clients going to start messing around? When is the money going to start running out? Stage 1, consolidation. Stage 2 is that the imposter. Stage 3 is where you then go into the fear zone, the dip, uh, which is very much where I feel, feel I am now. Um, and then, and then what's happened, stage 4 is where you have some kind of a breakthrough, which kind of, when your back's against the wall, it teaches you to creatively problem solve your way out of whatever challenges you're experiencing at the moment. But it does elicit a heck of a lot of fear, hence the reason why it's fearless business, um, when you're kind of heading into that dip and then trying to head back out of the dip. And what happens is inevitably, you come out the dip and your business is actually better off than it was in your previous consolidation zones. You go through these cycles of consolidate, imposter, fear zone, and dip, and then breakthrough, and you're back out, and your business is off and running again, back into consolidation, I guess. I've been through this 5 times. Well, I have a feeling this might be the 6th time. Don't want to preempt it or predict it too much, but my goal is always, when I recognize this is what's happening, is to get into the dip and out of it as quickly as humanly possible. If nothing else, to save myself quite a lot of heartache and energy, try and discover what those breakthroughs are going to be that are going to dish me out of it, and then business will return back to usual, back to normal at some point, I guess. I didn't want my YouTube channel to be all about, you know, how amazing everything is and how you can have a simple system and a strategy and a process and do this X, Y, and Z, and then you'll have amazing results. It's just not like that. Sometimes it's great, sometimes— well, majority of the time for me, it has been easy enough. I had to make a choice this morning between, do I go down to the archery range and shoot for 3 hours, or do I come into the office and actually do some bloody work and get some videos recorded? And what derailed it? Something very simple. I received a text message in the middle of recording a video. Now, you can't see it, but up here, there's a little teleprompter, something called a Parrot teleprompter, which I've got set up, and my phone slots And I get a text message, and of course it flashes up on the screen in the middle of me trying to record something, which was— that split second is just enough to distract me because I'm a bit mentally fragile at the moment. I don't know why in particular this week. Right, deep breaths, reset, let's go again. That's all I wanted to share with you. Whatever it is that you're going through in your business right now, I get it. I'm going through it as well. If you wanna reach out and have a chat, talk to somebody about it, hit me up. Let's have a conversation. I've got time in my diary over the next few weeks, so let's have a conversation. A problem shared is a problem halved, and I feel better for the fact that you've— however many of you have watched this— have stopped for a moment to listen to me. And hopefully it's a gentle reminder to you to— a bit of self-reflection. How are you feeling about— is it going to plan? Do you need to speak to somebody?