Why Entrepreneurs Burn Out (and What to Do Instead)

When I was working in corporate America, I was working a lot. I was often in the office before 8 and still on email after 10 at night. At the time, I carried two images of what entrepreneurship might look like.

The first came from my childhood. My dad was a chicken farmer who also held a full-time job outside of the home. He worked around the clock. His schedule did not even include full weekends. He had to work every other Saturday or Sunday and only got one full weekend off a month. Four days off in total. To me, entrepreneurship looked like endless work.

But in contrast, there were entrepreneurs like Tim Ferriss selling a four-hour workweek, or the glossy vision of people running businesses from coffee shops in Colombia or beaches in Bali. What I began to notice was that whether they were farmers, CEOs, or laptop-lifestyle entrepreneurs, many of them were burnt out. 

In my corporate life, for over a decade, I was in a constant state of burn out. I wanted to prove myself. I hustled to get validation. I worked for founders and CEOs, so I treated the business as if I owned it, even though I was making a fraction of their salaries. I was running the meetings, keeping everything on track, pushing myself constantly. And I was not taking care of myself. When I had free time, I numbed out. I spent money. I drank to escape. The cost added up: fatigue, illness, infections, anxiety, and a complete lack of creativity or joy.

Later, as a coach, I began working with career transition clients. Almost all of them were burnt out. When I moved into working with entrepreneurs, I noticed the same thing. Burnout was everywhere.

When I finally left my job, I was determined not to repeat the same pattern. I wanted to create a third way of being an entrepreneur. This is an ongoing experiment as my business grows and transforms. In the beginning, I started by paying attention to entrepreneurs I trusted. Not the ones selling silver-bullet solutions, but the ones being honest and vulnerable about the truth of running a business. Through this, I discovered something: burnout comes from trying to control. Recovery comes from discovery.

Last year I wrote myself a note in a Letter from Love format. It said:

“Remember, my love. You’re tired and that’s okay. You’re still recovering. You can and continue to find even more rest. Restoration, actually. Restoration isn’t all passive laying on a log all day (yes! do some of that – in the sun perhaps?) But restoration takes a bit of planning, careful action and some magic. The magic comes from honoring the original state for what it was. The history has beauty, the future has promise. ” 

So in building my coaching business, I made a commitment to ask myself one guiding question:

What would I do right now if I loved myself?

That question became my compass. Each time I asked and answered, I built a new kind of business. One rooted not in proving my worth but in returning to joy, curiosity, and trust.

Here is what I learned to do instead of burning out:

• Create space for 360 experience of being a human being, even within the world of ‘business’
• Realign offers to serve in a way that feels effortless
• Build discovery-driven routines, if I don’t want to, I don’t do it
• Learn your body compass (Martha Beck’s work) and trust your intuition
• Let go of perfection
• Give yourself permission to rest

Burnout is not a personal failure. It is a signal. A sign that you are pushing too hard in the wrong direction. You can reimagine your business not as a grind but as a sustainable adventure in the Out Beyond. Out beyond expectations. Out beyond right and wrong. There is a field. I will meet you there. (Thanks, Rumi)

Love,

Kellyn