The Burnout Badge of Honor:
I am an entrepreneur, through and through. I love the ups, hate the downs and push through regardless. One trend however I can’t seem to wrap my mind around is this new burnout culture.
Of course, as an entrepreneur, one thing we all have in common is our ability to hustle…we have to. If we don’t then we don’t get paid. A lot of us don’t have 9-5 jobs that provide us with stability, so this is the beauty and beast of entrepreneurship. Your pay is all on you. But there has to be some in-between.
We always hear of the best investments you can make. Well I’m not Warren Buffett but as an entrepreneur, I can tell you the best investment you can make is in yourself. Your health, your sanity.
Why are you an entrepreneur?
A very common answer we hear is to achieve some type of work/life balance. One that allows you to spend more time with family, going on vacations, etc, yet as most find out (quickly) those goals go out the window.
For most new entrepreneurs they believe the old saying “hustle hard now like most won’t, so you can live a life later like most can’t.”
Sounds fantastic, and maybe for some it’s true, but the cold reality is for most it’s not. If you’re lucky enough to survive the storm of the first years (yes I said years) of being an entrepreneur then maybe you’ll have that luxury, but the vast majority of entrepreneurs don’t make it.
One reason for this new phenomenon of burnout culture is the Guru’s we’ve all grown to love (sarcasm). We follow them like a cult. Waiting for their next hot Instagram post, or their next e-book telling us all what we should be focusing on in life. It’s become a sort of “motivation porn,” but just like real porn, it’s impossible to live up to and often warps your understanding of how it really works. There’s real work involved with this. No matter how many videos you watch or books you read, at some point you have to do some work and that work might just be too much to handle.
This isn’t meant to discourage anyone from going down the amazingly rewarding path of being an entrepreneur, because I love it! Since I started my company Inventrify over 3 years ago I’ve had some amazing experiences and I’ve been very blessed. But it hasn’t been an easy journey and you need to be prepared for everything.
