How to Conquer Entrepreneurial Stress Without Leaving it at the Door

I’ve had the great privileges to grow three businesses from idea to eight figures in annual revenue. We did it the hard way, bootstrapping and growing the businesses without the benefit of outside capital. This kind of stuff is really, really, hard to do. You know the odds. Seventy percent of businesses fail within 10 years. Of those 30% that survive, only 0.4% of those ever reach $10 million or more in annual revenue. Doing it three times successively is a one in millions kind of entrepreneurial experience.

Growing businesses is really stressful. It is stressful when they fail as two of my ventures have. It is stressful when they grow — especially when they grow fast — as I experienced in three ventures.

And the stress makes sense. Your livelihood is connected to the success or failure of the business. Maybe, as was my case, the livelihood of your extended family or friends is tied up in the business too. Your ego would take a massive blow if everything you said was going to happen in fact, didn’t happen, and you don’t want to be seen as a failure. There is pressure from family, investors, and yourself in addition to all the pressures from employees and customers in running the business.

So you find yourself waking up at 3:00 in the morning, heart and head pounding, running to your office to fretfully check on that thing. Been there. You develop chronic migraines from stress, sleep deprivation, and caffeine abuse. Done that. Weight gain. Prematurely greying hair. Stomach problems. Excessive weight loss. Ceaseless muscle spasms in arms, legs, and eyes. Tried it all on at one time or another. The outward signs of the heavy toll that entrepreneurial stress takes on us. But it isn’t just us, is it? That is what makes this topic particularly important to handle and to handle well.

As a dad, a spouse, or a partner we can become myopically focused on the physiological and psychological toll that our quest demands from us, losing sight of the fact that we are not the only ones paying the mental and emotional bill. I labored under the illusion that it was the right thing to do to try to separate my work stress from my family life. I thought I could leave work at the door on my way into the house.

It was a stupid inclination.

If you think you are leaving your work stress at the door you are bullshitting yourself. If you think that the stress you carry into your home isn’t something that the rest of your family can feel then you are like a man wearing sunglasses in the dark. Willfully blind.

Here is how you deal with it.

Bring your work home. Don’t pretend you can leave it at the door. The stress that follows you home from work is a ninja elephant that will sneak in behind you before you can close the door. Agile fuckers, those elephants. Once firmly installed in the corner of your living room, you find yourself covering said elephant with a camouflaged blanket as though you can conceal the massive load that is following you around. Your partner can feel it. Your kids can feel it. Your friends can feel it. It affects them.

Emotions are contagious. We have nerve cells in our brain called mirror neurons. An evolutionary trait that was super useful twenty thousand years ago. It is a trait that feels less useful today. In a simple sense, the purpose of a mirror neuron is to mirror the state of another person. Generations ago when one of your tribe members saw a predator, or a warring tribe, the fear response in that person would fire up, spiking their adrenaline and preparing for fight-or-flight. You would see that change and likewise your fear response would kick in. Despite the fact that you haven’t yet seen the threat, your observation of another tribe member was all that was needed to kick on that physiological response.

Only today when we feel threatened the threats are less physical and much more mental. More frequently imaginary than real. Yet our physiological response to those stressors is the same. Fight. Flight. Freeze. We go to a place where we are not mentally and emotionally our best selves and we take our families right there with us. Shutting down mentally and emotionally, preparing collectively to meet a danger that lives only in one person’s head.

One step to conquering it, for yourself and for your family, is to invite it in.

Own that you are coming in stressed.

Share in a normal tone of voice with your family the challenge that you are undertaking at work. What is hard about it. Why you are concerned. What you intend to do about it. The opportunity that is available when you conquer it. Rather than leaving them guessing about why you aren’t yourself, or what is distracting you, invite them into your world. Use language that makes sense to them, and with a normal tone, to show them that the things that bother you are of no real threat to them. Give them the space and opportunity to offer their ideas. Their support. Their compassion. Provide for them the opportunity to connect with your concern, if they desire, while giving them the transparency to understand it.

Then the elephant is no longer a secret everyone pretends to keep. Intriguing, not antagonistic.

When they are no longer secret your work challenges transform. From a vague and threatening source of anxiety, stress, and distance to an opportunity for learning and connection. From undisclosed barriers to connection, to opportunities for discussing and modeling how to handle conflict.

You can work hard without sacrificing your opportunity to be present. When your stressors are not secret it becomes remarkably easier to be fully present with your family. The stress doesn’t melt away. The real issues of your entrepreneurial struggle don’t vanish. But how you show up with your family, to be fully present with your children when they want to share, to connect with and support your partner and experience her support in return, all of these things somehow feel entirely transformed by the power of transparency and vulnerability.

A little sharing goes a long, long, way.

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