I’m gonna get a little bit touchy-feely here and talk about one of the lifestyle components of entrepreneurship and business success. Essentially, why we tend to prioritize our business above everything else, even when we know we shouldn't, and why we get an overwhelming sense of guilt when we go the other way – the right way – and prioritize those things that are actually the most important to us.
Like family, friends, health (physical and mental), and happiness.
I want to talk about that guilt. Get in on the table.
This phenomenon isn’t something unique to being a founder. This happens up and down the startup org chart, and it even happens to high performing people in other walks of life outside of startups and small business.
But it’s a pretty common pitfall in entrepreneurship. In fact, it’s one of the pitfalls everyone knows about and cautions against, but we still fall for it every time. I think it impacts startup people more often and more profoundly because of the lack of a support structure around startup people.
“Let the boss worry about it.” – We can’t do that.
But in fact, I’d even say that traditional startup founders, once their business reaches a certain level of maturity, usually form a pretty decent support structure to balance out the enormous pressure put on them by everyone else. It doesn’t mean they abide by the recommendations of that support structure, but it’s there.
When you’re talking about sole founders or early founders or solopreneurs or just high-performers, the support structure isn’t there at all. So let’s just include everyone I’ve mentioned under the label “high performers,” and I’ll talk about all of you.
Now, I’m not here to be your support structure. Not my job. What I am here to do is talk about the situations where even the best support structures are going to fail the high performer.
See, we’re not stupid. We’re not dense. We’re not masochists. We know we’ll kill ourselves to succeed, and we know where our limits are, mostly. We know we take an enormous risk when we test those limits, but we’re mavericks and we’ll do it anyway and laugh about it later.
That’s the standard operating procedure in business. Except in one particular case. And that’s when we let guilt reprioritize our lives in a manner that tests those limits to the point of it being unhealthy.
Then we’re kinda fucked.