Mental Health Matters: Common Fears for Entrepreneurs

“Is this idea stupid?”, “Am I wasting my time and money?”, “Will anyone even care about this?”, “Is anyone even seeing the work I’m doing?,” “Should I just pack it up?” 

Entrepreneurs are no strangers to this internal dialogue. Hopefully, this isn’t every day for you, but it might take a toll on your mental health at specific points in your journey. I empathize because I am also an entrepreneur and consult with aspiring and thriving entrepreneurs alike. Let’s take a moment to examine and reframe some common stressors that almost every entrepreneur has faced.

Fear of the Unknown

Part of entrepreneurship's thrill is that we’re charting our own path. However, this thrill of the unknown acts as a double-edged sword and can present deep, paralyzing fear at the opposing end of that spectrum. 

Our society has programmed us to follow the structure laid out for us. When navigating off the beaten path, or even “breaking the rules,” especially the ones we’ve been taught to follow to safety (physical or psychological), our sympathetic nervous system can get triggered. This system in our brain has a job to spot a threat. When we don’t know the path laid out ahead (because we’re building it), it can trigger the stress “fight, flight, freeze or fawn” response. Ironically, this can lead to more stress and seems to be the antithesis of productivity. Fun! 

Reframe: Create a structure for yourself. Have a list of goals you’re working towards per year, ideally broken out per quarter, and keep reducing them into smaller actionable tasks for easier achievements. For instance, if you’re in growth mode and working towards gaining new clients, it may be helpful to create a wide-ranging list of dream customers and generate a game plan for how you’d best target and pitch your business or services. I recommend a planner specifically made for busy entrepreneurs, they're easy to find on sites like Amazon –  it’s been my saving grace! To better hold myself accountable, I’ll put the goals into chunks on my calendar to ensure I set enough time aside for each task.  

Feeling Isolated

Many entrepreneurs hit points in their journey where they feel completely alone, which can make the thoughts mentioned earlier much louder and more intrusive. The risks at this stage are pulling the plug on your ideas and, at its worst, pulling the plug on your business altogether. 

Reframe: Seek connection. Surround yourself with a slew of other entrepreneurs, a coach, contractors (if that makes sense for your business model), or all of the above. The more, the merrier because those feelings of isolation typically dissipate in a group. Seek a group where you feel safe to give/receive feedback, bounce ideas, or simply commiserate. Remember the familiar adage, “You are the amalgamation of the five people you spend the most time with,” so make sure you’re truly getting something positive out of the experience with your founder friends. 

It might even make sense to create connections in your business model, like on social media, a Patreon, or building a community on a platform like Mighty Networks. This way, you’re always showing up and giving/receiving energy from others. 

Fear of Failure

Fear of failure is potentially the most common. Most people who feel this way deem failure as not having enough money, knowledge, or expertise before starting their business or launching a new product/service. But what do you quantify as having enough? The answer, without a doubt, is different for everyone.   

I was just talking to my accountant, Lisa Pelletier, who specializes in working with small businesses, and she told me that someone in her orbit quit entrepreneurship within the first year because, “it was a failure.” So I asked her, in her experience, how many businesses are profitable (one metric of success) within the first year. She told me that, in her 30 years of experience, only about 10% of the businesses she works with are profitable in the first year. 10%! 

Reframe: Failure is a necessity in order to learn, grow, and succeed. Take it from educator turned Founder and CEO of Lit, Nikki Bridges: “We focus a ton on the successful moments without realizing that you actually need the micro mistakes and failures on the way to proficiency.” Becoming an entrepreneur is like the brain stretch of a lifetime, and we actually need failure to embark on the journey. If you surround yourself with other entrepreneurs you admire, ask them about their failures. Listen to how they might frame failure as a pivot or a learning.  

Taylor Crane, founder of Fractional Jobs, puts it another way: “I think people are generally more risk-averse than they should be, and usually coming from an emotional vs. rational place. My approach to [fear of failure] involves visualizing the worst-case scenario and strategizing a plan B. I ask myself, ‘If this fails, where does this put me? What is the worst-case scenario? Do I get another job? Do I supplement my income in another way?’ Then I get comfortable with that.” 

Taking care of your mental health as an entrepreneur is no small task. You’re charting your own path, and that can be intimidating. But by acknowledging your feelings and fears while taking proactive steps to protect your mental health can put you in the right headspace to tackle any challenge.