There were times when I was running my company where I spent so much time working that I forgot about living. That’s not something that I’m proud of, but it’s something that happened. I was building a company, a brand, and I was unstoppable, literally. So unstoppable in fact, that I didn’t stop for evenings, weekends, fun.
Hello burnout, nice to meet you
It came unexpectedly, the moment when I went from driving my business forward at 200mph to putting the car in neutral. Sure, I coasted for a while but I had shut down, I’d stopped building my leads pipeline, stopped my networking activities and I was strangling the business I was to have three to six months from now.
A friend of mine, Paul Levine, who is a great optometrist and business owner seemed to take note of my burnout, pulled me aside, and gave me some much needed advice…
If you don’t work on the future of your business, you won’t have a future business
I’d relied so strongly on my past success and worked so hard that I’d had massive successes early on, but there needed to be a point of equilibrium. Somewhere between the energy drink fueled superhero business owner and the burnt out neutral coaster, that’s where I wanted to be.
It took a wake up call from a friend to help me keep my business alive and my spirits in check. If you’re at that point where burnout is a real possibility then I’ll pass along the advice of my friend Paul, “if you don’t work on the future of your business, you won’t have a future business” and I’ll add another piece of advice, “if you aren’t building your life, you don’t have a reason for building your business”.
Author:
Nick Inglis is an expert on enterprise software and is the author of the AIIM SharePoint Governance Toolkit. Nick has worked with companies as diverse as Ernst & Young, Shell and Canon. Nick is currently an independent consultant and noted keynote speaker on the topics of SharePoint, Information Management and Collaborative Technologies.
