Planning for the other costs that come with running a business
Budgets. As any investor will tell you, if the numbers don’t add up then the vision isn’t even worth thinking about. But when it comes to the personal cost of starting and running a business, it isn't only finances that take a hit. The decisions made by an entrepreneur and the way that work and life can so often crossover, can easily seem nonsensical to those who didn’t choose that career path.
It can be turbulent and the ups and downs can take their toll. Over the course of an entrepreneur’s career, it’s not uncommon for them to experience emotional ups and downs, with situations and challenges which they often never saw coming.
But what if we just accepted they might come…and be ready for them when they do?
Planning ahead - for your mind
Since entrepreneurs are no strangers to budgets, perhaps one idea could be to imagine a way of budgeting for our emotions, just as we do our finances. When you think about it, they’re not too dissimilar. When we look ahead at the next financial period, we anticipate where the costs will come. We ensure we have the resources put aside, we have a contingency for inevitable surprises and we attempt to mitigate those costs, as best we can.
The same can be said for our emotions and psychological wellbeing. When we look ahead at the prospect of starting and running a business, we must, there and then, accept that there are going to be challenges along the way, which will impact our emotions and mental health. We've all read the success stories about the shit that eventually successful founders went through, in order to create the empires they built. Many experience incredibly dark, low points; from the uncertainty and financial instability, to the burnout, lost relationships or fall-outs with co-founders - and they’re the ones who succeed. It might be fair to assume that the 90% that fail probably didn’t have an easy time of it, either.
Whether leading to success or failure, I can certainly speak from my own, personal experience, that a better job might have been done, with some better emotional budgeting. In other words, anticipating the emotional and psychological costs and mitigating their impact - to ensure the ability to deal with the ups and downs as they come, while also being fully focused on where the attention is needed the most - rather than on the worry and stress that may come with it.
Setting the emotional budget
We don't necessarily need spreadsheets to emotionally budget. But if we did, the first column might show the types of situations we have a good chance of facing, over the coming period. Such as, the isolation that can come with being a solo founder; or the relationship tensions that can come with being a co-founder; the hours required to start up, or the financial strain of bootstrapping.
In the next column, we may have the types of emotions we'll face, with each situation. Such as, the despair that comes when an order is cancelled or a supplier lets us down; the joy that comes with winning a pitch; or the frustration that comes with losing one.
Then, in the final column, we'll have the types of actions we can take to prepare for them, or to mitigate them. This final column is the most important, because there’ll be many in here which can help to ease or make sense of a whole load of the emotions and situations we might come across, along the way.
Here are some personal favourites which may make their way into that final column:
Maintain wellbeing - very simply, our state of body and mind should always be the priority. If it isn’t, then we won’t be able to do our best work, anyway. Exercise, diet and sleep are the fundamentals of a healthy body and mind. Shortcuts don’t work, so find time for these.
Have someone to talk to - if we’re going it alone, it’s important to have support. If we’re not, it’s important to have someone we can talk to, who isn’t the co-founder. Be it a mentor, a coach, a partner or a friend we feel comfortable to confide in - starting and running a business can have so many ups and downs, talking them out can help to make sense of it all.
Be aware of expectations - many of us endlessly chase after dreams of achieving this global empire, on the assumption that, in doing so, our lives will be fulfilled. This can be a dangerous trap, in which someone may spend their whole lives building towards that goal, only to get there, feel even less fulfilled and look back on all the times they could’ve been enjoying themselves. The process of building the dream isn’t supposed to be easy. But if we’re not enjoying that process and are only thinking of the day that fulfilment will come, then it’s worth questioning why it is we’re doing it.
Check in with why it is we’re doing this - if all we want is money, fame or status, we could easily be on that treadmill to nowhere. But if not, it’s important to remind ourselves why we’re willing to work so hard. Remember the mission, the purpose. And if it’s not clear what that is, then perhaps it’s worth revisiting or redefining.
Make time for friends and family - or at minimum, explain to them why we may not have much time for them. It’s easy to assume that everybody else gets why we’re never able to socialise, because we’re working late or watching our expenses. Friendships and relationships can be ruined by such lack of communication. But either way, taking time away from the projects to spend some downtime with the people who care, can set us up well for getting back into it and giving it our best.
Celebrate the wins, then move on - with so much happening, it can be easy to plough through without taking the time to give ourselves credit for the little achievements we make along the way. If we don’t, we can easily end up spiralling into a feeling that no progression is being made and losing faith. Celebrate the small wins, as well as the big ones.
Learn from the losses, then move on - as above - we can easily distort the way we deal with the things that go wrong. We might dwell on them, or focus on the potential consequences, rather than the solution. But as with the good things - we should give them the time they need, note what can be learned, problem-solve where necessary - then move on.
Be in control of finances - whether that means budgeting well or ensuring we have the funding that can sustain us throughout this journey, our personal finances will always dictate our performance, if they’re not under control. Make sure that layer of stress isn’t there - look after yourself, first.
Respect the co-founder - there’s a reason we chose the person we start-up with. It’s often because they have traits which are completely opposite, but complimentary, to ours. When the pressure builds and if times get hard, it can be easy to forget that those opposing traits do have value. So it can be important to not only remember this, but to discuss it and ensure we’re playing to eachothers’ strengths.
The entrepreneur journey is an epic one that most people do not take, because of the risks involved - both to finances and to how and whether we can handle the ride. It’s not supposed to be easy, just like it’s not supposed to be cheap. But if we anticipate this in advance, then when those costs hit - whether financial or emotional - they’re less of a surprise and can be much easier to work with.
Need help writing your budget?
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