Starting something and seeing it take off is a rush. You would ask yourself, “Did I build that?” and you’ll be excited and proud. But the nature of the journey is that it refuses to be characterised by only good things. Most times, the hard stuff is about 89.7% of the journey, but entrepreneurs are gifted with a high pain tolerance for some reason.

When we hear growth stories, we may hear about funding issues and board restructurings, but do we really hear about the person running the venture and how they are doing mentally and emotionally? We may even hear about new products and attend launches that make it seem like the owners always strike gold, but what happens behind the scenes?

Five of these emotions that strike my mind immediately are boredom, confusion, loneliness, analysis paralysis (overthinking), and the superhero complex.

Boredom: The single most destructive emotion, if you ask me. For business owners who are mostly fueled by conviction and/or passion, boredom is usually a sign of doom. It is either the beginning of the end or the start of something that may derail the brand. If an owner lacks the ability to introspect, this could lead to biting off too much and causing the business to lose focus.

Confusion: This is just as fatal as boredom, but it’s easier to recover from without detonating a bomb. Confusion occurs when the owner doesn’t know what to focus on. This can lead to being overstretched and reducing the value that could be added to the business because the entrepreneur is out chasing too many things at once. A great antidote for confusion can be to start thinking like a business owner, weigh the costs and benefits of both options. Make choices along the lines of the key vision you, as a business owner of a brand, are chasing. What can you afford, and make sure that your motivations are clear. The worst thing is making an emotionally charged decision and passing it off as a business one.

Loneliness: This is hard, especially when quantifying or discussing it. It is visceral, especially for extroverts. Building and growing something that takes all your energy, but not having anyone to talk to about it, is another level of loneliness. Some people who don’t have someone who understands precisely what they are talking about feel it adds too much of a burden to an already burdensome situation and makes it too hard for them to continue their journey. But you know what they say about the head wearing the crown being heavy. Many business owners are lonely by choice because they decide not to reach out on their own and because building relationships takes effort. 

 Analysis paralysis [overthinking]: Show me a person who is stuck, and I will show you a person who is overthinking. The amusing thing is that taking calculated risks is part of innovating. Still, when you are afraid to fail, or don’t have any buffers that can make failure less painful or staggering, you tend to overthink so much that you end up doing nothing.

I have found that the main silver bullet for overthinking is thinking about the worst case scenario. As a chronic (recovering) overthinker, I can tell you that thinking about what could go wrong and if you can bear it would help. If the outcome is ridiculous and you logically know you are seeking catastrophe, then that is your answer. If you think about the worst case and decide you can bear it like an optimist, as most business owners tend to be, then you can go ahead.

This is in no way asking you to dive into danger, but the great thing about overthinkers is that if they have considered the worst case and decided that they are ready to make a decision, then you can trust them to stick with it.

This Superhero Complex: don’t take my word for it, but it is very hard to find a successful business owner/ entrepreneur who has built something and employs people who doesn’t have a level of the superhero complex. Not all of them, but some of them tend to think that they know everything and are the smartest in the room.

These people are usually the opposite of overthinkers; they are the move fast and break things lot. They believe all mistakes are worth it, and old, burnt buildings can be salvaged eventually through certain incentives. However, these are not high safety environments, and most people rarely fully form a thought before they send it to the mass market and iterate along the way.

In today’s business world, this is not a bad thing. If you have confidence in yourself, you can convince people to have confidence in you and in the world of profit and loss that converts to a positive balance sheet. However, when you think you are the smartest in the room, you tend to silence all other forms of thought. People don’t bring you the best ideas, and since you think you are the smartest, you place a lot more stock on your own opinions than those of the collective.

 A great way to balance all these five difficult emotions is to be open to talking freely about them to a trusted community of like-minded people. It takes a certain form of humility to be vulnerable, and you can always learn something from other perspectives. If you are able to invest in and build strong communities and relationships that support you as a business owner, the benefits are exponential.

Business is hard, and most times, people have to go it alone. An honest scaffolding team that can be honest with you while holding you up and telling you the truth, despite the costs, will help you go farther than if you had to do it alone.