Every year, usually around the time when it seems Capetonians have just about had enough of the never-ending Cape winter, I start noticing small telltale signs of the impact on my clients of running their businesses.
The ongoing pressure of paying taxes, managing sales, dealing with cash flow shortages, non-paying clients, employee challenges, and the struggling economy are all ever-present forces to reckon with.
Since we are all inundated with an overwhelming quantity of posts, articles, and short-form social media content on mental health, it’s kind of lost its true meaning for me. However, at a certain point, I have to admit, I also start to feel the physical and psychological effects of running my own business in these complicated times.
In this month’s article, I focus on five key stressors, their impact on our mental faculties, and how we can potentially remedy the effects on our decision-making abilities.
The Burden of Sole Responsibility and the Myth of "The Grind"
The Stressor:
Unlike employees, the business owner is never really “off”. Every problem, crisis, major decision, failure, and the livelihood of all the employees rests squarely on the shoulders of the owner.
This creates a relentless cognitive load that leads to significant personal stress. There exists a cultural myth that successful business owners must constantly be "on the grind", which exacerbates the situation.
The Impact on Your Mental Health:
Chronic anxiety and overwhelming feelings of isolation. The feeling that you can't share your concerns and worries because it might erode confidence in the business or your leadership worsens the feeling of being isolated, and that it’s “lonely at the top."
The Practical Takeaway:
Implement a personal "Responsibility Firewall": a mandatory, non-negotiable hour of disconnection each day. It is also essential to develop a trusted, non-employee peer group to share your feelings and fears, and to reflect on your current situation.
The Financial Rollercoaster and Its Impact on Self-Worth
The Stressor:
In a small business, the owner's personal finances are often deeply intertwined with the business's cash flow. A slow month isn't just a number; it's a threat to the mortgage, your children's tuition, and may even impact day-to-day necessities such as groceries and fuel.
The Impact on Your Mental Health:
Intense, episodic stress and a dangerous blurring of personal and professional self-worth. When the business struggles, it’s so tempting to feel like you are a failure, a feeling that further leads to symptoms of depression and burnout.
The Practical Takeaway:
Create a financial structure that underscores the importance of professional financial separation. Work with your finance team (or accountant) to create a 12-month "Owner's Salary" budget (even if just aspirational as a start).
Set up and track financial Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) separate from your personal feelings, and maintain emotional distance from the economic and monetary fluctuations.
Imposter Syndrome and the Pressure to Be the Expert
The Stressor:
Many business owners are experts in their core business field (e.g., baking, coding, landscaping). Still, they may feel inadequate when forced to wear other C-suite hats, such as "CEO," "HR Manager," and "Marketing Director." A feeling of having to constantly "fake it until you make it” becomes the order of the day.
The Impact on Your Mental Health:
Trying to be everything to everyone all the time is often a mask for anxiety and leads to crippling procrastination and the inability to delegate. It also fuels the constant internal voice questioning one's competence (also known as imposter syndrome).
The Practical Takeaway:
Start seeing delegation and outsourcing not as failures, but as essential and strategic business strengths. Challenge yourself to auditing your own time and commit to outsourcing at least two tasks that drain you the most (for example, bookkeeping, payroll, social media posts, blogging, marketing).
Always on Tap and the Breakdown of Boundaries
The Stressor:
The smartphone, along with numerous other technologies and platforms, has eliminated the physical boundary between "work" and "home." Clients, employees, and “urgent” problems can reach us 24/7, normalizing the idea of checking email late at night or taking calls during the weekends.
The Impact on Your Mental Health:
We get caught in a chronic state of sleep deprivation and low-level hyperarousal (the so-called "fight-or-flight" response), which exhausts the nervous system and makes even minor setbacks feel catastrophic. This leads to burnout, the total depletion of physical and mental energy and resources.
The Practical Takeaway:
Implement concrete strategies for setting digital boundaries, such as using separate devices or "work profiles," disabling notifications for work apps after a specific hour, and scheduling mandatory "recovery blocks" into the weekly calendar that are treated as seriously as client meetings.
The Need for Professional Help and Structured Empathy
The Stressor:
Many business owners believe that seeking mental health support is a sign of weakness or a luxury they can't afford, fearing it will scar their image as a strong leader, problem solver, and prolific worker.
The Impact on Your Mental Health:
The problem gets bigger as it remains untreated and undetected. When a problem affects your business (e.g., legal or accounting), you call an expert.
When a problem affects your mind, failing to apply the same logic can lead to worsening symptoms. And many business owners only realize too late that they should have seen the warning signs earlier.
The Practical Takeaway:
It’s completely ok to seek professional help. Begin by reframing therapy, coaching, or counseling as a vital business expense that supports your most critical asset as an owner: your decision-making abilities.
Start by making a list of low-cost resources (for example, local small business meetings, mental health support groups) and share this list with all your employees and teams.
Take the lead in advocating for sound mental health and help reduce the stigma associated with seeking help. Be open with employees and teams about prioritizing self-care.
Closing Remarks
Ultimately, the relentless demands of ownership and our modern lifestyles mean we are confronted with a choice. Either we acknowledge the genuine mental strain of running our businesses and take the necessary remedial actions proactively, or we can delay resolving it and pay a hefty price in the end.
The truth is, postponing this essential work doesn't make the stress disappear; it simply ensures the mental debt continues to grow. Every time you set aside the need for a boundary, ignore the creeping anxiety, or refuse to delegate due to perfectionism, you are taking out a loan against your future well-being and your business’s stability.
We all know that sound financial management begins with an honest assessment of the numbers. Similarly, effective mental health management begins with an honest self-assessment. Until we can honestly admit to ourselves and to a trusted professional that we are struggling, we cannot apply the strategic, decisive leadership we use every day to solve business problems.
Our minds remain our most valuable asset. Let’s treat it as such and budget appropriately for its protection and scheduled maintenance. Let's make the critical decision today to stop postponing the most important thing we will ever do for our business.
Contact us at +27 82 561 7024 or myrtleo@mbasa.org for a free, no-obligation consultation, and let’s ensure you are on the right track from day one.
The ongoing pressure of paying taxes, managing sales, dealing with cash flow shortages, non-paying clients, employee challenges, and the struggling economy are all ever-present forces to reckon with.
Since we are all inundated with an overwhelming quantity of posts, articles, and short-form social media content on mental health, it’s kind of lost its true meaning for me. However, at a certain point, I have to admit, I also start to feel the physical and psychological effects of running my own business in these complicated times.
In this month’s article, I focus on five key stressors, their impact on our mental faculties, and how we can potentially remedy the effects on our decision-making abilities.
The Burden of Sole Responsibility and the Myth of "The Grind"
The Stressor:
Unlike employees, the business owner is never really “off”. Every problem, crisis, major decision, failure, and the livelihood of all the employees rests squarely on the shoulders of the owner.
This creates a relentless cognitive load that leads to significant personal stress. There exists a cultural myth that successful business owners must constantly be "on the grind", which exacerbates the situation.
The Impact on Your Mental Health:
Chronic anxiety and overwhelming feelings of isolation. The feeling that you can't share your concerns and worries because it might erode confidence in the business or your leadership worsens the feeling of being isolated, and that it’s “lonely at the top."
The Practical Takeaway:
Implement a personal "Responsibility Firewall": a mandatory, non-negotiable hour of disconnection each day. It is also essential to develop a trusted, non-employee peer group to share your feelings and fears, and to reflect on your current situation.
The Financial Rollercoaster and Its Impact on Self-Worth
The Stressor:
In a small business, the owner's personal finances are often deeply intertwined with the business's cash flow. A slow month isn't just a number; it's a threat to the mortgage, your children's tuition, and may even impact day-to-day necessities such as groceries and fuel.
The Impact on Your Mental Health:
Intense, episodic stress and a dangerous blurring of personal and professional self-worth. When the business struggles, it’s so tempting to feel like you are a failure, a feeling that further leads to symptoms of depression and burnout.
The Practical Takeaway:
Create a financial structure that underscores the importance of professional financial separation. Work with your finance team (or accountant) to create a 12-month "Owner's Salary" budget (even if just aspirational as a start).
Set up and track financial Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) separate from your personal feelings, and maintain emotional distance from the economic and monetary fluctuations.
Imposter Syndrome and the Pressure to Be the Expert
The Stressor:
Many business owners are experts in their core business field (e.g., baking, coding, landscaping). Still, they may feel inadequate when forced to wear other C-suite hats, such as "CEO," "HR Manager," and "Marketing Director." A feeling of having to constantly "fake it until you make it” becomes the order of the day.
The Impact on Your Mental Health:
Trying to be everything to everyone all the time is often a mask for anxiety and leads to crippling procrastination and the inability to delegate. It also fuels the constant internal voice questioning one's competence (also known as imposter syndrome).
The Practical Takeaway:
Start seeing delegation and outsourcing not as failures, but as essential and strategic business strengths. Challenge yourself to auditing your own time and commit to outsourcing at least two tasks that drain you the most (for example, bookkeeping, payroll, social media posts, blogging, marketing).
Always on Tap and the Breakdown of Boundaries
The Stressor:
The smartphone, along with numerous other technologies and platforms, has eliminated the physical boundary between "work" and "home." Clients, employees, and “urgent” problems can reach us 24/7, normalizing the idea of checking email late at night or taking calls during the weekends.
The Impact on Your Mental Health:
We get caught in a chronic state of sleep deprivation and low-level hyperarousal (the so-called "fight-or-flight" response), which exhausts the nervous system and makes even minor setbacks feel catastrophic. This leads to burnout, the total depletion of physical and mental energy and resources.
The Practical Takeaway:
Implement concrete strategies for setting digital boundaries, such as using separate devices or "work profiles," disabling notifications for work apps after a specific hour, and scheduling mandatory "recovery blocks" into the weekly calendar that are treated as seriously as client meetings.
The Need for Professional Help and Structured Empathy
The Stressor:
Many business owners believe that seeking mental health support is a sign of weakness or a luxury they can't afford, fearing it will scar their image as a strong leader, problem solver, and prolific worker.
The Impact on Your Mental Health:
The problem gets bigger as it remains untreated and undetected. When a problem affects your business (e.g., legal or accounting), you call an expert.
When a problem affects your mind, failing to apply the same logic can lead to worsening symptoms. And many business owners only realize too late that they should have seen the warning signs earlier.
The Practical Takeaway:
It’s completely ok to seek professional help. Begin by reframing therapy, coaching, or counseling as a vital business expense that supports your most critical asset as an owner: your decision-making abilities.
Start by making a list of low-cost resources (for example, local small business meetings, mental health support groups) and share this list with all your employees and teams.
Take the lead in advocating for sound mental health and help reduce the stigma associated with seeking help. Be open with employees and teams about prioritizing self-care.
Closing Remarks
Ultimately, the relentless demands of ownership and our modern lifestyles mean we are confronted with a choice. Either we acknowledge the genuine mental strain of running our businesses and take the necessary remedial actions proactively, or we can delay resolving it and pay a hefty price in the end.
The truth is, postponing this essential work doesn't make the stress disappear; it simply ensures the mental debt continues to grow. Every time you set aside the need for a boundary, ignore the creeping anxiety, or refuse to delegate due to perfectionism, you are taking out a loan against your future well-being and your business’s stability.
We all know that sound financial management begins with an honest assessment of the numbers. Similarly, effective mental health management begins with an honest self-assessment. Until we can honestly admit to ourselves and to a trusted professional that we are struggling, we cannot apply the strategic, decisive leadership we use every day to solve business problems.
Our minds remain our most valuable asset. Let’s treat it as such and budget appropriately for its protection and scheduled maintenance. Let's make the critical decision today to stop postponing the most important thing we will ever do for our business.
Contact us at +27 82 561 7024 or myrtleo@mbasa.org for a free, no-obligation consultation, and let’s ensure you are on the right track from day one.
CONTACT US
Please contact us for an obligation free consultation. Our team works remotely and we are available for on-line or local in person meetings.
082 561 7024
Mon to Fri 7am to 4pm
Mon to Fri 7am to 4pm
myrtleo@mbasa.org