If you own a small business, you’ll probably relate to Tracy Klopfenstein.
“The first two years were the worst,” says Klopfenstein, who bought a homemade ice cream shop in Goshen, Indiana, called The Chief with her husband, Chad. “We worked all the time, and I suffered burnout. My mind would spiral at night, and I’d worry about everything. I had what I would call an absence of hope.”
Without a large staff to absorb the bumps in the road, mom-and-pop owners often feel like they’re riding on the rims. This past June, the WSJ/Vistage Small Business Index showed that nearly 1 in 4 CEOs frequently felt burned out or emotionally exhausted over the past three months. In a separate survey by Startup Snapshot, 72% of founders reported that the grind affected their mental health.
Burnout is business as usual for entrepreneurs, according to clinical psychologist Chandler Chang, whose mental health platform, Therapy Lab, offers short-term treatment based on approaches like cognitive behavioral therapy. “Your concentration starts to be affected, your ability to focus. And there’s something called depersonalization, where you feel like you’re not even yourself; you’ve become a work machine.”
Related: How Entrepreneurs Can Master Resilience and Protect Their Mental Health
If you’re feeling that way, she says, it’s a sign that you need to take a break — the very thing that seems impossible to do. But at some point, breaks become necessary — for you and your business.
Chang suggests checking in with yourself every hour on whether you can keep going. “You start to learn when you really do need a break,” she says. Just getting exercise or an extra hour of sleep can really help. To counter the downward spirals of anxiety, she encourages a mindset of curiosity. Rather than thinking, I’m going to bomb, try shifting to: I wonder how this will go, what will this look like? “When you’re building a business, you’re doing it without a map,” she stresses. “So you can’t expect yourself to get it right every time.”
Klopfenstein found it helpful to take an antidepressant. “A low dose made a world of difference,” she says. “This was not about being mentally strong enough. This is a chemical thing. I needed a boost.” Chang, who did the same herself when she felt burned out, says it can be quite helpful when being down is not just a passing feeling.
Business owners also often struggle from isolation — feeling like it’s all on them and no one else gets it. “I think I still have PTSD from the pandemic,” says Jamie Erickson, founder of the hospitality brand Poppy’s in Brooklyn, New York. She’d been catering big, fancy events with 600 people, which all came to a crashing halt. “I had a 9-month-old and another child, and Poppy’s is the sole breadwinner for the family. We went from a multimillion-dollar business to zero.”
Chang is a big believer in the power of small behavior changes. Just going to get a coffee and striking up a conversation with a stranger can be surprisingly helpful. Yes, you might feel like nobody understands your plight — but once a month or so, try saying to a friend: “This might not make any sense to you. But can I explain what I went through today?”
Consider making changes to your business, too. Erickson ended up pivoting Poppy’s to a neighborhood cafe and market plus a small event space while catering more intimate events.
She also got connected with a group of female entrepreneurs that she stays in touch with on WhatsApp. And at the ice cream shop, Tracy and Chad hired managers before expanding with a second location and doing catering with a food truck. Today, they make time for exercise — she runs and he plays pickleball — and even occasionally get away. “I’m in a much, much better spot,” she says.
Related: Workers Taking Mental Health Leaves Have Increased By 300% Since 2019, According to a New Study
