- A few months ago, I talked to this guy who bills himself
as the Shrink For Entrepreneurs, Peter Shallard.
Basically, a therapist for entrepreneurs.
He writes about the type of mental struggles
that entrepreneurs go through when starting
and running a business.
Here are the takeaways from that conversation.
This video is very dense, so hope you're ready.
We started with,
what are the biggest psychological struggles
that entrepreneurs go through?
- [Peter] I always say that entrepreneurs
are kind of unique beautiful snowflakes,
that there's a lot of different ways that they can kind of
have disfunction or psychological hang ups.
You know, there's really almost too many to list.
I think that one of the biggest ones actually comes from
the very double-edged sword of entrepreneurship,
which is being so extraordinarily ambitious.
And putting such extraordinary high expectations
on them self, you know, in terms of your performance,
entrepreneurs are kind of crazy.
You have to be a little nuts to sign up for the
statistically improbable, kind of dice roll of a career,
where you're hoping to be in the tiny, kind of percentage
who win big in business.
- Then I asked him what burden
does entrepreneurship come with?
- [Peter] It comes with this like
crazy kind of psychological burden
of it having extraordinary high demands on yourself,
and also I think really struggling with you know, isolation.
Isolation and overwhelm are probably the biggest kind
of patterns that I see in business owners of any kind.
And I think that a big source of that problem
psychologically, is the very technology,
the very kind of opportunity of entrepreneurship,
the sort of world offers us right now.
- You guys know this, I'm a digital nomad.
So even though we have this team,
they're all working from their own location.
So, I really wanted to touch on
how physical isolation affects an entrepreneur.
- [Peter] It's kinda crazy how
we just kind of roll with the punches.
But the physical isolation, the changes and the difference
that have happened there.
Like, we kind of consider that to be completely normal
but the fact is that this is the first generation
of entrepreneurs who have built businesses
in these environments.
Because even our parents' generation, right?
Let alone grandparents.
This type of entrepreneurship wasn't possible.
You couldn't sit there with a laptop
and actually start something from nothing.
I've built, this business is the Shrink For Entrepreneurs
and I work one-on-one with a lot of founders
of some pretty kind of sexy and exciting start ups.
But my second project, the second thing I've really done
with this part of my career is being to start a company
called Commit Action that really aims to help solve
this lack of accountability issue.
And we kind of fundamentally ask the question of our clients
which is, is there anyone in the world who knows
whether or not you phoned it in this week,
or actually crushed it?
And the answer to that question gets straight to the heart
of the problem with modern entrepreneurship,
and sort of positions what we do at Commit Action.
We have a team of accountability coaches
who basically provide like a personal training
for productivity service,
to basically be a lifeline for that isolation problem.
- And then I asked him why the situation would get worse?
- [Peter] To really answer your question,
I think that this is the modern barbare of entrepreneurship,
the modern problem of entrepreneurship,
and I think it's gonna get worse, you know?
The US Treasury puts out the study every couple of years
on this state of employment and small-business ownership
and stuff like that.
And they're predicting like vast, vast swarse of
white-collar work force to go freelance,
to be increasingly building small businesses, you know?
For the whole digital services kind of category of business,
to increasingly go into peoples homes.
Like the way that people work
in the English-speaking first world is just transforming.
And you know, I think that we're just
seeing the tip of the iceberg
of the psychological fallout from that.
- One of the biggest struggles
I run into and have to constantly fight against
is the urge to compare myself to other entrepreneurs.
I know it's unhealthy, but I do it.
So I asked him why we play this game of comparison?
- [Peter] Entrepreneurs love to play the game of comparison
and I think that again, the modern technology fuels this.
It's so easy for us to begin social media platforms
that primarily give us a window
into the best highlights of other peoples lives
and to see the other entrepreneurs in our networks
and all the amazing stuff that we're doing.
People are hearing about Elon Musk
and the fact that he's running, God knows how many companies
He probably started a new one this week.
Doing all of this crazy stuff, and they're kind of thinking,
what's wrong with me?
Why am I struggling to get so much done
with my one business that I'm running?
There is this comparison game that entrepreneurs play,
that I think really trips them up.
And what's crazy about it is
that all those superstar entrepreneurs,
who we kind of idolize and look up to,
and create articles about their morning rituals
and all this crazy stuff, these people have built a web of
extraordinary accountability around them.
- The follow-up question was, why everything seems easier
for superstar entrepreneurs like Elon Musk?
- [Peter] You know, they're accountable to shareholders
and advisory boards that they meet with regularly.
They've got you know, huge teams of direct report VPs
who are coming to them
with scheduled meetings in their calendar
where they just have to show up
and provide vision and guidance, right?
Being the best version of themselves
is something that is demanded by the structure
that they built around them,
which is a part of the success that they've created.
- Then we talked about the loneliness of Entrepreneurship
and why the entire system promotes that loneliness?
- You know, entrepreneurship is fundamentally lonely
and when people start self-sabotaging
and tripping themselves up, I think that they ask
why am I broken, what's going on?
But I think the real question
and the thing that I really
help liberating people by understanding
is you know, the environment is broken
and you have to do something to fix that isolation.
- Then I asked him what are the psychological changes
he's seen from people in their first-year business
to people five years in?
- [Peter] The thing that people struggle with
really early on is people who are massively confused
around bright shiny object syndrome.
Bright shiny object syndrome is what we call it,
which is basically a sort of an imaginary unit,
quantum medicine that people chase
because they are overwhelmed and they're not sure
specifically what it is they should be doing.
There's a faze very early on when people start a new project
and decide to kinda become self-employed and do this thing.
They kind of get to a place
where if someone was to stuff them in the street and say,
what is it exactly you're doing to grow your business today?
They wouldn't really know, they wouldn't have a good answer.
And so typically, we see people get sucked into this
multi billion-dollar industry of like self-health,
and you know, training resources
and checking out what other people are up to online.
I see a lot of small business owners
just chase after these bright shiny object
thinking like all this stuff isn't working,
this other thing over here is the answer, right?
Oh, this amazing new marketing strategy, that's the answer,
I gotta do that.
We get really excited because we don't know
what we don't know, we only see the upside.
We're not aware of the challenges of that.
So, we take this new idea,
we capture that bright shiny object
and we start playing with it.
And the more we execute, the more action we take,
the more we become informed.
And we start to realize that if it were easy,
everyone would be doing it.
And so the temptation for beginner entrepreneurs
when they start to move from a state of uninformed optimism
to a state of informed pessimism.
- I love that type of question
for anyone that's been doing anything longer than you.
If you ask what are some of the things to look out for
10 years in the future, 30 years in the future,
whatever they are,
they're going to give you insightful answers,
even if they're things you don't want to hear.
And Shallard talked a lot about informed pessimism,
so knowing so much that you feel
kind of bummed out about the future.
And so I asked him why is it psychologically attractive
to leave that state of informed pessimism?
- [Peter] The reason that's so addictive psychologically,
is moving back into a state of uninformed optimism
is going to give you that dopamine endorphin, right?
It feels amazing!
It's like the most relieving rush in the world
to abandon what's difficult
and go back to something that's easy.
And I think that a lot of beginner business owners
and entrepreneurs really struggle to recognize this pattern
that they'll loop this through this five, or 10, or 20 times
over like a year or two,
when they're just trying to get started.
You know, and some people never figure it out.
- And I wanted to leave you off on this last question
which was, what are the biggest problems
for more established entrepreneurs?
- [Peter] I think that the biggest problem
for more established business owners is plateaus, right?
It's like kind of pushing those growth levers,
having early kind of wins,
you know, being able to have initial success somehow
or you know, like building something that really works
and there's customers and things like that.
And then, there's a lot of really tricky decision making
that goes on, I feel, like in a way,
I think that one of the hottest things to have happened
is to have overnight success as an entrepreneur,
and go from playing around with an idea
to like a year later or six months later,
scaling up a team and suddenly dealing with
payroll and overhead and all this crazy stuff going on.
There's a lot of capabilities that I think
that entrepreneurs assume they'll figure out in real time.
But you know, they aren't really prepared for it.
- It's always good to track the growth process
and the psychological stuff matters.
Because as you grow and you master the systems of business,
most of it becomes surviving, taking customer complaints
without freaking out and without quitting, hiring people,
dealing with HR issues, recruiting, all of that.
So mastering your psychology is huge.
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I'm Alex Berman, thanks for watching.