The pressure no one talks about as a business owner
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Posted: Wed 30th Apr 2025
13 min read
Social media paints an exciting picture of business ownership. Impact, freedom, fulfilment and making a great living. But the reality is less pretty.
A 2024 article from the UK Small Business Commissioner shares that:
8/10 small business owners report symptoms of poor mental health
64% report suffering from anxiety
1/4 have panic attacks
More than 1/3 struggle with depression
Expectations of owning a business
I'm not proud to admit that, prior to owning a business, I was a combination of naive and ignorant about the impacts of mental health. I served five years in the military, which included two tours of Afghanistan, had lived in monasteries in the Himalayas and worked on deep-sea fishing boats off the Austrian coast. Those experiences had been challenging and often stressful, but never to the point of having an impact on my mental health. So I (ignorantly) formed the view that most poor mental health was just people making excuses.
Reality of owning a business
Then, in 2017, I opened my first business. Of course, I wasn't at all concerned about the stress of opening a business.
I had served in Afghanistan and lived with monks; owning a business would be a walk in the park. Fast forward five years, and I was totally burnt out and depressed, which led to me closing that business when COVID came along.
On hindsight
Reflecting back on that experience, I was able to identify the stressor unique to business ownership that had such a knock on my mental health when other challenging life experiences had not.
By understanding these unique factors, I'm now able to own a business without it hurting my health and lifestyle and help other owners do the same. Here they are:
1. Negativity bias
Business owners are perfectionists. We have high standards and are results-driven. We see how things can and should be done better, so we naturally find our way to owning our own businesses. It's the only way to escape bureaucracy and achieve the outcomes we desire.
In the early days, these traits serve you well. The standards you drive get talked about, and you build a name for yourself. But as you get more traction, these impossibly high standards become a hindrance. Although 99 things are going right in your business, all you can focus on is the one thing that went wrong.
Being able to spot and focus on what can be a strength, but it can also limit the success of your business and make you miserable.
This boils down to how you are internalising issues or problems in your business. If you are highly stressed by them and feel a need to respond to them immediately, you've to look into why you feel that way.
It's easy to justify this behaviour and keep yourself stuck in a loop of chronic stress. It's easy to say to yourself: "I've got this business to where it is because I've got high standards and I don't stand for issues."
But if you dig deeper, you'll find something else. If you dig deeper, you'll find this behaviour is driven by fear. Fear that you're not good enough. Fear that it's all on the brink of falling apart. Fear that if you don't plug issues the second they arise, the ship is going to sink.
The very nature of business is constantly solving problems. You don't ever rid your business of problems, but simply replace old problems with new ones. If you want to enjoy owning a business, you have to accept that problems are OK. They are not a reflection of you as a person, and 99% of the time, they are not emergencies.
When you create a healthy relationship with problems, your relationship with your business and your overall mental health will improve substantially.
2. The weight of responsibility
All adults have responsibilities to different degrees, but perhaps none have the self-imposed level of responsibility that business owners do. When you start a business, you are only really taking responsibility for yourself. But as your business grows, so do the responsibilities.
You take on more clients, you grow your team, you work with more suppliers or third parties. If you are a partner or parent, you, of course, also feel the responsibility of providing in that part of your life. Ultimately, it's on your head to make sure the money's coming in to pay people.
But it's not just paying people. You feel responsible for the lifestyle, health and families of your employees – no pressure. You want to be able to pay them well and support them in having a good lifestyle. To do that, you need them to do great work, but you don't want to put too much pressure on them because then you might stress them out and be responsible for them having poor mental health.
I can think of no other position where you take on this level of responsibility for others, and that's coming from someone who has served in the military and had to make numerous decisions that have a direct impact on someone's risk of death.
There are two solutions to this challenge that I have found to have the biggest positive impact. Firstly, embed yourself into a community of other like-minded business owners. Doing so stops you feeling isolated and opens your eyes to the numerous solutions to these challenges.
The second is to regularly think about how to make your business a win/win for the 'core four'. The core four is a model I designed to show that any business is simply a relationship ecosystem between four groups – the owner, the business (revenue, profit, cash), the clients and the team.
The mistake owners often make it reactively responding to issues when they arise from one of these groups but having no plan to support all four. Plan for all four and the perfect business plan will present itself to you.
3. The freedom paradox
A study of 3000 small business owners found that 45% feel trapped in their businesses.
One of the major reasons for starting a business is freedom. When you start a business, generally for the first few years you don't care how many hours you work and still feel happy.
The reason for this is that, in the first few years, you are fulfilling your desire for freedom by being free from employment. You are no longer in the rat race. You're your own boss now, creating your own destiny. You work hard, develop every aspect of your business and grow a team.
Then, typically around three to six years, something changes. Your team and business have grown, and the novelty of everything being reliant on you starts to wear off.
Working 40 or 50+ hour weeks and taking hardly any holidays (and I mean genuine holidays where you switch off from the business) starts to feel not so cool. You start to crave, and rightly so, genuine time off, quality time with your family and a lifestyle that supports health and happiness.
This is a natural stage in the business owner's journey, and it happens for two reasons. Firstly, you can't run a sprint forever. It took a sprint to get your business to where it is, but you can't sustain that pace long term without getting burnt out and miserable.
Secondly, the human brain thinks in trades. You naturally start asking yourself, is the work I'm putting in, the money I've put in and the stress of owning a business paying off?
What often happens at this point is the owner comes to the logical conclusion that, unless the business is paying them well and allowing them a great lifestyle, the input is not worth the output. If your business isn't providing well for you, you're going to come to the conclusion that you'd actually be better off in a job.
Now you have three options at this point and unfortunately most choose option one (be default by not changing anything) and end up as unhappy business owners (like I did in my first business).
Option 1: Do nothing
Stay in a business that is stressful and overly dependent on you because it feels easier than making changes. You end up feeling a combination of trapped in and resentful towards your business. Over the years, you lose motivation and your business ends up feeling a lot like the job you started it to escape.
Option 2: Shift from reactive to proactive
You get clear on what you want from your business to make you happy, and build a new business strategy to make this a reality. This fires your ovens back up.
You ensure your new strategy is a win/win for the core four (you, business, team and clients) and involve your team in planning so they're motivated to make it happen.
You accept that change brings 'risk', but are at complete peace with this because you know the ultimate risk is changing nothing and staying stuck in a business that isn't giving you the lifestyle you deserve.
Concluding
Your business should make you happy. If it doesn't, what's the point in having it? Seriously, please ask yourself that question.
I'm not going to pretend that owning a business is easy and shouldn't cause you stress, but it should contribute to your life. It's not ok that so many of our business owners are stressed and unhappy. Business owners fix problems, create jobs and improve economies. We need more business owners and we need you on your A game, not feeling trapped and burnt out.
All too often, business mentoring/coaching services focus on the logical steps you need to take without considering the psychological barriers that are really holding you back.
If your business isn't where you want it to be and you know things need to change, promise me something. Don't commit to another tool, tactic or strategy someone is spouting on the internet before getting clear on what YOU want from YOUR business.
When you do this first, I promise you, everything else will fall into place because getting clear on this plan will bring your true psychological barriers to the surface and force you to deal with them.