Overcoming Entrepreneurial Lonliness

Ask any Business Owner or Entrepreneur and they will tell you that owning and running a business can be a lonely and isolated role. Especially when the going gets tough and you are the only person who can and will make the final decision. You cannot expect your spouse or friends to relate to your problems as they are not involved in the day-to-day running and management of your business, they probably have their own worries which is taking up enough of their time and energy. 

It is important to prioritize your relationships, no longer can you meet people at the drop of a hat and go for a drink or a coffee. That does not mean you isolate yourself but choose your friends wisely, the ones who you know will be with you through thick and thin. They are your true friends who you can trust and confide in.

To help with your personal development and learning look at getting a mentor or coach who can help you reach a decision in a logical and from an impartial point of view offering guidance and to help you see the woods from the trees. You could also consider on bringing on board a non-executive Director.

In ancient Greece the great philosophers Socrates and Plato would have sat for hours with their peers debating matters of interest and concern in what was a forerunner of the Mastermind Group.

The Mastermind Group concept can be traced back to the author Napoleon Hill. In 1908, Hill was commissioned by the American industrialist Andrew Carnegie to interview over 500 of the most successful people of the day and put together a general formula for business and life success. The ‘project’ took over 20 years to complete culminating in ‘The Law of Success’ later to become ‘Think and Grow Rich’, which included a series of steps of which he advocates the ‘Power of the Mastermind’ which we now know as the Mastermind Group.

A Mastermind Group is a group of people preferably not more than six who are of a like mind from either the same or different industries sharing a common need for success in their business venture. The group meets on a regular basis with the objective of supporting each other through the sharing of experiences and knowledge.

When forming a Group choose members who are likely to create synergy, who are focused, ambitious, open-minded and goal oriented with a positive outlook who will bring to each and every meeting energy and a willingness to share. It is beneficial to include people who have real experience and success in business and who have overcome personal challenges. The Group is designed as a long-term support system and not as a ‘drop-in’ session whenever you feel you need a motivational lift.

The Group becomes a place where individuals can bounce ideas, discuss problems confidentially and learn from the wisdom of their fellow Group members. Mastermind Groups can offer valuable benefits including accountability to ensure that projects don’t slip in terms of deadlines and completion. An additional advantage is the power of simply stating your goals out loud which in turn can help you to clarify your thinking and to ‘follow-through’

So if you find yourself in a situation where you are starting to get over whelmed and feel you have no one to turn to with your problems why not take the initiative and create your own Mastermind Group and gain from the support of fellow business people. Organise your initial meetings in a local coffee shop, they will welcome the extra business and who knows they might even benefit from the Group themselves.

If you are looking for help to grow your business and if I can help you why not call or email me for a confidential Breakthrough Call.

Great Chinese proverb

Are you Overwhelmed by email?

I recently had a client ask me how do I avoid becoming overwhelmed?

Reality is, in today’s hectic society, overwhelm is just part of the game we play but it is up to us to decide what rules are we going to play by.

One of the main contributors to daily overwhelmed is email. Ask anyone how many mails are sitting in their Inbox unread - the answers can be shocking! The problem is no one teaches us how to ‘Manage’ our Outlook or G Mail account and everyone is left to their own methods or lack of.

The other big creator of overwhelm is the expectation of an instant response to e mails 24/7. Depending on your company response time policy, rather than allowing senders get into the habit of expecting an immediate reply - it is worth agreeing some communication ground rules with them in advance by setting a time limit for when you will get back to them. In my instance I have added a line to my signature which says: E mail response time within 24 hours - if matter is urgent text or call me on my mobile. Obviously I have provided my mobile number in my signature.

Worth talking it through with your colleagues and agreeing a policy and procedure that will work for everyone and in turn any new hires can be shown 'how we do things around here'.

How often have you been working on a task or responding to an email when you are interrupted by an incoming message showing up in your alerts - the natural tendency is to click on the alert to see who the email is from and what it is about. According to a study conducted by the University of California on the cost of digital distraction, that simple distraction can take as much as 25 minutes for the individual to return to the original task on hand - no wonder we never seem to get anything done. The solution to this problem is to switch off all digital distractions and to put time aside to check e mails every 30 minutes and stick to it. Give it a try - switch off your alerts and set aside uninterrupted blocks of time for focused work - in fact why don't you give the Pomodoro Technique a try - it really works.

 Deleting unsolicited and junk emails every other day probably takes most of us way too long unless you have a good spam filter installed and you regularly go through your list of mails and ruthlessly ‘Unsubscribe’ from the lists you ‘Accidentally’ signed up for or better still assign them to the ‘Junk’ folder.


I learnt a good practice for email management a few years back called the ‘4D’ method:

• Delete it: the easiest of all the options and needs no explanation
• Do it: if the activity is going to take you 2 minutes or less, as soon as you click on the mail simply do whatever has to be done straight away
• Delegate It: that is of course if you are fortunate enough to have someone who you can delegate the task to, alternatively there maybe someone in your organization who is in a better position to handle the issue than yourself
• Defer It: Pop the email into your Task Manager with a Reminder date when you need to take action and forget about it till then.

Whatever method you use do not let your email take over your life – book time in your calendar once or twice a week to ‘Clean out' your inbox and while you are at it set up folders to file your mail into which should replicate your filing system on your main storage system or in the Cloud. All good house keeping. 

The key to not getting overwhelmed is to get yourself focused on one primary objective or goal – and to always ask yourself does each activity you undertake move you toward a specific goal and if it doesn’t you need to question why you are doing it in the first place. We can all be busy people and broke fools. 

Then once you hit that target start moving the line and stay focused on the end goal. If it doesn’t help you get closer to your goal, don’t give it any of your precious mental bandwidth!

I like to look at each day as being: Meaningful, Efficient and Profitable.

Easier said than done however... trust me, I know!