10 Essential Tips for Avoiding Solopreneur Burnout
Most of us became business owners so we could set our own schedules, steer our own ships, and create lifestyles that fit our unique personalities and dreams. But hustle pressure is strong when you start a business, especially in the beginning stages. If you’re not careful, that energy can lead you right toward solopreneur burnout.
Burnout Defined
What is burnout? There are a few different ways you could describe it (here’s an official definition), but generally it’s a period of prolonged physical and emotional distress that can have serious consequences on your work and life.
Once you’ve hit burnout, you’re hitting against a Cannot Do Any More wall. While this sounds like a temporary hitch, true burnout can actually cause much bigger problems.
Burnout is caused by a deep and abiding stress level that continues on and on, with no end in sight. This high level of stress can have serious consequences for your mental health. This, in turn, can lead to physical health problems that can have very real consequences on your life.
Avoiding burnout is essential to building a sustainable business that feels like your vocation’s home.
Signs of Solopreneur Burnout
The best scenario is for you to notice those first few red flags, telling you that you’re entering the initial stages of burnout. Once you get good at noticing those, you can immediately course correct to take good care of yourself.
Here are a handful of the most common signs, but you know yourself best. Watch yourself for any new stressors and behaviors that tell you something is wrong.
Feeling a lack of motivation for your work
Groaning when you see a new email in your inbox (or having a mini panic attack)
Procrastinating starting your work day almost every day
Remembering your joy about your work in the past, and wondering how you felt that way (and if you’ll ever feel that way again)
Snapping at your family members on a regular basis
Avoiding friends and family, or using them to avoid work
Not able to find joy in your hobbies or personal interests
Realizing that life is starting to feel bleak
Every interaction with clients feels like a chore (even the ones you really like)
Finding excuses to not work - escapism
Lots more anxiety than usual - likely interfering with sleep and self-care
Emotional eating and drinking
Poor sleep that’s worse than usual
Feeling like your brain is going to crack if you put one more bit of information into it
Daydreaming about running away for a very long no-work vacation (maybe one that will never end…)
Looking at job ads online and wondering if you’re just doing the wrong thing altogether
There are SO many other signs, from the obvious to the subtle. Keep an eye out for odd behavior that doesn’t match up with how you feel and act when you’re at your mentally healthiest. Every person is unique and will express unhealthy stress in their own way.
And if you’ve really hit a burnout low point you know you can’t pull yourself up out of, please get help. Therapy can make a HUGE difference in recovering well from burnout.
Stopping Solopreneur Burnout
Regardless of how hopeless you might feel in the middle of a burnout episode, you CAN turn this bus around. It’s going to take some effort on your part, but it’s worth it so you can steer clear of the truly harmful effects of ongoing burnout.
Here are my 10 best tips to help you create more self-nourishment in your business and life. You matter, your business matters, and how you feel in your business matters!
1. RETHINK YOUR WORKDAY STRUCTURE.
When we’re building out our businesses, we often model our workdays on what we know about work from broader society. In other words, we copy a corporate model for our workday.
Now, for some people, that might work just fine. But for others, that just isn’t going to work at all.
You’ve built a business to create a life you love. You’re not chained to your desk and there isn’t anyone looking over your shoulder to tell you what you “should” do. So that means you can design your work around your life, your personality, and your energy flows.
You can work in the early hours of the morning, then take the rest of the day off. Or sleep in, get fully rested, and work in the later hours of the day when your mind is most alive.
Set up your work around your children’s needs. Around your chronic health needs. Feeling fatigued? Take a nap.
You don’t have to do work in the way that we were socialized to do work. You can do it in the way that works for your unique needs and that fits with your clients’ needs.
If you meet with clients on a regular basis, get creative. You CAN find a way to fit your needs with what works for your specific business model. Keep playing around until you find the magic balance point.
2. RETHINK AND RETOOL YOUR SERVICES AND OFFERINGS.
If you’ve hit burnout, you probably have been running your business for long enough to have a clear service structure and workflow. Signs of burnout are an invitation to revisit these offerings.
Are they a true reflection of how you WANT to serve your people?
Do they offer the most magic when it comes to how people transform under your care?
Did you intentionally design your services in a way that best showcases your skills?
Have you narrowed in on the soulmate clients that you can work with best?
Are there aspects of your services that you can take away (the things you resent) or add in (the things you daydream about)?
Can you daydream about unique ways to offer your services that would better match your energy levels and the true needs of your clients?
Get creative. Go deep. Allow yourself to speak out loud the things you’ve been afraid to say. Be blatantly honest with yourself.
Resentment is an indicator that you’re doing something that really isn’t a good fit for you OR you’re not charging enough money for your time. Daydreaming or jealousy is a sign that there are things you could add into or completely replace your current services offerings with.
Get curious. You might find a depth you hadn’t anticipated before and clarity that will lead you right out of burnout and back into business bliss.
3. REFLECT ON YOUR WHY— IS IT STILL SERVING YOU?
When you started your business, did you clearly define a why? Sometimes we’re so focused on the WHAT as we’re building a business, that we forget that we have to have a sense of purpose in the work as well. Without that sense of purpose, it’s going to be very hard to get through the stuff we don’t like to do or that feels tedious.
Take some time to dig into your WHY.
Why did you start doing what you’re doing?
Why do you work with the kinds of people you do?
Is there a deeper calling behind what you do? What is it?
Are you expressing your why in your work, or are you holding back for some reason?
If you can dig into that why, you’ll have an anchor. Without the why, you’re just floating from thing to thing, not really understanding how to ground your work.
If you haven’t yet found a why, get busy finding it. Make it a priority. Think long and hard about your origin story. If you can link your why back to yourself, you might find a deep well of connection that you hadn’t yet accessed.
Harness that why and let it renew your energy for your work.
4. TAKE A LONG HARD LOOK AT YOUR PRICES - ARE THEY HONORING YOU?
One of the biggest causes of burnout in solopreneurs is not charging enough. I hear the protests already…
“But I want to be affordable and accessible!”
“If I charge more, it will put me out of business!”
“Raising my prices will scare people away, and then I’ll have less clients!”
Here’s the truth about what you charge for your work: Your business cannot sustain itself if you’re not getting paid enough to live.
Read that one again: Your business cannot sustain itself if you’re not getting paid enough to live!
If you’re charging so little that you’re nearly paying your clients to serve them, then your business is a liability and eventually you will have to quit your work altogether.
Just as you have to put an oxygen mask on yourself before a child in an airplane, you must put your needs FIRST in your business if you’re going to create a sustainable future for that work.
If you start looking at it that way, you’re doing your clients a serious disservice by not building a stable, deeply rooted business. If they come to rely on you for your support, and then you have to close your business because you haven’t been putting your needs first… that’s not fair for them.
Additionally, you know when you’re over-giving and not being paid for the extra love and care you’re pouring into your work. Your nervous system is keeping a tally of where you’re spending your energy without getting energy back.
Money is a very messy subject for a lot of people. But in order to build a thriving business, you need to heal your relationship with it. You DESERVE to be paid WELL for good work.
Have a tendency to over-give? Charge more so you can feel nourished and free to give as much as you want. You’ll be amazed by how quickly your energy stores will replenish when your money anxieties have melted away. Plus, by charging more, you’ll get clients who are more serious about wanting to work with you - this means you’ll attract better fit relationships, which will nourish you in new and important ways. (AND you’ll be able to take on less clients while making the same money, which is an immediate relief for an overburdened mind.)
Your business isn’t just to nourish your clients. It’s also there to nourish you. So do it already, and let your guilt and fears melt away.
Please, for the love of all things good, charge what you’re worth!
(You’ll be doing your colleagues a huge favor as well, by supporting all of you in your perceived value!)
Want to help those in need?
Create a scholarship fund and ask clients with means to contribute.
Create a passive offering that doesn’t depend on your time/energy and give a few away to those in need.
Charge what your worth and consciously choose to donate your time to a select few, in a way that feels good and doesn’t lead to burnout.
Get creative. You can be good and ethical, while also taking good care of yourself first.
(Just a note: women tend to be the ones always giving away time for free. Our value has been seriously undervalued and our hard work has been associated with “free” for centuries. If you are a woman and struggling with charging what you’re worth, take some time to truly heal in this area. You owe it to yourself and to the stability/thriving of your family to fix this issue. When you develop a better relationship with your worth, your kids will too.)
(One more note: take this healing and turn it toward others. Pay others what they’re worth. Don’t try to get free work out of others, especially women. Value what others bring to the table. Demand that they get paid, and that they get paid what they’re worth. Friends don’t let friends undervalue their work.)
5. GETTING PAID BY THE HOUR VS. GETTING PAID FOR VALUE: REFRAMING HOW YOU SERVE THE WORLD.
Our culture has been stuck on an hourly model for a very long time. Most of us start our businesses with this model and then at a certain point realize that our income will forever be stuck at a certain level, because we cannot create more hours in the day.
The truth, however, is that hourly pay is not the only way to price your work. Additionally, this kind of model limits our thinking when it comes to how we design our services.
When you start to price your work based on the value given and the perceived value received by your clients, you can get more creative with how you actually do the work.
Project-based rates are a common way to go about this. As are also day rates (transform your clients’ lives in a multi-hour intensive with you). Monthly membership rates. Groups instead of individual care.
You can also build out passive offerings to go with your services that help you cut back on how much repetitive 1:1 time your clients will need.
Build out a short course that covers the basics that you’d like clients to know before they work with you.
Create a private podcast full of short episodes meant to answer questions your clients might have, or to build them up when they’re feeling the struggle.
Create resources - guides, workbooks, checklists to help.
Find ways to help your clients in innovative and passive ways, so you’re not constantly draining your energy in hourly work. If you find yourself answering the same questions over and over again, create a resource. (Pro tip: this resource immediately makes your services more valuable and sets you apart from others.)
6. BUILD IN SELF-CARE THROUGHOUT YOUR DAYS AND WEEKS.
Once you start working for the day, you don’t have to be glued to your desk. Build movement and spaciousness into your day.
Get up and move around.
Go for a walk.
Take a brain break.
Eat a snack.
Read a book to your kid.
Take your dog for a walk around the neighborhood.
Go to lunch with a friend and have a nourishing non-work conversation.
Read a book.
Take one weekday off every week and go wander in the woods, or to explore the next town over.
When you need a nap, take one (power naps or time spent meditating are energy gold).
Say no to projects you don’t have the energy for. Get really good at saying no. ;)
Self-care is a buzzword, but it’s an important part of being a solopreneur. If you don’t take breaks, your workday will wear you down in ways that a job might not (being the CEO of Everything is a heavy load!).
Take good care of yourself. Your clients will notice – you’ll glow and nourish them better when you’re feeling nourished.
7. TAKE TIME OFF FROM YOUR WORK — REGULARLY.
You didn’t start a business so you could be glued to your desk for 80 hours a week. Seriously.
Taking time off from work is essential for preventing burnout. Set clear hours for starting work and ending work. Keep the computer off during the weekends (or a set of days that fits your lifestyle). Take one day off every weekday just to rest and play.
If you want to take 1-2 months off every year so you can travel the world or recharge in your own backyard, figure out how to make that happen.
Our society is FAR too obsessed with productivity and constant work. We’re to-do list obsessed to the point where we’re dying from it. Most of the rest of the world has a culture of rest and built in vacations (or at least regular breaks).
Your wellbeing is valuable. Don’t kill yourself over having a business. Build in time off so you can be an example of taking good care. You’ll come back to your work feeling refreshed, creative, and recharged. And your clients will benefit immensely.
8. CHANGE WHAT YOU’RE DOING ENTIRELY - MAYBE YOU’VE REACHED THE END OF THIS PURPOSE.
If you’re experiencing the kind of burnout that is deep, deep you might just be done with what you’re doing. Every journey evolves and sometimes it leads to the end of a path.
Most people change their livelihoods several times in their lifetimes. Maybe you’ve got a new interest you want to pursue, but you’re feeling held back by feeling like you “should” keep at what you’ve already built.
Or maybe you just feel completely exhausted by what you’re doing and you know you can’t keep doing it anymore. It was fun while it lasted, but you’re very over it.
If this is you, do yourself and your clients a favor and make a plan to get out of your business. Maybe that means it’s time to reinvent your relationship to your work and come out with a whole different WHAT. Or maybe it’s time to reinvent your WHY, stop taking on the kinds of clients you’ve been taking on, and change every single aspect of your work.
It also might be the end of your time as a business owner, and that’s okay. We all need to do what’s best for us and sometimes that means letting go of our roles and identities as solopreneurs.
If it’s time for you to move on, put a plan into place for how you’ll do it. Take into account your financial needs. But also let go of Shoulds and focus on your emotional needs.
Just as it is not worth killing yourself over a job, it’s also NOT worth it to run yourself into the ground over a business.
Reinvent yourself. Find the new evolved you. And embrace your new path without shoulding yourself.
9. CREATE BETTER BOUNDARIES IN YOUR PERSONAL AND BUSINESS LIFE.
Boundaries are everything. They make the difference between feeling like you’re in control of your destiny or feeling like your everyone else’s doormat. Everything in this article thus far has been in the realm of creating boundaries.
But boundaries deserve their own mention, because they’re crucial for living a life that prevents burnout.
Healers are notorious for over-giving, saying yes, and wanting to help every person they meet. While these intentions are coming from a beautiful place, they won’t meet the goals they seek.
Why? Because an undernourished, burnt out human doesn’t bring healing energy to the table. They instead tend to only be able to half-give, feel resentment, and help people that don’t appreciate everything they’ve given.
Now, I’m certainly not saying that everyone you meet should see your worth (they won’t). But the people you selectively choose to work with should. And if they’re not, it’s either because you’re saying yes to the wrong people or you yourself haven’t created clarity around your work.
The first order of business in creating clarity is to lay down specific boundaries. These don’t need to be big or complex. They can be things like…
Only answering emails and messages during specific hours, then shutting off notifications (or ignoring them) the rest of the time
NOT giving your phone number to clients and instead asking them to email you or use the online/app-based messaging system you’ve provided for them to use
Making it very clear that your time is valuable and that you’re a busy person, but that when you’ve got booked time with the client you’re all theirs (and you’ll give best during that time)
Setting times when you’re working on your business, then crafting a ritual and routine that tells your brain “time for work to be over” so you can power down to get back to being fully present in your personal life
Saying no more often than you say yes (conserving and protecting your precious energy)
Start to notice points of resentment in your work and get curious about the root cause of those feelings. Then build out boundaries that will nourish you better and allow you to feel renewed about your work once again.
10. FALL BACK IN LOVE WITH WHAT YOU DO AND WHY YOU DO IT.
Perhaps you’ve gotten so lost in the everyday, that your work has become mechanical. Maybe in all the work, you’ve lost the sparkle and orientation toward your why. This happens many times during the lifetime of a business and it’s up to you to recultivate your connection.
Funny enough, running a business is a lot like having a relationship. It takes work to stay in love with what you do.
If this is you, maybe it’s time to take a break from your work and go learn something new. Attend a conference, sign up for a new certification or specialization, or ask a mentor to teach you something new.
Get super clear about your unique value and the type of person you are perfectly suited to serve. Falling in love with your work sometimes means intentionally creating more magic in your every day. This is easier to cultivate when your work is going well. Orienting your services toward those full-body-yes clients will immediately bring more magic to your work, without a whole lot of trying on your part.
When it’s magic, it just happens. But you have to set the stage first.
If you know you’re meant to be doing what you’re doing and there’s still lots of purpose left in this calling, then find the way back toward injecting love back into your daily formula.
It will be worth it and will feel like rediscovering your passion for your work all over again.
Prevent Burnout by Taking Care of YOU
If this article hasn’t brought this to the forefront, taking good care of yourself is ESSENTIAL to a thriving solopreneur service-based business. Your business can only do as well as you are doing. So prioritize your own needs always, then watch the burn out melt away. It’s going to take work to get back to thriving. But you – and your business — are WORTH IT.
