Managing Mental Health as a Founder

Best Practices from an early stage founder's experience

The anxiety starts before I open my eyes in the morning. Thoughts start racing through my head about the workday ahead and I start to feel pressure to jump out of bed and start working right away, so as to not waste a single moment when I could be helping to grow or improve my company.

As an entrepreneur of an early stage startup, each day looks vastly different but it always starts the same, with that feeling of anxiety and pressure. It always ends the same too: after a long day of meetings with the product team, potential clients, compliance, investors, advisors, marketing team, and finding time in between to do actual work– I lay back down in bed and my mind is racing about the details of the day and what I didn’t get done or could have done better.

The startup has taken over my mind.

Since leaving Google to start Sparket, I’ve had the opportunity to meet hundreds of other entrepreneurs. I’ve seen many of them seem burnt out, anxious, and insecure; fewer have been calm, measured, and confident. As I initially drifted into the camp of the former, I started to wonder how entrepreneurs who are supposed to be living their passion can find mental peace alongside the demanding grind of startup life.

I spoke to dozens of entrepreneurs and mentors while trying to crack the code, not only for my own mental health but for the good of the startup. What follows is an exploration of the mental health challenges that I’ve experienced personally during my journey, and the methods I’m practicing to overcome them. It’s a work in progress but it IS working, and I hope this can help someone out there who is on a similar journey.

Issue 1: The Startup Took Over My Mind

As described in the introduction, this issue has been one of the biggest. When you’re working super hard on a passion where you need to be in the top 1% to be successful, how do you ‘turn it off’ in your mind?

In addition to the daily anxiety, I find myself incessantly checking my phone for pings and emails even during personal time with loved ones. ‘Vacations’ no longer have the same meaning, as I fly with my laptop and end up taking meetings and working in hotel rooms.

These issues come down to the premise that I can always be doing more. In most corporate jobs it’s easier to ‘turn things off’ because you don’t feel the ultimate responsibility for all aspects of the company on your shoulders. With a startup, you’re working for yourself and those who have put their faith in you (see Issue 3), and it’s easy to adopt the ‘Kobe mentality’ of maniacal working. While this can work for some (like Kobe), for many it leads to burn-out which impacts your quality of work and is ultimately a bad thing for the company.

A balanced and mentally clear founder is a better founder.

My Approach: Make boundaries (and stick to them)

I’ve tried a few things unsuccessfully here. For example, meditation is amazing to clear the mind but I have never been able to practice it as regularly as I intend to. Instead, I set a series of boundaries for myself and stick to them.

There are micro boundaries and macro boundaries. The macro ones are consistent principles that I follow for my mental health. For example, I am committed to getting at least 30 minutes of movement during every workday. Whether this means a workout class or a long walk, I make sure to get out and away from staring at my devices for a consistent period everyday.

Micro boundaries are set in real time based on my needs each day. If I become aware that my mind is jumbled or my breath is short, I’ll step away for a few minutes and do something away from my laptop and phone. If I’m out at dinner and there’s nothing urgent going on, I’ll shut off my notifications or even move my email and chat apps off my phone’s home page to stop the unconscious checking of these. I’ll look at each weekend and carve out mindful times when I can get work done and intentional times when I won’t work.

By taking and sticking to these boundaries I’m able to take care of my brain, create some mental space, and even quiet the mind a bit at the end and beginning of each day!

Issue 2: Dealing with Rejection

You have to deal with rejection a LOT as an entrepreneur. I’ve been told ‘no’ by 95% of the potential investors we’ve spoken to. I’ve been told by multiple industry experts that our idea would never work and our company would fail. I’ve spent months chasing a client and gotten a verbal ‘yes’ only to have the rug pulled out at the end. It’s made me question what we’re doing and feel discouraged after putting so much work in only to get rejected over and over again.

At the same time, you have to project confidence and positivity in all of your conversations, which can be very hard to do and feel inauthentic when I’m on my 10th pitch after 9 straight rejections. Dealing with this consistent rejection has made me feel dejected and sapped my energy on a daily basis.

My Approach: Celebrate the wins

The human brain naturally anchors on the negatives above positives. Losses often feel amplified compared to wins of the same magnitude. It’s part of what drives society to progress and gives motivation to continue to get better.

To counteract this, I emphasize celebration of wins whenever I can, big or small. This applies to both our company wins and to individual contributions of myself and others. Whenever a team member accomplishes something I make sure to celebrate it, publicly where possible.

For myself, I try to celebrate every contract won with 10x the effort of any dejection I feel from all the no’s I get. I internalize it and vocalize it. In doing so, I give more power to the positives and drown out the constant patter of rejection that comes with the territory.

Issue #3 Social Pressure Builds Up

In the super early stages of my startup there was minimal pressure. I was working on it as a passion project with my co-founder and we were self-funded and part time. That dynamic quickly changed as we raised money, a lot of which was from close friends and family.

Then we convinced employees to dive into Sparket full time and entrust their professional careers to us. This led to a cascading pressure where more and more people are relying on you and the risk of failure feels untenable.

What if I let my friends and family down?

Will I be embarrassed for the rest of my life and take crap for the money I lost them?

One tough example here is letting one of our early employees go when they had taken a leap of faith with Sparket. It wasn’t working out and even though I respect them personally, we had to make the decision in the best interests of the company to let them go. Making that decision was gut-wrenching, and having that conversation was one of the toughest things I’ve done in my professional career.

The social pressure has felt suffocating at times. And even that pales compared to the pressure I put on myself!

My Approach: Be Grateful for the opportunity and learnings

Developing a regular gratitude practice has been a game-changer for my mental health. Instead of approaching the social pressure with fear, I focus on how grateful I am that my friends, family, and others have put their faith in me. I am grateful for the blessed position I am in where I can even have the option to have a startup. I can approach the worst case scenario with curiosity, and realize that if the startup fails I will be ok. I will leave with a wealth of knowledge and learnings, and with the knowledge that I have a strong support system that’s there for me. Those are things that I will be grateful for the rest of my life, regardless of how the startup works out.

Issue #4: Imposter Syndrome

There was a concept I was introduced to at Google called ‘Imposter Syndrome’. It’s a common issue among new employees who come into a work situation in awe of the company and the intelligent people they are working with. They are prone to feel like ‘imposters’ and that they couldn’t possibly measure up to the expectations that their position has.

Being a founder put this concept in focus for me every day. First, I have to believe that me and my idea are elite enough to rise above the 90%+ of startups that fail. In addition, I’ve had to take on responsibilities that I have no experience in and try to execute them well.

Sales was a major area where I had no experience or interest prior to Sparket, yet is a crucial function to perform at an early stage. With each rejection I felt more and more like I was an imposter in sales, that I couldn’t possibly drive enough business and that might be the undoing of myself as a founder and ultimately our company.

Then once we get a sale, the doubt creeps in my mind about whether the product will deliver results and make the client happy. Any client onboarding a startup’s product is taking a leap of faith. Let’s be honest, most startups don’t have a ton of data points to give you full faith. Fortunately in Sparket’s case the majority of our clients have been very happy, which is how we’ve continued to grow, but the couple where it didn’t work out can feel like a major blow.

My Approach: Trust myself

Self-esteem and confidence are a theme throughout this article, but nowhere is it more important than in response to imposter syndrome. I’ve had to remind myself repeatedly that faith in myself is the reason I took this plunge in the first place, and that I believe I can learn and become good at almost anything. Self love and affirmations are crucial in life in general and I’ve had to employ them often as a founder. Responding to doubts by saying to myself “you got this” (sometimes out loud), resets my mindset and gives me the confidence I need to execute across the many hats that I need to wear.

Thanks so much for reading! I hope you can take one small thing from this blog to help make your work/life relationship just a little bit better. Feel free to comment here or hit me up on LinkedIn if I can be helpful.