Entrepreneurship Demands a Healthy Mind and Body
There is a lot of hard work in making a business work. As the business grows, it creates a lot of foundations and assets. Within a few years, a business starts growing roots and becomes more stable.
The business depends on many foundations, but the biggest asset of a business will always be its founder. If the founder cannot continue working to grow the business, the business might fail. Very big corporations which seemed to big to fail have shut down in the past when the founder was no longer involved.
It is very rare that a founder will choose to stop working on a business if it has been built by him from scratch. But sometime nature forces founders to step aside.
When you are not mentally and physically fit to run your business, whatever you have built can come crashing down.
Keeping yourself in peak shape both mentally and physically is a very important factor in the success of your entrepreneurship journey.
Many billionaire entrepreneurs have become billionaires in their 50s because you need to give that much time for things to compound. If you are a billionaire and you don’t have the health to enjoy it, then what’s the point of having worked so hard?
Even if you decide to give away your money to charity, you need to be in good health to make sure that you hard earned money is used in the right way.
Entrepreneurs nowadays have a sense of urgency to achieve massive success. The media keeps highlighting billionaire startup founders in their 30s and 40s and founders buy into the urgency to achieve big success early in life.
This also gives a dangerous mindset to entrepreneurs that you can buy success by paying the price with health.
Entrepreneurs nowadays push too hard. And it has become a cultural disease. Working 15 hours a day, not getting enough sleep, eating junk food, having alcohol, smoking and having a poor work-life balance has become the norm.
When you are trying to sprint in a marathon, you are borrowing from the future which you have to repay with heavy interest. It doesn’t make any sense.
If you keep yourself healthy, you will have a lot more time to achieve what you want to achieve, and you will be in better health to enjoy what you have achieved.
Ten full years of extra work hours might help you achieve massive success in the 10th year, but in the 11th year your business might fail because you are not healthy enough to put the same kind of energy and attention into your work.
If you moderate out your work and have better balance, you might achieve 10x more success in the 11th year and still be healthy enough to continue growing your business.
A big tree that has taken deep roots and and grown magnificently never forced itself to grow. It grew at a pace it is supposed to grow. There is not faster or slower way when nature expands.
Your business came into life because you nurtured the idea from your mind. Your idea is the seed. Keep nurturing it for a long enough time and let it take deep roots and grow taller and stronger.
The only thing you can do is to make sure that you don’t stop nurturing it. Over-nurturing can kill it. Ignoring to nurture it will also kill it. Consistency will always beat intensity.
There are certain things in your business that should takes its own time to grow. And you should consistently nurture it. If you are over-working on your business, you have a higher possibility of not being able to work on your business for a period of time.
When you are not nurturing your business, things can go dry. A short period of ignorance on your business can kill your business more than anything else. All your over-nurturing previously is not going to help.
Work for 50-60 hours per week on your business. If you can work for 80-100 hours, do it without affecting your health.
Take good care of your body during your entrepreneurship journey. A healthy mind and a healthy body is non-negotiable for an entrepreneur. Set an example to other people in your team on how to have a good work-life balance.
Your investment in health in terms of time, money and energy will give huge returns for your business in the long term. It might not be very visible in the beginning when you are working 10 hours less every week to spend time at the gym. That doesn’t mean that you can sprint in a marathon. You better be at your peak health when you are at 50 and have insane financial success.
People try to stimulate themselves with caffeine and nicotine and then they want to intoxicate themselves with alcohol and THC. Try to reduce your dependence on external drugs to accelerate or decelerate. When you push and slow down with external help, you are damaging your mind and body.
Maintain consistency in your energy than having multiple highs and lows. A car accelerating and decelerating all the time will consume more fuel than the car that is going at a stable speed.
Over work and lack of sleep are like credit card debt. The short term benefits are irresistible but you will pay back with health and vitality.
So take care of the vehicle that takes you to your destination. There is no spare vehicle and your vehicle doesn’t even have a spare tyre.
Life is a long journey and so is your entrepreneurship. There is no rush. Do it the way nature does it. Slow and steady but magnificent over time.