Diversification should be sequential, building on skills you've already proved you have. Metaphorically, when you diversify you build or place your self-esteem on a tripod rather than a pillar. The diversified entrepreneur has self-esteem that's more stable, more confident, more anchored. In short, you can more readily take a hit if you have multiple sources of self-esteem.
* * *
Strategy Number Two
Teach
In teaching, you pass your skills along to others and see them rejuvenated and expanded upon. When you teach, you get feedback that reaffirms your competence and increases your self-esteem. Best of all, you can teach both within and outside your business with close to the same result for yourself.
* * *
Strategy Number Three
Plan your succession
Every entrepreneurial dream should include the vision of passing the business on to reinvigorate it and yourself. Succession planning is really the ultimate form of teaching within your company. By planning your succession you recognize the need to move on to your own encore performances and recognize that new blood is essential to revitalize any enterprise. To be envisioning the future as you live in the present is psychologically beneficial -- unless, of course, you're lost in fantasy as an escape from a painful reality.
As you think about the future you can cut out what you don't like to do (or feel you don't do well) and give those responsibilities to someone else. You can also identify areas of your business that don't challenge you and try to rectify that.
What you're saying when you start succession planning is this: Whom do I trust to shepherd my baby? What qualities do I want in that individual? In asking those questions, you can't help engaging in self-analysis. Consequently, you can name a successor who can offset your weaknesses while the challenges you seek can and will exploit your strengths.
* * *
Strategy Number Four
Network
As the CEO of a profitable company, you can't help finding yourself atop a pyramid, no matter what organizational structure you have in place. You're in a rarefied zone, and you're in a restricted circle of peers. That means, among other things, that you probably lack the intellectual stimulus that's so crucial to psychological and entrepreneurial health. (Who will tell the person at the top that an idea is inane or needs major reworking?) Networking with peers in groups like Young Presidents' Organization (YPO) will ensure you'll get feedback from people who aren't intimidated by your stature. Consequently, whether your intent is to schmooze or to solve problems, you'll be challenged by divergent points of view that your position and success often block you from receiving.
* * *
Strategy Number Five
Renew your passion
The core component of every 60 Minutes story is that it's about something that ticks you off. It may be federal waste. Or some poor guy railroaded onto death row. Or a disease that isn't getting the proper attention because of some snarled mass of bureaucratic red tape. The stories stir our passions and motivate the feeling "I've got to do something about this."
If you want to seek challenge in your life and retain your entrepreneurial venture at the same time, find something outside your business that makes you passionate or angry enough to stop what you're doing to invest time and energy to address it. Writing a check will not correct burnout. Instead, use your power, position, and skill to fight for a cause you're passionately committed to.
* * *
You may be nodding your head in agreement, but in your heart you may decide that however bad the psychological consequences of burnout are, there's no way you're going to give up your profitable company or throw more challenges at yourself at this stage of your life. And with good reason. People don't reach a point in their companies where burnout is a threat because they are lazy or phobic about challenge. At a purely narcissistic level, there are accoutrements of success that you don't want to let go. The reserved parking spot, the nicer car than you ever dreamed of to park in it, and the charge accounts. That lifestyle is a form of bargaining with the devil rather than daring him. In fact, you can take it to an extreme by becoming a pampered pet. But regardless of how you end up in a pampered existence, the result is a lack of challenge that will inevitably bore you out of your skull.
Among entrepreneurs, what's more likely to occur than the pampered-pet syndrome is a variation of being trapped in golden handcuffs, which I call "the provider paradox." As you attain a certain level of material wealth, you feel obligated not to disappoint or change the lifestyle of those you love. You find yourself yoked to their aspirations. So while you might feel like Sisyphus rolling the stone up the same hill day after day at work, you feel you can't deprive your loved ones because of your desire for challenge. Unfortunately, that only exacerbates feelings of burnout by seeming to entrench you further in a circumstance you long to escape.
The entrepreneur -- in contrast with people in other careers -- suffers the provider paradox most acutely because he or she feels the added sense of needing to nurture, and remain committed to, parts of the business that feel like family. In time, though, you'll come to resent, and probably lash out against, those who force you to sustain a Sisyphean existence. Better to seek challenge early than to act out in the long run.
There are other, far less altruistic reasons that entrepreneurs are reluctant to seek new challenges, chief among them the memory of the early days. However heady and self-esteem-enhancing those times may have been, you were begging for money and support, and that can be a demeaning position. And many entrepreneurs tell me they'll never put themselves back in such a humiliating, one-down posture again. So as your business attains status you, too, derive status. But what you're not feeling is the joy that you get from building or striving to attain new heights. You risk feeling insignificant because all you're doing is holding power instead of earning it.
And, finally, entrepreneurs often don't let go of success and rechallenge themselves because of the fear of the unknown. While I'm talking about the downside of success and the boredom, depression, and alienation that can ensue when you reach the top of your game, believe me, I understand that failure is lousy, too. I'm also aware that far more people go to shrinks because of failure than because of success. What I'm advocating is a very counterintuitive, risky posture in the world. I'm saying, "Let go of something safe and physically secure in exchange for psychological challenge." But I promise you, if you don't, the burnout you are feeling -- or almost certainly will feel -- will only increase.
Psychologically, you must have meaningful goals that give you an internal sense of well-being and self-esteem. And after working with scores of people who have earned more money than they dared dream of when they were starting their companies, I'm positive that those feelings cannot be bought at any price.
* * *
Steven Berglas is a member of Harvard Medical School's Department of Psychiatry and is the director of Executive Development Resources, a management consulting firm in Chestnut Hill, Mass. He is the author of three books that detail the deleterious effects of success on individuals and organizations.
* * *
