T here are a ton of articles that exist about burnout: How to Avoid It, How to Escape It, How to Overcome It. It’s clearly a real thing but the funny part is, many entrepreneurs don’t even realize they’re dealing with it because we’re all too busy to recognize what’s going on. I’ll admit, I never thought my business would burn me out. I love what I do, and the life it allows me to live. For the first few years after my co-founder Kris and I started FanSaves, we never stopped. It was meeting, after conference, after startup accelerator, after sporting event, after investor pitch all while working extremely hard to get our business off the ground and into the masses. We loved it so much though and we were on a constant high. Sure, I would sometimes feel tired from working 12- 14 hour days, but I was never tired of the grind. I loved Mondays and I would tell anyone who listened that if you really love what you do, Mondays would be awesome. I worked on weekends for fun because I could never get enough, I was obsessed with the company, the growth, the innovation. Kris and I travelled a ton, whether it was 10-hour road trips or six weeks in the air flying across the continent, and we absolutely relished in it. How did we get “I worked on weekends for fun because I could never get enough, I was obsessed with the company, the growth, the innovation.” so lucky that we could do this for a living, we would ask ourselves. How awesome was it that this startup we created from scratch was bringing to life the vision we had set out for ourselves in 2017? This year we celebrated seven years of FanSaves. We are extremely proud of everything we have done and the adversity we have overcome. Seven years flew by in the blink of an eye, and we love everything we’ve been able to accomplish. But they say life happens in cycles of seven so perhaps that was why this was the first year when my burnout began to hit. I didn’t read articles about how to avoid it or escape it because I didn’t even know it was happening. It crept up, slowly but surely, finding its way into my life, unwanted and confusing. To be honest, I didn’t even recognize it as burnout at first.
Getting Your Spark Back ENTREPRENURIAL BURNOUT
by Shannon Ferguson
It didn’t happen immediately and when I say the effects were
106 SPOTLIGHT MAGAZINE ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE • VOL 24 ISSUE 5
SPOTLIGHT MAGAZINE ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE • VOL 24 ISSUE 5 107
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