been talking to a few small founders lately, and there’s a pattern that keeps repeating. it’s not the hours that break them, it’s the illusion of control.
coz every decision, every email, every tiny mistake feels personal. they say “no one cares like I do,” but what they really mean is “no one else carries the fear like I do.”
the irony? the harder you hold on, the faster everything slows down. trust feels like a risk until you realize not trusting is just a slow-motion version of quitting.
curious if anyone else had that turning point, when did you realize “doing it all” stopped being proof of commitment and started being proof of fear?
most founders don’t burn out from work. they burn out from pretending they’re the only one who can do it
byu/maninie1 inEntrepreneur
Posted by maninie1
7 Comments
This hits a little different when you’ve got multiple cofounders.
There are four of us, and the whole control thing had to evolve fast. When you’re solo, the fear is “if I let go, it’ll fall apart.” With four, it turns into “if I don’t do enough, I’m the weak link” or “if I trust too much, I might lose influence.”
It took me a while to realize that over-owning stuff wasn’t actually helping, it just meant I didn’t fully trust the process or the people. The real turning point was when we stopped overlapping on everything and started defining clear lanes. Once we did that, trust stopped feeling like an emotional leap and started feeling like a design choice.
Different dynamic, same lesson: control feels safe right up until you see how much speed it kills.
Agree 100%
Control is addictive, but trust scales. At least that’s been my experience.
that is the highway to burnout even for employees. “i deeply care and if i don’t do it, nobody will”.
Most people feel this way after getting burned by multiple employees, partners, whatever. I have yet to find one single good employee, partner, business or otherwise.
Back when I was a lowly route salesman, the recruiting process was pretty tough and we had a 3% retention rate. That’s crazy. But what that says is, most people are sorry pieces of crap and the vetting process has to be pretty extreme before you put any trust in them .
Out of that 3% retention rate, this is a sales job mind you, at least half of them had substance abuse issues and the other half were primadonna’s.
Yeah, I definitely have trust issues. Considering my ex-wife was embezzling and don’t even get me started on the current situation. People suck, there’s a reason I don’t trust them.
I think a lot of people feel this way just because it keeps happening to them, it is very difficult to find anybody that you can actually trust. This applies to money, romance, professionalism, just keeping the customers happy, you name it, people will drop the ball every single time. I am 52 years old, haven’t seen one person that didn’t fit this description.
I take that back, I have met a couple people over the years that were really something else, but they were already running their own business or were very successful elsewhere. Anybody that can earn your trust like that is probably already successful doing something else.
So, I’m going to say that the lesson here is to master recruiting, which is definitely my Achilles heel, and really double down on the vetting process to make sure you have good people coming through the door.
My best employee ever, the guy that really knocked it out of the park on the job site, he turned out to be an alcoholic crackhead wife beater. At one point, I found out that he had been actively and enthusiastically chatting up random women to try to get someone to beat up my wife because he felt like she was cheating him on the money. That’s a true story, I’m not making that up.
I paid that guy more than I made because he was just that good on the job site, he really was, he deserved every penny. After it was all over and I found out all this stuff about him, it really freaked me out. I mean it really freaked me out, I understand this is an extreme case, but that was a scary thing and I never told my ex-wife about it.
Partners, employees, all those things, I don’t trust them and neither should you.
I needed to read this today. Thank you kind internet stranger 🫡
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