Leading a startup is a tenuous balancing act. On any given day, you’re dealing with multiple projects, deadlines, and tasks that demand your attention. Starting and running a business can be rewarding and exhilarating, but it can also be lonely and grueling, with long hours. Managing the highs and lows and maintaining your sanity is challenging, especially in the early days. 

Recently, we sat down with Derrick Morton, Founder and CEO of FlowPlay, a video game company that operates virtual community games such as Casino World and Vegas World, and Jonni Ressler, Founder and CEO of the consulting firm Eleven 11 Solutions. Here are their first-hand insights and advice on balancing competing priorities in your business, taking care of yourself and maintaining important relationships during exceptionally busy seasons, and keeping your sanity while in startup mode. 

Be willing to be flexible. To quote Eric Reis, author of the best-selling book, “The Lean Startup”: “Pivot, don’t jump to a new vision.” In business, especially in tech, nothing stays the same, and you have to be willing to adapt and pivot as the market, your customers—and yes, even you—evolve.

As Jonni observed, “If you’re going to work in high tech, you need to be really comfortable that the only thing that is consistent is that it’s always changing. I would say to any founder: ‘You have a great idea, you start a thing, but don’t be afraid to pivot. I can guarantee you the path to success is going to look very different than you originally thought…’ Reserve the right to respond, react, and adjust as you need to.”  

Be honest about your deficits. No one can be good at everything. All leaders have strengths and weaknesses, and it’s important to be clear about yours so you can identify gaps in your skill set and get the support you need. 

Leveraging others’ expertise is a logical solution. You may decide to bring on a strong partner with complementary skills like Derrick did in Doug Pearson, FlowPlay’s Chief Technology Officer and his business partner of 15 years. Or if you’re a solo owner, like Jonni, you might hire a leadership team that includes expertise you may not have. Jonni hired a Chief Financial Officer, for example, to help her understand the inherent risks in her business, manage financial forecasting, and handle her company’s financials—strengths Jonni did not possess. 

If you aren’t clear about what your deficits are, ask. “Ask your trusted advisors—the people who have worked with you or managed you. They know where your blind spots are,” Jonni said. 

Accept that entrepreneurship isn’t for everyone. Entrepreneurship requires a very specific mindset and personality. Generally speaking, to be successful as an entrepreneur, you have to have an appetite for chaos, risk, innovation, and improvisation, Jonni noted. Startup life can be unwieldy and unstructured, so being comfortable with chaos and focusing on finding the opportunities in the challenges is key when it comes to keeping your sanity while growing and leading a business. 

Make your schedule work for you and your team. Compartmentalizing your schedule, or blocking out specific days for certain tasks, may help tame some of the chaos—especially when you’re first starting out and your team is still small. Block scheduling worked well for Derrick and his staff when FlowPlay was in its early days, he said. 

“From the beginning, we were a Monday, Wednesday, Friday [in the office] company, with Tuesdays and Thursdays work from home. It started because my CTO and partner said, ‘I need two days a week where I just write code, otherwise, we’re never going to get it done,’” Derrick recalled. “But it worked for the rest of the company too. Everybody had two days a week where there were no meetings and they could focus on their jobs, and three days a week where they were interacting with the rest of the team. That may not work for everybody; every company’s different. But for us, it was the perfect rhythm.”

Understand that self-care is non-negotiable. Adequate sleep. Proper hydration. Consistent exercise. Good nutrition. Maintaining your physical health is critical to being able to “go the distance” and having the energy to stay present, productive, and focused. 

Don’t expect self-care to happen automatically, Jonni warned. You need to build time into your day to take care of yourself and the things that are important to you. “[Your physical fitness] is one of the easiest things to let go of,” she said. “You think, ‘I’ll take the walk or do the exercise later,’ but later never comes to fruition. You have to schedule it.” Derrick does just that—he blocks 45 minutes on his calendar every morning for the StairMaster and doesn’t take meetings during that time. He also sets aside dedicated family time every day. 

Prioritize your mental health. Along with your physical health, your mental well-being is vital to be an effective leader and business owner. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, neither Derrick nor Jonni had seen a therapist. That changed when suddenly, they found themselves largely isolated and required to make heavy, difficult decisions that impacted their companies and teams. Both prioritized getting support from a mental health professional, because they recognized the importance of keeping their mental well-being intact as they navigated leading a company and making sure their employees were taken care of amidst the uncertainty and unprecedented conditions brought about by the pandemic and its aftermath.

Another aspect of prioritizing mental health means making sure your benefits package provides access to the care that you and your employees may need. While it may not be possible to offer the Cadillac of benefits packages out of the gate, it’s important to consider adding services as you’re able and getting creative about how to handle benefits based on what you can afford. For instance, can you offer employees a stipend to cover some or all of the cost of therapy, or work with a broker or trade association like the WTIA to obtain more affordable benefit options? 

Make sure you can pay your staff. Both Jonni and Derrick agreed that being able to make payroll is a top priority for keeping your sanity. Knowing you have money in the bank and that you’re able to pay your employees is vital to keeping your stress at a manageable level.

Know who your customers are, and who they aren’t. When you’re first starting out in business, it’s tempting to want to say “yes” to anyone who expresses interest in your products or services. But that isn’t realistic, because what you have to offer isn’t for everyone, Jonni said. “You’re going to say yes to the wrong customer when you start out, and then you learn from that. When you get real clear about that ideal customer, ideal client, ideal partner, ideal employee, it makes it so much easier,” she added.

Derrick echoed that sentiment: “Knowing exactly who your customers are, what they want, and what you can provide, you have to be the expert in that. And if you know that, it takes your stress level down, too.”

Remember, you aren’t alone. “This is very difficult to do and there’s a lot of weight on your shoulders, but it really helps if you don’t look at this as just you. It’s a team sport, entrepreneurism,” Derrick said. “If you’re talking about everything that’s worrying you with your entire team, then that’s a form of therapy in itself. I would encourage everybody to practice that level of visibility with everybody they’re working with, both because they deserve to know what’s happening at the innermost level of the company for the most part, and for you as a leader, it really helps you to feel like you’re not in this alone, that this is a team effort.”

Acknowledge your failures and learn from them. Sometimes, it’s not about heralding the wins, but celebrating the failures in your business so you can get closure, move on, and do better next time. Derrick shared a story about a company that throws a party, complete with cake, when they have to cancel a project. The party serves as a way for the team to celebrate the hard work they put in and move on from the failure rather than dwelling on it.

Jonni noted that more founders need to treat failure as a learning opportunity and share those learnings with others. After all, a rising tide lifts all boats. “We’ve got to really get rid of the myth, especially in technology, that we’ve got it all together, that it’s win, win, win, that it’s no pain, no gain, that whole thing,” she said. “As a founder, what’s huge is finding other people that you can talk to honestly. Like, ‘Wow, I really screwed that up. That was a huge loss. I would’ve done that very differently. I just lost $40,000 making that decision.’ And I think it’s really important because we celebrate the wins. I think we’re really good at that. But the learning comes from the failures, the losses, and having people that you trust.”

Focus on the day-to-day, not the final outcome. Starting a successful business is a marathon, not a sprint. Derrick put it this way: “If you’re always just fixated on the outcome, you’re not enjoying this whole ride you’re on. I would encourage people to enjoy the day-to-day because it’s a grind. You might as well have fun with it, and not be so focused on the eventual outcome. The possibilities for the outcome are endless. There are a million different ways things can go. But just make the best of every day that you’ve got with your team, with your product, with your company.”