How Depression Almost Killed My Business

I think it’s important to bring up the importance of mental health as many people suffer from their mental health and feel alone. In today’s world, people still have the stigma that if they feel depressed and want to reach out for help, they are somehow “crazy” and an outcast from the rest of the world.

People have been fighting depression for centuries, and till this day people who haven’t suffered from depression I call them unempathetic souls as they tend to look at us and think “oh they’ll get over it.”

I’ve concluded that depression is a feeling just like happiness, anger, and motivation influenced by our environment including biological, psychological, physical, and social factors.

In 1917, Dr. Sigmund Freud wrote about mourning and depression where he theorized about depression as being a response to loss, either real (for example, a death) or symbolic (failure to achieve the desired goal). Freud further believed that a person’s unconscious anger over their loss leads to self-hatred and self-destructive behavior.

Depression and mental health have been studied and recorded for many years but for some odd reason don’t take priority in our everyday health.

It should. It affects everything we do daily.

I think people who suffered from or are suffering from depression can all describe it a little bit differently. I don’t think you can say “person A and person B have the same depression.” I believe it’s an individual experience that no matter how hard you try to explain to another individual who is not a psychologist won’t understand.

For me, depression felt like a heavy weight on my shoulders that stayed there, dragging me down every waking minute of my life. To wake up, eat, move, and train clients were some of the toughest parts of my day. I remember distinctly taking a shower, and I felt like I couldn’t get through it because I had this weight on my shoulder and felt like I couldn’t take a deep breath of relief.

How did I get here?

I ask that question regularly when I think back.

Luckily for me, I was self-aware enough to reevaluate my life. I asked myself “what is going on in my environment causing me to feel this way?” I started to think and nail down points what could be causing the way I was feeling. After creating a mental list and sifting through the bullshit reasons why I figured out the primary cause.

Before I get into it, I think it’s important to give some context to the situation. Being a true entrepreneur and following its path is a lonely road. No one will understand what you are doing unless they too are an entrepreneur cut from the same cloth. Working 70–80 hours a week to an average person may seem like torture but to an entrepreneur trying to build something from the ground up and eventually watch it succeed and finally take a step back, then venture into another business and do it again is how we thrive. Their friends, family, spouse, and people they meet at a social event won’t understand why they would enjoy doing something like that as their DNA wasn’t designed to think, react, and attack the same way.

The day I started my business in late 2014 I was so excited to build it. I made the switch from training and rehab books to sales, marketing, business, and personal development books instantly. I wanted to learn everything there was to build a successful, healthy business. My goal was to develop it into something that I could look back at it and be proud that I did that.

I began building and expanding my business by training clients in person, creating my first website, blogging, writing copy for social media posts, administrative work, and the list could go on. I loved every single second of it. But, something changed. The luster of the hustle and grind faded away. Was I not made out to be this entrepreneur I had pictured in my head? Should I just quit now and look for another training job somewhere else?

Again, the environment around us determines how we feel.

In early 2015 I opened up my first gym with two business partners. In the beginning, everything was fine and dandy, but something felt off after the first year. I think with the combination of consistently improving my business knowledge with continuing education and speaking with other coaches on my podcast I realized how I wanted to conduct business for the first time.

When I started my podcast in August 2016 and started to speak with many coaches I looked up to and learned about all the fantastic things they are doing in their businesses; I felt like I received a face slap of realization. The business partnership was nowhere near what I envisioned my first entrepreneurial venture would aspire to be.

After realizing what I got myself into, everything changed. It felt like I turned around and when opened my eyes the luscious green pastures of business that I thought I was in quickly turned into a colorless apocalyptic dead desert. I felt like I was walking through this never-ending grey desert malnourished, dehydrated, and chained to a heavyweight as I stumbled across trying to find an oasis. I was miserable, sad, frustrated, and had no motivation to pursue my business anymore.

Things started to slip.

I went into a powerless automated cycle of wake up, train clients, do the minimum required, sleep, repeat. My passion for building my business stopped. I did not need to grow it further. Before my deep dive into depression, my training business was generating six figures with the combination of in-person training, online coaching, and selling physical products. To many coaches, that is a successful business, and I had it within my first year of starting.

This feeling of melancholy continued until one day I had an opportunity fall into my lap. I believe in karma, and things do come back around. I was asked to join another gym and bring my talents there. I was nervous to leave and thought about the state I was in, I’d be useless to the new team and wouldn’t be able to connect. I was completely wrong. Every single person I met at the new gym was supportive, happy, and eager to help. I instantly snapped out of the depression spell and turned a 180 turn and fell back into the green pastures of entrepreneurship again.

My environment changed, and I thrived. Something so simple yet has a significant effect on my life.

I think if it weren’t for my lifeline of an opportunity my training business would have failed. I owe it to everything in the universe that lined things up for me, and I was able to realize the opportunity before me and not fall victim to the zombie-like state I was in and not take it.

My advice for anyone out there dealing with their depression is to wait for their opportunity. Know that something will come your way and when it does, jump on that opportunity as fast as you can and you’ll thank yourself on a daily basis for doing so.