You won’t find this in “How to Start a Business” books or any classes. And yet, I have found this one thing can cause more harm to a home-based entrepreneur’s success than anything else. The majority of my solopreneur coaching clients suffer from it and some battle it on a daily bases. I have run a home-based business for 16 years now and still encounter episodes. What is it? Isolation Disease.
Here are the Symptoms of Isolation Disease…
- Can’t get motivated.
- Start adopting the “What’s the use” attitude.
- Believe you are the only one suffering from this disease.
- Unable to get excited or even work on projects.
- Worry way too much about the future.
- Feel the business’ success depends entirely on you.
- Work hard or hardly at all, but get very little accomplished.
- Experience paralyzing overwhelm.
- Lose your creativity.
- Visualize nightmarish stories about your problem situations.
- Start gaining weight or becoming ill.
- Often have a time management problem.
- Loss of energy.
- Start doubting yourself and your abilities.
Here are the Risk Factors…
- Having a home-based business.
- Having infrequent human interaction.
- Living alone or having a roommate/spouse that is often absent.
- Getting very little exercise.
- Watching TV, working, reading, eating or surfing the Web in your spare time.
- Ignore the concept of building a team.
- Usually don’t attend workshops, networking events, or meet with potential clients.
Possible Cures of Isolation Disease…
- Get out of the house.
- Spend some time working at a coffee house, library or a park.
- Find other solopreneurs to bounce ideas off of.
- Interact with people other than on Facebook and Twitter.
- Take a walk or exercise.
- Hire a life or business coach or a consultant.
- Attend workshops, not webinars.
- Hire a bookkeeper, housekeeper, virtual assistant, copywriter, or marketing specialist.
- Go out to lunch.
- Take frequent weekend trips or vacations.
Like any business problem, the difficulty comes in diagnosing it. Once you realize all you have is a case of Isolation Disease, you can take steps toward the cure. From there, recovery is easy!
Check out the entire Running a Business section.
You can also contact Vickie Champion for a discovery coaching and consulting session.