The entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses | CPT PPP Coverage

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It isn’t uncommon for the realities of running your own business to clash with expectations, says UK-based careers coach Ayesha Murray. “As business owners, we want to succeed, but we often have unrealistic expectations from the outset around sales numbers, income or work-life boundaries,” she points out. “If you’ve had a successful career before starting out on your own, there could be an assumption that whatever you try next will also work out.”

Added to this is the risk of comparing the gritty reality of your experience as an entrepreneur with the seemingly thriving experiences others share online.

That was the case for Catherine Warrilow, who first set up her own PR agency in 2006, having found she struggled with the hierarchy of a traditional workplace. From the outside, it looked like a positive move. The agency grew into a successful business, with seven staff and top clients.

“But I never switched off,” says Warrilow. “I felt overwhelmed and anxious all the time. Nothing ever felt good enough.”

The stress turned her into “a complete control freak”, always micro-managing her team. It wasn’t what the now 43-year-old from Oxford, UK, had imagined. “My biggest misconception was that being my own business equalled freedom, that you could come and go as you pleased and set your own hours,” she says. The reality was life had to fit around work, with clients expecting her to be constantly available.

That’s why, in 2015, having been offered a job by one of her prospective clients, the mother of two decided to give up the company. “The day I decided not to carry on being self-employed was probably one of the best days of my professional life,” she says. “It felt like a massive weight had lifted.”

Now managing director at travel company daysout.com, she says she enjoys many of the freedoms she’d hoped would come hand-in-hand with entrepreneurism. She’s able to pop out for appointments and finish early some days to meet a friend for coffee.