Negatives of Entrepreneurship (James Dooley Chats With Craig Campbell)

James Dooley: Disadvantages of entrepreneurship. Today I'm joined with Craig Campbell, and we're going to talk about the negatives of being an entrepreneur.

Craig, let's jump straight in. What is the downside to being an entrepreneur?

Craig Campbell: Earlier in my journey, I could not switch off. That was one of the big things for me.

Starting out, and you will have been in a similar position, you just cannot switch off. When I was going on holiday, I was in the hotel reception trying to get the Wi-Fi. This was years ago when you did not have Wi-Fi in your hotel room. You had to go to reception, do all your emails and get people doing different bits and pieces throughout the day. I could never really have holidays or switch off at the start. Most of us were doing 14, 15 or 16-hour days and never switching off. You were on the phone on holiday and all that kind of stuff. That was one major disadvantage. That led to me not being able to switch off at night. I had to go and see a doctor, a hypnotherapist and everything because I just could not switch off. I would wake up at 3 in the morning and start buying domain names. Then I would have another dream the next night and be up buying more domains, even though I was not doing anything with them. I just had this crazy thing going on. Some small tips I got from people who gave me advice were things like not having emails on my phone. When I want to answer emails, I go on a laptop and do it. I do not know if it is an ADHD thing or something else, because you probably have a lot of the same traits as me, but if I saw something at 11pm on a Sunday night, like a client moaning at me, it would fire me up. I would reply back, then I could not sleep. It was disruptive. Even with thoughts getting into your head, someone said to just write a note. Have a notepad beside your bed and write it down. If it is in your head and you're thinking, “I cannot forget this. I need to buy that domain in the morning,” you cannot sleep. I still do not have emails on my phone to this day because I do not want to be distracted. I check my emails three or four times a day. That is it. Things like that made me burn out, and I had anxiety as well. I remember going to the doctor and he asked, “Have you got any marriage troubles?” I said no. He asked, “Any financial troubles?” I said no, I am doing okay. Then he asked what my day-to-day looked like, and he basically said, “Mate, you're going to have a heart attack. You have been doing four years of 17-hour days. Something needs to give.” That was one massive disadvantage. When you're starting out, the job from there is to make sure you delegate, have processes and even have people reading your emails if you do not want to do that. That was one big disadvantage for me. I found it stressful and ended up with anxiety and anti-anxiety medication, which is strange because I am not really an anxious guy.

James Dooley: I think with the disadvantage of entrepreneurship, the poor work-life balance is huge.

Honestly, I think entrepreneurship is a mental illness, and I think I am right in it. I think I am right on the mental illness because I am addicted to what I do.

Craig Campbell: You are mentally ill.

James Dooley: Yeah, I am mentally ill.

The reason I say that is because you were talking about delegation. You can get people to do your emails and other tasks. I have had loads of great mentors and coaches over the years, and they have taught me everything about learning to let go. So I get the staff in, I delegate, and then everything runs really well and efficiently. Then I get bored of that. It runs itself, so I get a CEO and a CFO in and tell them to run it. Then I think, “Right, what can I do now?” So I start something else, then something else, then something else. When I have everything set up and I think I have smashed it, I finally have work-life balance. I probably need to do what Tim Ferriss taught in The 4-Hour Workweek. I have done everything he says. Everything is taken care of. I only need to work four hours a week. Then I have to start something else because I do not have that drive, that need to innovate, push myself and push the boundaries. I stop getting those dopamine kicks from the little wins. Honestly, I think it is an addiction. That is the downside. Because I am addicted to it and I love what I do, it affects work-life balance because I actually enjoy doing it. That is a bad part for me. It is the addiction of wanting to continuously grow when you are fine. You do not need to work another day in your life, but you choose to do it.

Craig Campbell: My wife would kick me out if I did not work.

If I sat around the house, she would think, “Forget this guy.” When I tell my wife I am coming down here, she says, “Yeah, go away. See you later. When are you back home?” I say, “Probably Wednesday.” She is basically packing me off with a smile on her face. I do not get tears anymore. If I stopped working, I would drive her crazy. It is probably the same with you. You came up to Scotland a few months back and you were not well, but I cannot imagine you lying around for two or three days. People would be getting your ear, and we got tossed out of the hotel this morning for being too loud, shouting, screaming and swearing. You are just too rowdy. If you were sat sunbathing for a couple of days, someone’s ears would get chewed off at that pool. Someone would get roped into something. It is a mental illness, but if you enjoy it, that is what it is. I see people like Dan Peña, who is around 80 and still working. His wife probably tells him to go to work because he cannot stop. A lot of people like that will probably always work until they drop. I probably see myself being one of them as well. Some people have joked with me that if I sold everything and had £100 million in the bank, I would have to invest in a football club or something just to get out of the house and do something, like fix the stadium. I would need to do something, otherwise I would drive myself crazy.

James Dooley: Another huge disadvantage of entrepreneurship is that the buck stops with you.

So many entrepreneurs end up with really bad stress. There are serious mental health risks for business owners and entrepreneurs because the buck stops with them. The best leaders in the world, when things go well, do not take the praise. They shine the light on the staff and the employees. But when things go wrong, everything points back to the leader. It is their fault. Unless you specifically work on saying well done to yourself sometimes, which is difficult because you're trying to shine the light elsewhere, you get none of the applause and all of the blame. If something goes wrong, it is all your fault. That can be tiring at times.

Craig Campbell: Yeah, and like you say, it can affect people mentally as well.

You see more and more mental health issues, particularly in this industry. It is about how you react, who you speak to and how you relieve that stress. I figured my way out by seeing therapists, hypnotherapists and people who could help me sort myself out. It is definitely a massive downside and it is not for everyone. I know a lot of people who would rather just be employed and not have all that stuff. But for people like you and me, I could not think of anything worse than being told what to do and doing it someone else’s way when you probably know it is wrong. It is for some people and not for others. You have to choose wisely what type of person you are. Mental health is something you have to take into consideration. It was tough for me at times. There were times when I thought I could throw the towel in and go and stack shelves or something. But I have too much fight in me for that.

James Dooley: Another huge one, and actually in a weird way, I think you might say the same, is the high risk of failure.

Entrepreneurs are risk-takers. They are always trying to push boundaries and create or innovate new things that might not work. That is a big disadvantage and a big negative of entrepreneurship because you can fail a lot. But I now use that as fuel. Sometimes I quite like failing, which sounds weird, because it keeps me grounded. Failure becomes stepping stones to success. I embrace failure now. If I have not snapped the elastic band while pulling it, I do not know how far that elastic band can actually go. When I snap it, I know where it breaks. Then I know how far I can push the boundaries. What are your thoughts on that? A lot of people say failure is a disadvantage, but I think true entrepreneurs love the risk-taking element and having that bit of a gamble.

Craig Campbell: I have failed miserably with lots of businesses for lots of different reasons, but I do not really see it as a negative at all.

I take it as a positive. I learn not to do that again. Even with what we were discussing this morning about making AI websites, I do not know who is right out of me and you. We both have websites that look good and professional, but I want to figure out what way I can do it. Then I will compare notes with you. If you are doing it faster or better, I am happy to see that. It is not about winning all the time. For me, I need to enhance my knowledge and try things out. Even if I lose, I am happy to put my hands up and say, “He did it faster and better.” It is not an ego thing for me anymore.

James Dooley: Did you have to train your brain to think like that?

When I was younger, if I lost, I was always a bad loser. I wanted to win every time. Now I feel like I have had to train my brain that losing is fine because, like you said, you win or you learn. There is no such thing as losing in business, in my opinion.

Craig Campbell: The way I have always told myself is that everything I have failed in is just part of the apprenticeship.

It has probably cost me millions of pounds to get that apprenticeship through failed businesses, putting companies down, putting money in and never seeing it again. But that is the apprenticeship. At the end of the day, if I come out with more than I started with, I am winning. I have lost money. I have been shafted. I have been bent over. All of these things happen. I am sure you are the same. You have been sold the wrong thing, bought courses that turned out to be rubbish and gone through the same process. I still get caught out now. But I laugh at it. When I go to conferences, I try to give examples of failures, not just successes. I have spoken before about the e-cigarette niche I got into. There was legal red tape and all I saw as an SEO was the search volume. I never thought about the fact that you could not run Facebook ads or paid ads. I did the women’s clothing niche too. I spoke about that at SEO Estonia a few years ago and everyone was laughing because we were selling white knee-high boots without realising that returns were eating up all the profit. In all those businesses, I just saw search volume and jumped in. It was either legal red tape, returns or something else that made it difficult. Long term, every niche I enter now, I look at it more as a businessman rather than just an SEO. Before, you would see a niche and think, “I can get that domain name, it has 200,000 searches a month. Boom, that is a business.” That is not always a business. You are going to win some and lose some. Long term, my job now is to have more winners than losers. Previously, it was way more losers. For every eight businesses I started, one or two would be successful and the rest would be dissolved. Now everything, including the AI stuff I am doing, is a more calculated bet. I am 99.9% confident because I know my skills, my marketing, my following in this industry, and the people around me. One person has one skill, another has another skill. I am a scatterbrain, and another person is more business-focused and can do the face-to-face meetings. The balance is there, and I feel like there is no real reason for the business to fail. It is already generating revenue. We can grow it, build an academy from it and use the skills I already have in training and YouTube. Things feel right now. I do not know if that is just experience. Everything I now do is not just an SEO risk. It is more about whether the business can fail, because I am sick of losing as well. I do not mind losing, but the odds used to be stacked against me.

James Dooley: Here is another drawback of entrepreneurship.

I feel like every entrepreneur I speak to suffers from these two things, and I want to see whether you do. I am pretty certain you do. FOMO, fear of missing out, and shiny object syndrome. Someone mentions something and you think, “I am going to do that. That sounds amazing.” Entrepreneurs want to find the next new thing, so they get the grass-is-always-greener mindset, fear of missing out and shiny object syndrome. How do you control that? I would put that into the same mental illness package that comes with entrepreneurship.

Craig Campbell: I absolutely have both of them massively.

With shiny object syndrome, I used to go on AppSumo every day buying all the tools. There came a point where I was using maybe 1% of what I bought. I had to tell myself it was a waste of money. I decided to let other people use AppSumo first, and when someone kept saying something was great, then I would take notice. I try not to jump into every rabbit hole because there are only so many hours in the day. Even in my mastermind, I say, “Stop throwing stuff in unless you can come back and show me how that makes money.” That is how I deal with it mentally. Even with AI and LLMs, people say this is the best and that is the best. They say OpenClaw is the best for this, and people run out buying things like Minimax, then three weeks later OpenClaw is redundant. You cannot go down every rabbit hole anymore. I have had to sit on the fence a little bit. When someone says this is working and shows proof, and I can take that knowledge or tool and implement it in my business, then I will do it. I am trying to be more standoffish and smarter with it. But I had a real addiction to just buying stuff and thinking, “I could use that in a year’s time.” FOMO is difficult too, especially with AI. You feel like you need to get in quickly and learn fast. You cannot be too standoffish, so it is a balancing act. I find that part tough. I am curious about how you deal with shiny object syndrome because you go down a lot more rabbit holes than me now.

James Dooley: I still suffer with work-life balance because I love what I do.

I still suffer with shiny object syndrome and FOMO. I think, “That sounds like a great idea. Let’s do it.” I do not need to do it, but I just want to do it for some reason. There is some driving force that keeps making me want to do it. How do I control it? I do not. I really struggle to control it. But it is what it is. It is who I am. If I am trying to fight against it, as long as I can do it and fail fast if it fails, I am fine with that failure. At least I tried it. One thing I would not want is to be on my deathbed thinking I did not try it. If something is going to be a niggling thought in the back of my head, I think, “How long will it take to test it?” I am very good at delegation. I can say, “Right, we need to do X, Y and Z. Go and run with it and come back with results within a week.” I get involved a little bit, but I am good now at getting through noise to find the winners.

Craig Campbell: I have to ask you a question, and it is kind of criticism of you as well.

When you talk about mental illness, I think you are mentally ill. How many podcast websites have you got?

James Dooley: Eight.

Craig Campbell: Exactly.

Rather than testing one podcast website for your theory, why do you need eight, 20 or 50? You always go in all guns blazing. No one does eight podcast websites at a time to see what is working. You have to look at that and think, “I could be down a massive rabbit hole here and none of it might work.” I am sure it will, and I hope it will, but that is one criticism I see. I could give you a fake knowledge bomb and you could end up in that rabbit hole for three weeks. You would not just test one website. You would test 15 websites. That is crazy.

James Dooley: Just so you understand this part, I am trying to defend myself, but I completely agree with loads of what you said.

You give me a little seed and I think, “That might work,” then I do it on 10 sites. You ask why I do not test it on one site. For me, it is diversification, different geos, different niches and different nuances. However, last year I did eight books. I was the author of eight books last year, and this year I am doing eight podcasts. Why not one book? Why not one podcast? I am trying to send a message. I class myself as an entrepreneur and investor. I try to invest in existing businesses that are doing a couple of million plus, already have staff, and where I can fine-tune the growth. Sometimes I want the business owner I am working with to write a book, and every single person says, “I have not got time.” That is everyone’s default answer. I tell them they can get AI to help, get a ghostwriter to help, and do it. They still say they have not got time. So I wrote eight books to show that I run 17 different companies, we own 6,000 websites, and I wrote eight books within a year. Yes, I had people help me. I used ghostwriters and AI to help me. But I did eight in a year, and I am asking them to do one in two years. If I can do eight in a year while running all these companies and projects, and they are just running one business, I am practising what I preach. Long term, I realised the power of podcasts and books. If I can show that I have done it with books and now I am doing eight podcasts, which is stupid because I have three kids under five, it proves the point. I have set myself the goal of doing 2,000 episodes. It is ridiculous. But it is a bit of a challenge for me to go after a goal that I might not hit, but I will get as close as I can. In a few years, if I invest in a building company, roofing company or whatever, and I ask them to write a book, they might say they do not have time. I can say I wrote eight books. If they say they do not have time to do one episode a week, I can say I did six a day for a whole year. If I can show what I did while running 17 companies, owning sites and having over 300 staff, then they can do it. They are just choosing the easy excuse that they are too busy. Usually, they just struggle with delegation. It is a stupid goal, but it gives me something big to point to. If I did six a day and I am asking them to do one a week, they understand where I am coming from. But away from that defence, you are completely right. It is a mental illness. I am crazy. I cannot swim, and I do not walk down the ramp into the pool until I am comfortable. I just run and jump into the deep end. Then I think I need to learn how to swim or hopefully a lifeguard will save me. That is the mentality, and it is wrong.

Craig Campbell: But it works for you. That is the other thing. It pays off for you.

My point is that at some point you must think, “I cannot continue to do this.” When do you rein it in? That is obviously a problem with entrepreneurship. You are going to have to rein some things in because if another idea comes up next week, you cannot go and make another eight podcasts. You are going to run out of time eventually. There are only 24 hours in a day. There is only so much you can do to scale with that method.

James Dooley: For sure. It is madness.

Anyway, I hope you liked the video about the disadvantages and negatives of entrepreneurship. Make sure you check out the link in the description where we also talk about the advantages and benefits of entrepreneurship. Craig, it has been an absolute pleasure.

Craig Campbell: Thank you.