Building and then leading a business is a bit like having a child (so my wife tells me)…

This thing becomes a part of your life and you care for it immensely. When something bad happens to your business, it hurts you emotionally and causes pain. And the way you deal with this makes or breaks your success.

In the great game of business not everyone is cut out to be a leader. It’s a hard job and there are a handful of characteristics you need to be successful at it.

You need to be smart. You need to be a good leader and a team player. You need to be mature, responsible, efficient, honest and hard-working. And these characteristics are great and necessary.

But there is one thing many people forget about, which is super important. You need a high tolerance for pain…

To be a successful business leader you need to be prepared to encounter pain and be able to think logically and rationally no matter how bad the pain becomes.

Here are a some examples that will most likely happen whilst you build and lead your business. And for the record, we have lived through every one and will always live through some of them, whilst leading our business:

• Losing large amounts of revenue and profit

• Losing employees you really wanted to keep (and not being able to do anything about it)

• Working 60+ hours every week

• Being told you’re doing things wrong & not qualified to run a business

• Receiving unjustified flack from clients, suppliers and outsiders looking in

• All types of legal battles (and usually unwarranted)

• Constantly battling with HMRC over different issues

• Having parts of your business taken away from you

• Having parts of your business changed (caused by issues & rules outside of your control)

• Having to make redundancies (this one made me cry)

• Being the least paid person in the business

• Late payment of invoices causing cash flow issues

• Admitting your business model is outdated and changing it

Any one of these situations would be enough to make a normal person give up and go work for someone else. And I can pretty much guarantee every successful business leader has gone and goes through through at least one, if not all of these situations.

Having a high pain tolerance means that you don’t get involved in the emotional aspects of these problems. If you can look at them with a logical, rational mindset you will be able to turn the pain into something productive.

If there’s one constant that you can see in a great business leader, it’s that they use the painful moments as motivation to improve. You could even argue that these moments are necessary for you to become a success.

Not everyone is cut out to be a business leader. In many businesses, problems start to arise when the builder (founder) is forced to step into the role of the leader. And if you’re not cut out for it (can’t handle the pain), the business (this child like thing that you’ve been fostering for so long) can quickly come crashing down around you.

As the builder (founder) this is a very important question to ask yourself. And if you can’t handle the pain, it’s important you recognise it quickly. And would you be better off handing the business leaders role to someone else? Someone who might be able to handle the pain better than you?