Written by: Steven N. Adjei, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
15 March 2013. I remember it well. It was 9.30 pm. I was alone at home, upstairs, with the lights turned off. The company I had started, BlueCloud Health, was dead in the water. After over 150 rejections, I felt worthless, tired, and just plain burnt out.
Just by me on my desk, there were stacks of letters from credit card companies, The Inland Revenue Service, utility companies, and bills left unpaid. This did not include the tens of thousands of pounds owed to family and friends.
My marriage was on the brink, I felt like my whole life was falling around me like a Ponzi scheme, a house of cards.
I sat on the bed, crying with frustration, deep pain, and yes, hopelessness.
And the culprit?
It wasn’t all the above, even though they undoubtedly played a major part.
It was something much worse.
Pornography.
The worthlessness, the pain, and the loss of identity I felt were so bad that I turned to the ’drug’ for some instant relief.
But as always, it turned out to be a false crutch, and it left me feeling worse than I did previously.
I vowed to myself: Never Again.
Really?
10 March 2016
After that incident, I managed to go three years clean and was feeling proud of myself.
Very smug.
But like a bad penny, the addiction bounced back.
But this time, it was at a different location, 6000 miles away in a hotel suite in Lagos, Nigeria.
We had just closed a $16 million deal to build a state-of-the-art diagnostic centre in Southern Africa.
I was on a high and I decided to peek to calm the euphoria.
Six months later, the addiction was in full swing.
Again.
And what was worse, the signs had begun to show in my external life.
In desperation, I searched for help on the internet. It came up with a unique software tool called Covenant Eyes.
I signed up, followed the instructions, and paid the fees.
Reflecting on this, six years later, I’m still clean and my life has completely changed.
I wondered long and hard whether to share this humiliating story when writing my book, Pay The Price.
But I realised two shocking truths.
There was not much difference between the alcohol user, the one who turned to drugs, the compulsive gambler, and me. And it was having not only a negative effect on my mental health but on my success as an entrepreneur.
And the other truth was the sheer number of leaders, entrepreneurs, and CEOs who turn to similar addictive destroying habits to release the stress, the challenges, and the pain. I was not alone, not by a long shot.
Psychology Today puts it this way:
Unfortunately, the consistent attempt to find emotional regulation through hyper-stimulating and hyper-satiating substances and/or behaviours can for some people develop into a full-blown compulsivity or addiction with clearly identifiable consequences. When this occurs, all sorts of problems may ensue—damaged relationships, trouble at work or in school, financial woes, declining physical health, anxiety, depression, shame, legal issues, and more.
This experience forced me to think long and hard about why 90% of entrepreneurs fail within 10 years.
Pain.
And I realised that in building a business, or in any form of entrepreneurial undertaking, failure is well documented in many books. There is the insistence that yes, it exists, and yes, you will have to struggle, but if you make it through the pain, if you keep going and treat it as part of the learning cycle, you’ll make it.
But is this completely true?
If 90% of businesses are failing after 10 years, then the pain became too much to bear, so evidently, closing was deemed easier than soldering on.
The problem may be that pain is hard to quantify, put in a box, and explained away. Behind the statistics of failure lie some heart-breaking stories, and the plethora of books that have been written have not moved the needle in terms of success.
So, how do we deal with pain? How do we look beyond whatever we are going through now to the other side?
That is the reason why I have formulated the Pain Flag Response Model.
And in this model, I explain that in building any entrepreneurial venture, pain comes from FOUR primary sources. I’ve categorised them and their corresponding responses in four colours: Red, Amber, Green, and White. The model is shown in the diagram below:
1. Red Flag Pain: The Pain of Self-Sabotage:
See?
Nobody warns you about yourself
The red in your eye
The trap in your mouth
The person who hurts you the most, in the end, will be you
Almost every time, you.
You’d better learn to forgive yourself
Forgive yourself instantly
It’s a skill you’re going to need until you die.
Yrsa Daley-Ward, “Things It Can Take Twenty Years and a Bad Liver to Work Out”, Bone (2017)
My story at the beginning of this article is a prime example of Red Flag Pain. It’s a pain caused exclusively by our bad decisions, habits, and hang-ups. It’s a response that acts like a false crutch for a deep emotional recurring pain – a maladaptive coping strategy to cope with the stresses, highs, and lows of the entrepreneurial roller-coaster. But the problem is that the crutch never lasts. It’s a false promise, a phantom solution – like a spray from an aerosol, here one moment, gone the next.
And if unchecked, it will bring us down and cause failure – and lead to a legacy that I call the Profligate ‒ just as it did for Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, Elizabeth Holmes, Tony Hsieh, and more recently, Sam Bankman-Fried.
We think of these catastrophic failures as things that just happen. But for instance, in the case of Jeffrey Epstein, seeds for his Double Red Flag Pain of deceit and paedophilia were being sown decades earlier – in 1976 ‒ when he was a teacher at Dalton School in Manhattan, one of America’s most prestigious academies.
Of all the 4 kinds of pain in the model, Red Flag pain is the simplest and easiest to diagnose but possibly the most difficult to fix. But the solution is incredibly simple:
Stop.
Just like you would if you were driving, and you came to a red at a traffic light.
And there are six things to do if you want to beat Red Flag Pain:
Acceptance of the problem and seeking help outside yourself.
Bringing things out from the darkness into the light
An accountability partner and a mechanism providing checks for reoffending
The need for a counsellor, or coach to bring out the why
A non-judgemental support system
And what I call Reject and Replace; is a firm commitment to stop the bad behaviour and replace it with a good one.
2. Amber Flag Pain: The Pain of Waiting
Amber Flag Pain is caused by a mismatch between the dream and business of the entrepreneur and the actual reality of the market on the ground.
It's what I call the weight of the wait.
Leading British podcaster and business tycoon Steven Bartlett said in his ‘diary of a CEO’ that we must be willing to commit at least a decade to see the sustained success of any business.
Some things just take time, and developing patience is key.
So, what’s the antidote to Amber Flag Pain?
Wait.
Just like the amber light at a traffic light, you just must wait. But there is a difference between passively waiting and actively waiting.
As an example of actively waiting, I introduce the concept of Personal Capacity in Pay The Price. Every business is set up to perform exactly at the level where they are. To increase your level of success, you must increase your capacity.
Capacity = Ability + Resources + Stewardship.
So rather than grumbling and complaining about how long it takes to realise your dream or vision, maximising the Amber Flag Pain involves actively building your capacity whilst you wait, so when the market is ready, you’re ready. As best-selling author Gino Wickman says,
‘Life is much easier for everyone when you have people around you who genuinely get it, want it, and have the capacity to do it
So, fill your plate whilst you wait. Four ways:
Invest time in expanding your personal capacity
Reflection: Actively learn from your mistakes, events, and developments
Corporate: Invest time in expanding the capacity of your business: colleagues, partners, employees, and relationships.
Relaxing: Learning to unwind and enjoy life during the waiting process.
3. Green Flag Pain: The Pain of the Observer
All I see are green lights
Let no one distract me
All I spit is real life,
I don’t need directions from nobody in the back seat,
Or these people in my corner tryna check me…
All I need is to see green lights…
NF, ‘Green Lights’ Perception, 2020.
Green Flag Pain is the pain we feel when breaking out of normal certainty into abnormal uncertainty. It is possibly the greatest pain faced by an entrepreneur.
It is like the extensive amount of energy needed by a spacecraft to break out of the gravity of Earth into space.
Once we decide to break out to become an entrepreneur, we will hear a cacophony of voices, including our own, telling us we’re not good enough, we don’t have what it takes, we will fail, and we won’t make it.
And many of those voices will come from people who are close to us, people whose opinions we value: heroes, loved ones, investors, coaches, mentors, and our own insecurities.
We will feel the intense force of gravity trying to pull us back into the zone of comfort.
The solution is simple, just like you would when you get to a traffic light and the lights show green:
Go.
Pivot, slow down if you must, but you must keep going.
4. White Flag Pain: The Pain of the Unfairness of Life
I won't wave my white flag, no
This time I won't let go, I’d rather die
Then give up the fight, give up the fight, give up the fight
Smoke, fire, it's all going up,
Don’t you know I ain’t afraid to shed a little blood
Oh, I won’t wave my white flag, no…
Bishop Briggs, ‘’White Flag’’ Church of Scars, 2018.
White flag pain is the unfair events or circumstances that happen to us, or that we are born with that serve as a perceived impediment to our journey.
We all have our white flags.
Tammy Mildren is a fascinating entrepreneur in my adopted city in Plymouth, England.
She has been diagnosed with 10 serious, potentially life-changing medical disorders ranging from autism, ME, hypermobility syndrome, brittle bones, dyspraxia, as well as a functional neurological disorder involving non-epileptic seizures. These seizures do not respond to medication and can attack her without warning.
In early 2021, she was found unconscious in her local car park where she had been in the freezing cold for over half an hour. She had had a seizure whilst emptying her bins.
She nearly lost her life that day.
She was later diagnosed with COVID which also nearly killed her and left her with a further deterioration of her memory and her speech.
She is noticeably autistic, has suffered countless fractures, and suffers from ME.
But she is also a professional dancer, has a degree in art and dance from Plymouth University, and is an entrepreneur with a financially thriving business in making beaded jewellery and Autism/SEN-friendly products.
She is the inventor of the Fidget Poppet, a device used by severely autistic children to relieve their stress.
Even though her many ailments have severely limited her entrepreneurial capabilities and reach, she has still done the best she can with what she’s got.
Success for her does not mean building a multi-million-dollar organisation. For her, it means staying alive and healthy enough to tell her story, be a positive role model, as well as make good money in the process.
She did not allow her white flag pain to make her a victim, as perhaps 99% of people in her situation would, but rather, a victor.
My white flag pain is epilepsy. I've had massive epileptic fits in the bath, when out running, have crashed two cars beyond repair, and have landed in hospital more than once. I am heavily medicated to limit the seizures. How I have escaped death is nothing short of miraculous.
But my white flag pain has also galvanised me to become a worldwide bestselling author, entrepreneur, and speaker.
So, what’s the antidote to White Flag Pain?
Surrender.
Accept it. But acceptance doesn’t mean you surrender your dream. It means you surrender to the fact of the unfairness, the injustice, and the bad turns that life has handed you. You surrender to the fact that it may make your dream a bit harder – will take a bit longer, that it may require some pivoting ‒ as Bishop Briggs, the famous musician says in her song ‘White Flag’ ‒ ‘don’t be afraid to shed a little blood’
Your victory will be in your struggle.
As the rock band Imagine Dragons put it in their song ‘Believer’:
Pain!
You made a, you made me a believer, a believer Pain! You break me down and build me up, believer, believer Pain! Oh, let the bullets fly, oh, let them rain My life, my love, my drive, it came from... Pain! You made a, you made me a believer, a believer
But there is a caveat to this.
Your purpose, your passion, and you as a person (what I call the Honeymoon Period in Pay The Price) should be rock solid. Immovable.
If it's not, your business will crash once you hit the pain.
So, I ask you:
What pain are you going through right now? Which flag(s) are they?
And how are you going to respond?
Because it is your response-ability, and its timing, that could make the difference between failure…
…Or Success.
PS. This is an excerpt from my bestselling book: Pay The Price: Creating Ethical Entrepreneurial Success Through Passion, Pain, and Purpose – where this model is expanded on with stories, detailed reflections, and questions.
Also, sign up at www.stevenadjei.com for the Pain Response Course which will be available in Spring 2023: See here for a sneak FREE preview.
Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info!
Steven N. Adjei, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Steven N. Adjei is a British-Ghanaian author, poet, healthcare consultant, entrepreneur, and pharmacist. He is the founding partner of BlueCloud Health (part of the Emerald Group), an advisory and consulting firm with offices in London, Dubai, and Delhi with clients all over the world. He has an MBA from Warwick Business School, and his first book, Pay The Price, is set for release on 30 August 2022.
