Owning a business can be one of the most liberating and rewarding things that a person can do—but it can also be one of the most stressful and challenging things that a person has to deal with. Profiting off of a successful business and franchise can turn one into a millionaire, and it can open the door for even greater opportunities down the road. It takes hard work, dedication, and resilience to maintain a consistently healthy business that satisfies most of its consumers’ needs.
But even if you do everything right, sometimes it isn’t good enough—and when businesses begin to fail, it seems like the weight of the world is crashing down on you all at once.
Owning a business is like having a child. All of your care, attention, and energy are invested into it to ensure that it grows and develops in a healthy way. You ultimately want your business to be successful and for it to not only benefit you financially, but solve almost all of your customers’ problems.
When things start to get rough, and business begins to take a drastic fall, many business owners begin to doubt themselves and express guilt for how things turned out within their companies. In many cases, a business falling into bankruptcy and being closed down can take a heavy mental toll on a CEO, and has caused many to fall into depression and lose all hope.
One example of this is the case of 52-year-old.Gustavo Arnal who took his own life after he jumped from a skyscraper in Manhattan, New York. Arnal was the CEO of the Bed, Bath, and Beyond franchise, and his suicide came only days after it was announced that the franchise would be closing several of its stores around the country. It was also reported that the store was going to layoff a good chunk of its employees due to its stock dropping. Arnal died from his injuries which included several traumas to his body. It would be safe to say that the decline of the franchise left him feeling like he had no other option.
While the company has not gone completely out of business, the dip in business that the chain experienced backed Arnal into a corner. Watching a business that you own go from success to failure can be a brutal realization for anyone, and it is surely an ugly truth to face. While entrepreneurship can be a rewarding thing in the long run, it is not an easy thing to succeed at, and when times get tough, it definitely has a huge impact on the mental health of many big bosses.
