What Are the Points of Stress Entrepreneurs Should Combat?

Being an entrepreneur means being under constant stress. The problems, obstacles and threats keep appearing and your task is to deal with them as ready as possible. However, you can’t be successful if you don’t know how to deal with stress. In order to do that, you have to know your enemy, i.e. the points of stress you are bound to encounter on your entrepreneurial voyage. Here is a list of the most common ones:

Obtaining capital

Without enough capital, your business can’t survive, which is why every entrepreneur is constantly worried about having access to sufficient funds. There is also the famous problem of cash flow, where your business might be profitable on paper, but you don’t have enough capital to pay your workers and bills because you still haven’t collected the money your clients owe you. Managing cash flowis one of the crucial aspects of management, which also involves a lot of stress. Getting capital from loans, credit lines or investors are other options, but each one involves a lot of work and stress, as well.

Building and keeping reputation

Each entrepreneur is the face of their company, which means whatever they do reflects on the entire company. Every time they lie, cheat or fail to keep a promise, the reputation of the entire company is compromised, often for good. Sometimes promises that are not kept are not the fault of the entrepreneur, but it’s them who are eventually blamed. So much pressure and responsibility comes with a good deal of stress, which is why you should really pay attention to your actions and not make any unrealistic promises.

Decision making

Entrepreneurs have to make decisions on a daily basis. Some are easier than others, but in order for the business to thrive, they should all be the right decisions. However, if you’re feeling tense or frustrated, it’s easy to make a wrong call, which could have detrimental effects on your company. That’s why many successful entrepreneurs have their own ways of de-stressing. Some listen to music, while others always have their scented candle supplies ready in the office and at home. So, find the best way to relax before making any tough calls.

Remaining strong

The leader is someone everyone else looks at in times of crisis. If your employees see that you’re stressed, nervous and upset, they’ll feel the same way and will not be able to give their best. Their minds will be occupied with other thoughts and they might start panicking very soon. That’s why you need to stay calm and contained in the face of difficult times, thus sending a very strong message to both your employees and business partners.

Overload

It’s easy to take on too much responsibility as an entrepreneur. You want to control as much as possible, which is natural, but also impossible. You’ll have people to meet with, meetings to prepare, events to attend and tasks to complete before you leave the office and you can’t possibly do all that without a certain amount of stress. Try to give yourself enough time between two tasks, i.e. allow for something to go wrong and allocate enough time to correct it. If everything runs smoothly, treat that period as a reward and try to unwind.

Clients

Ideally, your business will have multiple, reliable streams of revenue from multiple sources. That is a difficult stage to achieve and you can’t expect it to happen overnight. This is especially true in the early days of your business, where you might find yourself in a position to heavily rely on one partnership. If that’s the case, you’ll have to do your best to keep that relationship strong, which is another source of stress. What if they get a better offer? What if you fail to deliver? All these and other questions will hover above your head and might prevent you from developing your business.

The unknown

The more experience you’ve got, the better chances of succeeding you’ll have, but you’ll also learn that there are always many unknown variables and unknowable situations that might affect your business. The fear of the unknown is probably one of the greatest ones and it is known to induce a lot of stress.
While a bit of stress in inevitable and potentially good, because you want something to keep you alert at all times, stress can really be the thing that leads to a majestic failure of a business. Recognising the situation when it occurs and learning to deal with it is of the utmost importance for every entrepreneur. The better you manage stress, the better manager you’ll be, which means your company will be much more likely to thrive.