An entrepreneur’s life is often fun and exciting, but it can also be filled with unease. Delivering a unique product or service to the world is difficult and extremely stressful—but this stress doesn’t have to hold you back from pursuing your passions.
If you’re interested in becoming an entrepreneur or improving your entrepreneurial proficiency, you need to understand the common points of stress entrepreneurs often face throughout their careers. Equipped with this knowledge, you can prepare for the road ahead and learn how to manage specific stressors, so they do not deter you from succeeding.
Below, you’ll find five common stressors entrepreneurs often face as well as some techniques you can employ to cope with them.
1) Funding
If this is your first entrepreneurial venture, you will likely rely on personal credit for funding, as you will not have any established business credit. If you fall into this category, your first step is to check your credit score using one of three credit bureaus.
People with a 690 credit score or higher should have a relatively easy time (fingers crossed) securing funding. If your score is below 690, you might want to take the time to improve your score or consider other sources of funding, such as crowdfunding or asking your friends/family for a loan.
Funding is often one of the main stressors for entrepreneurs, but understanding where and how you can secure funds can help you greatly mitigate stress. In fact, contrary to what many might think, studies have show than money is incapable of buying happiness.
2) Making Critical Decisions
Throughout your life, you’ve made paramount decisions, whether you thought of them that way at the time or not. When you start your own company, you’ll also be faced with many decisions every day, but they’ll likely cause you to pause more than you would when making a personal decision.
Over time, you get used to making personal decisions confidently, but this confidence isn’t directly transferable to making business decisions. At first, every business decision you face will seem like a reason to stress and pause, but this response will fade over time—ultimately reducing the amount of stress you experience when faced with a business choice.
3) Time Management
You might be familiar with the expression “There’s not enough time in the day,” but you probably haven’t really known its meaning unless you’ve started something new—like a family or business. In both of these roles, you have countless things you can do to grow and improve your venture, which can make your stress levels skyrocket. Instead of becoming overwhelmed by all that there is to do, though, you should focus on what needs to be done.
To cope with a long to-do list, write down what has to be done in order of importance. Make sure to work on tasks that you have the time and energy for so you create a sustainable workflow for yourself.
4) Onboarding
In entrepreneurship, the importance of a good team can’t be understated. The people you bring on can make or break your business, which in turn often makes the hiring process feel very stressful and overwhelming.
Regardless of what type of team member you’re bringing on and where your business is in its development, you should always hire people that add something to your company. You want to onboard people that you like and respect, but be sure that these people will also feel free to challenge you in ways that’ll help your organization grow.
If you want to avoid the stress associated with onboarding, make sure that you really need to bring on someone new before you hire them. Understanding that you do need this person will help you take this task seriously, making it more likely that you’ll hire the right man or woman for the job.
5) Long-Term Planning
Humans are often drawn to things that make them feel comfortable and supported, but entrepreneurship doesn’t cater to either of these human preferences—at least in the beginning. If you decide to become an entrepreneur, you will often face the unknown and the stress that comes with it. At any given point, your venture could fail, or a competitor could surpass you, which could have detrimental consequences.
To cope with the stress thinking about the future creates, you can turn to a long-standing technique that’s currently being adopted by entrepreneurs around the world—meditation.
Are You Up For It?
Whether you’re starting your first company or have launched many successful ventures, any one of the stressors above can overwhelm you at any given time. Luckily, by understanding them and how you can cope with them when they arise, you’ll be able to manage them effectively so you can focus on what matters—growing your company.