Entrepreneurship remains one of the most challenging and stressful life paths to toe. An entrepreneur is an individual who starts a new venture or business, observes, and offers solutions to problems. The modern entrepreneur is an innovator, a creator of ideas, and a genuine risk-taker.
These individuals play a very vital role in any economy, using their skills and all available resource to predict the market and offer viable solutions. Howbeit, uncertainty and personal responsibility (and liability) that comes with every decision-making process, coupled with the long and tiring work hours, makes this career path a very daunting one.
Most often, entrepreneurs are expected to wear many shoes at once and develop expertise across all areas of management, including finance, marketing, procurement, and operations as well as human resource management. Right from the very beginning, they will have to work long hours to ensure their startups become successful businesses.
Coupled with the perseverance necessary to survive, they are also expected to handle a vast range of daily challenges, like limited finances, staff, and resources. While it offers business professionals the platform to seek their passions and become independent, entrepreneurship is still a very challenging field.
Have it in mind that the primary role of an entrepreneur is to channel a company’s operations and plan its strategy. They will have to put together policies, set goals, and consult with investors and clients. Coupled with hiring employees, entrepreneurs will also have to prepare work schedules.
They are also tasked with overseeing marketing, distribution, sales, and every other activity related to the company’s products and services. Most often, it is the job of an entrepreneur to review financial statements to identify ways to bolster profits and reduce expenses.
They are also tasked with deciding the future direction of the company. While an entrepreneur gets a bucket of stress, each one will handle it differently. But since stress is part of the entrepreneurial life, successful entrepreneurs do well to cope with it sooner rather than later.
Stress management is a massive part of attaining one’s business goals. As a business owner, you must understand the main reasons why entrepreneurs encounter daily stress and the different kinds of stress. Once you note these reasons and have identified the triggers in your own business, then you can seek ways to limit or entirely avoid them.
10 Main Reasons Entrepreneurs Experience Daily Stress
If you’re wondering why entrepreneurs experience daily stress, here are the top 10 reasons why entrepreneurs experience daily stress.
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Clients
Truth be told, one of the most significant ways to grow a business is to have multiple, reliable streams of revenue from multiple sources. This is only possible when you have satisfied clients who are eager to invest more in the services of products you offer. While attracting new clients can be a daunting and stressful endeavor, maintaining them is another rough patch on its own.
There is bound to be one that gives you a headache – the one that ensures that your mind remains occupied even at home owing to a nasty email or voicemail received from this individual right before you left the office for the day – the one who’s doing this for the fourth time this month. Every entrepreneur understands this feeling.
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Competition
This is one of the primary reasons why most entrepreneurs face or deal with stress daily. Most entrepreneurs worry themselves to death with what their competitors are doing, who they are meeting, what they are planning, and how they intend to disrupt the market, coupled with many more things.
However, to survive as an entrepreneur, you must stop working hard to keep up with the competition. Since you can’t influence what your competitors do, it is preferable you understand what they are up to and then focus on your tasks.
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Financial Limitation
One major mistake most new business owners make is to underestimate their early capital needs, and a good percentage of small business failures are attributed to limited capital.
Note that when an entrepreneur underestimates his start-up capital needs, sooner or later he understands that he can barely keep the business running and would need to seek external financing to make ends meet. Most often, workers’ salaries are past due, bills need to be sorted out, production is temporarily stalled, and all of this piles up to induce stress.
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Commitments
In the field of entrepreneurship, it is common to make commitments that can be quite challenging to keep. While an entrepreneur can be genuinely willing to go above and beyond to satisfy the needs of clients, over-committing can most times bring about stress.
There isn’t enough time in the day for an entrepreneur: The people you are expected to meet, the research you have to carry out, events you need to attend and tasks you are expected to complete can easily pile up. Regardless of how much you love the work you do, when your schedule is so packed there’s barely time to think, your stress levels will begin to increase.
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Easy Target for Criticism
Entrepreneurs tend to make decisions that affect a vast range of employees and customers. While it is impossible to make everyone happy, you should also be ready to deal with criticism from others. Understanding that you can’t please everybody is a good starting point for handling stress caused by this. Confidence in your ability to make the right decision for the business is necessary. It is also imperative you hone the skill of not taking criticism personally.
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Quick Decisions
One of the major reasons why entrepreneurs experience daily stress is because they are expected to make a lot of decisions quickly. A good number of small business owners can attest to the pressure of having to make quick decisions that can positively or negatively affect their business in a split second.
They are also always working on one thing while also analyzing an entirely different situation and trying to stay aware of what’s going on around them in the market. While entrepreneurs are thinking about the present, they also have to ensure they understand what is obtainable in the future and plan accordingly. All these and the urgent need for crucial business decisions can weigh down an entrepreneur.
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Finding and Retaining Great Talent
Every entrepreneur understands the need to find and retain great talent. Owing to that, they are steadily trying to attract, motivate, and maintain the best talent possible while also trying to build their business.
Have it in mind that it can be quite challenging to find, attract and retain good team members, and any wrong decision can often tell badly on the business. Most often, these are clearly noticed early on, but sometimes they won’t be noticed until much further down the track, and then it might be late to do anything about it.
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Fear of the Unknown
A good percentage of entrepreneurs fear the unknown, and since most entrepreneurial startups are in the business of bringing something that barely exists into the market, there are so many possibilities for things to go sideways. This unknown can take on many forms and include business problems they’re going to encounter, how they are going to seek solutions to these problems, and whether or not they are the right person to handle these things.
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Support
New business owners can get very busy and have less time to confide in anyone. Owners of established businesses also claim “it is lonely at the top”. This might be excessively frustrating if your friends and family aren’t entirely supportive of your endeavors, thereby adding to your work stress. However, to get over this problem, successful entrepreneurs network with other business owners or invest in a life coach.
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No Time for Self-care
This is one of the primary reasons why entrepreneurs experience daily stress. Note that at the very beginning of a business, the workload of an entrepreneur is massive. A good number of them have to sacrifice their time for relaxation, physical exercises, skincare, preparation of healthy food, socializing, etc.
While hard work is necessary, business burnout still won’t do any good. Therefore, it is very important to balance work with daily life and ensure the stress associated with business doesn’t pile up. When venturing into the world of entrepreneurship, you must keep an eye out for these stressful situations and ensure you don’t let them get to you.
Note in advance what has the propensity to shake you, and take the needed precautions to ensure your stress levels stay low. Exercising regularly, meditation and time away from the office (breaks and vacation days) can all help you manage the daily rumble encountered by entrepreneurs.