The stress experienced by entrepreneurs, has many root causes, most of which are self-induced. What are some of the causes of stress in the lives of entrepreneurs?
1. Competition
Competition to a very large extent is the major cause of stress for most entrepreneurs. They worry about what their competitors are doing, who they are getting, what they are planning, where they are going, etc. As much as you need to work to meet up with competition, you don’t have to get stressed about it. You can’t be in control of what your competitors do but at best you can understand the competition and focus on your own actions.
Solution: Focus your attention more on competition, not competitors. Remember sometimes that you could be a very big success without necessarily being the best in your domain. Be satisfied with good success and compete with yourself more.
2. Unrealistic Goals
You have been taught about the importance of setting goals. You should also have been taught that goals must be S.M.A.R.T for them to be achieved. S.M.A.R.T means they must be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound. This means that before making a decision to work towards achieving a goal, you must be sure it amongst other things, realistic.
Many entrepreneurs get stressed up from struggling to achieve goals that are unrealistic. They believe they can achieve and then work so hard but get frustrated and discouraged when at the end they realize they were over ambitious. When your goal requires more skills, energy, knowledge, time and other resources than you have available, it is unrealistic.
Solution: Set realistic goals. This does not mean your goals must be small. In fact, they must be big enough to scare you. But they must be realistic with the resources you have.
3. Limited Capital
Most business start-ups underestimate their initial capital requirement and most small business failures have some limited capital undertone to them. When an entrepreneur underestimates his start-up capital requirement, he soon realizes that he is unable to sustain the operations of the business and has to go borrowing to meet up. Salaries of workers overdue, bills accumulate, production is halted for a while and all these lead to serious stress.
Solution: Be sure to set aside more than what you think you require as start-up capital.
4. Meeting Expectations
No one goes into business, hoping to fail. Everyone has great expectations to succeed and when this does not happen, it leads to stress. However I have realized that the stress cause by unmet expectations is caused more by the disappointment in not meeting the expectations of others, even more than those of the entrepreneur.
Family, friends, loved ones, community, etc. have their expectations which very often we try to meet up. We worry about what they think about us. When we seem to be making little or no progress, we get disappointed in ourselves. So on a daily basis we work hard to make sure we impress the people in our lives. This is a big source of stress for many entrepreneurs.
Solution: Ignore the expectations of others, if there are any. Know that everyone has issues in his/her life, to face. Be accountable to yourself alone. Work hard to succeed, not to satisfy anyone, because no one ever gets satisfied.
5. The ‘Solomaniac’
Another
very key source of stress for most entrepreneurs is what I call ‘the
solomaniac’. The fact that you conceived the idea in the first place and
set up the business doesn’t mean you have all the knowledge, skills and
experience to run it alone. And even if you did, you can’t. Many entrepreneurs get stressed up in trying to do all alone. Sometimes they even hire workers, pay them, but don’t building them, enough confidence. So they do all the thinking, planning, strategizing, organizing, directing and building all alone. The end result is too much load for just one body to carry and since they are humans with physical limitations, they soon breakdown in stress.
Solution: Apply division of labor, one of Henry Fayol’s 14 Management principles. Reduce tasks to little action steps which can be carried out by any category of your workers, and empower them to take initiatives.
6. Growth & Expansion
As much as we all desire growth, not always are we prepared for it. This is especially true in business. When we try to pursue growth and expansion faster than we can cope with it, we get ourselves stressed up and this could lead to a serious crash.
Growth and expansion in business could come with added responsibilities, need for more man-power and capital, more thinking and planning, more production needs, more hours of work, more management challenges, more competition, and so on. When all these are what an entrepreneur has to put up with, and is unprepared, the result is stress.
Solution: Consider seriously your decision to increase/expand your services. Be sure you are well prepared in terms of resources, to cope with the increase/expansion.
7. Change & Challenges
The business terrain is one of the most changing platforms I know. Every day witnesses the entry into market of new products, practices, expertize, prices and businesses. As people are thinking and coming up with better ways of doing things, there is continuous evolving of the business system. This could lead to serious stress for an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur needs to be innovative and surround himself with very innovative people. When that is lacking, he will always be steps behind change and innovation.
Solution: Change is inevitable in life and very often challenging to cope with. However, there is nothing else you can do about change than to prepare for it, welcome it, and move with it. In fact, a good entrepreneur is an architect of change himself.
If you are an entrepreneur, you will surely from one time to the other, be dealing with one or more of the above causes of stress. I am sure after reading this post you are more apt to face them. Now, read my post titled “How to Prevent Stress From Business (Practical Tips)”.
Remember always, health is wealth. You need to stay healthy to keep working and keep succeeding. If you go after success and lose touch with your health, you will be preparing for disaster.
By Kadzem Claude
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Please, no email address or phone number in your comment. Tick "Notify me" to follow the conversation and get notified whenever there is new comment!