How To Deal With Feeling Stressed When Starting A New Business

You can take actionable steps to minimise stress when starting a new business

Starting a business is tough. If has never been easy. As an entrepreneur, you will experience a rollercoaster of emotions. As such, starting a business walks hand-in-hand with stress - and your ability to cope with it. So listen to this episode of the Startup Streams Serial Entrepreneur Podcast to find out about my first hand account about how you can reduce stress and prevent burn out…

As an entrepreneur, you need to be mentally robust. You will spend your time building a great product, deciding on the perfect marketing strategy, getting your product to market etc… only to find yourself putting out fires, figuratively of course.

Running a business is one of those rare things which is non-binary

Meaning, the number of hours you put in doesn’t directly correspond to the amount of success you receive. Some people, new to entrepreneurship may spend countless hours down the wrong path, perhaps spending every waking minute building an Instagram page, without seeing any direct results. Whereas, another entrepreneur may launch a Facebook ads campaign, and hit gold from the off.

But this is a risk all of us entrepreneurs take. And that is exactly what starting a business is. A risk.

Advice from investor Warren Buffet

I watched an interview recently with world renowned investor Warren Buffet. He stated that not everyone has what it takes to be an investor. Meaning, some people aren’t mentally prepared to see their hard earn cash devalue, sometimes extremely quickly, they sell fast, and lose out. If you know about Warren Buffet already, you may know he preaches the long game. He states that no one wants to get rich slow.

This is equally true in entrepreneurship and running your own business. You need to think of the long term goals and objectives and have a clear vision about what you want to achieve. No matter what obstacles you face along the way, if you have a clear vision - the big “why” I have talked about in previous podcasts, you are able to better cope with daily distractions and setbacks.

More advice from investors

Stress in business usually comes from worrying about money. Professional investors advise that is it wisest to only invest money you can afford to lose. This is the same with investing in a business of your own. If you can’t afford to lose the money you invest in your own business, the stress will pile on, and every wrong turn or setback will feel ten times as heavy as it would do if your stake and risk invested in the business is minimal.

Don’t be stubborn about the end outcome

The truth is, when you start out in a new business venture, you will not know the end outcome. It is a mystery from the start. The end product is highly likely to be totally different from what you envisage from the get go.

Did you know that AirBnB relaunched 3 times before finding the right business model, branding and product market fit? Likewise, Startup Streams relaunched three times to date as well. Your ability to be mentally flexible is what will set you apart from those who don’t succeed in business.

I learnt this lesson early on in school. I have always been good at designing things, and when I studied graphic design at school, I was given a project to design an album cover for my favourite brand. I designed it within a day and handed it in. The teacher, looking at me confused, refused my work. Why? Because I hadn’t properly gone through the processes. There hadn’t been any contact with the enemy, so to speak. I hadn’t asked for feedback from the target audience, I hadn’t tested the application of my chosen colour scheme, or the messaging, or the iconography. I went back to the drawing board, literally, and the end result was 100 times better than what I handed in, in the first place. Lesson learned. You need to be mentally flexible. You will not know what your end product will look like, until you get there and go through the motions. If you remain rigid and stubborn, you are unlikely to create a successful product. This is what causes stress in a lot of new entrepreneurs. I can almost guarantee you that the stress of failure is worse than the stress of having to pivot your company and your product offering.

Calm is contagious

Leading onto my next point. I am aware that the US Navy Seals have a phrase which I am fond of: Calm is contagious. The opposite of this is of course, stress or panic is contagious. This is important to note if you are an employer - or intend to be. You need to be able to take bad news well, put everything into perspective and remain calm at all times. If not, and your employees see that are not remaining calm, they too are likely to panic and stress out themselves. Not great. Remember, calm is contagious.