This article is a guest post by Ma. Emicon Medenilla from First Circle.
So, you’ve taken the road less traveled and the journey that only the few and the fittest survive: pursuing your entrepreneurial aspirations (hopefully you’re still on it).
Whether you’re a small to medium enterprise or a huge corporation, you are surely in for an endless bout of stress. Albeit reaping the fruits of your labor is self-rewarding, the blood, sweat, tears, and sleep you have lost—and are still losing—will make the road to self-fulfillment and business success seem like 10 times longer.
There will be tons of laborious paper works to be done, social anxiety-inducing meet up with people from all walks of life (a necessary activity that helps you grow your network or pool of customers), and the pressure you put on yourself to keep everything on-point.
Making the situation more cutthroat is when all these are combined with the pressure put on by the people around you who have high expectations for your success or—hopefully not—wishing for your doom.
So, how do you get away from all these and just focus on the business? The thing is, you cannot. No one can ever get away from stress. Stress is an inevitable fact of life. But anyone can take heart and manage this stress so you can keep going on running the business no matter what.
See these five foolproof tips to start managing the business stress:
Be adaptable to change
Change is constant. Sticking to the plan is a plus point. But getting disappointed whenever something that’s not part of the plan happens is among the major stressors.
There is no sure and clear path to reach your business goals. There will always be something along the way to challenge your blueprint and require you to adjust to some changes.
Frustrating as this may sound, learning how to adapt to changes in the plan and being flexible enough to work around the unexpected will save you from a lot of stress.
Also, accepting the fact and knowing by heart that something might not go as planned will help you manage your expectations even in future endeavors as well as handle stressful situations in any aspect of life.
Delegate the dirty work
It’s no doubt that you deserve the position where you are now. You have the determination to run your own business, you have enough resources such as time, money, and even a versatile set of skills, knowledge and talent to keep it growing.
Though your versatility makes you an effective and credible leader of your own enterprise, that does not mean you should do every single thing.
Unless you have superhuman powers, it is okay to take care of everything. However, it is not a bad thing to delegate some responsibilities to other members of your business especially when you’ve already hired some people to support your growing business.
Also, if you’re a small-medium enterprise that works with a group of people, you might consider leveraging the capabilities of automation to handle some business areas such as human resources’ timekeeping and payroll.
Some innovative platforms like an HRIS provided by Sprout Solutions is efficient in terms of cost and labor to handle back office processes without having to consume office or HQ floor space.
Never be afraid to constantly calculate your resources and liabilities
This has been done before you set out in this journey. You go through the proactive and introspective process of financial assessment, building a timeline to gauge your business’ lead time ‘til its launch, and preparing your mind, heart, body and the people around you as you give birth to your business.
Two to three years in, going through your business’ birth pains is now in hindsight. But the truth is, the birth pains will replay every now and then especially when you’re a business that keeps on innovating and expanding. And that means not saying bye-bye to stress, ever.
Muster the courage to keep on assessing your resources, liabilities, and have a good feel of when to take the business to the next level. Is it time to move to a bigger HQ? Itching to expand the business? Would you need a business loan for the expansion? Are you looking for inspiration to reach your business financing goals?
There is no harm in entertaining these questions if it means leading you to do what’s best for your thriving organization.
Be passionate about endless learning
Reading and learning are activities that sound time-consuming and maybe even stressful. But some studies show that reading can help relieve stress. Physical workout increases endorphins and as a result help in lessening stress, so do the mental exercise like reading help in calming the mind.
More importantly, discovering something new by reading about your industry or the trends in the business help you brush up on some best practices. This is also one of the quickest ways to keep up with the times; know which strategies work and which ones you should finally let go to take the back burner.
Not only do strategies evolve, some business terms change through time as well and you surely would want to stay on the frontline. Staying updated even on simple things such as newly coined terminologies also spare you from the pressure of being left out of the conversation and clueless of certain business jargons or slang.
Cut yourself some slack but stay committed
Somewhere along the way, it will be tempting to quit. The stress and the thought of how farther you need to go in the journey will make you feel like it might be better to give up.
It is, however, most of the time more worth it to toil and get tired achieving something than to choose comfort of quitting the journey. You may have gotten away from the business stress but it will be more counterproductive to be subject to a bout of self-blame and be haunted by the ghosts of “what if I never gave up on my business?”.
There will be moments when the business is not hitting its target or suddenly losing out on sales. Sometimes there are purchase orders which are at the brink of not being fulfilled.
If the business keeps on progressing and remains more productive than detrimental, there is no way it is wiser to quit. The stress may be endless but if the business keeps you happy and fulfilled, you can simply call it a day when it already feels like a long, tiring one doing business.
You can never get away from the business stress. When the going gets tough, you can always sleep but never quit. Getting away from the stress means getting away from the business too.
Looking for ways to ease the stress about getting finance? Sign up with First Circle today and discover a cost-effective and labor-saving financing your growing business needs.
About First Circle
First Circle is the first fintech SME lender in South East Asia. It uses technology to minimise the time, effort and complexity associated with traditional financing options to provide SMEs in the region with fast, convenient and cost-effective financing. Its building a community of dynamic SMEs and empowering them to grow their businesses and reach their full potential.
The post 5 Keys to Get Away from the Business Stress appeared first on Sprout.
source https://sprout.ph/blog/5-keys-to-get-away-from-the-business-stress/
