It’s no secret around here – I’m an entrepreneur and have been since 2018. I dove into full-time entrepreneurship in 2021 after a year of working as a corporate developer. Along the way, I’ve endured a lot of stress and anxiety because of my responsibilities. As a founder of a multi-six figure company, I’ll be discussing 3 tips to manage your entrepreneur stress.
I can’t believe I’m writing this post because I still have a long way to go with managing my stress. I have always struggled with achievement-related stress and anxiety. College was a ball of stress – which is why I was dedicated to finishing it in three years (and did!).
Entrepreneurship has been no different – managing a team or dealing with client relationships. It all comes piling onto one another and can be a lot.
While I’m still learning the best tips to manage entrepreneur stress, I want to share with you the ways I’m working daily to become a less stress-induced individual.
How to become an entrepreneur
If you have a similar story to mine, maybe you’ve always wanted to become an entrepreneur.
I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs. My dad is a generational farmer, my mom was a stay at home mom and some of my siblings have had their successes.
Seeing their careers enabling them to be present with family when they wanted, creating their workday or simply doing what they genuinely love. I loved that.
Although, at the time, I didn’t recognize how much hustle, dedication and sacrifices entrepreneurship could also bring. Insert: stress.
To become an entrepreneur, you have to be willing to take sacrifices. Maybe work on days that aren’t “conventional, and be okay with failing and pivoting when necessary.
What is the main reason why entrepreneurs experience daily stress?
I can’t speak for all entrepreneurs here – but I will speak on my experiences alone.
The main reason why entrepreneurs experience daily stress is likely due to you “wearing all the hats” as they say. And yes – I can attest to this statement!
As an entrepreneur, you are the CEO and founder of your company. When first beginning your journey, you’ll also find yourself being: the HR department, the accountant, the creative director, and the social media manager. There are so many responsibilities that I’m missing, but you get the point here.
For me, this is usually where my source of stress comes from. Grasping the fact that so many responsibilities are left up to me can be overwhelming! This is the main reason why I knew I wanted to grow a team versus being a solopreneur my whole life. I hired my first contractor just 3 months after hopping into entrepreneurship full time. Since then, we are now a team of 6.
Now that you have a better understanding of where stress can stem from, I wanted to provide some helpful tips that has helped me through my even hardest days (and weeks). Let’s get into them below:
Entrepreneur Stress Tip 1. Incorporate admin-only days
To be honest, this is one of the points that is the hardest to keep, but the best one for combating burnout or stress-related symptoms due to work.
Admin-only days are entire workdays that you only focus on the internal side of your business.
As you grow, you’ll notice that you’ll place everything in regards to your own business in the back lane. Your internal processes will get messy, your blog will lack, you’ll forget to update your website.
However, being a business owner (serving other businesses) I recognized how crucial it was to keep our own operations in top-tier operations.
With that in mind, I dedicate Monday’s to be my admin-only days. During this day, I do not even lift a finger doing any client-related work (I’ll leave that up to my team). Instead, I’ll do things such as:
- Content creation for social media
- Blogging
- Updating website portfolio
- Responding to emails
- Task management for the week
By dedicating an entire day to just admin work, I can really hone into only client work on other days which is most efficient for our operations.
Again, there are weeks where I dismiss my admin-only days, but I can really notice a difference in my productivity when I do!
Entrepreneur Stress Tip 2. Brain dump or use your calendar for planning
I won’t say I invented the term “brain dump” because I definitely didn’t – however, it’s basically our mantra here at the studio.
Every Monday morning, I post our weekly “brain dump” to our stories.
If you aren’t familiar with what a brain dump is, it’s essentially a process of “carbon copying” my brain and writing everything on paper to get it out of my mind.
Trust me, you need this in your life.
By practicing brain dumping, you quite literally empty all of your stressful and worrisome thoughts, place it on paper and craft tangible action items from it.
For me, I write down every thought into my Golden Coil agenda and then task schedule it out in ClickUp and time-block in Google Calendar. Game. Changer!
Entrepreneur Stress Tip 3. Take self-care days at least once a month
Last but certainly not least, to reduce entrepreneur stress, take self care days at least once a month!
It might sound intangible for you at the moment, but I promise once you begin incorporating these throughout your months, you’ll see a positive return very quickly.
As an entrepreneur, you are a workaholic. You love what you do and you truly follow the “if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life” mantra.
However, working nonstop isn’t healthy for your mental, physical or emotional health. Take it from someone who had to experience severe burnout to learn this lesson.
Now, every month, I’ll “spontaneously” take a day off to do something that I personally enjoy that’s not work related:
- Shopping
- Day date with my husband
- Reading
- Laying on the couch and watching TV (yes, this can be productive for you!)
- Spending the day with friends
By doing this, I’m fueling up my “personal” recharge button and I can totally tell it helps me to be more productive and intentional when I work with clients.
Entrepreneurship is meant to be enjoyed!
Yes, friend. Entrepreneurship is meant to be enjoyed! While there are very hard days of managing a company, the result of taking the leap is truthfully so rewarding.
By implementing the three tips above, you can limit your entrepreneur stress so that you can truly enjoy this journey you’ve embarked on!
If you still find yourself struggling with stress, anxiety or burnout, I highly suggest finding a community of other like-minded entrepreneurial friends where you can chat through what you are feeling. I promise you you’re not alone!
