5 Ways to Reduce the Stress of Running a Business

July 4, 2018 by Susan Brooks

 

There are many wonderful things about being a business owner. You can follow your own vision, set your own hours, and reap the rewards from your hard work and imagination. At the same time, being fully responsible for your company’s success can be stressful. Add to that the possibly of having employees and clients who rely on you and you can be under a huge amount of pressure. Here are ways to reduce that stress so you can spend more of your energy focusing on what matters most.

 

Delegate

It’s your vision. It’s your company. It is important that you are willing and able to take charge and be responsible. You just need to know when you need to let go and allow other people to help. This isn’t simply important to reduce your stress, it is a key step in getting ready for your company’s growth. Eventually you will need to delegate so starting now can put you ahead of the game. Freeing up some of your time and energy can allow you to spend them on coming up with new ideas, planning your next big innovation, or staying ahead of your competitors.

If you have employees, that can be an obvious place to start with delegating tasks around your business but it doesn’t stop there. Look into whether you should have an accountant take over more of the financial paperwork around your company. Using delivery services can free you up from some of the work required to track individual packages and the time stressing about shipments.

 

Outsource

It doesn’t always make sense to do things in-house. You might want to have some items produced elsewhere now that your sales have reached a large enough volume to justify bulk purchases from a manufacturer. Instead of being on-call 24/7, you might need to let employees take responsibility for fielding telephone calls or hire an answering service so that you are only contacted about more urgent issues.

You might be tempted to move to a larger space as your company grows. Proceed with caution. A better option might be to make due with what you have now. You can allow employees to work from home so they don’t need office space or rent a storage unit on a short-term basis so you don’t need to commit to a long-term lease for a larger space.

 

Automate

Paying bills can be extremely time consuming. Schedule automatic payments for ongoing obligations so you only need to review statements periodically without having to deal with the payments. In some cases, you might be able to receive a better rate by paying more quickly so negotiate with your suppliers to see. Certainly, things like utilities should be scheduled for automatic payments each month.

 

Accept

Realise that you can only do so much. Take the steps that you can but excess worry is not accomplishing anything. You might need to make a list of action items so that you can let those thoughts go while you get some sleep or spend time relaxing. You should remember that you won’t be able to accomplish everything you’ve dreamed about immediately. You might want it all now but try to think about how much sweeter your successes will be after you’ve put in the time necessary to accomplish them. If running a business was easy, everyone would do it!

 

Go Slowly

You want to build your business but the temptation may be to try to do too much too fast. Have plans for your company’s growth but don’t become so focused on the future than you aren’t paying attention to your current business.  While you want to take advantage of opportunities and build on your company’s growth, being overextended is a huge risk. Try to avoid making a lot of long term commitments until you can determine if growth will continue at the same rate.

It can be easy to mistake a seasonal increase in business as a long-term market trend. Initial strong sales might not guarantee a continuing pattern of growth. You might have already made sales to the likely purchasers within your current demographic target group. Other companies could see your success and leap into the market with competitive offerings. Your company might have managed to harness a trend but that trend might quickly die out. You don’t want to be overextended by making large long-term commitments for manufacturing, staff, or office space if your company’s growth might not continue at the same pace. You want to have the resources to meet demand but, at the same time, you don’t want to be burdened with a large amount of inventory or employees if sales suddenly drop off.