One would say the initial years of a venture are the most stressful ones for an entrepreneur. Although this phrase holds some truth, it is important to know that stress is a part of an entrepreneur’s life. The early course of a business venture has been the cause of significant stress in an entrepreneur’s life as his/her savings and resources are at stake.
Owing to the lucrative prospects of the successful business, one may step into this booming world of competition. However, it is a widely accepted fact that stress and hardships also come tied with it. Following things relates to the everyday stressors in an entrepreneurial journey as a startup to a successful business venture.
The phase of worst stress
An entrepreneur faces extreme stress in mainly two conditions when the startup is not doing well, and all steps to improve the situation are failing such as the inability to meet the monthly budget, running out of capital etc.
The other scenario is when the startup is growing through brand identity and using trademarks and patents for securing rights of a product. However, the requirements of the trademark filing in a growing enterprise cannot be met which leads to structural problems in organisations, technical errors, to name a few.
Other than this phase, an entrepreneur faces a lot of obstacles in the regular endeavours.
Competition
The competitive environment of the business world is often the root of many stressors in an entrepreneur’s life. Mostly everything that bothers an entrepreneur has to do something with the other rivals in the field. During the initial phase, entrepreneurs are worried whether their startup will survive in the stiff competition.
Once the startup starts showing good results, the ultimate goal of any venture is to dominate the niche they work in, hence, to match or rather surpass others is what causes major stress to the entrepreneur.
Meeting immediate and future goals
For a startup, the immediate goal would be to survive and bag opportunities to further the business. In this phase, looking for ways to survive, as one is relatively new to the field, and looking for investors and capitalists, is one of the toughest jobs and causes much distress for the entrepreneur.
Once the startup has perfectly established itself, the pressure of meeting the larger goal or the ultimate goal causes much stress. Working towards that goal is not an easy endeavour, as this phase is often characterised to be the longest and full of ups and downs.
Responsibilities and making decisions
While as much appealing it may sound, it is one of the most daunting tasks that an entrepreneur is required to fulfil. As the burden of the wrong decision will be carried on by the whole team, entrepreneurs felt highly doubtful and perturbed when under the pressure of deciding for the whole enterprise. This prolonged state of being under pressure and scrutiny causes much stress to the entrepreneur.
Changes and expansion
Changes whether predictable or unpredictable bring along hassles and problems that need addressing changes in the course of action. It is often the that either entrepreneur is not ready for them or are unaware of them.
The expansion is also a kind of change which either requires the same process to be applied on a larger scale or modification in the methods to suit the demands of the growing venture.
The expanding enterprise requires more human resources and capital, which gives major stress to the entrepreneur in the later phase of the startup.
Clients
Finding clients for one’s products or services is one of the major tasks of an entrepreneur, and it is most often done during the planning phase of the startup.
In the early days, the flow of revenue is limited to a few clients or even one. Hence, finding a regular source of revenue is one major headache for the entrepreneurs. But the problem is not so simple also.
Entrepreneurs are often surrounded by irritating clients as well, who are hard to handle and can even ruin one’s good mood.
Conclusion
No matter how precisely we define the major stressors in the life of an entrepreneur, the truth is many of the stressors don’t fit in each category; they overlap with each other. For instance, achieving the long-term goals and expansion related problems require a similar set of actions, as both of them share related to each other. Other than these, time management, recruiting the right individuals, are meeting deadlines are few of the stressors that also bother an entrepreneur.