Every business owner is aware that there are many things that they are responsible for. Whether it’s the direction of the company, employee challenges, employee training, financing, or working in sales, most business owners have many roles. In fact, there are close to 30 different roles that you may be involved in. Each of which require attention, thought and effort. That alone can cause stress and fatigue. But that may only be the start of where your stress comes from. Often our stress becomes amplified when emergencies arise in our business. Whether it’s a supply issue or a client problem, urgent issues pop up and derail your daily productivity.
What Causes Stress When you are Running a Business?
With all of these different areas to deal with it is easy to lose focus and find yourself in a reactive state, just dealing with whatever is demanding attention now. As a business owner, being in a state of reaction in your day-to-day business flow limits your income capacity.
When you are solving everyone’s problems and are constantly “putting out fires”, you can find yourself missing the space to get the really important things done. In business coaching we have a saying,
“Are you spending your time reacting or working on the important things that will drive your business forward?”
Seduced by the Urgent Problems and Putting Out Fires
When you find yourself focusing on the day-to-day problems that pop up, it is easy to miss the time to guide and grow your company effectively. These challenges and distractions need to be dealt with in context of what is important to the overall focus growth of your business. Remember where you focus your time and energy will dictate where your business will end up. Distractions are one of the biggest problems that stall business growth and productivity.
Most people will just take what comes their way, reacting to the pulse of business as it comes to them. Unfortunately, reaction has a price. You’ll be suffering with one of the following results:
- You could be busy until clients stop coming to you, then have to wait until the next client shows up. This waiting can be cyclical, it may catapult you into an extended slump or last so long that you have to close your business.
- You have a steady volume that keeps you running; eventually you’ll be suffering with adrenalin fatigue. Adrenal fatigue is caused by a severe and prolonged burden on the adrenals. This happens when your body needs to produce high amounts of hormones to combat the effects of stress on the body.
- When your body is under stress, physical stress from infection, illness, or disease or emotional stress, the adrenal glands respond by increasing cortisol production. Cortisol helps your body deal with stress and curb inflammation. However, when the body is in a constant state of stress, the adrenals can become exhausted. This constant production can cause you to stop producing adequate amounts of cortisol. Managing your personal energy resources as a business owner is necessary to achieve the results you want.
Poor Results = Frustration = Stress
When your body is under stress, physical stress from infection, illness, or disease or emotional stress, the adrenal glands respond by increasing cortisol production. Cortisol helps your body deal with stress and curb inflammation. However, when the body is in a constant state of stress, the adrenals can become exhausted. This constant production can cause you to stop producing adequate amounts of cortisol. Managing your personal energy resources as a business owner is necessary to achieve the results you want.
Tips to Reduce Stress from Urgent Problems
Take the time to keep on course; eventually you will succeed much faster. When those challenges show up, try the following:
- Write down your main goal and objective for the week. Having a short-term focus will have you feeling that you are moving forward. Remember to match your goals for the week with what you know needs to happen.
- When a challenge shows up ask yourself can this wait for one hour, one day or will this really matter one year from now. Asking these questions will help you put this challenge in perspective regarding your overall goals and objectives. This will stop you from jumping up to deal with problems that may not be problems and things that are not urgent today.
- Just a comment about staff. Your staff may feel that they need to run to you with everything. To them everything is an emergency, and it’s not. If this sounds familiar, you will need to retrain your team. Teach them what is important. Then they know what to bring to you and what can wait.
- For those repeat challenges, find out what you can do to eliminate the problem. As a business and sales coach, many of my clients come to me with various reoccurring challenges. These challenges pull them away from their priorities. I work with them to find creative ways to prevent the problem form happening in advance. Therefore, it doesn’t need their attention on a regular basis.
Now that you have an idea of what urgent problems affect your business, you may want to start making changes. Start with this simple exercise. Take a notepad and record each day all the urgent problems that affect your workflow. Record who is involved in the request and what was needed. At the end of the week, place the things you noticed into categories to see the true scope of the problems. Then pick the top 2 or 3 to start making changes. Don’t make changes in any others at first. Wait until your changes have taken effect and seem to be producing the results you want. Then you can add the next changes that you want to make. In a few months you’ll have made significant reduction to the number of daily problems you are dealing with. Your stress will be lowered, and you’ll have more time to get the important things done!