How to Turn Entrepreneurial Anxiety Into Confidence

In your entrepreneurial life have you ever felt anxious?

We certainly have.

Anxiety is defined as a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome.

It’s important to remember this is a natural emotion. However, chronic stress can result in some negative symptoms such as heart disease, lack of focus, headaches, and sleep disturbance to name a few.

Further, beyond impacting you as an individual, it has the potential to harm your Company too.

Did you know that:

33% of employees experience chronic stress
28% of employees intend to change jobs due to stress
75% of doctors visits are due to stress

This is costing businesses $300 billion per year per the American Psychological Association’s Work and Well-Being survey.

So what should you do? We have a few different thoughts on this that have some range.

1. Know You Are Not Alone and Tap into Your Community

There are many entrepreneurs in the same situation and many who have experienced what you are feeling before. Be open and vulnerable to talk about your entrepreneurial anxiety to help you better process these emotions.

Try finding mentors or peer groups like C12, Vistage, EO, or another strategic group. These folks will help you to work through challenges and give you a different perspective.

Don’t forget to turn to your team and open up the conversation with them. Mental health is something everyone deals with. Working together through some of this, will strengthen trust and relationships and create a sense of team alignment.

Overall community has many benefits. You can learn from each other, encourage each other and really support each other to work through the most difficult of times.

2. Build Resilience

Resilience is a powerful tool when it comes to the mind. It creates the ability to avoid chronic stress by effectively managing stressful events.

Being more mindful is the premier way to build resilience. Pay attention to your present-moment experience with an attitude of openness and curiosity. Practicing the exercise of meditation is one of the many ways you can increase your capacity to be mindful throughout the day.

At New Economy, we practice building resilience together as a team. We started a program called Mindful Leader where we practice mindful moving, and work on learning how to focus our attention on specific areas. If this interests you, reach out to Jeff to join our next session.

3. Obtain Visibility in Your Business

As an entrepreneur, there is a lot of volatility, especially in these uncertain times.

Think of it this way, if you are headed on a road trip you need a map to help chart your course. During the trip, it’s possible that you take a wrong turn and get off course. But having a map and going back to the map will provide the information and knowledge to put you back on track to your original destination.

Our team at New Economy helps businesses do that from a financial perspective. In fact, our mission is to help entrepreneurs take control of their finances to make smart decisions.

How do we do that? We use a combination of proven financial tools. Here are our tops three:

13-Week Cash Flow Projection

Our cash flow projection tool provides visibility into your cash needs week by week over a rolling 13-week period.

Having this information on hand removes any anxiety around not knowing if you can pay your bills, meet your payroll or tap into your line of credit. It’s a mini road map for all things cash related.

Financial Projections

Financial projections provide visibility into where your overall business is headed and what financial resources it will take to get you there. This removes anxiety around taking a wrong turn and heading in a different direction.

Each month, we layer the plan over the actuals to see if we are on track. And if you’re not on track, we work out a plan to get you moving in the right direction again.

Month-End Close

A solid month-end closing process provides you with accurate financial statements to assess the financial condition of your business. Each month you should receive a timely and accurate set of financial statements. As mentioned above this is compared to your financial projections to determine and access if you are on track or off track to your final destination.

Turn Entrepreneurial Anxiety Into Confidence

We are in unprecedented times, and being an entrepreneur is difficult, even when times are good.

However, there are steps you can take to mitigate the anxiety that comes with running a company. It starts with understanding you’re not alone, requires a ton of built-up resilience, and ends with gaining financial visibility within your business.

At New Economy, our mission is to help unleash your full potential. So if you want to learn more about how we can help you do that, reach out to our Founder, Jeff. He’d love to learn more about your company and its goals.