How Business Coaching Can Help With Stress and Anxiety within Your Business
Entrepreneurs face many obstacles in their day-to-day grind—that is stating the obvious. While these obstacles differ from person to person, they almost all end up in the bucket called “stress.”Some common themes rise to the surface, no matter what field you are in and then there are many hurdles that are industry-specific.
Stress affects a majority of business owners and varies by gender. And, yes, owner stress has gone up post-Covid-19. Since the pandemic began, 51% of male owners and 62% of female owners report feeling daily stress, according to a 2020 Gallup poll. Overall, 25% of small business owners report that their mental health has declined during this period. These numbers might seem shocking, but rest assured there are ways to combat anxiety.
There are many solutions to these stressors, but one thing that is becoming more and more in-vogue is the act of hiring a business coach to help mitigate some of the anxiety you feel within your business and point you toward positive solutions.
This article highlights a couple of common stressors for those in business and looks at how hiring a coach could help you and your business.
Overwhelm and Lack of Control
According to Forbes magazine, one of the top sources of stress for today’s business owners is a lack of control. This could mean an inability to define results, or it could be a feeling of being unable to control outside parties or partners. Another way this lack of control can manifest is through ambiguity; the feeling of wearing “too many hats”. Many solopreneurs are trying to do it all, and sometimes that just isn’t realistic. Realistic or not, all these hats eventually leave you with a perceived lack of control can be a major stressor for any owner. You eventually are juggling so much that you start dropping balls.
As a business owner, you work very hard every single day. These high-intensity workloads can quickly become a source of anxiety. The concept of “so many tasks, so little time” can become overwhelming in a very short time. Meeting all of your business’ demands, attending to sleep and health needs, and balancing a personal life can truly feel like a strain. It’s no surprise that this is one of the most common sources of stress for an owner.
One of the reasons that hiring a business coach can help reduce your sense of “lack of control” and wearing too many hats is that a coach is in the mess with you. They are listening, cheering you on, and proposing other avenues of action that can help you move into that next level of functioning.
They often will push you to action a decision that you already know you need to make but are afraid to do, such as hiring another person to help. Sometimes, hiring a coach pushes you over the “entropy hump”—that thing that is keeping you from doing what you know you need to do.
Decision Fatigue
Every business owner makes dozens (if not more) decisions in a single day, and it probably isn’t a shock to hear that this is yet another major stress factor. Even small decisions can cause a buildup of anxiety and multiply over a workweek these seemingly small choices and stresses can really add up.
Additionally, entrepreneurs report that striving to avoid reactionary choices and decisions is a stressor. Reacting to information too soon or too fast is not a good practice, and many proprietors admit that the push to react to data or news can be overwhelming.
Decision Fatigue is a real thing.
One of the ways I have seen hiring a business coach help with decision fatigue is that a good coach will push you toward creating systems in your business that reduce the decisions you have to make. Yes, you will constantly have a stream of new decisions, but hopefully, as you create systems and processes to address the common decisions you repeatedly make, then this reduces your overall stress and anxiety.
As a business coach myself, people often say to me, “Ok, this is totally intuitive. Why do I need to hire a coach to fix this?”
The answer is: “Just because you know you need to do it, it doesn’t mean that you actually do it.”
Another factor regarding decision fatigue—at times you do not have enough information to make good decisions. Sometimes this requires research. Other times, this requires some input, like classes.
Business owners have told me that they find Business Made Simple classes be an easy way to boost their knowledge of business processes and receive immediately implementable action steps from these classes.
Clients
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” (A Tale of Two Cities). Charles Dickens understood that rarely is something all good or all bad. Usually, they are a mixture of both. Customers are your life-blood, for sure. They are why you exist. And they also can become a significant source of your stress.
As a business starts out, it is not uncommon to derive a major amount of revenue from a small base of clients. This can make things even more stressful when it comes to the desire to keep everyone happy. “The customer is always right” is a time-honored saying, but in practice, this commitment to the customer can bog down an owner with distracting issues and undue burden.Hiring a business coach can help you keep this customer-based ideology in check.
An Example
A business client I have been working with for a while had a customer who was argumentative and frustrating, constantly telling my client one thing and then undermining him and doing another. He (my client) had several conversations and went the extra mile to create a satisfactory working relationship, all to no avail. Eventually, my client just wanted to be finished with this person, but he (his customer) brought in millions of dollars of revenue (and millions more in potential future revenue). This was a tough choice for my client.
However, in discussing it repeatedly over weeks, it became apparent that this guy (my client’s customer) was going to be an ongoing source of frustration and angst. In the end, after several coaching conversations that helped my client get clear about his objectives and his other possible revenue streams, he made the decision to cut this guy loose. Since then, he has been presented will three other opportunities that will be 10x more lucrative for this business owner—without all the drama included.
Would he have come to this decision on his own, without a coach? Probably. But, there is no doubt that he came to the decision faster, with the coach (and time is money and peace of mind). Who knows how many more opportunities he will experience because he is not ingesting this toxicity and stressing over this troublesome customer. He expressed to me that his anxiety went down significantly as soon as he made the decision to let the pot-stirring customer go.
There is no magic bullet, but consider hiring a business coach
There is no magic bullet to cure all stress, but there are definitely numerous effective ways to not only cope, but eliminate many of its sources.
Overwhelm, lack of control, decision fatigue, and troublesome clients are just a few causes of stress for business owners. Obviously, there are many others, like bottlenecks, access to capital, staying strong and focused, and retaining great employees. Each of these can tax an owner’s mental state.
Have you ever considered hiring a business coach, like one from LeaveBeter.com? They will help challenge you to practice patience and humility. Adopting these mindsets can help reduce negative health effects brought on by stress.
Your coach will propose ways to discharge tension by leaving work at the office and being present in home life. They will challenge you to look to your family and friends for support. These are some low-hanging fruit as far as ways to cut through anxiety and achieve a more relaxed state of being—which, of course, positively impacts your business.
Some other ways a coach will push you—to seek rich sources of information such as face-to-face meetings with trusted colleagues. Or, try assembling a cabinet of associates whose opinions you value. They will work on getting you to delegate tasks that don’t require your complete attention. They will help you learn to say “no” when you are feeling overwhelmed by tasks or obligations. They will get you to commit to personal and vacation time! No one can burn the candle at both ends without taking some time to recharge.