Entrepreneurs: Get ready to address Psychological Challenges

In our earlier article, “The Defining Traits of An Entrepreneur”, Clock b briefly addressed the most defining traits of an entrepreneur. In this article, we would be looking at psychological challenges that loom in an entrepreneur’s career.

Before we begin let us question ourselves, “What kind of idea is great/revolutionary for entrepreneurs?” Despite having a good idea, entrepreneurs fail to reap benefits out of it. Just because the idea looks great to you, those ideas simply may not have a market and commercial value; as that may not fit the market requirement and the customers’ needs. Most of the entrepreneurs struggle in generating and designing the idea that caters to the interest of the market. These ideas should create a fortune for the entrepreneur and explore the hidden market opportunities.

With that being said, opportunity comes with costs. The hurdle that is needed to conjure in order to cash in those available opportunities breaks or makes an entrepreneur. No matter how well the entrepreneurial traits, mentioned in our earlier article are mastered, entrepreneurs would have to pay other associated price for success. These prices (un)knowingly leads to stress, depression, anxiety, and work-life balance.

Time and again, countless problems arise within a company. From initial establishment to scaling phase, every stage of a company is pampered with problems. Bootstrapping may be a worthy start for some, but for most, financing remains a behemoth challenge. Along with financial management, an ideal entrepreneur needs to deal with issues such as company management, customer relationship handling, internal conflicts, legal issues, and profitability concerns, to name only a few. Inadequate and inapt handling of these major issues could well lead to stress, for the entrepreneur which in all, creates a suffering platform for the enterprise.

At the other end of the entrepreneurship spectrum, entrepreneurs are the long-standing players of the ‘risk-game’. You cannot guarantee the success of your enterprise without taking on risks. According to several studies, most start-ups are likely to never make it big at this fierce yet fragile market. According to research by Shikhar Ghosh, a lecturer at Harvard Business School, “Very few companies achieve their initial projections,” he further quotes that “Failure is the norm.” This fear of failure, adds to the stress level of most entrepreneurs.

Then again there are even more tricky challenges besides failure and financing. There could well be sleepless nights for entrepreneurs thinking about the current underlying problems in the company or planning for the strategy to counter their competitors. The requirement of continual focus on the entrepreneurial journey sometimes takes away their social life. Quality time with family and friends would be hard to manage which ultimately could introduce disruption in the working mindset due to work-life imbalance. These are strong reasons why entrepreneurs are prone to depression and anxiety.

Many well-established entrepreneurs have had their days of dealing with their psychological issues. It must be surprising yet true that, entrepreneurs do experience more anxiety than their employee counterparts. One of the studies of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index shows that 34 percent of entrepreneurs – 4 percentage points more than other workers – reported they were worried. And 45 percent of entrepreneurs said they were stressed, 3 percentage points more than other workers.

With all these fuelling psychological factors affecting an entrepreneur, s/he has to combat the pressure coming from society to maintain their social status and remain exemplary. This further adds problems to their psychological aspect. In order to excel at the level of the entrepreneur’s initial vision, s/he needs to adequately deal with all these psychological challenges.

Contributor: Roshani Chand

Edited by Clock b Business Innovations