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Entrepreneur Stress: How an Assistant Can Help

Below, you will discover different ways your Entrepreneur can show signs of stress without your Entrepreneur telling you their stress. As their right hand, you should become one of the few people that can immediately recognize it even if your Entrepreneur doesn't admit to it. This is how we become their second brain and go beyond the golden rule. First, let's look at the causes of stress.

Causes of Stress

Stress can be rooted in a number of things, so it's important to think through things from your Entrepreneur’s perspective. What is draining them and making life hard?

• Control: your Entrepreneur may have a hard time delegating tasks, which comes down to having a hard time relinquishing control. They've been controlling every part of their business operation, so it's hard for them to let go of power, but it's also stressful for them to carry all that control on their shoulders.
• Support: this is where you come in! If your Entrepreneur doesn't have someone supporting them, assisting, or helping with their load, this will cause an incredible amount of stress. Your support will be life-changing for them!
• Demands: your Entrepreneur puts a lot of pressure on themselves to succeed and grow their business. They expect too much, and when expectations are not met, it leads to stress and burnout.
• Relationships: if your Entrepreneur is having issues at home with their family or their business partner or team members, this can cause unhealthy behaviors and lead to anxiety and depression.
• Big changes: many people find transitions stressful, and your Entrepreneur may be one of those people. Not everyone embraces change with a positive attitude. Some refuse it. It can lead to uncertainty and fear about where their business is heading.
• Working too much: there's no doubt that Entrepreneurs work a crazy amount of hours. But, unfortunately, most don't have a time management set in place. The problem with that is that when they work too much and their time is not well spent, they begin feeling tired and burnout all the time.
• Being the bottleneck: your Entrepreneur is making small and big decisions daily, and team members are always waiting for their Entrepreneur’s decisions to be made. This makes their pressure rise rapidly and will continue until those duties are fulfilled. With so many responsibilities and decisions to be made, your Entrepreneur may start to feel like a bottleneck, which causes crippling stress.
• Customers: this is their stream of revenue, customers. Finding and retaining customers can be the top source of stress for your Entrepreneur.
• Meetings and commitments: there isn't enough time in the day for your Entrepreneur. They have people they need to meet with, events they need to attend, tasks that need to be completed. All of this can fill up pretty quickly. When your Entrepreneur’s schedule is so packed, and there's barely time to think, their stress levels will begin to skyrocket.
• Constant tight deadlines: meeting deadlines can easily cause pressure and stress, especially if it's an important project that would benefit the company. Whenever your Entrepreneur’s makes a promise, whether it's to meet a deadline or achieve specific success metrics for a customer or make a new hire for an overworked employee, that promise becomes a source of stress until it's fulfilled.
• Mundane and repetitive work: your Entrepreneur is a creative, free thinker. Redundant, day-to-day minute work will make them uneasy and feel like they are not moving forward, creating an unhappy sense of self.

Stress Indicators

Next, let's look at stress indicators to begin identifying stressors for your Entrepreneur. The signs you should be on the lookout for will be psychological, emotional, physiological, or behavioral.