If you are going to take the entrepreneurial leap you have to be able to handle stress. This is not the 9–5 world. It’s 24/7/365. You live it and unfortunately there are times you going to be awake at night thinking.
So here’s some things I’ve thought about back in the startup days:
Will I be able to make payroll for my staff (I can’t even pay myself yet) ?
Will we have enough money in the bank to make it another month?
My customers are 90 days late in paying. Will we ever get our money?
Am I forgetting something I should be working on to move the forward?
What can I do to drive more sales?
Will we even make it?
What will I do if I can’t make my house payment?
How much do we have to buy food with?
Why aren’t clients knocking down our doors? We have the best product out there.
Why are my friends and family doubting me?
How can we market better to get more recognition?
Why is staff so hard to manage? What can I do better?
Will the bank renew our credit line?
Okay, you get the point.
As an entrepreneur you pretty much can worry about everything and you know why? There is no safety net. Especially if you are the one with your own personal money on the line.
You are on your own.
Now I’m talking about the true bootstrap entrepreneur, not the VC funded startups where the founders have no skin in the game.
When it’s your own home and personal assets pledged against a credit line, office space and more, you have everything to lose. That’s when you’re going to be up late at night worrying.
But you know what? I might worry a bit but I make sure I outworked my worry by getting up and doing things to drive the company ahead. There’s always something I could be doing to gain just one bit of an advantage on the competitors.
While they sleep, I work.