No one said it was going to be easy. If they did they are full of shit. Or deluded.

It is vitally important to understand that in business you must have patience, diligence and the ability to handle stress.

SME’s face stresses such as conflicting priorities, cash flow issues, time pressures and deadlines, and all the wonderful things that go with the territory. It is important to stare these things down and embrace the strain.

You are likely to find that the stress generally does not stop. Once you get to the point where you can handle the strain of the status quo, the business has usually expanded, or market conditions have changed to a point whereby there are other more significant stresses that confront you.

Play the long game and understand that your ability to handle more stress will increase as your business grows.

Do whatever it is that you need to do to find an outlet. Whether this is meditation, yoga, hitting a bucket of golf balls, doing something stupid on the weekend like playing football or soccer when you are too old to be risking the injury, it doesn’t matter. Work out what it is that gets your mind out of work mode and into the zone where you think of nothing else but what is immediately in front of you. Your family will thank you for it.

There are many and varied stresses that are par for the course when running your own business. The sooner you accept this and adopt methods to best handle these stresses the better.

You can run from these pressures, you can hide from them, you can bury your head in the sand, but ultimately you just need to face up to the daily stress of being in business and embrace the strain.

If you cannot, then running a business is not for you.