The Small Business Owner's Guide for "Practicing Safe Stress" …Building Natural SPEED

By Mark Gorkin

Why might the small business owner need a "how to" for "Practicing Safe Stress"? Consider these two maxims. A surefire formula for stress smoke signals is chronically grappling with roles and tasks involving:

• High demand and/or high responsibility
• Low autonomy and an ongoing or pervasive feeling of being out of control
  

Do I have your attention? The second maxim, the classic definition of the small business owner, reveals the desire to manipulate the above "demand-control" stress formula: a person who'd rather work sixteen hours for him- or herself than work eight hours for someone else.

But for many owners there still aren't enough hours in the day, especially with the startling emergence and expansion of such technological innovations as cell phones and the Internet. Customers and clients are potentially anywhere and everywhere...at any time. The cutting edge small business owner not only competes in a rapidly changing real world, but must also harness a lightning-paced virtual business environment. There's a heightened demand for efficient and effective products and service delivery. Simultaneously, there's an ever-shrinking downtime window as your small business becomes far flung, crossing ever-greater numbers of time zones. And despite "the shock of the new," the existential-temporal dilemma remains familiar: Can there be life after deadlines?

In such a volatile economic environment how do you manage the inevitable stress without succumbing to small business burnout? If running a successful small business is more like running a marathon than a 100-yard race (though sometimes it feels like a barely interrupted series of dashes) then the key for surviving and thriving is the Stress Doc's formula for "Natural SPEED." Try this daily regimen.

Sleep

Don't be cheap with your need for sleep. It's nature's way to ebb and flow and help you grow. Don't you just hate those glib aphorisms? Actually, if you're like me, you often stay up too late and wake up too early to get eight hours of sleep. So learning to take power naps is critical.

Priorities

Perhaps the most challenging realization for the small business owner is, "I can't do it all." And according to a classic efficiency and motivation principle, you apparently don't have to. The Pareto Principle, derived by an early 20th c. Italian sociologist, I believe, posits: "80% of our results are produced by 20% of our activities." What a proposition: you can downgrade the critical status of four-fifths of your preoccupations without feeling guilty! So focus on your passion and power and, at least, learn to delegate or collaborate if you don't want to downgrade.

Of course, for delegation to work, effective hiring must be a high priority. The bottom line, of course, is creating a business environment conducive to success. Not effective hiring, not delegation, nor even the Pareto Principle negates the reality that at times successful self-employed individuals or small business owners must hands on juggle a number of revenue-generating activities. Having multiple income sources is critical for survival in a competitive climate with uncertain client bases, shifting consumer preferences, and quixotic markets or financial resources.

In the face of slow demand in one product or service line, constantly keeping a number of income-producing balls in motion provides security. It can also be exhausting. And with a time pressure tempest lurking or swirling, balls may be short-changed or mishandled; they can be deflated, dropped, or even blown off course. Non-stop juggling can turn seeming fiscal stability into psychophysical stress. Yet many business owners can't afford not to get into the act. Welcome to "The Entrepreneurial Catch 22."

Urgency, Familiarity and Simultaneity

Clearly, running a multifaceted enterprise requires both setting priorities and goals along with flexibly shifting time, energy, focus, and resources to vital projects and urgent requests. Of course, customers and employees will frequently try to convince you their important needs are really urgent. Remember, urgent gets done now; important gets prioritized. For a priority system to work, key business players and partners often must negotiate to overcome turf and territorial instincts – "My task is most important," "No, mine is even more critical." It's easy for the small business office to take on the manner and intensity, the loyalties and conflicts of a family. And sometimes you need an outside consultant to help you and your staff:

• Handle "family" dysfunction
• Envision goals, establish consensus and become a dynamic, "whole is greater than sum of parts" team.
  

Survival of the fittest requires both individual integrity and interdependent solidarity. So be wary of that "Multiple & Simultaneous Demand Situation," when you are:

1. Responsible for an increasing number of people and projects
   
   
2. Frantically managing an ever expanding base of data, policies and procedures
   
   
3. Feel like a slave to deadlines or tied up by thieves of time
   

If you are not careful, this Multiple & Simultaneous (or M & S) Demand Situation can turn around and become an "S & M" experience: you feel like a "Servant" to too many "Masters." The bottom line, priority-affirming strategy is "The Stress Doc's Basic Law of Safe Stress": Do know your limits and don't limit your "No’s”!

Empathy

Whether it's receiving editorial feedback on an upcoming column or enlisting an ear for the retelling of the day's trials and tribulations, I need/we all need support at the burnout battlefront. A little TLC: tender loving criticism and tough loving care. Sometimes support doesn't only come from a smiling face or voice (or email buddy), but from a friendly place. Running a home/computer-based business (when not doing outside speaking and consulting programs) I need to get out of the cave. One ritual involves afternoon tea and scones at the local teahouse. I write. I network. It's a wonderful way to combine business and relaxation, if not pleasure. The change of scenery induces a new perspective and stirs the creative spirits.

Exercise

You're psyched; you're focused, putting in those hours, hitting deadlines, managing those difficult customers and employees, not to mention squeezing in some quality family time. Did someone say adrenaline? It's that hard driving, on the edge adrenaline rush that fires up so many. Unfortunately, frequent adrenaline bursts have nasty consequences, including elevated cholesterol levels and increased risk for cardiovascular complications. So in addition to pacing and prioritizing, physically working off excess adrenaline is critical.

When everything's up in the air – you can't seem to close any projects or sales, to meet elusive deadlines – structured exercise provides a self-defined beginning and endpoint. There's a tangible sense of accomplishment and control. So walk around the mall if need be. Just don't stop at any store for thirty or forty minutes. Your heart, lungs, waist, and pocketbook or wallet will thank you!

Diet

You can't stop during the day so you inject caffeine – coffee and sodas. Then you need those two drinks at night to unwind. Or cigarettes to both relax and stimulate you. Or potato chips to numb you. In an attempt to regulate your stress are you putting your system through a manic-depressive-like cycle? And the effects linger. Did you know that it takes eleven miles of non-stop jogging to burn off the saturated fat in a Big Mac, a shake, and order of fries?

In addition to worries about Big Mac and cardiac attacks, what we eat influences our ability to generate and sustain energy for the long run. All those simple sugars and saturated fats don't just weigh you down; this stuff also enervates you physically and mentally. Substitute dried fruit and power napping over junk food snacking.

The Doc's Power Breakfast

Avoid big meals as much as possible; graze rather than gorge. Nutritionists suggest four or five small meals over three large ones. For a lean-and-keen meal, try my low fat, high complex sugar and protein breakfast smoothie. Mix these into the blender:

• 3 bananas
• a handful of frozen raspberries and frozen peaches
• half cups of orange and grape juice
• 3 heaping tablespoons of soy powder. (Health food stores will have soy powder.)
  
  Not only is the soy high in energy-boosting protein, but also it gives your breakfast booster a thick, rich texture. I get four six-ounce servings.
  

I shared my morning special with a client and his immediate association: "I should be drinking this on a tropical island." Oh yes, the loyal partner with my smoothie…one half of a toasted, naked bagel.

Understanding the stress-relieving and energy-enhancing power of healthy eating (and exercise) will definitely help you finish the race. Adding Natural SPEED to your daily operation is a vital, bottom line variable for landing in the small business owner's "Winner's Circle" while…Practicing Safe Stress!

Mark Gorkin, "The Stress Doc," is a licensed Clinical Social Worker and a national speaker and trainer on stress, communications, team building, creativity and HUMOR. He is the "Online Psychohumorist" (TM) for the major AOL mental health resource, Online Psych, and for AOL's Business Know How. Check his Web site, recently featured as a USA Today Online "Hot Site," at www.stressdoc.com or email StressDoc@aol.com.

Published in Networking Today, January 2002.