The Anxious Entrepreneur

Book excerpt: Over time, our anxiety builds up; it either implodes or explodes. My anxiety has gotten me to that point several times. I'm Tiisetso Maloma and I am an Anxious Entrepreneur. Through the years I have stumbled across, and even formulated, some anxiety-defusing techniques. Entrepreneurship is nerve wrecking, especially when things are not going according to your plan. This is probably most of the time.This is because entrepreneurs, rightfully so, are always focused on achieving certain goals. We pursue opportunities we have always thought to be lucrative and this creates great expectations. We pine over visions, we obsess about how to reach those goals and even go as far as imagining how many units our products will sell. The funny thing is, nobody has control over reality and things don't always pan out the way we had envisioned them. Subconsciously, we are shaken when our expectations are not met and this gets us anxious and at times depressed. It should not come as a surprise that entrepreneurs are more prone to mental pains than the general population. A study entitled, "Are Entrepreneurs Touched with Fire", by Dr Michael Freeman, surveyed 242 entrepreneurs; 174 (72%) of them had mental health concerns, 118 (49%) had one or more lifelong mental health condition and 13 (5.4%) of them were suicidal - the numbers are rounded off. If you are doing the math right now, you will realise that some of them fell into all three categories. In contrast to entrepreneurs, the world's lifetime depression prevalence, as measured by the World Health Organization, ranges from 3% to 17%. I am the top-dog at being anxious and to make it worse, I dabble in a couple of projects all at the same time. Some call that Parallel Entrepreneurship. It is crazy. I am always anxious about multiple things. Anxiety plays out like this...It invades our productivity and therefore our goals. All it takes is to not see progress in a day, then a week or a month. The next thing you know, you are standing at the peak of the highest anxiety hill, depressingly recalling your record of failures and doubting your future.Well, this book tells of several anxiety-causing incidents, set in different situations, which you are likely to relate to. This book does not concern itself with defining anxiety or depression or any other mental disorders. It is not an academic journal either. It is fun. It is a collection of anecdotes, emotions, feelings, frustrations and philosophies that will show you that, when anxiety is removed from your entrepreneurial process, creativity reaches its optimum.You cannot be anxious and creative at the same time. Anxiety and creativity cannot coexist, so one must give way for the other. Anxiety trumps creativity and creativity trumps anxiety.The Anxious Entrepreneur is for aspiring and start-up entrepreneurs. It will get you in tune with the ventures you love and introduce you to robust ways of pursuing them. It will at best encourage you to look at new ways to deal with anxiety and at the very least provide you with some perspective.Unintentionally, this book is also about marketing and branding, which remains a headache for entrepreneurs, especially start-ups. It is also about:* Ways of coming up with unthought-of opportunities * Keeping you going with the bare essentials and making progress with limited resources * Tapping into your potential and making good ground * How to gain the hustle and refuel it* Testing business ideas without committing massive resources* How not to let the fear of 'failure reputation' stop and throttle you* Tactful networking