How To Reduce Anxiety in Executing Entrepreneurial Projects for Solid Brand Building

Do you always feel anxious about executing your entrepreneurial projects and goals? You are not alone. But you shouldn’t. And shouldn’t continue to operate in that darkness. Here is the light. Are you an outcome-driven entrepreneur or a process-based entrepreneur? The outcome-based approach can be hyperactive and toxic. The process-based approach is strategic and well-planned. It reduces fear and anxiety in project management and executions.

Why You Should Care

With the first quarter of the year done and finished as an entrepreneur, solopreneur, freelancer, creator, or startup, you might feel like rushing through and taking high risks to see immediate outcomes and make progress in the execution of your entrepreneurial projects. 

But gobbling mouthfuls of food without careful chewing might result in indigestion and discomfort. That way retarding progress in effective execution of business projects and goals.

That spoils the enjoyment of the whole dinner and its purpose and value in making you healthy and comfortable. Just like eating and digestion, the execution of business projects should be process-based to avoid anxiety and getting overwhelmed. 

You have heard and read stories of some celebrities and musicians losing themselves to alcohol and drugs to contain themselves in executing projects and performing shows and everything expected of them.

As an entrepreneur, freelancer, solopreneur, creator, or startup, you need to see every project as part of along-term process in your brand-building journey. The secret is to remain collected in your brand-building process and journey. Brand building is a long-term and continuous work in progress for sustainability and longevity in the market. 

So, adopting a process-based mindset is the best strategy for survival in your brand-building process and journey. And it is very much relatable to process-based management.

Process Based Management

In brand-building, this can be a holistic approach to view your business venture as a collection of processes aligned with all your branding and marketing strategies. That maximizes project execution in a seamless and streamlined way that limits panicking and anxiety in achieving set goals without fear of disruptions and distractions. 

Remember how emerging technologies have left many entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, freelancers, creators, and startups in feats of fear of the business landscape that results in anxiety in project execution.

Though what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, a mindset change from an outcome-based to a process approach will help reduce anxiety in project execution for solid brand building. In today’s hype of emerging technologies, stress and anxiety can push you to see projects done fast and finished for progress in having outcomes. 

However, brand building is not just about seeing outcomes but enjoying the process and journey. So, shifting your mind to process-based goals from outcome-based goals will reduce anxiety in executing your entrepreneurial projects. Here are five ways the process-based mindset will help in your brand-building journey.

Productivity

Calmness means you are focused and paying attention to what the project or job expects you to do. One task and project at a time promotes full attention and strategic tackling of the tasks and projects for efficiency and high productivity. Focus and concentration on the expectations of the project on you from the scope and anatomy of the project becomes easy if you don’t just think of the outcomes but the process in execution. 

Technically, productivity can be defined as the efficiency and effectiveness of converting inputs into outputs for profit realization that boosts revenue generation. However, in brand building, discipline and focus promote concentration on the tasks and activities for maximum execution of projects and accomplishment of goals.

Anxiety sometimes comes as a result of attention deficit that comes as a result of too many distractions, especially with addictions and obsessions with scrolling and trolling up and down smartphones and iPads with no guiding principles for best practices on the internet. 

So, limiting personal obsessions and distractions like scrolling up and down your social media platforms can help optimize attention to what you are doing and boost timeous productivity that limits anxiety and panic in your entrepreneurial projects.

Stability

A lack of stability in business processes and operations is a sign of dysfunction in your business venture. Haphazard pursuits of achievement of business goals and outcomes can be cutthroat and toxic. That may result in low productivity due to stress and depression in yourself and your employees as you grow into a big company.

A process-based approach limits dysfunctional changes due to disruptions or distractions for any changes. If they are necessary changes, in a process-based approach, you can easily seamlessly integrate them aligned with the vision and direction of the business venture. Stability means you are not jumping from one project to the other without certainty every project is duly done and finished at top-notch.

With a process-based mindset, you develop the creative and innovative power to resist tempting shiny tools and objects that promise mana from heaven by fast-tracking your entrepreneurial projects, tasks, and activities. Fast-tracking project execution compromises quality delivery and credibility for long-term business relationships. Your business venture can easily get drowned in short-term shiny business strategies and tools that are new and trendy but hardly stay stable in the market.

Your business venture might end up being caught up in the trendy tech cobwebs, especially some AI tools and apps still in their experimental and prototype stages. A long-term and process-based mindset will make you consider all these factors before jumping on the bandwagon of instant results. Cultivate a process-based mindset and be discerning to avoid anxiety in executing your projects for solid brand building.

There is no manna from heaven in the creative digital economy. But a creative and innovative approach to adopting change and assimilating emerging technologies. Doing it at random might result in anxiety and losing grip on your vision and mission, as spelled out in your purpose and value statement that should be your guideline in your brand-building process and journey.

Patience

Rushing through projects and focusing too much on outcomes can be stressful and toxic. You won’t enjoy the skills and effort you are putting in as an expression of the capabilities you are proud of unlocking and sharing with the world. Seeing every project as work you should do and finish hurriedly will miss the holistic and humane dimension of doing it creatively and innovatively, which makes it unique for yourself and the client you are serving through the solution.

Patience helps in listening and observing how best you can tackle any task. Once you train yourself to pay attention to the scope and anatomy of any project that needs your attention, the sky is the limit in execution. The more patience you cultivate in executing your goals and projects assigned or planned, the more you reduce panicking and anxiety in your entrepreneurial pursuits.

Patience promotes calmness in execution. It helps you manage your time and instills calm behavior even when faced with challenges in your entrepreneurial project, like meeting deadlines and keeping yourself up to date with trends and changes in your industry and niche market. So, frame your mindset to take everything you do in your business venture as a process, not a spiral. You are likely to enjoy your brand-building process and journey.

Fulfillment

In the traditional old-school outlook to business, fulfillment only refers to ensuring that you have taken all the steps to deliver the goods to the customer. That includes finishing, quality checking, labeling, packaging, delivering, monitoring and providing customer service, tracking orders, and managing returns. That on its own is a process. And once well managed, finished, and fulfilled, the process is complete. As an entrepreneur, you also feel fulfilled in what you have accomplished.

So, fulfillment in entrepreneurial business projects should not be a one-sided affair. Remember, entrepreneurship is not just about doing projects and executing goals. You also need to enjoy the game you are playing. Fulfillment comes with some sense of satisfaction with the effort you have put in without feeling stressed as if it is a punishment.

 Remember, the more you make your entrepreneurial pursuits a lifestyle, the more you enjoy it and never see it as work or a job. But something that gives you some sense of accomplishment and fulfillment as part of your life and living. That way, you are bound to remain focused on executing your projects with efficiency and enjoyment in what you are doing in your brand-building process and journey.

Sustainability

 In the creative digital economy, sustainability is not limited to environmental awareness for reducing carbon footprint in the atmosphere. It is the most common way relatable to business. But here, in our brand-building context, we mean using sustainable business approaches through long-term strategies like digital marketing and appropriate tools and systems for long-term processing that boost sustainability and longevity in the market. Shortcuts in executing entrepreneurial projects are not fulfilling for both parties.

Most of the time, shortcuts in finishing tasks and activities have resulted in arguments and getting overwhelmed in delivering and meeting deadlines. That is why most millennial entrepreneurs who rushed to make it big without considering their entrepreneurial venture as a process-based project and work in progress ended up getting overwhelmed with it all despite reaching the first million mark they yearned for.

So, brand building is not about how many projects you are crunching per day or week. It should be a process of how efficiently and effectively you manage yourself and your projects in your brand-building process and journey. That will help in limiting anxiety and toxicity of what you are doing in your projects. A process-based mindset will not interfere with the joy and celebration of pursuing what you should see as your passion in life and business.

 Overnight sensational breakthroughs do not last and are hardly sustainable. They lack a solid foundation that enhances the process-based execution of goals aligned with your entrepreneurial projects for solid brand building. Sustainability in your brand-building process and journey means longevity in the market. And that cannot happen if you are jumpy in execution. But to approach every project with a process-based mindset for solid brand building.