I’ve been running my own business for over a year now, and I can tell you that it is really the most stressful thing I have done in my life. But, it’s also one of the most rewarding. My self-esteem has been permanently boosted, I’m calm when normal day-to-day accidents happen, and I’m more confident about asking for what I want. It’s been a huge boon to my mental health and wellness. Before I rush into suggesting that it’s for everyone, let me explain the whole story.

Writing
I started work as a blogger working for a small advertising company in the city. The owner was an old guy who was kind to me, always paid me on time, and never yelled at me. I smile when I think about how much of a positive force he was in my life at the time. It was a really turbulent time starting college and trying to find work and move in with new people and all the stresses that go along with it. I’m probably one of the more anxious people in my family, and it was a relief when “strangers” (i.e. the world other than my family) were supportive of me. Also, the money really helped to reduce my stress. Because I was only part time, it wasn’t so strange to do work for some other people who needed writing, which I found online. I did feel a bit guilty about it, so I asked my old boss and he was very kind about it, and helped me to write the emails to them better. I still do writing for him to this day. That’s the story of how I got started in business: one boss became one customer out of two, and I was off with a gentle bang, you could say.

Stress
As time went on, my exams came around and I started to get a few more writing jobs from friends of my first two customers, who needed more writing done. I couldn’t write fast enough, and the orders were starting to pile up. My customers started to complain about the quality of my work, and I was getting really stressed out trying to keep up with all the orders. I was also getting more anxious that they might stop ordering if they were unsatisfied with the speed I could write at. I had to decide: I could just say no, and wait until I had fewer orders to work on before I took on more of them, or I could increase my prices. I decided on the second one. I felt really scared asking for more money by increasing prices, but it’s something you have to do when you’re starting out and you start to see demand. I increased my prices for a few months and I was able to get more orders and work faster by not doing shifts as a waitress. That helped with my stress a lot, having more money always helps with that when you’re a poor student.

Going digital
I decided that I should do more online marketing, not just the writing. I started to look into how to use Instagram for ads. How do I do google ads? Should I hire a developer full time to make all these websites that everyone is after? What is an employee? So many questions swirled around in my head, I decided to stop this journey and just give it a rest for a while. I started sleeping better just going back to the writing. Before long, after my assignments and exams were over, in the summer, I felt it was time to take it back up again. So be kind to yourself, there’s no rush, and you need to be happy to do your best work. Back to it, harder questions swirled in my head this time, but I decided to focus on one at a time. Do people want apps or websites? I decided just websites. Great. Should I hire a developer? No, I’m going to learn a little bit of it myself. Great. Which is better for marketers to learn wordpress or drupal? I decided WordPress. Fantastic.

Calm in a crisis
Once a customer’s website got deleted. I absolutely panicked and immediately offered a refund. Later, once the site was back up I felt a bit silly. The same day, I dropped a carton of eggs in the store, (which would really have shaken me up), but it seemed like a minor ripple on the surface of a deep ocean to me, compared to the tsunami storm of a customer’s website being deleted. So being in business and facing difficult challenges has really helped me to deal with everyday problems much easier. And the best part is, if it gets too stressful, you can stop taking on more work, you can say no. Or you can get more, and become more pressured, and become harder and more resilient. It’s an all-you-can-eat buffet of stress.

Conclusion
You should weigh up your own mental health against the pros and cons of getting into business. It’s a lot of responsibility, it’s up to you to make sure you get your work done, you need to be able to communicate with your customers, keep track of your finances, and plan for the future. It’s really satisfying though, and it’s a great way to feel a sense of accomplishment, to feel some power over your life. I strongly recommend it to those who are in the right head space for it. If you do decide to start your own business, I wish you all the best, and please let me know how it goes for you, or if you have any questions for me.