A wonderful article from Inc. Magazine came to my attention recently. It captures in precise detail the stress and anxiety that often comes with entrepreneurship. (Thanks to my friend and highly successful fellow entrepreneur Mike Maddock for bringing it to my awareness.)

In the second half, the piece details various ways we can reduce the wild ups and downs that come with starting and growing a business. Among them:

• Make time for your loved ones.
• Don’t be afraid to ask for help, even professional therapy.
• Limit your financial exposure.
• Don’t let friends invest more than they can afford.
• Exercise.
• Eat well.
• Sleep enough.
• Separate your personal identity from your business one.
• Reframe failure. It’s not the end of the world.
• Be open about your feelings.

Of course, I agree with what’s on the list above, but I was struck that one very important activity is missing.

In my entrepreneurial life, this is the single action with the greatest impact on decreasing my stress and anxiety:

Marketing.

That is, regularly and consistently communicating my value to people who can buy it.

For me, there is a very strong, direct connection between money in the bank and anxiety. Less of the former leads to more of the latter. Most entrepreneurs I know are also this way. And nearly everyone interviewed in the Inc. Magazine piece linked  above cite finances (expressed either as revenue; sales; paying the bills; or net worth) as the cause for their high levels of stress.

And there is no activity that generates revenue more immediately and more effectively than marketing. It’s even more effective at creating new income than sales — because sales work is one-to-one, while marketing effort is one-to-many.

For entrepreneurs, cash reduces stress immediately.

And marketing creates cash.

Tell the world about your value, boldly, aggressively, consistently.

People deserve to know how you can help them.

And you deserve the peace-of-mind.