Today we’re talking about de-stressing your business. I think stress is normalized in the online business space and maybe just in general, whether it’s life or in business. But I don’t think that your business has to cause daily stress for you. I think it is normal to have seasons where there are high levels of intensity that cause some stress, but when you have chronic stress in your business, there’s a problem there.
So many of us started our business for financial freedom, time freedom, but also because we wanted to get out of a stressful situation, whether that be a stressful situation around money, or you wanted to leave a job that caused you a lot of stress and anxiety there. But in any case, we are kind of recreating some of that stress in our business. And so I want to talk today about just some tangible things that you can do to de-stress your business and get really proactive about cultivating peace.
Be proactive
I have found that most business owners stay in reactive mode versus being proactive. Most business owners will only move, make changes, or do something drastic when things have just hit the fan. Be proactive. Nothing changes if nothing changes, you have to remember that.
Set up your boundaries
Unaligned clients cause probably the most stress aside from not making money. Unaligned clients that push your boundaries, that don’t stay in the scope, who want constant communication, are the main stressors that I see for my clients. It can also be team members that are causing a lot of stress too. It could just be the environment that you are in. But in any case, there is friction there, or there is a consistent push of boundaries that you may or may not have laid out clearly.
Communication might be all over the map. It’s just things started really simple that you had one or two clients. It wasn’t really an issue. And then as your business has grown, it’s gotten less and less manageable because you have more things to do. And it just gets messy. We have to get really, really clear on how we want to run our businesses. You need to know when your working hours are. You need to know what channels you’re communicating and when you are communicating on those channels. Set up your boundaries and then enforce them religiously
Systems are the thing
While I kind of get bored with systems sometimes, because it’s the unsexy part of running the business, this stuff makes or breaks whether or not you’re able to scale. This is an opportunity for you to break down the different services that you offer and make the processes within each offer crystal clear. You have to dig into each individual offer and ask important questions: what are you offering? How are you offering it? What are the turnaround times? Are they getting revisions? How are we communicating in this container? Break it down per offer.
Policies and procedures
Make policies and procedures part of your contract. When clients sign at the bottom, they are also signing an agreement to those policies and procedures. The energy of that makes it feel very concrete, like “this is how it is going to be”, and these policies are not a suggestion. A lot of people may send a welcome packet with all the policies and procedures and nobody’s reading that. And then when they start to push your boundaries, it creates a lot of friction. And sometimes it’s not even friction between you and them. It’s unspoken friction just really with you, because you’re resenting this client. Make policies and procedures front and center and put a lot of emphasis on it. That’s your job to reiterate those boundaries.
Sometimes we blame ourselves for the mess we’ve created or for not speaking up soon enough to reinforce boundaries. Because it’s difficult to go back to current policies and “lay down the law” about new policies and procedures you’re now committed to enforcing. We’re scared of what they’re going to think. But what choice do you have if you want to continue running your business? What choice do you have if you want to scale? These are the hard things in business, the unsexy things, but these are the things that really can make or break your business.
I really underestimated how deep I was going to dig into this topic so we’re going to have a part-two next week. So tune in next week, I have so much more to share.
As a side note right now, I have a really crazy offer. It’s $27 and it gives you two days of coaching with me. It is for anybody who’s listening to this podcast. We use this time to look at your business as a whole, and look at the gaps that you might have that are hindering you from growth. And then we zoom in on those specific areas and we look at how we can fill those gaps. It’s a crazy deal that won’t last long, so reach out, and let’s look at your business together.
