104: What to Do When You're Discouraged in Your Business - a podcast by Natalie Gingrich
from 2021-07-07T08:00
Do you feel like your business is taking an emotional toll on you?
Today we are talking about what to do when you are burned out in your business.
Tips to Combat Burnout
Business is a grind, especially when you are starting out, establishing a name for yourself, and working to get clients. You are doing your best to deliver at your very best and it is a lot to manage. Most of us are doing this while we are managing a full life.
In today's episode I’m going to share some tips that I've personally leveraged when I’ve felt just plain burned out.
Evaluate your business model
This is the first thing I want you to do when you start feeling burned out. Look at your business model and ask yourself if the business model you are working in today is serving you. Does this model match your value, your needs and your vision? Does it represent the needs you have today?
“People have aspirations for what the next version of themselves is, but they ignore what they need today.”
Where Are You Spending Time?
There are seven strategic objectives in a business. The seven pillars of are: financial steadiness, team growth, product suite, marketing and visibility, operational efficiencies, customer experience, and professional growth and development.
How are these showing up in your business? If you are a solopreneur, this is hard because you are personally trying to play all seven roles. In my business and corporate journey, this is where my burnout was coming from. It’s a heavy space.
I’ve found it helpful to prioritize the seven based on where my focus has to be right now. Prioritize the most important down to the least important. Make sure you save time in your schedule throughout the week to focus on the top three. You won't turn a blind eye to the others, but they are just less of a priority.
Evaluate Your Offers
Early in business we create offers that reflect what other people want. Often operators are people pleasers, so our clients can talk us into what they want us to do. We are people who figure it out, and sometimes we say yes too often.
Reevaluate the offers you have. Does your offer represent your gifts, strengths and competencies? Now is the time to remove the services that don't reflect your gifts.
“When you start doing things that are outside of your zone of genius, they start to feel heavy and you start to resent them. This leads to overwhelm and burnout.”
If you have recently worked on your vision and are feeling stable, it might be time to update your offer by adjusting it to reflect the next version of yourself.
Create Balance
To create balance I want you to minimize overworking. Beware of busywork.
As you move out of implementation and into the strategic level of business, you will find that busywork looks different..it's not necessarily about going through a checklist.
Busywork can lead to overworking. You never feel like everything is done, and only you know when it is time to turn it off and refocus. Make sure you set working hours for yourself, and that you don’t let the business dictate this. Find a way to make sure you have times when you are in the office and leaving the office.
Do a quick assessment. How many hours are you working each week and does that correlate to the needs you have? Are you still honoring your values and showing up as the person you want to be when you are working that volume?
Uphold You Boundaries
Make sure you are aware of your boundaries and that you are upholding them. If you have turned into a “yes” person then your boundaries are not cared for. Boundaries are the rules you create for yourself and they often come from your expectations and the values that you hold.
Do a quick assessment: Is a client or your offers bumping up against those boundaries that you have set? You want to be in alignment and build a business that feels good to you.
If you are experiencing burnout from the work that you are doing, it might not be that the work isn’t right, it just might be that you are avoiding the things that we’ve gone over today.
Weekly Ops Activity
Know what your primary goal(s) in business are, and set dedicated time to work on them every week. Make sure you let us know what they are in the Facebook group!
Previous Episodes Mentioned
Episode 5: The Seven Pillars To Your Business Strategy
Episode Sponsor:
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This episode was first published at theopsauthority.com/podcast/104.
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