Being a small business owner is not for the faint of heart! It means keeping the business machine going at all times. For many it also means regular bouts of burn out!
Learn how to keep your small business machine humming while avoiding burnout.
Many people become small business owners because of the allure of freedom. It’s exciting to make your own rules and dictate your own hours. Unfortunately, this can quickly turn into working hours that most governments would prohibit with labor laws. However, since it’s your business you have the freedom to work those crazy hours and treat sleep as a luxury.
What happens really early on is you confuse business growth with scaling. Your business is growing and then you try to keep up instead of learning how to leverage your time. This is where most small business owners fall victim to bouts of burnout as they have traded sweat for strategy. Instead of hiring a virtual assistant outsourcing and setting them up with systems and processes they, just work longer hours.
In addition to the historical demands of a small business owner, it’s not hard to fall into this trap with the “24/7” demands of the current “always on” culture.
It doesn’t take long before you fall into the dark whole of exhaustion, and fatigue. Between working for your clients, meeting new prospects, keeping up with the daily admin pressures, and trying to be on all social media platforms all the time, many entrepreneurs experience regular and serious bouts of burnout.
Defined as the exhaustion of physical or emotional strength or motivation, burnout is often described as the “high achiever” illness, and it’s a real problem in today’s hectic and fast-paced world. According to a recent survey by Indeed, burnout is currently on the rise, with over half (52%) of survey respondents reporting experiencing burnout in 2021.
Related: Understanding Entrepreneurial Burnout (And How to Deal With It)
From fatigue to the inability to concentrate on a task, to anxiety or even depression, the symptoms of burnout vary and often come on slowly over time. Here are seven ways to put a stop to burnout before it gets out of control.
Stop Stealing From Sleep
When you have your own business, long hours are perceived as part of the entrepreneur mindset.
You believe it’s the price of admission.
Every day you see the “grind it out” mentality encouraging you fill your tank with coffee. It comes across like a necessary part of the climb to success. Actually, following this mindset slows you down.
There are endless studies showing how your intelligence takes a dive when you’re tired.
In fact, we know that lack of sleep is used as a torture technique during war time.
When you lack sleep your creativity takes a dive and your mood sensitivity increases. Ever wonder why everyone is especially irritating when you’re tired? Now, is this the energy and mindset you want to be making important decisions from?
I get it you think that you have to figure it all out. It’s your business how could a virtual assistant outsourcing help? It’s just easier to do it yourself. And this is where you start getting lost in administrative tasks instead of doing the revenue generating work!
Outsourcing filipino virtual assistant has changed the game for small business owners. Honestly, is a magical time to be in business. You can now have resources you could have never afforded before virtual assistant outsourcing.
Avoid Overwhelm At All Costs
Every business owner has this list of ambitions that they are hungry to attack. Most small business owners have more ideas than they can implement.
Looking at the landscape of your business can be overwhelming for sure. It’s important to remember that like walking in the dessert, the horizon will always be moving. Your best plan is to focus on one thing at a time.
If you can focus on one thing at time, you will find you can execute at a much higher level.
How do you do that when you have so much racing through your brain, day and night? That is one of the many benefits of outsourcing virtual assistant. It instantly increases your productivity. Virtual assistant outsourcing is step one to project management.
There is so much work your virtual assistant outsourcing can do it unbelievable. Regardless of your industry this is always pre and post work that is redundant. We live in a world with a lot of copy and paste. These things can be created into simple systems and processes.
Consider the Costs of Mistakes
When you’re exhausted and struggling with overwhelm you are guaranteed to make mistakes. Most small business owners just try to go faster, and react to the demands of the moment. The saying “flying by the seat of your pants” becomes common place.
I want you to think about how much these mistakes are truly costing you.
Imagine you had a grocery list. You head to the store, gather the items you need, line up, cash up and then spend money on gas to drive home. The whole thing may take you 40 minutes. You get home and half way through making dinner you discover you are missing the most important item on the list.
It takes you several minutes to figure this out. Then you run through a series of ideas to compensate for this error and finally you decide to head back to the store.
Heading back to the store you go through the same actions again. You get the item you need, line up, cash up and then you spend money on gas to drive home. The whole thing takes about the same amount of time as the first trip.
This mistakes cost you double the work and cost plus the extra time it took you to find the mistake. Well, it’s the exact same situation in your business process! You have no idea how much money and time you’re wasting until you have virtual assistant outsourcing with effective systems and processes.
Set Hours For Success!
It’s so easy to think once you get past this “next thing” you’ll slow down. Or once you achieve a certain level of success, you will naturally work less hours.
It’s also easy to think that other business that have more experience or make more money can afford to work less hours. It’s hard to imagine but the volume of stress and responsibilities just multiples especially when the set up for your small business is ineffective.
Arianna Huffington openly shares how she fell over from exhaustion at her desk and smashed her face quite seriously. She clearly has a lot of hours and didn’t set healthy working hours. Part of your systems and processes has to be setting you up to perform at your optimum level.
I tell my client to treat themselves like a business athlete! Being healthy, and rested is the foundation to creativity and great business decisions.
Take Real Breaks!
There is a reason why there are break throughout the day at school and every other job that had in your life.
The body and especially your brain require is it to perform at the highest level.
I know 4 years I ran around stuffing food down my throat while I type with one hand and possibly on hold on a phone call thinking I was being highly productive.
My entrepreneurial mindset was “go non stop at all costs!”
One of the absolute best things you could do for your business is to stop every day and have a proper nourishing lunch. Take a proper lunch break.
If you’re eating at your desk it’s a very clear sign that you’re still running your business and reactionary mode and that is problematic to your success on every level.
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