How to Avoid Your Business Taking Over Your Life
We are going to talk about how to avoid your business from taking over your life. Now perhaps it has already taken over or you’re on your way to having your business run you over.
Either way, I’m going to share a secret with you that nobody really talks about. Once you learn it, you’ll find it easier to take back your life. I wish I knew earlier in my business.
I’m going to share my screen. I found that seeing the visual helps people understand it much better.
Let Your Entrepreneurial Journey Begin
This is a big secret. People don’t discuss it, but it happens naturally in your business.
Let’s go back in time on your entrepreneurial journey. This will help you see what’s really going on.
You’ve followed your heart as you start this journey. You took this big plunge and began your business.
- You defined your ideal client.
- You put yourself out there.
- You are sharing how you can transform people’s lives.
- You’re networking like crazy.
- It feels like you got the wind at your back.
- You feel strong, determined, and confident.
Everything seems to be going your way.
Then this happens. Success. Yay.
You got your first client and then you get another, and another.
Cash flow happens and money comes in. Your clients love the value you provide.
You are changing lives for the better. You are now living in your passion, and it is exciting.
Remember how that felt in the beginning. How exciting that is now. You built a successful business by changing lives. Now you’re bringing in some income. You’re on your path to living your dream life and running your ideal business.
The Big Secret No One Talks About
Something else happens… something else is growing; this is that thing that no one tells you about, and that is stuff.
Stuff.
As your business grows, so does the stuff. Stuff to take care of your clients. Paperwork can be endless.
Each new client creates more work, more details, more paperwork, and many more tasks. Keeping up with it all can leave you exhausted and frazzled.
See what happens is your business has outgrown you. And it’s beginning to take over your life and time. Because your business wants to take off.
The more successful your business, the more work and time challenges it creates.
The New BOSS in Your Business
You end up in what I call the Bottleneck of Stuff Syndrome™ (BOSS). All this stuff is causing a bottleneck. And you are the biggest bottleneck of all.
But this new BOSS is much worse than the one you left a job for.
Your business has consumed your life. Now, you notice your revenue is dropping. This decline shows that the core activities you relied on to grow your business are no longer effective.
Your personal life now feels strained.
Your business demands are pulling you away.
You’re not even enjoying time with family and friends anymore.
You’re burning out and it’s looming there in your near future.
You’re fatigued.
And when you’re fatigued, your creativity goes down.You don’t have that energy to keep up with everything.
Getting on the Revenue Income Rollercoaster
Generating revenue is an important task, but it often gets delayed. So does strategic planning, to make sure you’re staying on the right track. Now, it gets pushed aside for all those low impact work because it’s so much easier to do that stuff.
It’s called busy work. You’re tired from working longer hours, but you’re not getting the results for your effort.
So yes, these are the signs that you have now entered the Bottleneck of Stuff Syndrome™ and that your business has taken over your life.
It is this tug of war that’s going on, that you’re trying to get your life back, but your business is taking over and over. So you got this tug of war going on between the two of you.
Pop Open the Champagne Bottle…Time to Celebrate
Congratulations! You’ve completed the first leg of your journey. Now that you understand what’s happening, you can see the Bottleneck of Stuff Syndrome™ with clarity.
It’s natural. You’ve done absolutely nothing wrong.
Here’s a quick recap: You get your first client. Then, you get more clients. This means more details, more paperwork, and more hours. You might be wondering,
“Now what?”
Navigating Your Way From the Bottleneck of Stuff Syndrome™
Now that you have a clear visual, let’s cover a few things to help you navigate your way out of this.
If you’re on the brink of it, now you know what to look for. So that you can counter this in the future here.
So the first thing you’ve gotta do is focus on the priorities. This brings revenue into your business and keeps it on the right path. You can spend 15 minutes a day. That’s one key lesson in our system: a daily 15-minute segment.
Can keep you off that income rollercoaster. So it’s very important that you’re still doing the strategic activities that grew your business in the first place.
Second thing… Make downtime a priority, not an afterthought. When you’re overwhelmed, it’s easy to forget this.
That gets pushed aside because you’re working more hours to do it all. When we worked our nine-to-five jobs, we had weekends off as a reward. It’s not a reward in your business. This is a priority, and that’s what we, you know, always tell our clients, you gotta make this a priority.
When I made that a priority, oh man. Things change quickly, almost overnight.
And then obviously the next thing is, yeah, you gotta deal with that stuff. So you need to streamline operations. That’s your third thing.
Start delegating, automating, and setting up systems. This way, you won’t get bogged down in all that stuff.
Your business wants to take off. It can’t rely on how things were when you first started and began to grow. You now need to move up to that next level, you know, where it’s not so much effort anymore. It focuses on results and outcomes. You need to set up systems and processes.
Summary of Three Key Points to Take
While you take that time off, keep your focus on revenue. Keep in mind that 15 minutes of those revenue activities is important. You can begin by weeding out some of that stuff. Or, you can decide what you want to delegate.
Taking 15-minute breaks during the day can be very helpful.
But I’m also gonna invite you to our next workshop, which is the Art of Working Less. We’ll explore this in detail.
You’ll see how to work less and grow your business. This way, your business can support the life you want.
Stay Unstopulous!
