Are you feeling tired with the way things are in your life and pet business right now? Maybe you’ve lost that spark and you feel like you’re wading through mud, and you’re not sure how to turn things around.
When we’re feeling like this, we need to hold onto the belief that things are allowed to be easy. It’s your business and you make the rules. And it’s more than possible to create the life and business of your dreams.
If you’re feeling exhausted or close to burn out right now, there is always an easier way. Today I want to bring your attention to five possible areas that may be contributing to your exhaustion and what you can do about it.
You’re focussing on the wrong things
Do you feel your business isn’t making enough money for the effort you’re putting in?
If that’s the case, we need to start looking at where our attention is being placed. Consider where you’re spending most of your time, and prioritise tasks in order of importance.
Your focus and attention may be pulled in lots of different directions right now. I know when I first started out, I was all over the place. There were so many things I needed to do. It felt like I had a mountain to climb.
We can get distracted by all the shiny things. But cognitive switching is never productive, because we can’t do our best work that way.
But the thing is, sometimes we don’t necessarily know what we should be focusing on. We don’t know what’s going to have the biggest impact on our business growth and our bottom line.
I always find having a business coach is invaluable for this very reason. I’ve invested heavily over the years in business coaches to help me push my business forwards. You really can’t put a price on that because they give you essential guidance to take you forward in the right direction.
But if you’re not in a position right now where you can invest in a business coach, it really is about trusting in your instincts and intuition, knowing that this is the right next move.
We’re hugely powerful and resourceful human beings, and often we don’t trust our own intuition. We don’t trust what’s already within us. But listening to that nudge when you get an amazing idea, we need to learn to trust that it’s our soul and truth trying to communicate with us.
Get into the habit of sitting quietly with yourself and listen to that guidance. That inner guidance from yourself can actually be your best business coach. Quieten all those other voices in your head, ask questions and listen. What is my right next move here? What is going to have the biggest impact on my growth? What is going to take me to that success I crave?
Then create that priority list for yourself. Make space to consider the goals you want to achieve in your business over the next year. Start plotting them out. Create deadlines for yourself, and then the actions that you want and need to take to bring those goals into reality.
You’re trying to do everything
You might be the admin person, the social media marketer, the accountant, the web designer, the writer, the salesperson, the list goes on. If you’re a solo petpreneur there’s always lots to do, and you’re constantly putting these different hats on just trying to keep things afloat.
But by doing everything yourself, that’s taking you away from doing more important tasks in your business, like serving your customers and showing up in a meaningful way that helps people better connect with you.
Everything else, as much as possible, needs to be given to a tool or outsourced to someone else. We don’t have to put our superwoman pants on and wear it with pride that we’re doing everything ourselves. Because this can limit the amount of money and impact we can make. And the freedom we ultimately get to experience in our lives.
Think about the tools or processes you might need to support you. Consider hiring a VA to help out for a couple of hours a week. This massively frees up your time and energy. Over the years I’ve bolstered my business with lots of different systems and tools. I brought in a VA this year to help me with various tasks, and it just makes things so much easier.
It’s ok to get support. It’s safe and necessary for your growth.
Your prices are too low
When our prices are too low, you need to work with more people. It’s simple maths. So what we need to do here is consider the services or products you offer, and the pricing of those offers.
Then look at your monthly income goal. What is that figure you want to hit every month? Maybe it’s £2000, £5000, or £10,000. Whatever that looks like for you. Then based on that income goal, work out how many people you need to work with to hit that goal.
Is it doable? When you do that simple maths and figure out your numbers, is it achievable without burning you out? Or are you going to need to work with a hell of a lot of people, possibly more than you can handle, to hit that income goal?
If it doesn’t stack up, then that’s a definite indicator that you need to increase your prices. Because if you don’t, you could end up in a situation where you have far too many customers and you’re not being paid enough. So think about those prices and consider if they’re due an increase.
You don’t have the right business infrastructure
This is about business systems, processes and tools. Maybe right now you’re doing a lot of tasks manually instead of using systems and tech to support you.
Think about the different areas in your business that are eating into your time. What might need to change and where could you plug in a specific system or process to make things easier and quicker?
This might be things like how you get paid. If you’re currently sending invoices to customers after you’ve fulfilled the work, that’s labour intensive. That takes you away from doing other more important tasks in your business.
Ideally, we want to be getting payments up front. We want to give the customer the price of your offer, then a quick link to book in and pay. So think about that. Can people pay and book in with you seamlessly?
Then what happens after they pay? Maybe you’re currently sending welcome packs or documents they need to sign manually. Which again, is labour intensive. It takes up your time which is better spent elsewhere. So consider an automatic process or system here so you’re spending a lot less time on menial tasks.
Another example, what happens if someone cancels or a payment defaults? Do you send them a manual email saying: ‘hey, your payment failed this month. Can you update your payment details please?’ Again, that’s taking you away from doing other more important tasks in your business. But instead, we could have a whole process and system in place to automate it, so you’re not involved in that process at all.
There are so many different areas where we can significantly improve the background infrastructure of your business, make it more robust and supportive. That way you’ll free up your time so you’re not left exhausted at the end of the day.
Your business model isn’t aligned to you
You might not be working in a way that suits your personality and your energy levels. The way you started working with your customers, you may have lost that spark and it’s leaving you drained.
Maybe you wake up in the morning and are no longer excited about the day ahead.
But here’s the thing, you created your business and you set the rules. You don’t need permission from anyone to change things up. You don’t have to fit in a tiny box because that’s the way other people have done it before.
It can be as joyful and easy as you want it to be. You just have to believe that it can be that way.
I’ve found a way that totally works with me. It works for my personality; it suits my energy levels. My business focusses on offering courses, memberships, group programs and digital resources that people can buy at any time from my website. Over 95% of my income now comes from passive and semi passive income sources.
I know people can get incredible support from the advice I provide, but it’s not going to leave me drained and exhausted. I’ve been in that position before where I’ve been working one on one with people back to back, and it just doesn’t work for me. And I can’t scale that in a way that I want to, and have the lifestyle I desire.
So really think about what you want to do here, what kind of business model is really going to support the lifestyle you want, your energy levels and your personality.
I hope you’ve found these quick tips useful and will put them into practice to help you get out of that slump. If you have any questions, please do pop them in the comments below.