How to Regain Clarity on Your Business After Personal Mishaps
There are so many reasons why you start your business. You wish to start living your passions in life, serve the people that matter the most to you, or set an example for your family (Hi Liana!). There is constant talk about work-life balance and not letting the work that you do transcend to your personal life.
What if it’s the other way around? What if something substantial that happens in your personal life greatly affects your business?
You may start to forget your why. You ask yourself If your business is even worth it anymore when the dust settles. You think about the time that it took away from your business and if things would be ok when you start things back up.
This happened to me not too long ago (and I'm still going through some changes). I was at a point of worry in life, and my business was just on the back burner. I wasn’t doing much marketing to attract new clients. I was definitely not producing any blog posts.
When the dust settled, and things were getting somewhat back to normal, I thought I would be able to pick up where I left off and start accomplishing my goals in business. Iv'e started to find distinct ways to regain clarity in why I started my business in the first place. I stopped being scared to ask for help and owed it to myself to dust myself on and try again... and again if need be. (in my Aaliyah voice!).
Here are some ways that I found to help regain some clarity in my business and prepare you for things that may come up in the future.
don't feel guilty about tending to your needs and family first.
WHATEVER IS CAUSING YOUR PAIN, DEAL WITH IT HEAD-ON.
It was pretty tough when things are happening in my personal life. I was so confused at this time because I finally felt like I was actually gaining some traction in the start-up of my new site.
Then all the sudden things that I did not plan to occur, happened!
I felt that if I focused on networking on social media when I couldn’t find the time to work on other things, I would be fine. At least that way I would be able to talk to people who understood how hard it is to have a thriving online business while nurturing your family.
I even vented my concern on biz productivity in a couple of great Facebook groups. Just posting a general statement of how they coped with personal life interfering with their business.
Most shared the same sentiment. Make sure you and your family are OKAY!
Everything else will eventually fall into place when it was meant to be.... and today I’m a living testament that this is so true.
Through this time, I also took my morning routine a little more serious. Self-care is especially imperative when facing dilemmas in all aspects of life. During this time, I read some of the books in my book bucket list. Reading every day allowed me to look forward to dealing with the rougher days.
I also had ongoing work-related stress (I am a “foster parent” to developmentally disabled adults as my work-from-home job). Just when things were leveling out, things got more intricate during the time things were happening with my family.
I was stressed although the much-needed income increase. After about a month, I was able to get back to a consistent schedule and include time for the biz.
This is imperative when your business is not your main source of income. You will find that you better enjoy your business because it better aligns with your deepest desires in life, but you can’t lose all focus of your main income.
Finally, deal with your inner demons.
As long as I can remember, I've suffered from what I know now as imposter syndrome. I never believed that I deserved the things that have come to me.
I stopped myself from striving for greatness countless times because I didn’t feel that I deserved to have my own business. For so long I was okay with mediocrity. Doing above and beyond was too scary.
Imposter syndrome it's something that so many people go through. Especially when they do something substantial in their lives and businesses. If this is an aspect that causes you to lack in your business, take a moment, look in the mirror, and remind yourself that you are soo worth it!
You are more than the thoughts that hindered you. Caused your depression and feel so close to giving up.
You should also feel far from ashamed in your depression, anxiety, or any other mental illness that you've faced. Seek the help that you need from family and strongly consider professional support. Nothing wrong with therapy.
A woman I look up to and is the ultimate definition of hard work and going above mediocrity is Myleik of Curl Box and MyTaughtYou. She confesses to her audience to rise above the stigma of mental health and sees her psychotherapist as often as she can.
Refocus on your why for your business
Have the end in mind.
For so long, I have never understood how free it can feel to have the ultimate goal in life broken down to bite-sized pieces.
It's so refreshing crystallizing exactly where you want to be in the next five years and know what you need to do each year, month, week, and day to achieve it.
We can get so wrapped up in instant gratification and don't understand the process of it.
With the end in mind, you will have a better chance on focusing on your why in your business and be better than ever!
You look into yourself and see why you pursued your dreams. Or even figure out that you no longer want to do a particular service/product in your business.
One of my favorite pastimes as of late is listening to podcasts. One of the newest ones that I listen to Creative Empire Podcast by Reina of Reina + Co. and Christina Scalera (lawyer for creatives).
In one episode, where they talked with a lovely photographer Abby Grace. Abby spoke about how focusing on her why in her business, she became confident in telling people no who didn't align with her vision. She was exhilarated by that fact and as business owners, we all should feel that way.
Anything can happen in your life that will open your eyes to change in your business, and that’s ok. When you know your end goal for your business (or at least an idea of it), know who you'd like to serve, and can say no to things outside of that realm, you will be golden.
Despite your personal misfortunes having a plan in your business or the flexibility to shift when need be will allow you to regain clarity.
Preparing for life ahead of time
Ideally, from the beginning of your business, you want to start to document all of the processes of your business. Know how long it takes to do certain things. Have a process for taking on new clients. Streamline your blog writing process.
A great way is to perform batch-work ahead of time so that things will be on autopilot when the shit hits the fan in your life.
A perfect place to start would be Dana Malstaff’s free Trello course. It was nothing short of amazing! Great way to have everything mapped out from your processes to having one place for all of your affiliate links! I now use Trello to set up my week and know exactly what I’m supposed to do throughout it including the batch-work system I created.
When it comes to content creation, I use one of the BEST things ever, the Smart Content Toolbox. And it's the best $20 you can ever spend for your blog writing! This toolbox was created by the lovely branding coach Maya Elious! The best thang smokin' on having organization and consistency in your blog writing right on your Google Drive.
When you're focused on putting the work in beforehand, at the most unexpected times, your business will work for you!
A great example of this is Mariah’s (of the Femtrepreneur) experience. On this blog post, she shared about how stress caused her to be so overwhelmed and ignore her body, until she was sick. She was out of commission for weeks and even had to receive an appendectomy!
Because she did her due diligence in her business ahead of time with a slew of sales funnels, she recovered with an immense amount of passive income.
When you start batch-working, you can set days in your business where you plan your blog content, write your content, edit, take photos, and pre-schedule them on social media on something like CoSchedule (they have a free trial!).
As you’re doing your batch process, you can use a time-tracking app called Toggl. This will time all of your projects and see how much allotted time you will have to dedicate to. Perfect for when you're about to start delegating tasks to others like a VA.
When you hire a VA (like me or another lovely person), you will be able to know approximately how many hours you would need to delegate to and focus on the real money making tasks in your business.