Episode 56: 5 Tips To Practice Self-Care and Prioritise Yourself As A Business Owner
As we start to plan our goals and map a new strategy for 2021, Fiona reminds all small business owners to prioritise themselves in the coming year. Listen now as she shares her 5 tips to practice self-care which not only benefits your well-being, but also your business.
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
Mapping next year’s goals
5 Tips to prioritise yourself
#1: Knowing what you most want out of your business
#2: Managing your time effectively
#3 Setting boundaries
#4 Cultivating your crews, both your business crews and your non-work network.
#5 Being self aware.
Booking in a session with Fiona
Conclusion
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Episode transcript:
Hi, and welcome to Episode 56 of the My Daily Business podcast.
We are at the homestretch. This full on this challenging, weird, wonderful, scary, strange, odd, surreal, just bizarre year that has been 2020 is finally coming to a close. And what a mammoth year it's been especially for small business owners across the world. Oh, God. I'm just hanging for the year to be. I mean, I've had a great year as well. Don't get me wrong. But yeah, I think everyone in our household is hanging for a break. And just to, you know, call it a day of the madness that has been 2020.
And I know for many small business owners this time of year is also one that's filled with, you know, offsite strategy days or planning days or new calendars, wall diaries and all sorts of things to help us nut out the next year, whether it's, you know, 2021 or whether it's kind of any year at this time. You know, I'm recording this in December 2020. It's definitely when people have already made their plans or are making their plans for their business for the year following.
So I wanted to today in the coaching episode, really discuss something else that I think needs to be part of your planning, and it's something I find a lot of small business owners totally forget about when it comes to planning or they ignore or they put to one side or basically they prioritise it on the bottom rung of everything else that they have to get done.
So with that in mind, I'm really excited to be diving into it. But before I dive in, I wanted to let you know that if you're listening to this in real time and you've left it really late to give somebody a Christmas present or a Hanukkah present. Happy Hanukkah! or just a general, you know, thanks for helping me survive 2020 kind of gift.
We actually sell a bunch of online offerings that are also really good gift items, particularly for like business bestie. Or if you have a friend or partner that is in business themselves, we have things like short courses such as, you know, how to get published in online and print, how to start a podcast, how to map out your money, all sorts of things, marketing for your small business, as well as e-books and shorter trainings and templates. So I'm also obviously an accredited business coach and obviously I guess, but I am an accredited business coach. And we, of course, also sell one-on-one coaching packages. And we have this one hour session called the laser session where people booking and we just nut out meeting them one on one. You know what? They need to get done and prioritise. And I put it into a plan and I give them a customised Trello board after that. So if you've left it really late or if you just need a gift, any time that you're listening to, they say you're listening to this next year and you're like, oh, my gosh, one of my friends is just amazing. And I just want to send them a thank you gift. Definitely go and check out our shop. It's just at mydailybusinesscoach.com/shop.
All right. So let's get back into the planning and the element of planning that I definitely think more small business owners need to incorporate when they're putting together their plan and a map of attack for the next year.
Let's get you to today's coaching episode. All right, so as a business coach, I often see people, particularly the types of people that are attracted to working with me at a stage of transition or a stage where they're levelling up or they're doing something different. So that could be they are hiring staff. It could be they're just getting started on a product business. And they are looking at manufacturing and the brand and building all of that. It could be they are rebranding. It could be that they're really trying to expand into a new territory such as, you know, the U.S. or Asia Pacific or some other part of the world.
It could also be that they're making the move to full time into their business. And so a lot of the time we're talking about people who've got a lot on their plate. They're often overstretched. A lot of what I work on with clients and customers is systems and processes. So, to create maps and ways of working, that's going to reduce, overwhelm, reduce stress, give you time back, give you energy back. And so a lot of the time I'm working with people that have in the main put themselves last as a priority. They have prioritised every other thing that business, their family, their kids, and they are bottom of the road. They're very much like, yeah, I'll do that whole self care thing when I can get to it.
And so, one of the things that I want to talk about when it comes to mapping is how are you going to plan your own self care?
You as the business owner are the leader of your company. And if you're burnt out or if you're stressed, all of that not only impacts you, but it impacts your business. Even if you're just working for yourself, it impacts the contractors that you might bring in. It impacts the suppliers, it impacts your manufacturing. It impacts the way you talk to your customers or your clients. And self care as much as it might sound like, oh, this is a fluffy episode, Fiona, I actually think it's at the foundation of everything else. If you don't have time for yourself, if you don't have time to even not necessarily away from the business, but time to enjoy the things that you love about your business, then the business can easily become this big monster that you resent and that you kind of in two minds you really want to do really well, but you're also sick and sick to death of being in it.
So today, what I'm talking about planning for the next year or any time, it's really important to step back and think, OK, well, how do I plan for my own self-care as a business owner? And I'm not going to go through things like meditation or yoga or apps like that, but I am going to go through really practical steps that will help you map this stuff in so that it doesn't just become another thing that you wished you'd had more of at the end of next year. But it's something that you've actually actively been involved in making sure that actually happens.
All right. So I've got five tips or steps you could work through to make sure that you as the business owner are a priority in your map for the coming year.
#1: What am I getting from this business?
You know, really? And it might seem a really simple thing like, oh, well, we make money and it helps my family survive, but really step back and know what am I getting from the business. So for me, from my business, a big part of it is freedom. It's absolutely one of my key values. It's something I live by, but it's freedom. And so it's freedom. And that means, you know, not overloading myself, not taking on clients where I just don't get the sense that we were a good fit. It's not working with particular industries or particular types of sectors that maybe I don't feel aligned to.
To me ethically, morally, it's about really just having the freedom to do jobs that I'm proud of, to work with people I'm really excited for. And I really want to be a part of their journey. And I can see where they're going and I can see the good things that they're putting out with products or services or both. And so that freedom is a huge proponent of my business. Now, in my first year, I definitely found that even though I had mapped out my brand values and I of course, I'd done all that because that's my background. I was like, “Oh, why am I working in certain places? Why am I working for certain companies? Why am I working for certain people?” And I was really finding that that freedom element was just there in paper. It wasn't really there. You know, I wasn't truly aligning to it. And I was working a lot of the time in the city, in inside of corporations, inside of places. And it wasn't the freedom that I'd planned out, which is, you know, I want to work from home. I want to, you know, really enjoy the area that I live in. I want to be able to go for a walk. I want to be able to just look outside my window like I am now into, you know, bush. And there's beautiful animals that come along. I'm really lucky to live where I live.
But that is the first step, you know, nor what you are getting from this business. What do I most want as the business owner? Because it is your business. So what do I most want from my business in the next 12 months? And, yes, you know, money. Is probably going to be a part of that, it is for most businesses, the financials are a huge part of why they're running a business, but there has to be more than that.
So asking yourself, what else do I want from this business? What else is going to make me feel that this was really fulfilling when I get to this time next year? Like what certain things might I have achieved? Even just personal things? I know some people listening might be, you know, having your business for 5, 6, 15 years, but you've never spoken publicly about it or you've never been on a podcast or just small things like that. And you might feel like, well, that's what I'd like. I'd like to, you know, push myself out of my comfort zone a little bit more.
Or it could be I'd really like to travel more. I'd like to do a lot of the research trips that I used to do at the start of, you know, potentially having a business, maybe make furniture or you design in some way. And you used to go, you know, to various trips or make the time to research trends or designers or other things that are going to inspire you or even just go and see a documentary or go and see a beautiful French film. And so you're like, I want to bring some of that back. So that's the first thing, because that is part of self care. Self care isn't just, you know, run a bath and listen to a meditation. It's so much more than that and it goes so much deeper than that. So yes, those things definitely help.
But when you're running a business, you can't really just turn around to somebody and be like, well, you know, just run a bath on a Sunday and you'll feel great about everything. Yes, for sure. That could work. But you also want to get much more strategic about it. And this is the first question. Know what you are getting from your business.
For me, it's freedom. It's a whole lot of other great things as well. But #1 is freedom.
#2 Time management
And this is a big one and especially one of the tools or the frameworks that I like to use with clients or to at least, you know, show them this or anything that I ever mentioned on this podcast. Some people will be like, yes, that's totally for me. Other people be like, it doesn't work right for me with, you know, some things that I mentioned, other things like, yes, for sure, 100 percent. One of the things that I'll mention today is time blocking, and that is the concept of blocking out your time in certain chunks so that you're working on something and you're focused on that for a particular amount of time. Now, it could be just the morning. It could be a particular, you know, just one hour. It could be the whole day. So I started time blocking about two years into my business. So I've been running this for five years and I started time blocking where it was like, OK, you know, at the time I was sort of doing whatever people wanted from me whenever they wanted it.
So if they wanted to do a coaching session on a Friday, yeah, I'm sure if they wanted to do, you know, a coaching session at a certain time of night, okay. I can rearrange things or if they wanted me to come in and present to their team. Yeah. I could do it on this day or that day and you know, so I'd end up sometimes having these days that were like write an article for this company, you know, in the morning, then interview somebody, then go into the city and run a workshop, then come home and do a strategy session over the phone or over coaching like zoom in the evening. And it was just running from one thing to another.
And actually what I did was step back and be like, you know what, I'm actually catering to everybody else's needs right now. This is not freedom. Freedom would be where I present what my ideal week is and everybody kind of fits into that. Now, that might sound really harsh and you might be like, well, I run a product based business. It's not like that. But definitely there can still be times when you can try and block. So, for instance, right now I never talk to a client on a Monday. That's Mondays in my day. I work three days Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. I don't talk to clients on Monday. Monday is my day to batch create content. It's to check in with the people that are working for me. It's to, you know, just like kind of ease into the week. So Mondays are client-free.
And so what I did was that people can only book coaching on a Tuesday or Thursday. And I simply put that in. I used a court tool that can only to help me schedule that stuff in. So there was no back and forth on email. It's just here's a link to my calendly, book, a time that suits and all of those times suited me.
Now, I also work during school hours and that is a huge part of why I started my business, why I run it the way I do. I want to be there for my kids when I pick them up. Now, part of that then means that I can only work certain hours. So again, Calendly really helps because I can just block in. And those are the times that people can book in with me.
So it really, really helps for me. It also means that I know exactly when in my week things are going to happen. And if something like an opportunity comes up, say, where, you know, a friend is like, hey, I'm coming to your area, I'd love to meet you for coffee. I'm like, awesome. These are the times that I can meet because I know what my week looks like. It's not just this scattergun. Oh, gosh. Every day is totally different and I have no idea what's happening. So definitely consider when you're mapping out how you go into practise self care and really help yourself as the owner of your small business, consider time management and time blocking as a framework for time management.
And when I'm actually putting together my ideal week, I've actually blocked out time for things like my daily walk, I've blocked out time to speak to my biz bestie, and those things are mapped in there in the schedule and they happen. And that's another thing. If you're going to map this stuff out, you want to then put it into whatever diary or calendar kind of tool that you use and make sure that you stick to it.
#3 Setting boundaries
So definitely we can all, you know, make it really pretty time management calendar. We can put this stuff into, you know, Google calendar or whatever calendar tool we use. But then it's up to us to actually, you know, stick to that to make sure that those things happen. And a huge part of making sure it happens, at least to start with, is setting boundaries, you know, saying no to people, saying, you know, when I first started moving from doing coaching any time of week, really, that people wanted it, I had to learn to say to people, this is when I'm available. This is when you book in. If it doesn't work for you, then I'm sorry, I'm not the coach for you. And I actually was worried that people would be like, oh, my gosh, no, Friday is my day. Unless I can work with you Friday, I'm not going to work with you. And I have to say, I've had absolutely zero times when someone has said all these times don't work for me. Every single person has been like, oh, I accept that. This is when you do business coaching and I'm going to Book in occasionally. I'll have somebody in a different time zone. Most of the time. The people coming from different time zones can still work to the schedule that I have.
But sometimes I might have somebody that is, you know, especially with like daylight savings or changes in where they are, that the time is just slightly off. And so we do have to change things around. But again, even with that, I've learnt how to say to people, you know, I would really love to work with you. I think I definitely can help you or I know I can. But it might mean that, you know, you're staying up till nine o'clock on your time to be able to do this call or you're getting up early so that you can fit into the times that I have available.
Now, that has taken me setting boundaries and believing in what I do and coming back to that idea of freedom. I want freedom. So setting boundaries can have all sorts of different faces. It could just be saying no, it could be setting up an auto response on your email. That's like this is the days I work. It could be setting boundaries with staff and sort of pushing back on them, you know, if they're staff. And part of their job requirements is to do XYZ, and they just keep coming to you and almost expecting you to pick up the pieces. It's time to push back.
If you keep complaining about something and you're actually making no effort to change it, then you can't keep complaining about it. And often our complaints come up if we're really honest, because sometimes we're not setting the boundaries. So we're allowing people to get away with certain things. We're enabling them. We're saying, oh yeah, I don't work Fridays, but that's totally fine. I'll answer every question that you have. It's fine on a Friday, even though I've told you I don't work Fridays.
So when you set boundaries, it's one thing to set them and to come up with, OK, how am I going to set them? And if you've worked through #2 time management, you'll be like, OK, this is, you know, starting point for setting boundaries, but it's also up to you to stick to them to have, you know, standing in yourself to be like, nope, this is what I want. This is how my business runs and I'm going to step up and create that boundary and stick to it. If you're having trouble with boundary setting or even thinking, well, how do I even start? Definitely go back to your values and your objectives for the business.
What kind of business are you trying to run? What are the values that you want to align your business to both externally? So the stuff that you're putting out to customers or clients, but also internally. So I always use the example of if you're a business that predominantly talks about family, so say you sell parenting products or you sell baby toys or something else, and you're putting that out to the universe and your customer facing content is all like, yeah, we're all about families and spending time together and then internally (so within your own business), you're not seeing your family or your staff and never seeing their family because you expect them to work all hours, then the boundaries need to be shuffled around and reset so that they're adhering to what everybody wants out of the business, particularly you as a business owner and also adhering to the brand values.
What do you support your business is about? What do you align to? What are your values? And then how can you set boundaries that allow you to truly align to them and not just to have it on piece of paper or some strategy document that you've never, ever looked at again. So that's step three, setting boundaries.
#4 Cultivating your crews
And this is really a two part step. Now, also, I've talked about cultivating your crews before in more detail. So if after listening to this, you're like, oh, my gosh, I really need to learn more about cultivating my crews, go back. And listen to Episode eight, which goes into detail, but for now, step four is cultivating your crews.
So this is definitely making sure that when you're mapping out your plan for the next 12 months, you have time in there for people who are in your network or you are investing, say, you know, you might be investing into group coaching or you might be investing into a mastermind or investing just your time into meeting with a business friend every week or every fortnight to really not out and have somebody to bounce ideas off with your business outside of your staff.
So if you have staff, you might think, well, I've got staff, we have team meetings. But as the business owner, you also want other business owners that might be going through the same sort of challenges or struggles or even things that they really want to celebrate. And you're there to help them and vice versa. And so you want to cultivate your crews with business owners who are at a similar level to you and where they're not going to get caught up in like competition or anything else like that. They're truly going to be there and be happy for you in whatever you're doing.
So cultivating your crews is one part with business friends. The other thing in step four when it comes to like self care and looking after yourself is to also cultivate your non-work network. And I talk about that a bit in my book as well. Passion. Purpose. Profit. And that is to really plan in time with people who have nothing to do with your work so we can all get caught up talking about our work, especially small business owners. It's a huge part of our lives. We can get caught up talking about it, particularly if you're in business with, say, your partner as well. So it's like you're talking about it outside of the home, you're talking about it inside the home.
What you want to do is make sure that in your plan and it might just be once a month, you know, we're all busy, but it could just be once a month that you're meeting with people who have nothing to do with work and that you can completely unwind, totally turn your work mind off, turn your small business owner mind off and just chill and talk about other things.
So I have a group of friends that I'm still friends with from high school. And two of them I mean, there's one of my best friend I talk to all the time, but there's two of them as well that I started going out for dinner with in 2019. And I mean, I'd known them forever, but we kind of reconnected and started going out for dinner again. And it just is the most wonderful, refreshing thing to go out with people who “I knew you when you were like 11 years old.”
So just totally know who you are start to finish. But also, what are you talking about? Like your families? You're talking about just things that are not related to work in any way. And I think making sure that you've got time in your plan to talk to people who have nothing to do with work is really, really beneficial for your mindset, for your mental health, and to just be able to switch off so that step for cultivating your crews both on their cultivating your business friends and business, you know, like minded people that are in business that you can talk to, check off with, bounce ideas off with, but also cultivating your non-work network.
#5 Being really self-aware.
And what I mean by that is just knowing who knowing what's important to you, what drives you. Now, there are things that you can use, tools that you can use, like 16personalities.com or Adobe has creative types, their personality tests online that you can, you know, answer some questions. It doesn't take long. And they kind of spit out a lot of information about what you're like.
Now, some of those things you might think, well, nothing like me and take it with a grain of salt. But often there will be, you know, nuggets of truth in there. And what they can do is remind you of, like, you know, everyone else might be out there doing X, Y, Z, but that's not something that sits well with me or it's not something that my personality type is really suited to. So for some people, you know, attending a huge event and chatting to everyone all night is going to fill them up with energy and they can then go into their workplace the next day being like, oh, my God, I'm on top of the world. I feel so great. Other people, they'll need to get their energy maybe from reading a good book or going for a walk or something else.
So really knowing yourself as the business owner and again, kind of going back to that step one, what do you want to get out of your business in the next 12 months will help you with this step, which is really being self-aware. So I know I really am on the line between introvert and extrovert. Every time I take a personality test, it's either I agree, but it's very close. And I would have said for most of my life I was an introvert. And I think there's a question around, if you're an introvert or extrovert and can't figure it out, ask yourself where your energy comes from. So does your energy come from being around big groups of people? What does it come from being by yourself? And I'm definitely somebody where my energy I love being around people, but 100 percent I need to be by myself sometimes in order to regroup, to think, to consider. I love just sitting down and reading a book. I love having a cup of tea outside and just watching, like the birds playing or the leaves dancing in the breeze. As cheesy as that sounds it really does bring me a kind of inner peace.
Now, this is also why I go for walks often in the morning before work so that I can get in the right headspace. I allow myself to think things through and that's where my energy comes from. And that's, you know, part of what I've had to learn and becoming more self-aware about myself.
So that's the step five. Self care comes from being self aware. So whether it's a personality test, whether it's going to therapy, whether it's meditating, whether it's some way of becoming more self aware, more in tune with what do I want, what makes me happy, how do I reenergize and what kind of fills my cup for lack of a better word. So that is step five. Self care comes from really being self aware.
So before you map out your plan or as you get started next year, take the time to really consider what is it that I want from this business, but also how am I likely to make sure that I'm energised, that I feel good and that I've kind of got I know I sound a little bit woo-woo but a bit of inner peace happening. So to recap, this coaching episode was really about kind of ways to help you prepare for the next 12 months, but ways that are going to help you as the leader of your small business.
And to recap, those five ways to plan and practise self care as a small business owner are,
#1: Knowing what you most want out of your business
#2: Managing your time effectively
#3 Setting boundaries
#4 Cultivating your crews, both your business crews and your non-work network.
#5 Being self aware.
As small business owners, there is always something or someone that seems to need our attention, you know, our staff, our suppliers, our email database, our customers, our clients, our Facebook ads manager, our Pinterest manager, or this or that. But if we as the leaders burn out, then every single other person around us is impacted as well. So if you're working on your plans right now for 2021 or you're listening to this later and you're working on any kind of plans, even the next 90 days, 90 day plans, try and really consider how this plan is helping you cultivate time for what matters, as well as cultivate activities and initiatives in your business that align with who you really are, what you most want from this and the values that your business really is trying to live up to.
As I mentioned at the start of this, we have a range of gift ideas and items that you can purchase at the My Daily Business Coach shop. One of those is a 1-hour laser session, one on one with me. It happens online. We do it through Zoom. So anyone, anywhere in the world can buy one and invest in one, or you could buy one for, you know, a friend. But in those sessions people just walk away and like, oh my God, mind blown. Now I know what to do now. I've got really clear tactics to work forward. I've got a great, you know, direction. I know I've got clarity around where I'm going next. So if you're listening to this today and you're like, yes, I need to do this, but I'd really like somebody to kind of be there to help me map it out, then I am a person. Definitely get in touch with us and you can find out more about business coaching packages that I offer over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/shop.
So that is it for this coaching episode. I hope you found it useful. As always, you can find the shownotes with links to everything that I've mentioned, any of the tools and all of that stuff over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/56.
Now, if you did find this episode useful, make sure you hit subscribe, but also in this particular episode, because it's about self care and looking after ourselves, I would love it if you have a fellow business friend that you might forward this to so they can listen and maybe even the two of you can, you know, practise this or plan it out together so that you keep yourselves accountable to practising good self care and putting yourself first as the business owner. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you next time.
Thanks for listening to My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you want to get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram at @mydailybusinesscoach.
