How to Stay Consistent in Business Without Burning Out
By, Esther Spina
Business Coach for Ambitious Businesswomen & Female Entrepreneurs
Inspired by Chapter 12 of my Amazon Best-Selling Book,
What It Takes and Why You Want to Be One,
“LIVE A CONSISTENT LIFE!”
For a limited time for Christmas,
get the book and audiobook CD for free (just pay $3.95 for shipping!)
“Be consistent. Little acts create great accomplishments.” — Uneeka Jay
If your list of Post-It notes is a mile long and you’re struggling to keep up, know that every successful businesswoman has once been in your shoes.
Maintaining and building a successful business can seem like a mountain of responsibility without the right plan in place.
I want to help you find the balance between growing your business and taking care of yourself so that you can maintain your goals for the long term.
In this week’s blog, I give you 5 tips for staying focused on the small steps it will take to get where you want to be as an ambitious woman or female entrepreneur.
1. Develop a Set Daily Routine You Can Stick To
Most successful entrepreneurs and female founders have a consistent daily schedule. For example, they may start with a morning routine including meditation to clear the mind, followed by a workout, then a healthy meal. They have this down to a science, and often, timed down to the minute.
Here are some examples of consistency in morning routines from top female CEOs and entrepreneurs.
While your routine might not be so regimented, I encourage you to think about how you structure your day and put a set plan in place that you can commit to doing regularly.
Of course, there will be times when you need to be flexible, but having a plan will prevent you from slipping into unproductive habits like mindless social media scrolling that distract you from the necessary tasks of the day.
Find the habits, hobbies, and schedule that works for YOU. Simply copying someone else’s morning routine may not work for your unique needs, and if you don’t enjoy it, you won’t stick to it. A brisk morning walk or light stretching to clear your head may work better for you than a drill sergeant-style workout class if you’re not a morning person and that’s OK!
Another strategy is to get the task you dread the most out of the way first thing in the morning. This way you won’t spend your valuable energy procrastinating and worrying about this task all day. Free yourself up to get to the other things on your to-do list with more vitality and energy.
2. Mind Your Mindset for Business Success
It’s easy to get busy with your day-to-day tasks and forget to check in with how you are feeling and where your energy level is. Overworking becomes harmful when you have a lack of balance, which leads to full-on business burnout.
As a business coach for women, it’s not uncommon for me to meet female business owners and entrepreneurs who are working 60 hours a week and running themselves ragged for the sake of achieving their goals.
But, at what personal cost?
If you’ve read my book, you know that I am an ambitious woman too, but if you wear yourself down to achieve your career goals, you won’t be able to enjoy the fruits of all your hard work.
Whatever helps you release excess tension, make sure you build time into every day to do it so that taking care of yourself first becomes a priority in your life. And when you do, I promise your business will benefit as a result.
3. Get Regular Support From Women Who Understand (Even If They Are Online Mentors)
Listening to your favorite female entrepreneur or businesswoman, on a podcast, YouTube, or TED Talk, keeps you on track and inspired, but do you do it regularly?
When you listen to your mentors, you realize that most successful businesswomen are not overnight sensations. They just stuck to the small daily habits that ensured their eventual success.
Those mundane tasks you don’t look forward to are the ones that will make all the difference. It’s all about consistency and daily needs repeated over time.
Join a Facebook or Meetup group for female business owners, and you’ll see that many women are facing the same struggles and occasional setbacks to motivation that you are. You will feel less alone and get valuable tips and resources from women who have overcome the same challenges along the way.
4. Delegate and Automate As Soon As Possible
Many of the tasks you are doing now you can either delegate or automate.
This frees your time to grow your business, instead of spending your time maintaining your business.
Look at ways you can outsource your smaller tasks to a VA or find systems that allow you to put them on autopilot. Preserve your energy for reaching your next business goal instead of expending it on simple chores that are not the best use of your valuable time.
Female billionaires know this secret — your time is the most valuable resource you have.
Putting systems like this in place allows you to stay fresh and concentrate on expanding the part of your business you love. Don’t look at it as an expense. Investing in your business is not an expense, it’s a necessity.
Fun downtime with great friends!
5. Don’t Forget To Schedule Your Downtime and Time Off Too
As much as you need to make a routine to check your business needs off your to-do list, setting time aside to simply R-E-L-A-X is just as important.
Give yourself one FULL day a week away from work and do whatever you want. Spend time with family and friends, lounge around watching TV, or on a day trip to forget about work. This is your day to do YOU.
More importantly, don’t feel guilty about your time off and stop telling yourself I “should” be working. Truthfully, you’re more productive when you return to your work relaxed, refreshed, and with a clearer mind to make important business decisions.
Take vacations when you can, even if they are staycations. This article, Why Business Owners Should Be Strategic About Time Off, mentions, Americans are taking less and less time off and as a result experiencing more burnout, fatigue, and depression than ever before.
Get more mindset tips and inspiring stories of women who never gave up and reached their dreams in my business book for women,
The Ambitious Woman, What It Takes and Why You Want to Be One
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In my book, I share the hard-won lessons I’ve learned as a business owner and entrepreneur who has reinvented herself many times over. This includes how I overcame the recession, failed business ventures, and the mental roadblocks that prevented me from living the life of fulfillment and personal satisfaction I now enjoy.
And, if I can do it, you can do it too!
Until next time, stay consistent and remember that it’s all the little things that add up to BIG success.
