Are you feeling burned out in your business? Here are some simple strategies to reduce your stress, free up time and help you to fall back in love with your business.
Are You Suffering from Business Burnout?
This time of year can be very demanding and exhausting for many business owners. Are you one of them?
The challenges you face as a business owner can be relentless; team demands, customer demands, supply chain challenges, seemingly ever changing regulation and legislation, the list goes on.
Burnout results from long-term stress and can manifest in emotional and physical exhaustion, which may affect the love you once had for your business.
So, what can you do about it?
We understand that as a business owner, you have many responsibilities, and often you do everything on your own. We know how hard it can be to keep on top of it all.
The most important step is to acknowledge you feel burned out and that something needs to change.
If you are planning a break over summer, take some time to think about where you want your business to be in 12-18 months’ time. While getting some rest over this time will help, it’s the act of taking time out of your business to do some serious and structured planning that will really make the difference to the new year ahead.
Strategies to help reduce burnout
What can you do differently to avoid prolonging or retriggering the burnout?
- Delegate – look at the non-revenue producing tasks you spend time on and pay someone to do them for you. This will free up time and energy. An example would be bookkeeping – what could you do with that extra time if this was taken care of for you?
- Review your customer base – take an objective look at your customers and assess them against categories, for example: how much of your time they take up, whether they pay their bills on time, and really evaluate how much it costs to do business with them.
- Look at ways to be more effective – stand back for a moment and look at how much you are working and how effective you are during that time. For example, is it time to streamline your work activities, implement some technology improvements, or even say ‘no’ to certain types of work or customers?
- Review your plan and reassess your goals – do you have clear business goals in place, and someone to hold you to account for achieving them? If not, do you find yourself being ‘too busy’ to make any lasting change in your business? Consider getting some outside advice from an experienced business advisor or mentor.
- Reassess your team – do you have the right people in place, people who take ownership to ‘get it done’ and get it done right first time? Or do they constantly bring you problems without also bringing you solutions (we call this ‘giving you the monkey on their shoulder’). How many monkeys could be resolved by your team, without handing them to you to solve?
- Celebrate milestones and achievements – it’s easy to forget the positives. Remind yourself of just how much you have done in the last year and put a plan in place to do more next year!
It’s the perfect time for business planning
After taking some time to reflect on your business over the summer break, February / March is the perfect time to develop your business plan for the coming financial year.
Experienced advisors are invaluable in bringing an objective view and new perspectives to your business planning. Get in touch to see how we can help shape your future business success.
Pathfinder Solutions can help you shape your business plan. If you’d like to know more, please do get in touch.
About Pathfinder Solutions
Pathfinder Solutions advisory team members have either owned or managed businesses, or are investors themselves, so we know first-hand the challenges you face in your world.
Sure we’re Accountants, but the best solutions in business come from focusing on more than just the numbers. Our real-world business experience delivers just that.
