We live in Interesting Times…a breeding ground for stress – especially for small business owners.  Indecision in the marketplace.  Indecision in the political arena.  Will you make payroll?  Getting your pricing right.  Keeping the pipeline full.  Catching up on a huge list of critical stuff to do.

All very stressful…and that stress has a lot of serious impacts.  Making it even more complicated, the U.S. business culture views stress as a badge of honor…the view is that if you’re not stressed, then you’re not doing it right!  Even to the extent that admitting to stress is a sign of weakness!  But the reality is that staying in a stressed out state may be killing your business.

Let’s start with how stress physically works.  Physiologically we are wired to react to perceived danger.  So when we sense danger, we get pushed into Flight or Fight mode – which is great if you need to run away from a bear!  It’s not so great if the problem is a missed deadline or an irate customer.

In a business setting neither Fight or Flight is a good option when it comes to dealing with your crisis.  Unfortunately your body doesn’t know that and it keys up the same way it would for a bear.  The results?  Increased blood flow (heart rate, blood pressure), a narrowing of focus and a shutdown of your higher level thinking.  It’s the cliché ‘Deer in the headlights’ effect of not being able to think when you’re in a panicked state…except it’s not just a cliché.

Obviously that’s an extreme reaction…but did you know sustained lower level stress has many of the same effects?  Your body is tense and you lose creativity and the ability to see the big picture even with lower levels of stress.

What are the impacts to your business when you’re stressed?

• Communication suffers – you don’t listen well or empathize
• Poor Customer Service – a tendency to over-react and be angry
• No creativity  – it’s really difficult to be creative when you’re tense
• Limited planning – stress tends to narrowly focus you on the most urgent issue
• Poor health – continued stress can have a dramatic negative impact on your health
• Poor productivity – you’ll work long hours, but it’s not likely to be productive
• Lose the little things – you won’t have time for the details, which can be critical

Bottom line – if you operate under continued stress, you’re not going to perform well and you will cause a lot of serious problems to your business.

How do you address your stress?

Admit the problem

The first step in solving a problem is admitting you have one…stress is not a badge of honor, there’s no need to be the hero in your business.  Acknowledge that you’re stressed out and that you would like to fix the issue.

Focus on your Sphere of Influence

It’s critical that you’re spending your efforts on things you can actually change.

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference.”

Alternatively Stephen Covey suggests focusing on your Sphere of Influence rather than your Sphere of Concern.  Either way – you will get a lot of relief by not wasting time and energy worrying about things outside of your control (like the economy, your competitors, etc.).

Slow Down and Breathe…

Easier said than done, but something that will make a real difference in your stress level is to give yourself some time.  When was the last time you took 20 minutes…even 5 minutes and just sat still and didn’t think about anything?  How about taking 10 minutes a day to write down your thoughts.  You don’t have to be an expert in tai chi or meditation (but if you’re interested – here’s a great article on how to get started with meditation), you just have to find enough time and a quiet place to breathe.

Start Saying No!

Related to slowing down, in order to find the time in your schedule you need to start doing less, you need to start saying no!  What’s currently on your schedule or to-do list that you could gracefully bow out of or delegate to others?  Know what your highest impact activities are (the things that you do that make the most positive impact to your business and your life) and say no to things that aren’t on that impact list!

Give yourself permission to say no and I guarantee you will start feeling less stress as you cut out things you didn’t need to be doing anyway.

Get some help!

There are professionals out there who can help you.  If stress is negatively impacting your life and you’re ready to do something about it, check out Dr. Ladd Carlston’s service at Mind In Motion here in Kansas City.  Dr. Carlston has been working on a unique approach for dealing with stress for the last 17 years.  I’ve had an opportunity to get a behind the scenes look at his work and I’m impressed with what he’s doing.

His approach combines acupressure, chiropractic, deep massage, and breathing techniques together in a 45 minute treatment that clears mental and physical stress by shifting your physiology and brain function. The process isn’t for everyone, and it may not be a fit for you, but it’s worth learning more if you’re dealing with overwhelm or anxiety.  The recommended program covers 6 months with a session every week or two.  You can learn more at Mind in Motion.

What about you?

What stress relief techniques have worked for you?  Is stress negatively impacting your business?  I’d love to hear your thoughts – if you have a minute, share them in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade   Kansas City Business CoachSimilar Posts:

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It didn’t start out this way. 

When you first started your business you had a dream, it was exciting…maybe even fun!  Sure there was a lot of hard work, but you can still remember the thrill of your first clients, cashing your first check and the quiet satisfaction of delivering on a job well done.  Unfortunately that seems like a long time ago.  Now you feel more like a caged animal…trapped by a business that demands all of your time and energy and doesn’t give much back in return.

You’re not alone – according to a recent study, only 40% of small business owners took a vacation last year – some because of lack of money, but many of them because they can’t physically be away from their business for any length of time!  You’re past the point when running harder means you go farther and faster – now running faster only makes the wheel in the cage spin harder!

Are you a slave to your business?  Here are some surefire ways to tell and more importantly what it takes to escape that slavery.

How to tell when you’re officially ‘trapped’

Never Ending Long Hours – As a business owner, you’re going to work hard, but you’re at least a couple years into it and the hours are getting worse with no signs of relief.

Gerbil Wheel Syndrome – Running harder doesn’t cause a lift in the business…or if you have to run just to maintain what you’ve got.

Touch Everything – Your business requires you personally to make every significant decision…nothing gets done without you involved,

No Practical Plan Forward – Planning on the lottery, or landing a huge and unrealistic client to break you out of the rut?  You spend all your time fighting the day to day fires without a strategic plan.

Stuck with Status Quo – You’ve stopped asking ‘what if’, you’re not proactively looking for better ideas…you hear yourself saying defensively “That’s how we’ve always done things”

There are lots of other potential symptoms but in general it can be summed up as ‘a strong feeling that you’re out of choices’…you know what you’ve got isn’t working but there’s no real options and the only thing to do is keep working harder and start it all over again tomorrow.

What can you do about it?

The good news is that most businesses can be saved – but you’ve got to break the cycle if you want different results – here are some ideas of where you can get started on making a change!

1. Get a candid review of your business model.

A big part of the problem may be the fundamental design of the business – does your business scale?  Are you strictly trading your time for money?  Can you get any leverage…with other people’s time or can you develop other streams of revenue?

It may be difficult for you to really look at your business in an honest way – enlist a business savvy friend (maybe even a Business Coach?) and have them give you some perspective.

2. Get clear on where you’re going

Assuming your current situation is NOT what you really want, then you must take the time to paint a better picture of the future.  Try projecting out 3 years to a future that’s attractive to you.  How are you spending your time in the business?  What’s the revenue and profitability like?  What’s your client base?  What’s different from today?  Without a clear picture / goal there’s no way to move in the right direction.

3. Get clear on your strengths

Right now you’re probably doing everything…or at least involved in everything.  However if you want to break free, you’ll need to focus on your strengths and let other people do things that aren’t a strength or that you don’t like doing!  The first step is to really understand where your talents are best used in this great business of the future that you’re planning.

4. Lay out an Organizational Accountability Chart

This is more than just an org chart.  Develop a fairly simple (but complete) breakdown of all the roles and responsibilities in your business and outline who owns those boxes on the chart.  Right now, your name is probably in most places…but that becomes a great starting point for planning what things could look like in the future.  Start with today, but also look at the next phase…what could you step away from that would free up your time and focus?

If you’re interested in learning more about this idea (and how to do it) – Contact us for a short whitepaper on creating this kind of planning tool.

5. Identify Opportunities to automate, systematize and delegate

In addition to your roles and responsibilities, you also need to build an inventory of your major business processes (the things you do to run your business).  From that inventory, which of those processes take up a big chunk of time or is painful? 

Are you spending 2-3 days a month on bookkeeping and invoicing your clients?  How could you improve that process?  Could you hire someone to do it for you?  (I know money is an issue, but if you had 2 extra days to prospect and sell…I’m pretty sure you’d bring in more revenue).

Identify the top 2 or 3 process candidates and figure out what it would take to streamline them or get them off your plate.

6. Take action…focused, planned and systematic action to make things better

Here’s the part where things generally fall apart.  Things are painful enough to drive you to come up with some projects, some initiatives that you know would help in the long run, but you can’t find the time or the focus to actually get them done!  Or maybe you just don’t know where to start or how to get started.  By the way – this is absolutely what Coaching is best at…helping you get things done.  The top recommendation is to get some help to make things happen.  However If you need to do it yourself, then lay out a reasonable plan, allocate time every week to move that plan forward, find a way to stay accountable and step by step you will make progress.

What do you need to do?

The business closure rate in the US is right around 50% within the first 4 years of being in business.  Most of the businesses that shut down had viable products and services, many were making money and most had business owners who were competent.  But they couldn’t figure out how to stop being a slave to their business! And without that breakthrough they eventually had to throw the towel in…it’s not a sustainable approach in the long run. 

You can break the cycle for your business…but you have to be ready to make some changes.

What about you?  Do you own your business or is it owning you?  I’d love to hear your thoughts on this issue – drop me a line or comment below.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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Are you a hero in your business?  Are you out there applying your super heroic selling skills, delivery abilities or micromanagement ‘gifts’ in order for your business to thrive (or survive)?

Do you take special pride in your ability to fight the fires and the chaos that surrounds your day to day operations?  Are you especially proud of your creative way to get things done right at the last minute – knowing you are the only one that could pull off delivering the customer’s expected results…or that you were the only one that could close the deal.

If this describes you or maybe one of your key employees, then you are slowly killing your business, headed down a path that far too many businesses end up on.

Here are 5 reasons why you need to stop being the Hero for your business!

Why you can’t afford to be a Hero in your business

Reason #1 – it’s not sustainable

As the Hero in your business, you’re working long hours and all of the important stuff must go through you.  But what happens when you’ve kept up that pace for 2 or 3 years and you come down with a nasty flu…or you fall off a ladder…or you get hit by the proverbial bus.

If you’re really the Hero and the only one that can get things done, then your business is going to shut down when you’re not there.  And there will come a time when you’re not available…it’s not a matter of if, it’s when.  You might be able to have things come to a halt for a few weeks, but what about the next time?

Reason #2 – it’s not scalable

It’s a sad and unfortunate truth that there are only so many hours in the day – even for the Hero.  When you first start out, 10 or 12 hours a day might be enough for you generate a good revenue stream.  Things are going well – you’ve got a good reputation and your heroics are making your customers happy.  You’ve got some opportunities to grow!

So you start working longer hours, weekends become a great opportunity to work even more just to keep the growth going.  You hire some extra help, but they can’t do what you can do and just cause you to work even more to make up for their lack of not being you.  But there’s only 24 hours in the day – at some point, even if you don’t break down or snap, you will literally run out of time and be unable to grow any more.

Reason #3 – It’s not transferable

One of the biggest reasons to own a business is that not only do you have a chance to generate income, but you also have the opportunity to build up equity in the business that you can take advantage of when you sell down the road.

As the Hero, you are responsible for generating most of the revenue in the business…but when you sell the business,  you’re not going with it, and without a Hero to plug in, the business isn’t going to generate much revenue…which means it’s not worth much.  In some more extreme cases, the business may not be worth anything without you – the Hero.

Reason #4 – It’s not consistent

You can only be in one place at any one time, but it’s pretty likely that you have more than one customer.  And even though you are driving all of the key decisions, it’s pretty likely that others will have to be involved, which means that they will do things differently than you will.

Even if that’s not the case, as the Hero your best weapon is your ability to creatively freelance solutions.  That means that you’re delivering things differently every time and while variety is the spice of life, your customers have expectations on your consistent delivery in all aspects of your business.  Whether it’s you or your employees that are creatively coming up with new ways to do things, you’re not going to be consistent and that will cause problems.

Reason #5 – It’s not fun

As much as you might celebrate your heroic efforts, it won’t take too long before the long hours, really hard work that never seems to end and the constant pressure of having to do everything yourself is going to wear you down.

It’s fun to deliver a great product (or service), make money and have lots of time to strategically guide your business and take time off.  It’s not fun to constantly be on call, fighting fires and never having a chance to take a deep breath.

What’s the alternative to being the Hero?

I’ll cover it in more detail in future posts, but the baseline alternative is implementing systems and procedures for all aspects of your business.  Working hard (up front and one time) to make sure that your products or services are delivered with minimal input from you as the owner.

So are you being a Hero in your business?  Are you convinced that you need to stop being the Hero?  Share your thoughts below – I’d love to hear whether you’ve spotted any Heroes lately.

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