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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The world is moving faster every single day.  In fact if you want to keep up with it, you need to start developing some super powers…super productivity skills just to keep up!  Everybody faces different arch enemies – for some it’s the dreaded interruptions, for others it’s that evil villain technology…for most it’s dealing with a lack of discipline or organization!.

Whatever’s holding you back, there’s no time like the present to start fighting back – you can develop productivity skills and habits and you can get better at efficiency and effectiveness.

Check out the 15 ideas below, put on your tights and pick at least one or two ideas to try out this week!

Know what’s important.

Are you really clear on the activities you do that add the most value to your business? Are you really clear on the top 5 things you need to get done in the next 90 days? If your answer is yes to the above, then you should only be spending time on those most important things. If your answer is no – then you are wasting time…probably a lot of time and until you get clear on what’s important you’re not productive!

Own your time – you’re in charge!

Simple idea but not implemented very often. You get to pick when you want to work on email and respond to phone calls…there is no law that says you need to respond right away and as long as you set expectations – you can respond within 12 or even 24 hours and people won’t blink an eye. The point is – check your messages at a point that’s convenient for you and take charge of your time.

Use systems…automate where you can.

Anything that you do repetitively, every week or every month is a candidate for automation. It will take some time (and maybe some money) up front to figure out how to implement the system, but you will save time (likely a lot of time) every week or month after that.

Take care of yourself.

Just like you need to take your car in for oil changes and regular maintenance, you have to take care of yourself if you really want to be productive and effective.  Make it a priority to take care of yourself and you’ll start finding more energy and more focus.  You might even consider taking ‘summer hours’.

Kill interruptions.

Does your phone make noise when  you get an email or a text?  Does your computer say ‘You’ve got mail’ (or the equivalent) when you get email?  Are you getting notifications from Facebook, Twitter or other Social Media?  Then you’re killing your productivity with self created interruptions.  Turn off all notifications and see how much more you get done (seriously – try it).

Use chunks of quiet time.

It can take up to 20 minutes to recover from an interruption – and nothing interrupts you more than a co-worker asking you a question or just stopping by to chat.  Take a suggestion from Jason Fried (founder of software company 37 Signals) and establish quiet times – he recommends ‘No Talk Thursdays’ but find whatever works best for you.

Don’t work long hours.

You’ve got a huge amount to do – so the tendency is to just buckle down and work long hours to get it done.  However lots of studies have shown that your work drops off dramatically after about 8 hours in a day, not to mention the toll that you take on the next day by burning the candle at both ends.  Challenge yourself to cut the work day off at a reasonable time.  Who needs sleep?  You do!

Work when you’re working.

Of course the corollary to “Don’t work long hours” is to actually spend your work hours on work!  That means no trolling the internet, no long water cooler discussions…save that for a clear break time or for after work.

Stop trying to multi-task.

I’ve said it before (along with lots of other people) – multi-tasking doesn’t work.  You end up spending a lot more time on each thing you’re doing than if you just stayed focused on one thing at a time – studies show you’re 40% less productive!  It’s a big change, but make a serious effort to start focusing on one thing at a time and you’ll find yourself getting more done!

Get stuff out of your head.

People can’t remember more than 6 up to maybe 10 things at any one time.  So if you’re using your head to remember your to do list, you are forgetting things…which means it won’t get done.  You’re also wasting a lot of brainpower on trying to remember things.  Find a system that works for you that allows you to get important things out of your head an in a place where you will be sure to work on it later.

Put it on a calendar.

You are 75% more likely to get something done if it’s scheduled on a calendar as opposed to just on a to do list.  When you take the time to think about when something needs to get done and how long it will take by putting it on your calendar, you’ll also have a much more realistic view of how much you’re doing and you’re less likely to overcommit.  This may be the most important thing I can recommend in terms of an easy change!  * Really Important Tip!!!

Cultivate an action bias – what’s your strategic next action?

Train yourself to always ask the question “What’s the next step to take to get this done?” and then scheduling that step.  Having a bias towards action means you’ll spend a lot less time stuck on what to do next.

Touch stuff once.

One of the great time wasters we all face is email.  It’s common practice to open an email, read it quickly and then save it to work on it later.  Start using the 3D approach to managing email – if it takes 2 minutes or less then Do it, if it takes more than that then either Delegate it to someone else or Defer it (schedule it as an activity for yourself).  You’ll spend a lot less time in your inbox and a lot more time getting things done.

Eat that frog!

Procrastination is bad news when it comes to productivity.  Brian Tracy coined the phrase ‘Eat That Frog!’ as a way to illustrate the importance of dealing with your most important (and most difficult) task (your frog) first thing every day.  When you eat that frog, you’re clearing out the big important stuff first – and you’ll build up a lot of momentum for the rest of the day.

Give yourself a deadline.

Have you ever noticed how much you get done the week before you’re going on vacation?  You’re in the zone, you’re on a tear, you can’t be stopped!  That’s because you’ve got a deadline that you can’t afford and don’t want to miss.  Use that same principle other times and give yourself deadlines on tasks to create that same sense of urgency.  Share it with somebody else (A Peer Group Advisory Board perhaps?) to help hold you accountable.

There are lots of other ideas for being more productive – I didn’t even talk about all of the apps and cool technology out there that can help you get things done, but this is a good start.  Now it’s your turn – share your best idea or the idea here that you want to try in the comments below.  I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Shawn Kinkade   Kansas City Business Coach

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I started Aspire 4 years ago, give or take a couple of days, and it’s been a fun, exhausting and enlightening ride so far.  Not only have I had a chance to learn a ton of great things through my own business efforts, but I’ve picked up a lot of amazing things from my clients as well.

When I started Aspire, I didn’t realize I was ramping up my business a few months before the ‘Great Recession’ started, which has led to some really strong lessons as well (things like living within your means, slow and steady, bootstrap wherever possible, etc.).  It hasn’t been easy and certainly there have been plenty of stumbles and frustrations over the years but there’s also been steady growth and I’ve gained a lot of clarity with each lesson.

As they say…”If I only knew then what I know now…!”.  Which brings me to the point of this post – I wanted to take a shot at sharing the most useful things I’ve learned over the last few years – hopefully they’ll be helpful to others…and if you’ve got some useful things that I haven’t learned yet, then share them in the comments!

What do I mean by ‘Incredibly Useful™’?  I could do a full post just on the technology tools I’ve picked up – stuff like Dropbox, Xobni and Pandora that I use all the time.  But what I wanted to cover here were some of the ideas that I either didn’t know or didn’t appreciate when I started.  I’m trying to read a new business book every few weeks…and some of these ideas came out of those books, but they also came out of real world application…practical (and Incredibly Useful™) ways to grow your business now…

1. It’s all about Marketing Consistency

One of the secrets of marketing that most people don’t pay much attention to is consistency.  Way too many business owners will spend money to make a big splash, but it’s a one and done approach…and they get frustrated when that doesn’t work very well.  What does work is getting in front of your target market on a very regular basis…in fact I’ve found that consistency is even more important than having a perfect message.  It’s your consistent presence over the long run that opens the doors…without consistency, you’re just floundering.

Incredibly Useful™ Tip:  Try this – Find at least 1 (preferably 2 or 3) marketing tactics that you can apply consistently every single month.  Newsletters, blog posts, post card campaigns, ads, events, meetings…if you’re not doing anything on a regular, repeatable basis now for marketing…you have to start…this month!

2. Use a Calendar not a list

One of the biggest challenges facing business owners (or anyone else for that matter) is the ability to consistently get things done.  Where most of us fall short is having too much to do and not enough time to do it.  We start with a list of really important things to do…start working the list and life happens and more stuff gets added to the list.  We reprioritize, work on some other stuff and more life happens!  Bottom line – not much gets done, which is why putting the important stuff on the calendar will help you actually get it done.  There was a study done a couple of years ago that showed that critical things that needed to get done where 75% more likely to actually get done if they were scheduled on a calendar!

Incredibly Useful™ Tip:  Try this – take a look at your to-do list and transfer the most important items to your calendar.  This will require you to estimate how long it will take and to find an open block of time to actually do it…which is why it works so much better.  There’s only so many hours in the day and this calendar approach will force you to honor that law of nature so you don’t kid yourself into thinking you can do more than you actually can.

3. It’s all about (well placed) Confidence

Picture this – you’re having a bad day and you are totally unprepared as you go into a sales meeting with a prospective client who would be a great fit for what you do.  You approach the meeting  with a real lack of confidence…saying things like “I don’t know” or “I wish I knew the answer to that…”.  How well do you think that meeting is going to go?  It’s going to poorly – people are looking for answers they can trust and if you don’t display real confidence, you’ll get eaten alive.  That lack of confidence comes shining through and you become extremely unattractive!

Incredibly Useful™ Tip:  Try this – Focus on building confidence going into sales meetings.  Confidence is the secret to success, but it has to be confidence that’s earned.  Here are some things to keep in mind to build up your confidence:  Let yourself take pride in what you do, make sure you’re overly prepared for the meetings and spend time visualizing a successful outcome.  Finally – when you head into that meeting, pretend like you are independently wealthy and don’t need the business.

4. You’ve got to have Focus

At any given time, you and your employees should all be very clear on what’s the MOST important thing you need to get done right now.  Outside of the day to day business operations, you should all be on the same page of what needs to get accomplished next.  Without that shared focus, the odds are very high that different people are working on different things or that things will change from day to day.  Either way, you’re not getting things done that way!

Incredibly Useful™ Tip:  Try this – take an hour or two of time and write down the 5 most important things you need to do this quarter – be specific and measurable.  Now out of those 5, pick which one is the most important thing.  Write the top 5 (and top 1) down, put it on your wall and give a copy to each employee and have them post it as well.  Rinse and repeat at the end of 90 days!

5. Be Really Visible

People will buy when they’re ready to buy (sadly not when you’re ready for them to buy).  So that means if you want to sell to people you either have to get really lucky and call them on the day that they’re thinking about buying…or you have to be top of mind when they’re ready to start looking.  The way to stay top of mind is to consistently keep your visibility up, make sure people know who you are and what you do and do it in a memorable way…consistently.

Incredibly Useful™ Tip:  This is where a tool like Social Media comes in.  My preference is LinkedIn, but Facebook can be effective for the right kind of business as well.  Make sure you are continually building up your connections with people you Know, Like and Trust…and that you are updating your status with useful and interesting information – if you blog (and you should consider doing that, link back to a blog update).  You could also answer questions online or reach out to people you know…bottom line, spend 30 to 60 minutes a week, be active and stay visible.

6. It’s not about you…it’s about your clients

This can be a hard lesson for some business owners.  It’s easy to get wrapped up in all of the cool things you can do and to want to share that endlessly with whoever will listen (we’ve all been trapped in that conversation at some point).  Don’t take it personally…but your prospective clients don’t care about what you do.  They ONLY care if you can solve their problems…how can you really help them?  Focus your efforts on what’s in it for them.

Incredibly Useful™ Tip:  Try this – Next time you meet a potential client, do everything in your power not to talk about yourself.  You don’t have to be weird about it, just ask a lot of questions on what they are struggling with, what the implications are and really (really) listen to what they have to say.  If you do this the right way and you can help them, then it’s no longer selling, it’s just educating them on how you can make their lives / situation better, but it starts with their problems, not your stuff!

7. Project your Profits

If your like most business owners, you probably have a good idea of how much money you’d like to make this year.  Unfortunately if you’re like most business owners, that’s about all you know…you don’t really know when that money will come in (i.e. what month), where it will come from and how all of that works with your expenses, cash flow and profitability.  In essence you are flying blind…and eventually that will get you in a LOT of trouble.

Incredibly Useful™ Tip:  Try this – create a Profit Plan for your business.  Keep it simple, but lay out a month by month projection of your planned revenues and costs for the year.  That alone is a worthwhile exercise, but where it really gets fun is when you start figuring out how you’re going to generate the planned revenue…what marketing needs to happen, when, is it reasonable?  There’s a lot you can learn from this kind of projection – if you want a template to start with Contact Me and let me know what you want.

Any of these resonate with you?  What did I miss?  What incredibly useful things have you learned in the last few years?  I’d love to hear your thoughts – share them in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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As a business owner, there will come a day when you’re just flat out tired.  You don’t want to get out of bed, and if you do get out of bed, you don’t want to do much.  All in all, you’re struggling.

Assuming it’s not some form of the flu, you’re probably feeling overwhelmed or just worn down.  You need to find a way to recharge and get back your motivation – it’s likely only a temporary setback for your business, but if it continues it could turn into a big deal.  Unfortunately it’s not as simple as ‘willing’ yourself to get excited again – however there are some things you can do to turn things around.

When you find yourself struggling with apathy or just not applying the kind of energy and focus you’d like to have, try one of these ideas:

1. Clear the calendar and unplug

Typically a big part of the problem is overscheduling…you have almost every minute of the day accounted for with meetings or critical / urgent tasks and at the end of the day you have a pile of follow-up items and to do list stuff that apparently needs to happen in the evening or over the weekend.  A few weeks like that and you will start wearing thin very quickly!

A better approach?  Build in some white space into your calendar and give yourself some real time off.  By white space, I mean build in time between meetings that will let you recover and prepare for the next thing.  Equally important, carve out a day (or at least a 1/2 day) every so often…at least monthly and just block it off the schedule completely.  Make it an unplugged day and try to use it for something fun.  If you just have too much to do, then block it off and use it as dedicated, focused time on very clear tasks (maintenance, follow-up…things that have a clear beginning and end).  You won’t get quite the same lift from using that time for work, but it’s better than nothing.

2. Get Organized – clean up your space!

This one may sound a little more trivial, but I guarantee it will make you feel better.  Find some aspect of your business that’s just out of control messy.  It could be your desk or your office, maybe it’s your schedule / plan of things you need to do.  Whatever it is, find a block of time where you will be uninterrupted and really straighten up that one corner of your world.

You will find a great burst of energy and satisfaction from getting things organized and piles of clutter taken care of.  Remember, don’t try to do everything, just pick one tangible area to address and work it to completion.  Assuming that goes well, pick another area in a week or two and work that area!  Not only will you get the initial burst of energy, but you will be more productive with an organized work space and process!

3. Get Focused – Start doing less

This one is definitely easier said than done, but part of what’s ailing you is that you are trying to do too many things at once.  There will come times when you just have a lot going on and your schedule is driving you with dates and commitments that don’t give you any choices, but when that starts putting you into a state of overwhelm, you need to find a way to deal with it.

The best way to deal with it is to prioritize.  Review your calendar for the next 2 or 3 weeks and take a hard look at what’s really important for your long term success.  What can you get rid of?  What can you say ‘no’ to?  Odds are at first glance your answer will be that everything is important…and it probably is, but if you absolutely had to cut 20% of your activities, what would you cut?

Once you’ve got some things in mind – figure out how to defer, delegate or just get rid of them…and take action.  Maybe you can move some things back a few weeks (or months) without it being the end of the world.  Maybe you can pass it off to someone else…or maybe you just need to make the tough call and let someone know that you can’t do something.  There’s no hard and fast answer – but you will be more effective and get more done if you can start doing less!

4. Build Momentum – get some small wins

People are wired for instant gratification.  A big part of motivation is a tangible sense of progress, and when you’re working on several big things that don’t move very fast you will quickly lose your motivation due to a perceived lack of progress.

However you can turn that around by including a lot of small wins into your mix of things that you’re working on.  If your goals are to write a book, triple the size of your business and expand operations to 3 additional states – it’s going to take a while to reach the achievement stage.  Instead find some small goals, or even interim milestones that you can knock out in the next couple of weeks.  By constantly achieving, you will build up momentum and energy.

What things have helped you get back into the saddle and regain your focus and energy?  I’d love to hear some other ideas – share them in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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I had a great question come up from the post I used in my newsletter last week:  Who Needs Sleep?  8 Things to Watch Out For.  The question was in reference to point #3 – Constantly fighting fires (living in Quadrant 1) and brought up an issue that I think almost everyone can relate to.  The stuff in Quadrant 1 is IMPORTANT and urgent, so you can’t blow it off without serious impacts, so when things are crazy, how can you find the time to work in Quadrant 2?

Jason did a better job than I did with the question – here’s the actual text:

“In the small business environment where there is only one employee, the owner, what practical ways can we focus on quadrant II and yet keep quadrant I from failing?  I’m sure it’s about balance, but that’s easier said than done.”

So if you’re spending all of your time herding cats and you don’t have  a lot of help, how do you make things better?

As with most things, the answer to this sounds simple (but it’s not), the first step in solving the problem is admitting you have one.  If you don’t recognize that you’re consistently in Quadrant I, then it’s unlikely that you’ll be in a position to make any progress on getting those cats into their place!

Let’s take a quick look at the quadrant 1 again – Q1 is stuff that’s urgent and important…usually it’s a situation where you are reacting to something (a client is upset…or has something they need right away).  Sometimes Q1 stuff is driven by others, but often it’s self-inflicted a result of poor planning, time management issues or just trying to do too much.

The problem with Q1 is that it’s completely tactical, reactive and exhausting.

How do I find time for Q2?

So once you’re into a crazy situation, how do possibly find the time to get out in front of it and start planning?

You have a couple of choices:  The first one is to hold firm, bite the bullet and just block out time on next week’s calendar and make that time sacred with no interruptions.  The other option is to work a little bit harder or longer – set aside some time on the weekend or a planning block of time some evening.

Once you’ve got some quality uninterrupted time, then you need to identify the top 3 or 4 recurring crises that you face.  The kind of thing that happens every month, or maybe an activity that happens with every client.  As an example, I have a client who just got slammed every month when it came time to do monthly invoicing and accounting.  They never allocated time for it and it ended up taking almost 8 hours to get everything accounted for and sent out – which impacted other activities and generally caused a lot of problems.

Once you identify some good candidates of things that take a lot of time, pick one of them and figure out how you could streamline, automate or delegate that activity.  In the example of monthly invoicing, the answer was a combination of upgrading Quickbooks for better automation and training the part time office admin (also known as ‘Mom’) to do a lot of the heavy lifting.

Granted that only saved 5 to 6 hours a month (the owner still had to do some things), but if you can find 4 or 5 examples like that, all of the sudden you’re saving 20 to 30 hours a month and you’ve got a lot more time to play with!

What’s an activity that you do on a regular basis that takes way too much of your time (maybe something you don’t like doing)?  I’d love to hear your thoughts on how to get out in front of the cat herding…share your thoughts in the comments below!

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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