4 Tips to Help with Business Overwhelm

You Are Enough.

Perhaps you feel the same way I do. As I scroll through social media, I am bombarded with images and sayings encouraging us to ‘work harder’, ‘build your dream’, ‘work now, sleep when you’re dead’, ‘are you doing enough to build your brand?’ Do the humdrum of words and sayings sound familiar? Arghhhh!

Honestly, it really starts to make me feel stressed, as though I’m not doing enough or working hard enough but when I look back on what I’ve built and how I’ve done it, I am able to remind myself and to see what I’ve built and how far I’ve truly come since I started my own business journey. I built my business to fit in with my own life and my life choices. I built it at my own pace and the way I wanted to. So I‘m here to tell you, that you can do the same thing, if that’s what you truly want.

First Step is Being Kinder to Yourself.

Today, I’m 35, married to the most amazing and supportive husband I always wanted, and we have 2 beautiful little girls. I have built the most amazing business of my dreams, making multiple 6 figures, improving on sales every year without having to actually work with clients myself. I’ve also been able to supply many jobs to other women who wanted to support their own families and have been a mentor for others who wanted to start their own business. And I did it all my way.

As a teenager, I had to fight my way through growing up in a broken home where money was ALWAYS tight. I never really learnt how to build relationships as I was always moving houses almost every year, which led to me going to 7 different primary schools and 2 high schools.  

I left school still not knowing how to read or write 100% as my dyslexia wasn’t a focus for my teachers, and I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. All I did know, was that I wanted to do something. I wanted to earn my own money and to be able to support my family when I had one.

Thankfully, I was and am a determined young woman, and knew I wanted something different for my life. This led me to start on the path of nails and later, beauty therapy.

Here I am, as I mentioned, 35 years old and living the life that I set out to do those 15 years ago, but still with everything I have worked for and achieved, I too, can still get caught up in the illusion and veil that is social media. When I go onto Facebook or Instagram, I am bombarded with images and quotes like, ‘hustle’, ‘you have to work it to earn it’, ‘build a better brand’, ‘if you’re not working hard, you’re not doing the best you can.’

And I’ve had enough!! Enough is enough I say! This fear of missing out (or FOMO as I think the kids call it), is overwhelming at the best of times, and seeing images of the perfect everything on these platforms can even leave people like me, who seem to have it all together, feeling a little frazzled! LOL

I’m here to say to myself and to YOU that we are enough. You are enough. A reminder to take it easy on ourselves. We are doing the best we can in the position we are in. I don’t know about you, but some days I get exhausted building my business every single day. It’s draining on my mind, my relationships with friends or family, and even my kids some days when I have too much on my plate. Over the years I have gotten better at organising myself, having a plan and really having to learn how to switch off. My life now is a lot easier than it was 6 years ago thanks to the work I put in at the start, but at times it still gets to me. And if it’s getting to me, then I know it’s must be getting to others.

My advice to you is this, if you dream of owning your own business, working for yourself and building something bigger than yourself then take this advice to heart. From a woman who turned a one woman show into a full on beauty salon with staff and able to run the whole thing from my phone at home.

Focus on one thing at a time.

1. Break your goals down, focus on your smaller steps not the whole picture.

It will help you to feel less overwhelmed. For example, I knew I needed more staff to grow my business, so I set about reducing my expenses so I could bring on a full time staff member. I focused on reducing my rent by half, and in doing so was able to hire my first full time staff member which then led me to be able to take time off in the salon.  

2. Realising when enough is enough, and you just need to rest.

With all my responsibilities my head can get pretty messy. Knowing how to turn off and deal with an issue the next day or week is a skill I had to learn. And still work on, even today.

3. Learning from trying something new and tweaking it to work even better next time.

You don’t need to start from scratch every single time. Not having or trying to reinvent the wheel has been a great business skill for me. If something has worked once, I will tweak it and do the same thing over and over again, whilst improving on results.

4. Systems in your business will make everything easier, and run smoothly.

When you’re ready, you will have your own systems in place to bring others on to help with the work load. Systems were something I had never heard or even thought about until my husband asked me to start writing everything I did down. This helped for a number of reasons: 1. To help me see where my time was being spent and 2. So I would have an instruction manual for my new staff that I was hoping to hire. This process alone has really helped to speed up the time spent doing services and tasks within my business.

Building a business doesn’t have to suck the life out of you. (This was my main goal all along). I was beginning to feel that I couldn’t even go on Facebook without feeling like I wasn’t doing enough, completely suppressed and overwhelmed that I wasn’t enough, or even that my business wasn’t enough. I literally had to pull my head out of my phone and give myself a pep talk that I was and am enough. And you Beauty Boss, are enough too. Baby steps are good enough to get me and you, where we want to go. Moving forward, no matter what pace, is better than standing still and staying in overwhelm.

With the size of my salon, looking for staff is a key component of my business, and this week I have been conducting interviews.

My first interview was with a woman who was a little older than myself. She had bought a beauty business but didn’t get it off the ground within the first year, so she gave up. She asked how I ran my business and juggled life with children. She commented that I must be really good at handling it all, to which my response was to smile and say, “No, but I did all the hard work years ago. Now it’s just about maintaining it and making it work for me.” You see, to her, I run my business differently to any other salon she had worked in, and she was surprised to hear I had small children and was still able to manage a salon. On the surface, it could look to anyone as though I should be REALLY busy and perhaps even overwhelmed with it all.

She was very kind with her praise of me and what I had built, but it made me feel a little sad that she had given up so easily with her own dreams. During her own struggles with business, feeling overwhelmed and that she had no one to turn too for advice on how to build her own business. I realised, she needed me back then. I could relate to her feelings and her experience of building her business, but I was able to push through, and continue to build my dream.

Her experience also told me that not everyone will succeed in their dreams if they don’t have a solid network of people to ask questions and bounce ideas off. It’s all exciting and fun at the start, but building a business takes time and understanding that it won’t happen overnight but we must keep going if it’s something we truly want to have for ourselves.

Simply chatting to her and listening to her story, has reignited the fire in my belly once more to share my story with women just like you. Women that don’t want a 9 to 5 job working for someone else. Women that want flexibility to be able to live their life. Women like you, that want to bring change into this industry that we love so much.

I can help you to do the same thing that I did if you’re not afraid of putting in the work now so it can pay off for you later. Just by sharing my story and showing you how I have built my systems over the years. These 4 steps aren’t hard or out of your reach.

If I can do it, then so can you.  

Now I want you to go and start to brainstorm what your goals are for the next 5 years in business and in life. What do you really want from life? Work backwards from there. And remember those small steps Beauty Boss.

Hugs,

Jessica xo