How to Overcome Burnout As A Small Business Owner
Small business owners often work very hard to meet pressing deadlines and provide the highest possible customer satisfaction. Since they have little or no time to relax and unwind, small business ownership frequently results in a decline of mental and physical well being.
Here are six ways to identify that you are experiencing burnout:
- Difficult work & personal relations – When your employees fall short of expectations, small business owners sometimes do not take responsibility for poor business results and easily get irritated by any of their employees’ actions. This can only harm your business, as it unnecessarily increases your employees’ stress which will negatively impact their work performance.
- Health challenges – Your physical and mental health declines as you gain weight, feel depressed, experience back pain, or feel sick.
- Cognitive difficulties – Your level of your brain functioning declines as you have difficulty with your memory, focus, and emotional control.
- Anxiety & panic attacks – You often have a high level of stress and anxiety such that you always feel like you are on overdrive. Sometimes this may seem like a life threatening situation as you may feel shortness of breath or pain in the chest.
- Fatigue – Regardless of how many hours that you sleep, you always feel completely exhausted. You will generally feel sleepy even after drinking numerous cups of coffee.
- Feeling Overwhelmed – You may be feeling great about yourself previously, but now everything seems like it is too much to handle such that you want to avoid the overall situation.
Other issues include inability to leave work, feeling less motivated by your work, increased negativity, and lacking satisfaction in almost everything you do. Eventually, you stop taking care of yourself as you used to, which may contribute to poor health and low energy.
Here is what you should do to mitigate the impact of burnout
- Plan Effectively – Set goals, develop an effective strategy, and properly prepare to manage each task. Know the level of your client expectations as well as your company’s resources to accomplish those tasks.
- Outsource – Outsource time-consuming tasks that are necessary to your business, but are outside of your core area of expertise to reduce burnout. For example, outsourcing digital marketing for your business will allow you to more proficiently increase the visibility of your business, and focus on providing the highest level of service for your customers. A reputable digital marketing consulting company will prove to be an exceptional investment if they understand the full dynamics of your business effectively, which improves how they can tailor marketing initiatives to the unique needs of your business.
- Take Breaks – Do not overwork yourself for a long time regardless of how pressing your deadlines are. Work within your limits and take days off as needed to restore your energy to make effective business decisions.
- Talk It Over – Talking about issues in your business with others builds trust with those who are close to you and allows you to get them off your head. Talk to someone about your challenges and how you envision correcting them. Discussing your business issues with a trusted business consultant can result overcoming burnout in the most focused, effective, and timely manner. This should be a strong consideration because your burnout is probably related to an issue that is impacting results in your business. Even if you do not get direct help or support, sharing takes the pressure off your head and heart.
- Change Your Routine – Alter your routine to create variation as you will get bored doing the same activities. You could travel a different route to your business, change the time in which you take breaks, or change the position of your desk, and the color of your office. Change often stimulates your mind and makes you more productive.
- Track And Evaluate Your Work – Keep a diary of your emotional distress or fatigue to take action to eliminate stressors. When you are stressed, take note of the time, the people around you, and what you were doing at the time.
- Eat well – While it may sound basic, eating three square meals of healthy vegetables, fruit, and lean protein can combat burnout effectively. You should minimizing caffeine and sugar to reduce anxiety.
- Massage – While it may be challenging to take time from your day to get a massage, it will help you calming your worn out nervous system.
- Automate – You should take a look at all of your actions to evaluate the feasibility of automating some of your routine activities. Consider marketing automation to create automated lead nurturing campaigns and to streamline the process of determining who are the best leads to contact.
To deal with burnout as a small business owner, you must first recognize its existence, and identify what is causes it. Tackling the causes rather than dealing with the consequences will increase your likelihood of business success.
Need help in overcoming burnout as a small business owner? Let highly experienced consultants advise you in the most effective manner in how you can take your business to the next level! Schedule a free business consultation today to learn how to improve the differentiation of your business from your competitors today by calling us at 617-651-1457 or emailing us at hello@primemarketingexperts.com!