When you start out in business you dream and wish for a diary full of clients, you want them coming out of your ears and then all of sudden, through hard work and determination you start to see your wishes come true!

Whoopeeeeeeee, I’m super busy with client work and THIS IS ACE!

You work hard, your client work comes first, obvs.

Your bank account starts to change shape and everything feels GOOD!

You’ve nailed it.

Yeah, you do still worry about whether it’s sustainable.  “Was it just a fluke?” “Will the rug be pulled from under me?” “Can I keep this up?” BUT with your head down, plowing away you only find evidence that you can bring more client’s in.

It’s working 😍

That is until you feel like is doesn’t work anymore 😱

Jeez, how guilty do you feel admitting that?!  All those clients you dreamed of have arrived and you are suddenly feeling like it’s all a little too much.  It feels like you’ve created yourself a (dah dah dah ~ dramatic music) a JOB and you’re giving your all and everything to everyone else and there’s nothing left for you and your business 🙈

Can we start off with – this is ridiculously common.  So many people get to the stage in their business where they could only dream of being in the not so distant past.

I get it;

✔️ You LOVE your business

✔️ As a whole you have ACE clients

✔️ The income is starting to roll

✔️ Your diary is BUSY

BUT still you’re not happy, it doesn’t feel quite right, you are getting tired (at times dare you even think it, a little resentful) and you worry that in order to continue to grow your business you are going to have to create a clone.

You daren’t whinge about your #firstworldproblems because plenty of people would give their right arm to be in your position.

BUT the work is meaning that all the things that you wanted to do in your business are sitting on the shelf, your ideas that you were desperate to implement are gathering dust and your zing is waning.

Let’s look at what this is actually costing you.

➡️ TIME – you are using up all of your available time on other people’s businesses and you’re neglecting your own business.  It might be that your social media slides a little bit (but surely that’s ok because you’re not looking to attract clients right now) and you might not send your newsletter or blog.

➡️ ATTENTION – when you don’t have time to give your business attention and you stop taking steps to stay in touch with your crowd and continue to develop and evolve then the best case scenario is that you stagnant.  It won’t be immediate.  You’ve got the work that you need right now but you need to make sure you’re still attracting new people to your business so that your business has longevity and sustainability.  You often see the impact of you’re inability to give your business attention 4-6 months later.

➡️ CREATIVITY – I know that when I spent a lot of time working in other people’s businesses I was kinda using up all of my bobby dazzler ideas on their work.  That’s what I was paid to do.  I still provide a massive amount of creative input into other people’s businesses but I don’t let my well go dry anymore

➡️ FRUSTRATION – you start to become increasingly frustrated that your work, for your business, seems to always go to the bottom of the list – you’ll get round to it – some day 🙄

NOT giving your business attention is costing you money.  Wow, in black and white that one is quite impactful.  BUT, immediately your head says that this work on the books is paying the bills, there’s no way you can turn your back on it and there’s no way you can focus on building your empire instead.  Yeah, that’s short sighted and that’s a mindset shift that you need to make.

Ridiculously HUGE gigantic ones.

Working on your business and giving your business the time, effort, energy and attention it deserves will mean that you can continue to evolve and grow your business.

You can start to consider leveraging your time and the ways that you can include products (programmes, printables, downloadables, masterclasses etc) into your business that aren’t based on time for money.  You can look at the opportunity and potential to become more profitable.  If you keep doing what you’re doing right now in your business then what will happen is you place a ceiling on your income.  You only have so much time you can sell.  You will end up burning out as you continue to chase your tail for more and more client work.

You get the opportunity to continue to develop relationships with your audience so that you are consistently bringing new people into your crowd, letting people know more about your work and securing your work into the future.  If you are not able to give your business attention then you end up starting from scratch every time you need to bring new client work in.

You feel more creative.  Having spaciousness in your business allows you to be MUCH more creative.  It gives you time to feed and unleash your creativity.

It allows you to be more strategic.  If you move away from the coal face then you can look at the things that are and are not working in your business.  It allows you to look at your income streams and their profitability.  It allows you to see where you have further opportunities to develop and grow.

REFRAME – firstly you need to reframe that mindset.  Right now you’re resisting doing this stuff in your business because you are worried that you’ll not make as much money as you could.  This is a lack mindset.  We need to shift this up, we need to move into an abundance mindset.  You have now proved to yourself that you can get clients and that you can fill your books.  It’s time to give a little nod of gratitude to all your wonderful clients and the work you’ve put in in order to get here – you rock! BUT you know that you can start to calculate your income now and you can give yourself a little more space.

DIARY – take control of your diary.  As you’re booking people in for 1-2-1 don’t just be realistic with the time it’ll take but give yourself a little wiggle room.  Start to cross out (as if it were a client appointment) time to work on your business.  You gotta be strict here, it’s got to become a non-negogitable.  For some of my gorgeous Rockstars that’s a week or 2 of client work followed by a week of purely working on their business, for some it’s a day every week.  If you’re just starting out you could say that the first hour each day is about working on your business and see how that feels.  There’ll be a perfect solution for you, that feels good – you just gotta find it.

BOUNDARIES – obvs clients are super important and for lots of you you will say that your clients come first.  My clients come first – but not at any cost.  People are usually super respectful of your boundaries if you set them and stick to them.  Yeah, urgent stuff will come in when you should be working on your business and you can allocate some time to that if you need to BUT that isn’t about throwing the towel in and deciding it’s no good, you won’t ever be able to achieve a balance.  Communicate with your clients about WHEN you will be working on their stuff or when the next available appointment is and they will then be able to have realistic expectations as to when you can get back to them and deal with their problem/query/help them or provide your support.

USE THE TIME – it’s time to stop feeling guilty about working ON your business rather than in your business.  This time shouldn’t be riddled in bad vibes, embrace it, love it, enjoy it and make sure you make magic happen.

There’s a couple of other little bits that will help you on this one if you need additional support….

I hope you’ve found this article SUPER useful, don’t be shy to share 😉AND get involved in the comments/social conversation on this one.