I recently took a poll on my instagram, and more than 90% of you that follow me there experience burnout in your business. I definitely have periods in my business when I’m feeling burnt out. For me it looks like neglecting my social media and email list, working way too long and late, doing a lot of time wasting activities like checking email 100 times a day. Which nobody needs to be doing. When what I’m really doing is procrastinating on other tasks that I should be doing.
So today I want to talk about how to avoid burnout in your business. So both you and your business are as healthy as possible. We’re going to work on planning ahead, staying healthy, asking for help, and your mindset.
Planning Ahead
First is planning ahead. And what really helps me with this most of all is having a weekly schedule that keeps me consistent and efficient and allows me to work ahead.
Here’s a great example. I have time in my schedule each week to work on marketing for my brand. I spend a few hours at the same time every week scheduling my social media posts. It’s something that’s important for my business, so I have made it a habit. Each week I work a bit ahead. So maybe this week I will schedule social media posts for the next 10 days. The week after that I get a little farther ahead, etc. Then if I need to take a week off or have something else come up I am prepared and not either ghosting my audience or getting no sleep just so I can schedule my social media posts for that week.
And I do that with all of my tasks. Creating new products, inventory, even this podcast! Mondays at 10 AM you better but I’m in my chair recording away.
Planning ahead does something else that’s really important for you too. It lets you plan free time. Ok ok. You can insert your eye roll here because it wasn’t that long ago that I was working full time with a new baby and trying to get my side hustle off the ground.
But take it from me. You CAN get everything done that you need to get done in less time when you are focusing on what’s important and only what’s important. You can work less, have more free time, and still explode your Etsy business. So make sure you have some free time on that schedule too. You’ll be much more likely to avoid that burn out.
Staying Healthy
The second thing that I want to talk about with you today is staying healthy. This is a common suggestion for burn out no matter what industry you’re in. no matter what your job is no matter what you’re doing. But there’s a reason for that. Because keeping your body healthy is so important.
And there are a few things specifically that I want you to think about in order to help you stay in the best health that you can.
The first is making sure that you get enough sleep. We talked about creating a schedule and that is something that can really help you make sure that you’re getting plenty of sleep each night. I know that this is something that I have struggled with in the past. When I didn’t have enough help in my business it was very very common for me to stay up till midnight or 1 in the morning to get all my orders done and out there. We’re going to be talking about outsourcing a little later on in the next episode. So if you find that this is you right now then you definitely want to keep listening because I’ll be talking about that in just a minute.
Something else that we need to make sure that we talk about when we are talking about staying healthy to avoid burnout is your eating habits and activity levels.
My previous job was as a physical therapist so I have a lot of experience in how important taking care of your body is for your mental well-being. Even if you have time to take just a 10-minute walk as a break in the middle of your work day you’re going to feel more energized and better after you’re done with that.
And I also know that it is super easy to grab some fast food or live off coffee alone when you are really busy and running behind and feel like you need to just keep working. But when you make time for meals that all that fuel your body and healthy snacks you are going to be a lot better during your working hours. So when you’re making that schedule for yourself make sure to include time for keeping your body healthy.
Outsourcing
Let’s talk about outsourcing next if you are finding that you are prioritizing really well but you are still having difficulties getting everything into your schedule getting all of your non-negotiables done then it may be time for you to Outsource.
Most of us don’t outsource early enough in our businesses and this one hundred percent can lead to a place of burnout. So I really encourage you to have a list of everything that you do in your business and what you want to Outsource next. This can be making products or packaging and shipping. It can also be a virtual assistant that you are outsourcing your customer service and email to. There’s a lot of different ways that you can outsource to someone online or locally and even if you don’t feel like you’re ready yet I want you to know what you are going to be Outsourcing next so you don’t get to the point where you waited too long
Mindset
The last thing I want to talk to you about today is your mindset and there’s a few ways that you can work on this in order to help you avoid burnout in your business.
The first thing is that you do not need to be the one to do every single little thing in your business. The belief that there are other people out there who can do things just as good if not better than you is something that’s really important if you want to continue to scale and to grow your handmade business because the reality is that you cannot always do everything in your business 100% of the time.
The next mindset issue that I see really holding a lot of sellers back and leading to a lot of burnout is that you believe that in order to hit your goals you have to work 24/7. when the reality is that you can work less, prioritize the big needle movers in your business, and make more revenue then if you work all day every day but aren’t stopping to assess what’s working for you and what’s not when it comes to business.
So if you’re someone out there believing that you need to hustle 24/7 in order to see results then this is a belief that I really want you to challenge.
If you need some help with that, I want you to sign up for my free masterclass here. It’s going to walk you through some of the biggest myths and time wasters that I see from etsy sellers every single day so you can prioritize better and save yourself a ton of time.
-Sarah
