Simplify Your Business Processes to Reduce Burnout
Image Credit: Death to Stock
After being inundated by articles about burnout, lack of time for work-life balance and self-care, especially during the pandemic, I’ve come to realize the struggles I face as a small business owner are very common. I feel normal in my struggle to constantly be achieving business-related milestones that are often arbitrary and, as such, never-ending. But I’m also bummed out that we’re all suffering from burnout while trying to juggle the needs of running a healthy small business, household and family before finally caring for ourselves. Add a pandemic and self-care can feel completely out of reach. To top it all off, it seems like we’ve been conditioned to ignore any feelings of accomplishment and fulfillment in what we have achieved so we continue to forge ahead at the expense of our own physical and mental wellness.
As small business owners, achieving work-life balance can be a challenge when we’re in a neverending race with not only our competitors, but also ourselves. It is difficult to find time to rest, and when we do, it isn't always restorative. So what can we do to try to create more time in our schedules to nurture our mental and physical well-being and avoid burnout?
It’s time to simplify.
As a business owner, you have to wear many hats to ensure your current clients are satisfied with your product and service delivery, your finances are in order, internal processes are well-managed, all while ensuring you have new business leads coming in from your marketing channels. There is a lot of noise out there on process methods and tools (software and social platforms) you should use to run your business efficiently and effectively. While it is good to try different tools and methods when you’re just getting started, I have found that it is usually best to keep the tools you use to a minimum and your internal processes as streamlined as possible to protect your time since time is your most valuable asset as a business owner. Here are some ways you can simplify your business processes to generate some more time for that much-needed self-care routine.
Conduct a Process Audit
Conducting a process audit is beneficial in allowing you to see where you may be wasting time or energy in your various processes. Is there anything you can automate? Can you reduce the subscriptions or tools you’re using to save some money? Should you increase your prices so you don’t have to take on as many clients and can focus on providing higher quality services to the clients you do work with? Is your sales process both efficient and effective? It’s very difficult to provide quality products or services if you’re stretched too thin and if there are too many time-sucking tasks in your processes.
Use What You Have
When funds are tight, especially when you’re just starting out, it is best to use the tools you already have at your disposal. Tools like Google Workspace offer so many uses for product and service delivery, and can help with internal organization and documentation. They’re also super easy to use because they’re designed like the Microsoft products we’ve been using since the 90s, so they’re quick and easy to integrate into your processes.
New Tools Require Effectiveness AND Ease of Use
If you are looking to purchase new tools, it is always good to consider how they will impact your current processes. I typically avoid using the big-name, expensive, flashy software applications, as they often have features I’ll never use, increase my overhead significantly and have complex interfaces that have a steep learning curve that can be frustrating to use in my day-to-day processes. All of this ends up wasting my time, money and energy simultaneously. I opt for tools that are intuitive, easy and even fun to use to make managing my business processes as pain-free and time-saving as possible.
Focus On Your Target Market
Figuring out where your target market spends most of their time can allow you to focus your marketing efforts more efficiently. Instead of blasting out content on five social media platforms, narrow down where you’ve gotten most of your leads and interactions with your past clients. This will allow you to focus your content creation on 1-3 platforms, allowing you to save time without significantly impacting the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
Marketing Quality Over Quantity
When creating content for your various marketing channels, it is best to create high-quality content less frequently than post watered-down content more frequently. Don’t be bullied into feeling like you have to post daily. Ideally, you post at a regular interval, but I don’t even follow my own advice there. I’d rather let an idea for a high-quality piece of content be fully formed before I release it into the world. No one should be sacrificing their health just to push content super frequently for the sake of higher engagement rates. Posting low-quality content too frequently is distracting and can actually have a negative impact on a brand’s image.
When In Doubt, Outsource
We’re not good at everything and we can’t do everything all the time. I’m a creative at heart and have never been great with numbers, so it’s a no-brainer to outsource my annual tax filing to an accountant. It’s a necessary overhead expense to run my business successfully and saves me time and a lot of stress, so is absolutely worth the price tag. The same goes for any business-related task that could be done better by a professional.
