Slow Business

Steps to slow business

I used to hustle. I used to wear the badge of ‘busy’ with pride. I used to do all nighters.

But in my 10 years plus of running my own business there is one thing I’ve really learnt. That’s not for me.

There is this quote floating around that says:

“Entrepreneurs are willing to work 80 hours a week to avoid working 40 hours a week”
Lori Greiner

And it’s true in the beginning. But then you get old and burnt out and it’s not so much fun anymore and you entertain the idea of going back to those 40 hours just to give your brain a break.

And maybe that’s what you do.

Or there is the alternative, you make steps to slow down your business and make it more sustainable.

For me this didn’t become apparent until babies came into the picture. I would work stupid hours and say yes to pretty much everything even if it did mean sacrificing time with my Husband.

Once kids came along my priorities shifted and it became more about a slow, hustle free but financially sustainable business.

Here are the shifts that I made to slow down the hustle.

Put processes in place

I put processes in place and automated as much as I can. After all administration hours is not billable hours, so I focused on profitability and the one thing that was dragging me down was administration. I looked at onboarding, quoting and project management strategies into play. I also put processes around general communication – so things like responding to emails would happen once a day as opposed to being reactive every time a message hit my inbox.

Putting processes in place has helped me ease the amount of time I was spending in admin land.

Package it up

I found that I was spending a lot of time quoting and also project managing projects. I made some simple shifts to my offerings and simple created a package with most popular add ons. This made my quoting and pricing process so much easier.

Leverage your time

I initially started leveraging my time with hosting group workshops, but this evolved to online training programs. Having this in place helped free up my time and helped me make the shift from dollars for hours and allowed me to focus on coming purely from a place of service.

These three shifts helped me slow down my business and allowed me to move into a more sustainable business mindset.

What shifts can you make to your business now that will stop you working until all hours of the night? Leave a comment below.