How To Actually Overcome Small Business Growing Pains

Listen To The Newsletter Here

Kris Gethin was exactly right…

My arms hurt like hell… 

And I had a hard time lifting them even to shoulder level. 

I recently started going back to the gym. 

When I was younger I was a gym rat but family and a thriving small business have made for some really good excuses over the years. 

Just recently I’ve had some minor health issues creep up…

Which made me decide it was time to rebuild Santa’s image... 

So two weeks ago I purchased a gym membership, downloaded my favorite app Kaged Fitness, and started following workouts by my favorite trainer Kris Gethin. 

Kris warned me in his training video that my arms were going to hurt after my first arm workout…

His warning was an understatement. 

In fact, thinking back I don’t think my arms have ever hurt that bad. 

My growing pains were extremely real and painful… 

And totally necessary.  

Because they are paving the way to a healthier and fitter me. 

Just like me in the gym, a lot of small businesses experience growing pains. 

Writing content, social media marketing, email marketing, wearing multiple hats, dealing with technology… 

Can leave you feeling like you are working all the time…

Which leads to burnout.  

I’ve noticed in my 5 years of copywriting and small business marketing…

That the best way to avoid burnout is to have a plan. 

Here’s a list of the 3 most common growing pains and a plan for how to deal with them. 

1. Problem: Every time you turn around there’s another fire to put out. 

Your business is running great! 

You have a lot of customers and things are starting to take off. 

It should be a great time except you are always wearing your fire chief hat and dousing flames.  

If you let them these fires can eat up your time quickly. (Kind of like the green goats eat up my time… and everything else in the house.)

Solution: Activate time blocking and goal setting.

Start with setting annual long-term goals for your business. 

Then break the annual goals down into a mid monthly goals.

And last break the monthly goal down into short-term daily goals. 

I like to take on 5 short-term goals a day. 

You need to set a time limit for each goal. 

If you haven’t accomplished it yet when the time is up just move on to your next goal and push what’s left of the previous one to the next day.  

When an emergency comes up you need to ask yourself, “Is  putting out this fire going to help you complete a long or short-term goal?” 

If the answer is yes then take care of it. 

If the answer is no then it can wait as a short-term goal for another day. 

2. Problem: You don’t have enough time to meet business demands. 

As your business starts to grow it can certainly feel like you don’t have enough time in the day to get everything done. 

Work can pile up quickly and as it does stress can lead to burnout.  

Before you know it what once was fun now feels like work. 

Solution: Pull back and review your long-term and short-term goals. 

Make sure that what your doing on a day-to-day basis aligns with those goals of where you want your business to go. 

If you're busy enough it might be time to hire a team. 

Make sure you hire people you trust to delegate your work out to. 

If you want to take some immediate stress off an Online Business Manager might be a good option for you. 

3. Problem: You don’t have any processes set up. 

If you feel like you are burned out…

And that you are a ping pong ball getting bounced from one thing to the next…

It could be because you don’t have any processes in place. 

Processes are a must-have for small businesses because they keep you on task and help you get unstuck. 

Solution: Start by writing down exactly how you do things step by step. 

Then step back and take a look at your list. 

You want to make sure it lines up with your goals. 

You are also looking for inefficiencies in your own steps that you can get rid of or automate. 

After you’ve done this you should have a pretty good idea of how you do what you do. 

This list can be passed down to people you hire as steps to get something done. 

Here’s The Real Deal

A thriving small business can lead to you wearing too many hats, spending too much time at work, and feeling burned out. 

If you let this go on too long your small business can start to feel like the one thing as entrepreneurs we all try to avoid…

Feeling like you are actually at work. 

To make sure this doesn’t happen you need to list out your goals, activate time blocking, and write your processes down. 

If this doesn’t relieve the stress… 

Then it might be time to think about hiring a really good team. 

A team that can take care of putting out fires for you. 

Speaking about fire I better go. 

I just got a call from the gym…

And I guess the green goats are down in the parking lot because they think the fainting goat needs to start working out.

When they were told they couldn’t get in because they didn’t have a membership they decided to have the fainting goat run around the parking lot…

And they keep lighting a fire underneath him to get him to run faster. 

I better go stop them before they catch that poor fainting goat on fire. 

Remember if you feel like you're on fire with your business it’s probably time to do something about that.  

Until Next Time,

Bobbie Lee (The Green Goat Copywriter)