Smart Women Entrepreneurs, Solids, and Fluids

As you start the New Year and a new decade, it’s a good time to give your business success skills a quick check up. Do you have what it takes to get you where you want to go?

As you review your tools and strategies, I’d like to suggest an area that many savvy business women overlookand this error of omission costs them big. One of the most crucial skills for any thriving solopreneur or professional is the ability to take excellent care of herself. After all, aren’t you the most important asset your business possesses? I know what you may be thinking. Many of us entrepreneurs have so much on our plates that it’s impossible to get to it all, and often, self care orme-time is one of the first things to go. It’s not essential. It may feel self indulgent or you think it’s rather a luxury. You tell yourself you can get to it later.

Not true.

Here’s what THRIVING business owners know (and many of us learned it the hard way). The way you care for yourself counts and it counts big. You can’t show up powerfully in your business or your life unless you are showing up powerfully for yourself. Taking care of YOU is not a luxury, it’s an essential part of a successful business plan. Successful business owners spend time and energy on themselves. They prioritize their health. They manage their stress. They take time offreal time off. They play and sleep and make efforts to eat well. And it has an impactnot just on how they feel, but on how they work in their businesses.

The cost of not making and taking time for yourself:
Self care isn’t always easy. In fact, sometimes, carving out the space, time, and energy you need is really quite an art, but learning to do so is well worth the investment. When we don’t take good care of ourselves:

We have less energy
We are more distracted and less focused
Our stress level is higher
Sleep can be impaired
We may feel deprived, irritable, more easily frustrated, or impatient
We are less creative
Our health isn’t as good
We tend to turn tovices to fill in the gaps that we aren’t filling with good stuff. Stress eating, smoking, drinking too much, wasting time surfing the internetthese are a few things that tend to show up big, waste more time and energy, distract us, and immerse us in a vicious cycle of decreased productivity and reduced happiness.

We’re simply not at our best.

When we aren’t at our best, neither is our business.
How can we possibly play our best game under these circumstances? The answer, of course, is that we can’t. When we are stressed, overwhelmed, or not getting what we need, we tend to feel like we are playing catch up. It’s the feeling of running along behind your life and your business instead of the one of sitting securely in the driver’s seat. We tend to feel deprivedshort on time, short on energy, even short on options. That is NOT the place from which one plays powerfully and big.

Stressed-out entrepreneurs risk thinking too small and making decisions from a place of limitation. Overwhelm is not an expansive place.
When we are not taking good care of ourselves, we don’t feel at our best. We don’t shine. Guess whatpeople notice.

When we are stressed or overwhelmed or feeling less than 100 percent, we tend to be reactive, not proactive. This can drastically affect the choices we make in our business.

Finally, when we don’t feel we cantake the time, it’s next to impossible to stop, take a calm step back, and get the perspective orbig picture view that is so vital to creating a thriving business (and life).

What’s a busy business owner to do?

If you recognize yourself, you are not alone. Falling off the self care wagon is one of the most common pitfalls for high-achieving, smart professional women. Knowing that this is a problem for you is the first powerful course-correcting move. It’s the only way that you can start to value and work on prioritizing the self care you really need.

##
Are you a smart, busy woman struggling with emotional eating, overeating,and balancing work and life? Claim your free psychologist-designed audio series: “5 simple steps to move beyond overwhelm with food and life” at http://TooMuchOnHerPlate.com. Melissa McCreery, PhD, ACC, is a Psychologist, ICF Certified Life Coach,and emotional eating coach who specializes in providing smart resources to busy women struggling with food, weight and overwhelm.
Smart Women Entrepreneurs, Solids, and Fluids19847Smart Women Entrepreneurs, Solids, and FluidsA few weeks ago, our family took a trip to the California Science Center for theirfamily lab day. It was a fun and educational experience. There was one experiment that had to do with the difference between solids and fluids, and it got me thinking about Smart Women entrepreneurs and their businesses. Does your business need to be solid or fluid? Actually, both.

When you first make the decision to become a business owner, you as an entrepreneur are veryfluid. After all, you’re probably a solo-entrepreneur trying to do everything yourself! There aren’t any rules about how to do anything. The goal is to get some clients and earn an incomeright? After some time passes, you begin to realize that thisfluid aspect of your business is not working. You aresurviving and you want to bethriving.

It’s time to take a look at where you are in your business now and make a plan for where you want to be in the future. In other words, it’s time for asolid foundation to be put in place. Your business needs to have a clear plan of action on what you want to accomplish moving forward and how you will accomplish the plan. You will want to gain clarity around how to best market your products and services, gain visibility and produce profit so that your business canthrive.

Here are a few quick examples ofsolid andfluid in your business:

Solid I was working with a smart woman just a few weeks ago who has a great concept for her business. The business is growing but at a much slower pace than she’d like. When I asked her what her action plan was for 2010, she didn’t really have a clear idea. Her reply was something like,make money. This was not asolid answer. We spent some focused time exploring her vision for the business this year. We then created a plan around her products and services, her marketing strategy and I also shared some time management solutions to make sure she’s getting theright things done to stay on course.

Fluid You need to be open to new ideas and ready to course-correct when necessary. Just yesterday, I was working with a smart woman who’s experiencing a lot of frustration around her marketing efforts with little return in terms of new clients. As we explored her business, she soon realized that she had overlooked 2 other streams of income that could generate profits right now in her business with much less effort while she continues to grow this new area of interest.

Working with a coach or mentor can be especially helpful. It provides a grounding process for the woman entrepreneur. It’s essential that you take the time periodically to sit down and review thesolid andfluid aspect of your business. Is your action plansolid for the long-term? Does it have a clear plan of action to gain new clients and produce profit? Do you need to make some changes in your plan? Is it time to course-correct? Many times, we put a plan into action only to find out that we missed a very important piece of information. This is when your thinking needs to becomefluid or flexible with new ideas.

I walked away from the science center that day with more than I expected. Giving yourself permission to get out of your daily routine can open a whole new way of thinking about your life and your business. I invite you to take a look at thesolid andfluid parts of your business. It will make a big difference in how it unfolds this year.

Anything is possible. Everything is waiting for you.

*****

2010 Joy Chudacoff

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Joy Chudacoff, ICF, PCC, is the founder of Smart Women Smart Solutions(tm), a Professional Certified Coach to 1000′s of women, Motivational Speaker, and Entrepreneur. She publishes a weekly buzz generating ezine, Reflections On Life and Business for Women Entrepreneurs. If you’re ready take your coaching business to the next level, get your FREE Tips, FREE Report, FREE MP3 and learn about my exciting new program for coaches and consultants at http://www.SmartWomenSmartSolutionsCoaching.com.