Earlier this year one of my dogs had what we initially thought was an upset stomach that turned out to be an infected abscess, maybe from a spider bite. It was an exhausting time getting him back on track.
I basically ditched my business for a few weeks as I was spending a lot of time visiting him at the vet hospital trying to get him to eat (with mixed success – I was also cooking a smorgasbord of options to tempt him). When I wasn’t at the hospital I was just keeping my head above water with client work.
At one point when I had done basically no work at all on or in my business I started to question if I was really up for running a business at the moment. I’ve had a few big life events recently that have thrown me off course and it has been hard to get back on track.
And I’ll be honest, even for a few weeks after I wasn’t 100% sure. Yes, I could tell you how grateful I was to be able to step back and be at home and the hospital for the pup. How I couldn’t have done that if I still worked in corporate and that would all be true. But I don’t feel like that is the whole story. I don’t have a business where if I step away unplanned for a chunk of time that things still keep moving forward. I do start to get a bit stressed about money, especially when the vet bills are piling up.
Now the episode with the pup is over and I’ve slept more, I’m feeling much more positive about my business and my ability to make it work for me. Most of us have these periods of self-doubt when things are rough. But while you are going through it, your mind can take you all sorts of places.
I’ve some thoughts for managing these periods:
01. Get clear on what absolutely has to happen. For me I had a couple of retainer clients that were my top priority during this time. Work for them was pretty much the only thing that happened during those weeks. Even when I had a couple of extra hours, doing anything that required deep thinking wasn’t going to happen. I had very limited brain capacity in those few weeks.
02. Communicate with people early. Tell people what is going on so they can plan around you. Give clients and colleagues the opportunity to make contingency plans. People always appreciate being kept in the loop, even if they are disappointed that you can’t do something or are going to be late.
03. People are kind. If you’re clients are anything like mine, they are very understanding. Probably more so than I am with myself. I had to reschedule appointments, I missed mastermind calls and some things were later than I would’ve liked. And in all cases the person I felt like I’d let down was unwaveringly kind and understanding.
04. Be kind to yourself. Just because you aren’t able to go all in on your business at these times, doesn’t mean you aren’t a good business owner. It means life has happened and you need to be gentle with yourself.
05. Let go of things for now (not forever). I had a workshop I planned to run in June. It didn’t happen and I’m comfortable with that. I’ve rescheduled it to September and I’m feeling happy with that decision. Rather than feeling guilty about not committing to my business, I’ve felt relief. Which to me is often a good sign that I’ve made the right choice.
06. Don’t make any rash decisions! For me I know that these times are not the time for big decisions – that my brain is lying to me because its tired and stressed. This is a hard learnt lesson for me from previous decisions that were made in the heat of the moment. If you feel the pull to burn something to the ground, don’t! Journal how you are feeling and then put it aside to read later when the emergency is over and then decide if you still want to quit. Similarly it isn’t the time for launching that amazing new idea. I’ve seen people share online that in a crisis they pulled something together in 24 hours and it has made thousands in sales. Unless you have a big established audience I think these claims are generally garbage. And what sort of quality do you pull together in 24 hours?
07. Learn from the experience. I know this could happen again. I’ve got two senior dogs. In the not-too-distant future I’m going to have to say goodbye to them. Now things are back to normal I’m looking at what if anything I could have done differently and how I could set things up better for these events. Maybe there is nothing I could have done but I don’t think doing a review is ever a bad thing as long as you don’t use it just to criticise yourself. There are somethings that went ok. I managed to make sure I was still eating relatively well and going to bed early even if the sleep wasn’t fantastic.
Sometimes you just have to hold on and ride whatever wave is tossing you about. And remember you don’t need to do this all by yourself.