Jade Boyd: I recently read the study that said that as many as one in three entrepreneurs struggle with depression and burnout, and 95 percent of entrepreneurs are unsure of how to achieve a healthy work life balance. And here’s why this is so important, even though it’s not super surprising, right? When we don’t manage and address stress in our life, it will inevitably lead to burnout.

You can’t sweep your stress under the rug. And hope it goes away as nice as that might be, you do have to learn how to manage your stress levels if you want to build a sustainable business, because it doesn’t go away unless you learn how to manage it and deal with it. And in a recent podcast episode, the four business lessons I’ve learned the hard way, I mentioned that I recently noticed how much of an impact stress has on my business, and over the past six months, I’ve been focusing on reducing stress triggers and learning how to process unavoidable stress, and today I’m going to deep dive into the things that I found to be helpful in dealing with stress as a business owner, in hopes that you’ll be able to pick up a strategy or two and declutter some of the stress in your own life and business as well.

So I’m just going to dive right in and share some of the ways that I’ve found it helpful in my own business to cope with and manage and eliminate stress and some of the strategies that I found to be the most helpful and some that I’ve tried that might not have been as helpful.

So the number one strategy that I recommend for business owners who are stressed is to process your business stress in community. An example of this last year, I launched my group coaching program for the first time, and this was a huge shift in my business. And I was putting way too much pressure on my first launch to be perfect.

And if I’m being honest, I was terrified that was going to flop. And another study I read showed that 54 percent of founders are very stressed about their businesses and fear of failure was the main stressor. And if you want to look at the research behind all the stats I’m going to give in this episode, they will all be linked in the show notes so you can check out the sources there.

So going back to this fear of failure, which I think is really, really common when it comes to the source of business owners stress. The thoughts that I was having were not productive during that launch or helpful in any way, and when I get into stress spirals like that, the only way for me to process that is to get outside perspective, like thinking about it and dealing with it in my own head never works for me. So during my lunch, I messaged two different business owners who know me really well. And I was completely honest with them about the thoughts I was having about myself and about my business. And those thoughts and beliefs were embarrassing and really vulnerable to admit to another human being, but getting their feedback and encouragement immediately helped me feel better about the situation.

Simply knowing that I wasn’t alone in this and that there were people who understood, again, who actually knew me who knew the real behind the scenes of what was going on in my business and what I was going through and who, despite all of that believed in me and were rooting for me, that made a huge difference in my stress levels and in my mindset and my belief that I could do this.

And ironically, that’s one of the reasons why I was launching a group coaching program in the first place, because this is definitely not the first time that I found doing business in community to be really helpful and really impactful in terms of eliminating stress and helping me manage it in my business, surrounding yourself with business owners who know you like really know you and your business is a lifelong benefit of any group coaching program or community that you join as an entrepreneur.

And I want to emphasize that being in community only helps if you’re putting in the effort to build real relationships, just being a member doesn’t cut it because you need to be able to reach out to those people. And again, be really honest about what’s happening in your business in order for this to work, but having even just a few core people, even if it’s two or three people who you can message in the hardest time. So you can be totally honest with. It’s been a game changer for me and my ability to process immunostress, and I know that it would be a game changer for you as well.

And this is something that’s really simple. You’ve probably heard it been said before, but sadly, the research shows that entrepreneurship is in fact really lonely. Like we say that, but it’s true. Most business owners don’t surround themselves with supportive community who know them well, who know their businesses well.

And one study showed that 81 percent of founders hide their stress from others. Like not only are we not intentional about building community, we are intentional about. isolating ourselves, which just contributes to the problem. And I get it, like I said, admitting you’re struggling and showing people the real behind the scenes in your business can be really embarrassing and vulnerable, or even hard to admit, but hiding it doesn’t help either.

So along these same lines, having a business coach in my back pocket has also been a game changer for this very same reason. Having somebody who I trust, who knows me, who coaches me as an individual, who knows my business, knows my tendency for certain struggles and things that I use to hold myself back.

All of those things help me avoid stress in my business because I know I can turn to somebody when spiraling in my own thoughts and anxiety Isn’t getting me anywhere and that has been the number one thing that has kind of broken that stress cycle for me Getting an outside opinion and leaning on other people to kind of like shove me in the right direction

Okay. The second strategy I’ve found to be really helpful in eliminating stress in my business is recurring revenue, and this is completely opposite and more business focused than the first strategy. But I also think that a lot of business stress is related to finances, especially for service providers who have busy seasons and slow seasons.

And in my own business, creating recurring revenue streams has been a game changer that saved me from a lot of stress and anxiety related to finances. It’s taken a lot of the pressure off of needing to be quote unquote on every single week in order to book my next client and cover my expenses and whether you offer a subscription or payment plans or retainer package, I would highly recommend building recurring revenue into your business.

If finances are stressing you out and if the need to book new clients every month. Is stressing you out because it can be a game changer to provide a lot of, sustainability, but also stability in general, in your business that can eliminate a lot of that pressure and stress that comes with it.

So in my own business, when I transitioned in coaching away from VIP days and one time projects as the only source of my income. Into the primary signature service in my business being a retainer coaching package that lasts for a few months at a time. And now 12 months at a time, it was a game changer for my stress levels.

I started paying myself a predictable wage every month, knowing how much money I would bring in months in advance, since I was booking clients who were on payment plans months in advance and having that base level income where I knew my bases were covered, and then income stacking on top of that was really, really transformational and eliminated a lot of stress from the get go for me.

And I’m not saying that you should only have recurring revenue streams, but having at least one predictable source of recurring revenue in your business may help to reduce a lot of your stress as a service provider.

My third strategy for reducing stress in my business will not be a surprise at all. It’s creating rinse and repeat systems that organize everything. So I know nothing is falling through the cracks and I can never say it enough, having all of my tasks and projects organized in ClickUp has saved me so much time and so much stress in my business, I really do never have to guess what I need to prioritize or worry if I missed a deadline or forgot about an important task, I organized my entire business into four categories, goals marketing clients and admin tasks. And I always prioritize them in my calendar and on my weekly and daily to do list in that order. And my ClickUp space also has rinse and repeat system set up for each area of my business. So I don’t have to stress about dropping the ball in any certain area or. Recreating the wheel every time I do a task that I do every single week, like creating a podcast episode. For example, there are systems in place and not all of them depend on me. And that has been extremely helpful as a business owner.

And oftentimes my clients will say that they finally feel like a quote unquote real business owner when they have a strategy and systems in place to run their business. Even if they’re not executing that system perfectly yet just having the system in the back end can reduce and eliminate so many stressors in your business.

Just from having it, it can make you show up as a different person in your business. So if you want to steal the exact ClickUp template and business system that I use to manage everything in my own life and business, You can check out the organize your business course, which walks you through my exact system.

And you get my click up template within that course, but I can’t say it enough. If you are just trying to keep everything in your head or even like jotting things down in a disorganized notebook for your business. That is a really stressful operating system to live on and you can do things just a little bit differently that will eliminate a lot of the, again, weekly and daily stress that comes with managing all the things in your business, especially if you’re a solopreneur.

The next strategy is a little bit. Out there. It’s kind of an outlier in this list of strategies, but I have found that having a dedicated office space has reduced a lot of stress for me as a business owner. And research has shown, I’ve mentioned this before in the podcast, that clutter affects women more than men.

And I think I’m particularly sensitive to clutter, which is why I originally became interested in minimalism. But after getting married in 2019, we started doing our home renovation projects like room by room in our house. And that has meant that I’ve probably temporarily worked from just about every room in our house at this point.

And my desk station has always been temporary, which has been particularly stressful for me, but there have been two brief periods where I’ve had a dedicated room or a nook that was really set up as an intentional office space. And those periods have been probably the most productive periods in my business. And it can be stressful to constantly be shifting from room to room and living the laptop life or trying to get into work mode from your couch every day. And it might seem like a luxury, especially if you have a small house like we do, but I’ve carved out my own little space and my home that is both inspiring and beautiful and functional and stepping into my office helps me leave the outside stress and mental to do list at the door and transition more seamlessly into work mode.

So it kind of eliminates that question of like, where am I going to work today? And not having to make that decision every single day saves me the mental energy. And I know that when I sit down, everything I need is going to be right there and set up in a way that’s actually conducive for me getting work done.

This year, I also invested in a monitor finally, I finally stopped working off my tiny laptop screen and I had a 15 inch MacBook. So it’s not a tiny screen, but having an actual monitor for my work has also been a game changer. Also for my posture, I don’t like crouch over my desk anymore. I finally got a standing desk and I’m going to create a blog post this spring at some point of my office setup and link some of the things that I found because it can be hard to create an aesthetically pleasing office that’s also like technologically sound when it comes from like, a setup perspective. And both are very important to me, obviously. So I’m planning to create a blog post that links all the things that I end up getting, which I really, really love. And when that’s live, we’ll make sure to link it in the show notes.

The next strategy is more of an obvious one, but again, something that may seem obvious, but very few business owners do taking regular vacation days and days off in your business. So apparently only 33 percent of entrepreneurs take real vacations and. I love what I do. So there have definitely been times where I felt that taking time off was unnecessary, or I didn’t even want to take time off cause I was enjoying that season in my business, but I’ve made it a priority in my own business to take at least one week off every single quarter. And I’ve never come back from a week off regretting that decision. I’ve actually been really surprised even in the weeks where we haven’t gone anywhere like taking a traditional vacation or trip.

I’ve just done a staycation, how re energizing and how much more motivated and inspired I’ve been when I returned to work. So recently we did a baby moon. We went to Kauai for a week and we just like chilled on the beach and it was very relaxing. That was more of like a vacation vacation. It was kind of a priority for us to get that done before baby comes.

And when I came back, we came back on a Friday. It was actually kind of a nightmare because we did a red eye Thursday night out of Hawaii and then spent all day Friday traveling and forced ourselves to stay awake until 7:30 PM on Friday before we like passed out. I slept for 14 hours and then. Saturday I woke up, but I had the weekend to kind of recover and reset before getting back to work the next Monday.

And that weekend was just so re energizing for me. And as you may know, I’m obsessed with planners and planning layouts, but I did a deep dive into like all of the inspiration that I’ve been gathering for planners and this is again, not a focus in my business right now, but something that is a passion project of mine and something that I genuinely just like really enjoy doing and started re imagining the way that I do my own planner layouts, because I love ClickUp and having a digital system is a non negotiable for me to keep everything organized, but I also love sitting down and writing out my to do list every day so I can create those time blocks. I’m like, okay, here’s everything I need to get done today how am I going to make that work in my schedule? I love putting pen to paper and journaling. And so I just felt really inspired. And like that creative itch in me came back after going on vacation and taking a break, just feeling like I had the headspace and yeah, just time to focus on something that I love doing that I mean, kind of is work related, but it really isn’t because at this point, I’m just experimenting with my own planning systems, not with any intention of creating the planner at this point, or with packaging what I’m doing into like paid YouTube tutorials or anything like that.

It’s just been fun. But I know that if I don’t take regular vacations and days off like that, my creativity definitely gets crushed and that like extra energy or outside the box thinking that gets re energized when I do take a break just doesn’t happen. It just gets depleted. And again, that’s another creatives, especially get burnout because they do really love what they do, but we all need a break and time away from work so that we can come back with the best energy and that creative energy for lack of a different word to call it that we all need to be inspired by what we’re doing and to keep enjoying what we’re doing. Because no matter how much you love what you do, you get sick of it after a while if you don’t take a break. And so planning regular vacation days and days off. Very important.

Okay, the next strategy is more of a I would say it’s more personal, personal stress related, but also applies to your business. I really don’t believe that you can separate your life and your business as if they’re two different things. Both of them highly influence the other. But the next strategy is getting professional counseling.

And I started counseling again about six months ago. And counseling is not something that I’ve ever liked doing. It’s very uncomfortable for me, but it has been really helpful for me in the past and difficult seasons and about six months ago, there wasn’t anything like major going on in my life that I wanted to go to counseling for, but I just had the nudge like this would be a healthy rhythm for me to be in the habit of doing and I’m prioritizing a monthly counseling session at this point for my mental health.

And even when I go into a session thinking I don’t have anything to talk about today, I walk away feeling more equipped and at peace and empowered to take care of my own mental health. And someone once told me that if you wait to go to counseling until you feel like you need to go to counseling, then you’ve waited too long.

It’s almost too late at that point when you absolutely need it, and from my personal experience, that’s 100 percent true. So this time, I was very proud of myself that I went before I felt like I absolutely needed to, and it’s still been extremely helpful.

And something I’ve personally been working on a lot through counseling is identifying the source of my stress. So for example, I brought up my launch last fall, which I was really worried about getting really anxious about and I wasn’t necessarily worried about the launch or making money or losing clients, I was more worried about who I would be if I failed. And that’s actually been a theme for me in a lot of different situations that have stressed me out. It wouldn’t have been helpful for me to spend a bunch of time trying to like foolproof my launch or get business coaching on that. Instead, I did a lot of reflection on where I get my identity, who God says I am, whose opinions matter to me, how I separate my self worth from my business success, all of those things.

And those exercises were a million times more valuable and more helpful. For dealing with that stress and anxiety, because I was actually getting to the source of it, right? Not just dealing with like the symptoms, but if it weren’t for counseling, it would have been really difficult for me to identify the root of that problem and to like have enough perspective, especially when you’re feeling stressed and anxious, it’s really hard to see things clearly when you’re looking. Like the cliche phrase when you’re trying to read the label from the inside of the bottle. And so going to counseling was really helpful and continues to be helpful in not only helping me have a space to talk about things that are stressful or things that are causing me anxiety, but finding real solutions and exercises that actually help me equip myself so that I’m able to deal with that now, but also in the future, instead of just like getting through it, right? Kind of like sweeping another rug. Time heals all wounds. And so it can be easy when you’re dealing with stress to like have a great day and then you forget about it and you don’t actually deal with it. But then the same problems come up over again and again and again.

And let’s just be real, life is full of unavoidable stressors. So some of the tips in this episode are how to eliminate stress and prevent some of those stressors from happening to you. But we cannot avoid any stressful situation, especially as business owners, but we can try to get to the root causes and change the way that we respond to the stress as business owners.

And sadly, research shows that 77 percent of founders refuse to seek counseling, even though 72 percent of founders struggle with mental health. And maybe it’s our bootstrap mentality, or maybe it’s the stigma that going to counseling means you’re weak or unstable in some way, but I see my investment, both the time invested into counseling, because I mean, it does take time, and the money invested into counseling, because it does cost some money, that’s an investment both in my personal health, but in my business too, and making sure that I am able to sustainably be the CEO of my business and be in the mental headspace to stay in the game and not get so stressed and burnout that I walk away from it, because that’s the alternative, right?

If you can’t manage with stress, eventually it’s going to pile up and something’s going to happen.

Okay, the last thing I want to say about counseling is that finding the right, counselor makes a huge difference. I think a lot of people shy away from counseling because maybe they’ve had a bad experience in the past or they’ve tried to go and it hasn’t been helpful at all. But if you’re in that space, I would really challenge you to continue until you find the right person because finding the right person does make a huge difference, and the last counselor I saw was kind of that situation where it’s like, it’s not really helpful like some sessions, maybe a little bit helpful, but it wasn’t something that I looked forward to or found a lot of value in. And so I stopped going, but the second round I found a counselor who, again, anytime I show up, like I have nothing to talk about today, she asks the right questions and the way that she phrases things is just really helpful for the way that my mind works.

And so finding the right counselor can take some time, but if it’s something that you think after listening to this episode you’re feeling convicted that this is something that you need to prioritize. It’s okay if you try out a few different people until you find that person where it just clicks.

Okay, two last strategies. So the next one is processing stress through a journaling practice, which is something that I have found super, super helpful. And at the beginning of this year, I recommitted to a daily journaling practice. I’m journaling in my daily planner, actually. So my plan for the day and my journal and like photos and memories and stuff is all in the same place, which is really helpful, I love having everything in one place. It just makes sense to me. And sometimes I write a few sentences and some days I write an entire page or even like go on to the next day and write multiple pages, but the amount doesn’t matter so much as regularly putting pen to paper and externalizing and analyzing my thoughts.

And I’m oftentimes surprised by what I write and don’t realize something is weighing on me until I take the time to sit down and just write down what happened that day and process through what was going on. And if journaling has always been appealing to you, but you don’t have the time to commit to a full page each day, I would highly suggest doing something like a five year journal, which can be a really fun thing to look back on the last journal entry from like a year ago or using like the monthly layout in your planner for a one sentence a day journaling and just starting there to build the habit.

And if you don’t know what to write about, I’ve also compiled some really helpful journaling prompts. Some days I don’t, nothing really interesting went on, there’s not a lot to write. So I also have been saving journaling prompts on Pinterest and I have a board set up for that. And I’ll link those in the show notes as well.

And if you are looking for a journal or a planner, I will also link my favorite five year journals and my 2024 planning stack as well as my favorite planners and journals. I have a blog post compiling a lot of like high quality planners that I really love and recommend. So all of those will be linked in the show notes as well.

And then the last strategy that I found really helpful for dealing with stress in my own business is taking care of my physical health, meaning exercise, what I’m eating, how I’m sleeping. I recently saw this reel on Instagram that said, I’m feeling really stressed and I don’t know why and then the narrator asks things like, well, have you been sleeping well? No. Did you get outside today? No. Have you been eating healthy foods? No. Drinking water? No. Etc. And I just went on and on and on and of course the answers were all no, and it’s comical, but how often do we do the exact same thing? We can’t expect to not take care of our physical health and then have great mental health and just feel great all of the time, right?

I’ve noticed that on days when I go to bed early or I do a hard workout or I get outside for a long period of time or a particularly healthy, I always feel less stressed and more productive. And again, investing in yourself. is investing in your business. And if you’re too busy to take care of your personal health, then you’re just flat out too busy.

This is a non negotiable in general, but if you have been feeling particularly stressed, I think the default can be to like, just get the work done, just ignore everything else in life and focus on doing the work. And that may be a good short term approach, but it’s not sustainable. And so setting up your business in a way that you are able to make time to prioritize your personal health it’s a cyclical effect that just returns more and more to your business because the healthier you are again, especially as a solopreneur, if you’re wearing all the hats in your business, the healthier your business can be because when you’re at your best, your business is also at its best. So if you’re struggling with stress, I can’t say enough, how much just eating better food and exercising and getting outside, and sleep has been a hard one during pregnancy, but the more sleep that I can get, or the earlier I go to bed, allowing myself to sleep in when I really need it. Those are all things that I do that help me feel less stressed.

So I hope that you can take one or two of these strategies and apply them to your own business to reduce your stress levels and become a more productive version of yourself. And if something in this episode resonated with you, I would love for you to share this episode on Instagram and tag me at jadeboyd.co. You can definitely come chat with me on Instagram too. I’m always in my DMs personally. So if you reach out, I will be the one who responds. And until next time, business minimalists, take what you learned today and get 1 percent better this week.