I want to grow… But I’m already drowning

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio

 If you have this burning desire to earn more money in your business so that you can create more financial freedom, but you have this awful feeling and you think I can’t possibly be chasing more, because to be honest, I’m actually drowning as it is right now. I’m feeling overwhelmed. I barely have the capacity for all of the clients and the workload that I’ve got at the moment, and yet you still know that you wanna build more, you wanna earn more, and you don’t know how to quite navigate through.

If you can relate this, today’s episode of the podcast is for you. We’re gonna be talking about how you can start to shift from business owner to CEO. All right, let’s go.

Do you ever have that feeling when you start your work week or your work day off and you feel like you are already behind? Before you even checked your emails, your brain is already sprinting ahead, thinking, oh my gosh, I’ve gotta get back to that person. I’ve got calls with those clients. I need to go and meet that person.

I’ve got that potential new client who’s booking in, let alone responding to your dms, or setting out that proposal that you promised that potential client that you would send to them. On the outside, you know, your business looks successful, you’re doing well. But inside you feel like you’re running on fumes and you know that this is just not sustainable.

If you keep heading down this path, you know that you are going to burn out. And yeah, there’s this little voice inside you that keeps Whispering Spring. I actually feel like I’m, I’m meant for more. I wanna grow my business. I wanna step into that next level. But how the hell can I do that if I can’t even keep up with my business as it is?

If you can relate to this, it’s not you. You are not broken. You’re just stuck at a growth ceiling, and today, I hope you crack him. So let’s start with maybe understanding a little bit more about why this happens. So I want you to go right back to the early days of business when you first get started. And you’re doing everything.

Gosh, I remember those days. I would say yes to every single client, every single project, every single dollar. A lot of the time I wasn’t even charging people, I was just wanting to get runs on the board. And what we do in the early stages is we are desperate to please, we are wanting to demonstrate that we are capable, that we are reliable, we wanna keep our customers happy.

And then what can happen as you step into that next level, maybe it’s the sort of around the, the six figure mark. Is it you find that the habits that got you here are what are really keeping you stuck. Like by being that person who people are like, I know I can contact them anytime. They’ll always get back to me.

I know they’re super reliable. I know that I can pick up the phone or the email and I’ll be able to talk directly to the business owner. But here’s the problem. You built a business that depends on you, on your output, not on your leadership. And so what’s happened is that the whole business is built on that time for money dynamic.

Your time, your energy. And what happens is that you are therefore limited by your capacity.

If your days feel like you open up your calendar and you instantly have a bit of a sick feeling in your tummy because you think, oh my gosh, my calendar is rammed, maybe you’ve got back to back calls. You need to check in with the team. You are just like, by lunchtime you realize, oh my gosh, I haven’t even eaten, let alone done a meditation for the day.

By the time three o’clock rolls around, you are running on fumes. And by five o’clock you’ve done so much. Like you’ve been so busy, you haven’t stopped all day, but yet it feels like you haven’t actually done any of the things that actually shift the needle. Like any of the strategic work, the CEO thinking,. If this sounds familiar, it’s because you’ve accidentally built a business that relies on you to survive.

And here is why this pattern is so hard to break because our brains are programmed to keep doing the same things. We think, well, this has helped me to build my business to this level. It’s helped me to build this level of success. So if I keep doing this, at least I’m safe. Yes, I’m busy, but at least I’m not sitting around twiddling my thumbs, hoping that more clients come through the door.

And so what happens is that you are scared to slow down. You are worried if I take my foot off the gas, everything’s gonna fall apart. The next thing, and this one’s a bit of a, a hard one to admit, but I’m gonna put my hand up and say, I am guilty of this as well. You’re addicted to being needed. Maybe even bring people into the team.

Maybe you’re starting to grow your team and you are the bottleneck. You are the decision maker for all of these touch points in the business. And you know what? Like if we are being really honest with ourselves, can actually feel good to feel indispensable. You’re like, my clients need me. My team needs me.

I think anyone can do it all. And it feels. Good to feel indispensable until it doesn’t, because you’re drowning. Perhaps you think that more hours equals more money. You think, do you know what? I just need to work harder. That’s what’s going on here. Maybe I’ve got a bit lazy. I just need to put in more hours.

Put in a couple of weekends, or perhaps what’s happened is that you’ve outgrown your systems. You’re still operating like a scrappy startup founder, and you’re not behaving like a CEO. And what I mean by that is that you are the doer. Everything relies on you. There aren’t systems in place, and this in turn makes it really hard to bring on team because every time you hire or try and outsource something, it just means more of your time, more of your capacity.

So if you are listening and thinking, yes, that’s to me, here’s something that you can do. You can start with a drowning audit. Write down everything that’s on your plate, literally every task. I love to use chatGPT for this. I. Put the microphone sitting on and I do blah, get it all out. Oh my gosh, I’ve gotta do this.

I also, personally, when I’m doing this, I actually like to put down everything inside and outside the business, because often there’s a lot of overlap. You know, it’s really hard to go, oh, I wanna set my Facebook cards up when you’re like, oh my gosh, I’ve gotta pick the kids up from school in half an hour.

So put everything down and then really brutally review your list. Does this actually have to be me? Can I hire someone to do that? Is there a system I can put in place to automate that? Or do you know what cctually, if I think about objectively where I went head or I wanna take this business, that is not a task that can sit on my plate or even in the business anymore.

Once you’ve done that, next, I like to say, why don’t you identify what are your distractors? Like, be really brutally honest with yourself. Maybe you are a, a social media scroller. I’m putting my hand up and admitting I’m one of those. I love to scroll. I know it’s so bad for me, but you know, I’ll be like, I’ve gotta get some ideas for social media and next thing you know, I’m still sitting there scrolling.

Maybe you are addicted to the ping of emails or notification. You get a slack notification, you ping in the inbox and you think, gosh, I’ve gotta jump on that now. What are your distractions? What are the things that tend to pull you off the important strategic work? And then next, really carve out some time in your calendar, like literally block out whole sections of your calendar, which is like, this is time to work on the business.

So for me, I’ve now carved out two sections in my calendar Monday morning until midday, and I call it half-ass Monday. Now I wanna be clear. It doesn’t mean that I’m not doing anything until lunchtime on a Monday. Necessarily, I could. I could just have a sleep in a bit of a slow start. Sometimes I do, I do a bit of a workout.

Take a bit of a slower start, but sometimes that’s where I do my meetings. Like I might be meeting with someone about my marketing or I might be, you know, just spending some brainstorming time mapping out my week. I’ve also blocked out my Friday afternoons, and again, I’ve called it Flexy Fridays. I could just clock off if I wanted to.

Last Friday, hubby and I actually went out on a date, which was beautiful. I had no calls in the diary. But a lot of the time it’s just like, I, I love to kind of be wrapping up the week thinking of some really clever social content for the weekend. So maybe for you it’s gonna be different. I know one of my former team members, she would carve out her whole Wednesday, which was her CEO Day, carve out the time to work on the business.

And I’m telling you, if you do just these few things, you’ll already start to feel the weight shift. Now you might be listening and thinking, yeah, I get it. But this just sounds like another thing to add to my to-do list. And this isn’t really gonna fix the, you know, tsunami of things going on in my business.

That is exactly why I’ve created my upcoming training. It is called From Business Owner to CEO, and it’s designed for people just like you who are booked busy, and business is doing well, but you know, you just can’t scale by doing more yourself over these two days, you’ll shift out of that employee mindset and start to lead your business with confidence, profit, and ease.

So in day one, we are gonna go through the mindset and identity shift that needs to happen to step you from control to confidence, and we’ll unpack your perfectionism, how to release control without lowering your standards, and we’ll talk about that identity shift that unlocks freedom and profit. We’ll also talk about how to audit to see where you’re holding your business back.

And on day two we’re gonna talk about systems team and scaling in a profitable way. We’re gonna talk about building the empire that runs without you. So this is for you if your calendar’s full, your brain is fried, and you’re craving more space and strategy time without dropping the ball. So I’m hosting it live, it’s gonna be interactive and it’s over lunch break if you’re based here in Australia.

So bring your lunch along, lunch and learn. It’s gonna be a really transformative few days, so I’d love to see you at that free training. You can join via the link in the show notes.

So to wrap up, let me leave you with three truths. Number one, you can’t work your way out of overwhelm. It’s just not going to work. You have to lead your way out. I mean, stepping out and working on the business, not in the business. Secondly, you don’t need a huge team or to hire A CEO or a COO to replace you.

You just need clarity. A lot of business owners can actually cut their workload just by setting better boundaries, having better systems, and knowing how to use the team effectively. And last but not least, as I spoke about in last week’s episode of the podcast, growth requires letting go. None of your standards.

But just letting go of the control that you currently hold. You can’t be across every single moving part if you wanna be behaving like a CEO and earning like a business owner of that next level. If you take nothing else from today’s episode, I want you to remember this. What got you to here won’t get you to there.

You are going to have to shift the way that you think. And behave if you want to create different outcomes. Now, if you’re listening to all of this and thinking, I am so ready to stop being overworked and start being an empowered leader, that’s exactly what we’re gonna do together inside the from business owner to CEO Masterclass, the training that I’m teaching over two days.

So please carve out the time. Come join me live. I’ll show up. I’ll serve and I’ll give you practical frameworks to step out of survival mode and into the mindset and systems of a true CEO. Bring your lunch along, bring your notebook, bring your big picture energy. I’d love to see you there. You can jump on in via the link in the show notes for today’s episode.

One final thing before we do wrap up today. If you have a friend, a colleague. I don’t know a distant relative who is a business owner who you know is going through the emotions of burnout. Please send this episode of the podcast to them so that we can help support other business owners who need a bit of a nudge, a bit of a friendly nudge with this area of their business.

Thank you so much for tuning in today, and yeah, I’ll chat to you again next week.

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio.