So in this episode, I will talk about how to shift how you're doing your current business to help you realign and feel back in alignment with your energy, health, and life needs. So one of the things I'm speaking to are these times in our life and. where, you know, maybe we've hit a little bit of a wall, we feel like we're heading towards burnout. Maybe you've already hit burnout, you're feeling energetically just tired in your business like it's not working for you anymore. You might have some kind of a health crisis or have new health needs that you need to attend to that are shifting how you can show up in your business. Or you may have had a life transition that now requires something different view as asking your energy to move in a different direction. And I think a lot of times, this shows up as what we label burnout, where we start to feel like we're not being fulfilled in our business anymore. It's draining your energy.
There may be this sense that you feel like you're heading towards burnout, or another common way it gets framed now is this idea of not being in alignment with your business anymore.m Meaning, like, there's not a sense of flow anymore. So alignment from a body perspective means that the bones are lined up, and you can move functionally and efficiently. You can use your physical energy and be in the best possible way to achieve what you want, moving from one place to another. And in your business, you want a functional sense of flow that creates energy.
In my journey of over 17 years of entrepreneurship, I've seen this with clients, friends, and colleagues to have your life and energy needs shift over time, and you start to feel out of alignment with your business. You know, it's easy for self-doubt to pop in and say, you know, Oh, maybe this isn't the right path for me. Maybe I should get a job. Maybe, you know, what I'm doing isn't valuable, or clients don't want what I'm selling. Like there are a lot of paths you can go down when you feel like something isn't working.
But what I want to focus on in this episode is what we do when we feel like our energy is out of alignment with our business. And how can we actually step back, pan out, and just do a couple of simple reassessments to see if we can make shifts, you know, just tiny tweaks that can start bringing more energy and alignment into your business and your life?
This is for you if you have hit one of these points in your life. You have a health need, an energy need, um, a life transition need that's making you feel like something's not working anymore. So I want to talk about the three things I did in my business and what I hit at this point.
Six or seven years ago, right before I ended up getting married and having a baby, I was starting to feel, you know, like there was just something that wasn't in alignment with me. I started to feel like I, you know, was trying to move forward, and I just kept feeling like I couldn't shift what I was doing in a creative way, and there felt like there was growth.
It's actually about the time I started to explore coaching, getting certified as a coach, and learning about that approach to working with clients and building a business. I had this sense of something, you know, I need to find a new way to grow. And then, I also had a new life that I needed to feed in new ways.
I ended up getting married and starting a business with my husband and immediately got pregnant, had a kid, and then ended up with some health issues. So I ended up dealing with many life changes that required my energy in different ways.
Having a daughter was like a huge shift regarding where my energy needed to go. And all of a sudden just feeling like, you know, I couldn't put it into my business in the same way. And I was then dealing with health challenges that came up for me where I felt like I had really low energy.
It was just hard to have even the energy and attention and so forth that I used to have and to devote to my business. So that all for my kind of happened within a, I don't know, a couple of. You know, um, from probably 2015 to 2017, I started to have this feeling of being misaligned with my business.
What I realized for myself in this process was that evaluating entrepreneurship for myself and my business was about really panning back and looking at three key things. One of them was the relationship that I had to my purpose in my business.
The other one was how I was using systems and leveraging my systems. And then the third one was how I was showing up. Like I was structuring my offers so that I felt I could sustainably show up.
So the first one is really important: how you view your relationship with your business. And so for me, that meant like really pulling back. And I had had a very much a personal, brand, , kind of a dual personal brand, but also I had sort of a name to my brand. And so what I found is when I started to feel like my energy was being pulled in a different direction, I started to pull apart and get perspective on my business and look at what my business is aside from me and how I can shift the pieces of it to feel more aligned with my energy.
So I realized that I needed some of my purpose energy back to put into my life in different ways, to put into my healing and wellbeing, to put into supporting my new daughter, to put into just building a life for myself in a new way. And so I pulled out from my business a little bit, and then I needed to look at the structures of my business and how I could use them to serve my new needs and continue to serve my clients. And I could still have that sense of purpose of showing up and supporting people to do their healing work. And at that time, I was focused on working with people with chronic pain and helping them to find new ways not just to manage their pain but to change their relationship with their bodies.
And it was something that was, it, it required a lot of one-on-one time, um, which I love. I love one-on-one work, so it wasn't like I wanted to create a course or something like that where I didn't have my presence as part of the process. I knew I had to find a way, to show up still and do what felt purposeful to me with clients, but that didn't burn out my energy.
So the first step was pulling apart that process and saying, you know, this is me, this is, this is my clients, and then there are these structures, there's this entity in between, which is my business. So, seeing by business as an entity that could shift, change, and evolve. So how that, as a mirror between me and my clients, how that could change and shift so that, you know, I could continue to channel the purpose in a meaningful and energizing way without feeling like I was losing energy.
Step two was- Eliminate, systematize, automate and outsource. So I started to get into those structures that make my business function in an energizing way. Structures are everything from how I interact with clients. So meaning like how I show up and have a relationship with my clients, everything from scheduling from the, you know, concierge service to um, you know, how I communicate back and forth via email, all those different pieces.
So first of all, looking at, like, well, what things do I not need to do that are not serving me or my clients? And secondly, what things can I start to make systems around that I don't need to participate in, and I can kind of let them run on autopilot? And then what can I start to automate, and what can I eventually outsource?
So the first piece was the eliminating piece. And honestly, I didn't have as much in this. There weren't many things that I felt I needed to eliminate.
But what hit home for me was the systematizing piece. And this is when I started to look at what I am delivering to my clients and how I could start to pull it out and make it its system.
I looked at how I place my one-on-one time within what I am offering and how I engage with my clients in a way that uses my energy in the best possible way. So not to repeat the same things repeatedly, but really to give that high-level support that I love. So I started to build out just simple organic ways of doing this that could create assets in my business, like little exercises, tutorials, PDFs, and things that I could start to pull in that gave energy and value and process to my client journey.
And eventually, I would use it as a creative process to shape what I now have with clients, which is a bigger client journey with a lot of different pieces to it.
So I started to do that, which energetically started to give me some space to say, I can have value in the journey, and I can encourage my clients to participate more autonomously in their journeys and still show up and support them.
And I realized the intention to systematize and create business assets is a core intention to growing and scaling your business at a certain point. So whether you're systematizing to grow out horizontally and hire people and have cultural systems and delivery systems in place for those people, or whether you're scaling up in terms of just developing your thought leadership and creating ideas and products and services that can be delivered, you need systems to grow. Either way, the systems piece is essential to start making space between you and your business and develop your business in a way that has its own life and energy.
It's like, it's like investing money. You want compound interest. You make it, and it sits there, and it grows, and it serves you, and you don't have to continue to put more into it. It has its own life.
So then the other piece would be automating. So I started to automate everything I could automate, and that included sending out invoices, like finding the right software system, CRM and delivery software, etc.
It was finding ways to do things that just had a rhythm to them and that I didn't have to participate in once I set it up. It created some space so I didn't have to attend to those details regularly.
And then looking for the little things I could outsource. And that is everything from, you know, having someone load my graphics into my media scheduler, bookkeeping, etc. I started with the things I had systems for but did not like doing. And Bookkeeping was the first pivotal piece. I don't like bookkeeping. But I love what bookkeeping does for me in my business.
To have a business, you have to have good bookkeeping systems. Still, it's super important for your business to be in a creative relationship to your money and to know what you're spending too, you know, So outsourcing bookkeeping created a huge value for me. I and I outsourced it after I had the system. This is an important point about outsourcing and why it is last on the list. If you try to outsource before you have the system, you'll get the wrong kind of outsourcing.
And it’s not all or nothing. You don't have to hire a full-time virtual assistant or any of that. It can be just little ways that you either use software or very specific support staff that you can choose to come in and start to work with those systems that are already working for you. Then you can step out a little bit, so then you can have more space to work on a higher level with your clients to develop your creative ideas and start to feel reinspired again and be able to put your energy into the parts of your life that are calling for it.
Because if you start to feel that lack of alignment and burn burnout, some part of you is calling for more attention in those other areas. And if you make the space to pull your attention back to serve your own, your being, and your own needs, then you're going to find that comes back and re-inspires your business in a new way. And this is really what happened to me.
And the third piece was about how I can keep showing up for my clients in a new way aligned for me. In a way that feels easy, it works for my energy, it works for what they need, and for me, I shifted at the time, um, into a membership model.
This was kind of when the pandemic and I reorganized my offer around the question of how can I show up and do something that consistently meets my needs for how I want to show up for clients and know there was going to be enough flow of money. I could just put my energy into serving my clients and maintaining things. And for me, the service I offer is a recurring service with movement. So I designed it so I knew I could show up without a lot of stress. You know, I could give my creative best to my business and clients. Meaning I had time and space because of how I set up that offer, where I knew I baked in time to create new things and stay inspired.
And these shifts don’t have to be big. Sometimes we go through periods where we have to renovate how we're doing our business, what the offers look like, what that bigger method is that we're using and that transformational at the core of our business.
And this is what I help people do in the Movement Creators Accelerator Lab, is to take that big pan view. To look from the big wide perspective, look at all these different pieces, and let them come into a new alignment.
But sometimes, it's tiny little realignments that start to have momentum, and then when you're ready, you can do the bigger, deeper work. Once you have more space to feel like you can creatively stand in your business, have creative space to work on it, and be in a visionary space.
So my point with this whole process is to share with you that when you're feeling like you have a realignment in your life that's happening like you've hit something with your health and wellbeing, you know, that now needs a different kind of attention. Sometimes it's just these tiny shifts with these three pieces of really being able to step back and get impersonal about your relationship to your business and say, where does my energy need to go so that I can continue to do what's meaningful with my clients and still serve all of my needs as well.
And then look for the little ways you've already got within your business to systematize, automate, outsource, and eliminate anything that just doesn't need to be there. And then, ask yourself, How can I make little tweaks to my offer, to how I'm showing up for people who feel sustainable? And that's going to be different for every person, based on your energy, your needs, how you serve clients, what their transformation is, that you help them with all of that. But, the questions can apply to anyone.
So I'd love to know how this lands. And if this is something you're going through in your life and you're feeling a big shift in some area of your life, and you want to create re-alignment in your business, I'd love to have a conversation with you and talk to you about the way that I can help and serve you!
And until next time, stay connected, stay creatively engaged, and keep doing what you're doing with your unique work because your message and your work matters. 📍
