Business exhaustion is not a measure of Success

exhaustion

Your level of exhaustion should not be used to measure your level of success.

So many business owners I speak to – whether that be on social media or in person, tell me that they are just so exhausted.  Their business is consuming every waking minute, and even those minutes where you should be sleeping you are instead running all your business scenarios through your head.  It never ends.

I am running a business, I have family, I have friends, I have commitments outside of my business and I feel like all I do is work 24/7.

I know the feeling – I have been there – but I am no longer there.

Recently I hired an Admin Assistant. I realised I was getting to a point in my business where I was really exhausted and I was taking on far too many things. And some of those things I wasn’t great at. So the admin, the email organisation, the templates, the filing system, the behind the scene things – these are not my strengths and they bog me down.

I realised that my business could actually benefit from me hiring someone, to be part of my team to take care of those functions.  So I found an amazing Admin Assistant and I hired her and she has changed my world.

But some of the comments I get from other business owners now are really negative, condescending even – and I didn’t think people would have this attitude towards me.

So when I tell people that I have an Admin Assistant and to send her through an email, the response I tend to get is “Oh, wouldn’t it be wonderful to have an Admin Assistant” and I can almost imagine the way they are saying it in their head, or when they are emailing it to me, or when they are saying it in person it becomes really quite obvious that judgement involved.

It’s almost like they are saying it in a really quite spiteful way.  Like my business must be earning a million dollars and I can afford an Admin Assistant, like it is a luxury and I am living the dream life.

No, my business is not earning a million dollars. But I place a really high value on my sanity, and my time with my family which is something I don’t wish to compromise on.

I think in business it is far too easy to become overwhelmed. I was there is the first 12 months of my business and I was doing absolutely everything myself. I was doing the networking, the social media, I was doing the website, I was doing the Blog posts, I was doing all of the client work from start to finish for every single client, I was trying to grow my business.  It got to the point that I was so burnt out that I would wake up every day and physically hate my business and what I had created.

But that is the thing – I created it.  I created the overwhelm. I created the stress.  So why don’t I just do something about it?

And I think it was at that point where I realised that being exhausted is not a measure of success.  It’s not something to be proud of, where you are so exhausted to the point that you are about to have a breakdown.  I think that is a sign that you need to do something about it and ask for help.

And whether or not you choose to outsource something, or you choose to get an employee, whether or not you choose to partner with someone to help take the load off. Whether it’s just getting a cleaner at home so that there is one less thing you have to deal with in your daily life.

I would never hold a grudge against people for getting the help that they need in any area of their business (or personal) life.

And I feel it really strange now that I have decided to get various help (I now have 2 bookkeepers and an admin assistant working for me) that the first response to me from other people is “Oh Gee, wouldn’t that be lovely”.

You know, I am investing a lot of time and investing a lot of money to hire these people. But the pay-off, or trade off I should say, for me is that my business runs smoother, tasks get done quicker and some of the tasks even get done better than what I would have been able to do if I had to do them all myself.

Plus I am eliminating the overwhelm, the stress, the anxiety, the sleepless nights – and for that – it is worth every dollar.

So, yes, my business could make more profit without having these “luxury” things like amazing employees, but I would literally be working 24 hours a day and that’s not what I want to achieve.

Whilst exhaustion might be a sign that, yes, your business is potentially growing and moving at a rapid rate (yay). It is also a sign to put some systems in place before your reach burnout. I don’t ever want people to start hating the lifestyle and business that they have created for themselves simply because of exhaustion.

So the next time somebody says to me “Gee, wouldn’t that be nice to have an admin assistant?”  I will say to them “It is nice. It’s amazing. You should get one too!”

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