The number of choices you have to make each and every day can add up to the thousands, from what clothes you put on in the morning and what you eat for lunch to which email to respond to next or what meeting to prepare for.
And if you also have a family household to manage, well … the number of decisions you have to make for others can rack up even quicker.
Some sources claim that we make up to 35,000 decisions every day (Sahakian & Labuzetta, 2013) and 226.7 decisions each day on just food alone (Wansink and Sobal, 2007).
It’s no surprise, then, that when it comes to making decisions about your business and marketing strategy, decision fatigue can become a real problem.
If you’re already facing a thousand or more decisions about day-to-day stuff, when you try to make decisions on the bigger business and marketing stuff, your brain can be running tired-and-wired.
Mental overload
I liken it to having too many tabs open on your browser or too many apps running in the background of your phone … because your brain is full of mundane thinking, it just doesn’t have the capacity to move up a gear to deal with the seemingly bigger or more important decisions about your business.
So if you feel you are struggling with motivation or you don’t think you are a good decision maker, it may be that you just don’t know what to do next because you are relying on your logic brain too much.
Decision making is one of the “secrets” to business success; you probably know that it’s action, rather than ideas, that grow your business and action can only happen once you’ve made a decision. So if you find it difficult to make decisions, which in turn means you aren’t taking action, it can really hold you back in your business growth journey.
The P Cycle
Many years ago, I came up with The P Cycle, the constant and exhausting swirl of perpetual learning, which leads to perfectionism, which leads to procrastination, which leads straight back to perpetual learning.
Because when you don’t know something (which is ALWAYS the case with most of your business and marketing decisions, yes?!), it feels that you ought to go out and learn more about whatever it is you are making a decision about first, before actually making a decision to take action on it.
However, this can mean you keep learning because you are striving to be perfect, which then leads to procrastination and back to perpetual learning again so you are forever seeking ideas and learning more about how to do something.
You never quite get out of The P Cycle to take actual action and move forward with your business idea or marketing initiative.
So is decision making a skill you can learn?
Yes, sure it is.
You can use tools such as the classic SWOT or cost-benefit analysis to help you weigh up the pros and cons. But for most of your decisions you have to make in your business, these decisions making tools have the danger of keeping you in the P Cycle.
These tools can keep you in your head, forcing you to seek information externally and you use logic to come to the ‘right’ decision which can delay the decision making process even further.
Is there another way of making a decision?
Yes, I’m glad you asked!
Because there is an important space within us that very few of us know how to access on a day-to-day basis.
You probably feel it from time to time and perhaps, like me, you know it’s there because so many people around you refer to it.
Some people call it a gut feeling.
Others may call it intuition.
It doesn’t really matter whether you may feel it or hear it in your gut, soul, heart or solar plexus, it’s the thoughts and feelings that come to you when you are in the shower, or out walking in nature, or when you are doing anything but trying to solve a problem and make a logical decision.
Having spent the first 25+ years of my adult life as a strong, independent woman (yup, I really was on track to burn out by the time I got to 42 – I was so in my head that I didn’t see the signs!), I really didn’t know how to access this intuitive way to help me make decisions.
Just like that browser with too many tabs open; at some point that spinning circle of doom comes on the screen and you realise the only thing you can do is shut down and re-boot your laptop.
In my 40s, when recovering from my burnout, I decided I needed to re-boot, slow down and explore different ways of growing and building my business, and this is why I’ve come to see that there is a simpler process to decision making when you learn how to get out of your head, and connect with your intuitive self.
What is intuition?
Everyone experiences intuition differently. For some, it comes as words or phrases. Others feel it as a gut feeling or a sixth sense. Some even experience it as a physical sensation.
The trick is to figure out how your intuition communicates with you. The more you get out of your head and pay attention to what’s going in your body, the more you’ll notice it. And when you start to honour your intuition and act on it, it becomes more noticeable, and your connection with it grows stronger.
Many people think they aren’t intuitive. I certainly didn’t think I was growing up in my 20s and 30s. But when I speak to my clients and ask them to recall a time they ‘just knew’ something wasn’t right—be it in business, finance, relationships, health, or anything else—everyone can remember an instance.
So if you’d like to find a way of accessing your intuition more to help you make decisions more easily – and thus take action on the stuff that’s going to grow your business – here’s what I love to invite you to do.
Learn to be a tracker of how your intuition shows up.
I’ve been on a huge journey over the last few years, re-connecting with myself and discovering how our energies work and flow.
I have had to learn how to slow down so that I may hear what my body, heart and soul is trying to tell me.
A couple of the regular practices I used to begin this journey was:
Journalling – the simple practice of writing a few pages of my thoughts before I start my working day
Using Angel Cards – picking a card before or during my journaling to help me bring awareness to what I could be paying attention to.
Both these practices allowed me to get out of my head and feel into different parts of my body and awareness. And, although it may sound a little woo-woo airy-fairy to be using things like Angel Cards, I have found them to be a practical way to give me another frame from which to see myself from. It’s like finding a four-leaved clover or shiny penny on the floor; these may be old wives’ tales to some but I dare you not to see either of these and NOT smile with the same child-like glee that you may have done when you were younger.
When we can pay attention to our own internal source of information, rather than the logical brain, it’s less exhausting and you will make better business decisions.
A final word about the stories we make up …
It is easy to confuse intuition with stories that we make up in our heads. If you find that you begin to explain why something feels a certain way and you tell yourself stories about it, it’s likely to be projection; you’ve interpreted something to mean something and this is when we start to second guess ourselves or make decisions that serve others, rather than ourselves.
Intuition just is; it doesn’t need to explain, rationalise, or justify.
If your sense or feeling comes with a lot of explanations or rationalisations, it probably isn’t intuition so when this happens, take some time to journal, walk out in nature or meditate to get past the stories. It can also be helpful to turn to a skilled coach or healer, such as myself, who can help you move out of the story in your head and into the wisdom of your body.
Thank you for reading. Until next time, do less, be more, play bigger.
Menopause in business: The 7 rules for reshaping your business and the way you run your business around your perimenopause
Who’d have thought that there’d come a time that I would be writing an article about how to deal with the menopause in business?!
I’ve become a woman-of-a-certain, even though when I look in the mirror I get a shock each time because the face doesn’t seem to reflect the mind that’s still living as a 30 year old.
It feels like only yesterday, I was writing about juggling work around pre-schoolers and school gate pickups. But children have a habit of growing up and we have a habit of growing older.
I’m 46 at the time of writing this blog post; my children are 13 and 15 and I have been dealing with the symptoms of perimenopause for the past few years. I don’t talk much about publicly because what I share is usually focused around marketing systems, lead generation, business models and revenue streams. But I’ve realised that I need to write about my menopause in business now because I wished I had read this two years ago. And I hope it helps you if you are going through that change in life if you dealing with menopause in business, too.
Menopause in business and what it’s meant to me
Fluctuating energy flows, extreme fatigue that’s taken me to bed, flushes, body shape change … it’s made me re-think how I run my business because if I’m not mentally and physically in good shape, it directly impacts on the level of service I can deliver to my clients.
And if you run a service based business like mine – coaching, training, therapy, design, consultancy or any other professional service – you have to be on the ball to be able to deliver.
Or at the very least, make sense when you have a conversation with someone!
So this isn’t going to be an article about advice on the pros/cons of soya, supplements or whether HRT is right (there’s plenty of articles already and I’m no hormone expert, that’s for sure).
This article is focused about how to manage your menopause in business and shape and run your business around your menopause, without making yourself ill, beating yourself up with guilt or losing your mind. And because I don’t think enough women (or men!) are talking about the effects of menopause in business I wanted to share my experiences and how I am dealing with this.
If I hadn’t put these rules in place for myself, I really think I would have ended up being one of those women you find walking around the supermarket, still in her PJs, hair unbrushed and looking dazed and confused about what she went in there for in the first place!
It’s OK … Men can read this too!
By the way, if you are a man reading this, change in life can affect you, too.
You may not be building up to that last menstrual cycle (darn … I never thought I would write that phrase in a blog article LOL) so don’t click away. I’d love to know your thoughts on this as your hormones change as you get older, too. Some may call it mid-life crisis, but it’s no joke when your body changes and you feel you have absolutely no control over it.
These have been my rules for re-shaping my business around me becoming a woman-of-a-certain age.
Rule No 1 Work when you are productive, not when you think you have the time
When I first started up my business in 2004, I was full of energy. I had a young family, suffered sleepless nights and ran the home too. So, technically, I really shouldn’t have had the energy to work the hours I worked back then.
But when you are younger (in my mid 30’s back then), you can really cope with anything because your body is still performing the way it needs to.
I would get my kids to school, rush home and work until I picked them up again at 3pm. in the first couple of years, my youngest was home with me 2 days a week so I only had 3 school days a week to work. But I managed to cram in work whilst he was napping on his home days, during CBBC sessions and as soon as they were both bathed and in bed, I’d be back in the office either running a teleseminar, coaching clients or writing until 2 am.
For the past few years, my days have become longer (yeah!) but once both my kids are home, usually from 5pm onwards, and I’ve made supper, supervised homework, had a “heated debate” with a stroppy teen and done the laundry … I’m done for. Literally done for. The only energy I have is to drag myself to the sofa, put my feet up and try to stay awake until 9pm before taking myself to bed.
The thought of working evenings or taking myself out networking can’t even cross my mind.
So rather than beating myself up for not being able to capitalise on the evenings any more, I surrendered and made sure that my days were efficiently scheduled as possible.
Client calls are now only scheduled from 12noon onwards until school pick up time. Mornings are my time because from 8.30am to about 11am I am at my best. When my energy starts to wane, my clients pick me up because after all, it’s so much easier working on other people’s businesses than your own, yes?!
I don’t do London, except for special occasions. The travel knackers me. Plus the jet-setting lifestyle that once appealed to me 10 years ago is now firmly pushed to one side. I am happy being a home-bird and now that I’ve accepted that, my productivity is back on track. I’m not wasting energy with that keeping-up-the-jones feeling.
Once my chicklets have flown the nest, who knows. But for now, I want to be a mother first and foremost. And preferably one that’s not cross all the time because she’s knackered from travelling.
TAKE AWAY:Look at your diary for the next couple of weeks. How are you scheduling your week? What changes do you need to make to your routine to address your productivity levels?
Rule No 2 Create a business that works for you, not a business you feel trapped in
Your business model has to work for you because if it doesn’t, you’re just an employee. And without the employee perks of paid holiday and still getting a paycheck if you end up in bed ill one day.
If you have created a business that was once exciting, exhilarating and fun but is now exhausting and draining, then you have to change it.
I’ve spoken to dozen of women in recent years who have all experienced this. They’ve created a business that involves travelling overseas – once fun but now they are of a “certain age”, it’s taking it’s toll on them. They’ve created a business that involves lots of 1-2-1 time – once energising but now exhausting.
My first 8 years or so, I sold a lot of low priced programmes and digital products and most of my income came from working with clients 1-2-1. My workshops were affordable which meant I was filling a room of at least 20 people every 4 to 6 weeks. I created a membership site, which at £30 a month wasn’t cheap but it was a price level that didn’t need a lot of persuasion and when I have more than 100 members who stayed on average for 8 months, it was a fabulous revenue stream for a couple of day’s work once a month.
My business model back then worked for me because I had the energy levels to see it through. I thrived off the juggling of commitments and dashing from one thing to the next.
But in recent years, I realised my business model had to change.
Now I have completely turned things on their head and have a business model that works for me in my current time of life. I work with far less people but at a higher price point, which means my time is more profitable and I can give a lot more value. I work considerably less hours, I don’t rush around like a headless chicken and yet my productivity has gone up.
Please note: This change didn’t just happen overnight.
It’s been a gradual shift, both in my mindset and practical implementation of new systems and programmes. But the realisation that things needed to change was the catalyst for going out there and making it happen.
TAKE AWAY:Take a morning out – away from your screens, phones and any other distractions – and quietly review how your business model is working for you. Is what you’ve created (or creating) going to work for you and your energy levels? Are you being your very best for your clients in the way that you are working with them? What needs to change over the next year or so? And what’s your first baby step to changing things right now?
Rule No 3 Review your wardrobe
Seriously, your wardrobe is important. I know confidence needs to come from within ourselves for it to be sustainable, but the clothes that you wear, the haircuts, the handbags and shoes … the outer impression of ourselves does directly impact how you feel.
And when your success in business is almost directly in proportion to how confident you feel at the time, your wardrobe matters.
I’m very much a jeans and converse girl. Yes, I’ve been know to put on a dress for my speaking engagements but essentially I feel most me when I’ve got a good pair of jeans on.
Perimenopause has meant that my middle is now not really a middle. My top half has merged through to my bottom half so that my wardrobe of GAP jeans give me not so much a muffin top … more like a full cream tea and couple of Mary Berry cakes look.
Have you ever tried to wear stomach-flattening pants under jeans? Amazing for the first hour, but towards the end of the day you just feel like a cling-filmed wrapped chicken that’s been left out of the fridge for too long.
I began beating myself up about my weight, which only made me eat more chocolate biscuits (classic emotional eater, me!)
But realising that what I could wear 3 years ago, simply wasn’t going to work any more I sought out the advice of Gail Morgan, one of the UK’s top image consultant trainers. One look up and down and she told me, “You’re a classic triangle, turning goblet”.
Rather than running off for a good sulk for being called a goblet, I jumped for joy. I had a new rule for dressing to follow and after Gail introduced me to Marks & Spencer sculpt and lift range of skinny jeans (which are very well priced, too I will have you know), I rushed out and sorted out my wardrobe.
TAKE AWAY:Like your business, is it time to review your business wardrobe? It’s really easy to get stuck in a rut but as your body shape changes, it’s wonderful to realise that going up a dress size is not a failure.
Rule No 4 Exercise
OK, I know I said this is not an article about dealing with your perimenopause – this was supposed to be about your business. But seriously … exercise is critical at this time of your life.
And when you run your own business, you simply have NO excuse not to make the time to exercise at least 3 times a week.
This goes back to rule number two and making sure you have a business that works for you, rather than you working for it. If you have created a schedule that just doesn’t allow you to take just a few hours out a week to take up an exercise you enjoy, then your business needs to change.
I use to run and go to the gym. But with my weight gain, aching legs and joints and general knackered-ness, this wasn’t going to work. Recently I’ve taken up swimming. And yes, the proper goggles, swim cap kind of swimming. Hey, I didn’t say that style has to affect the way you exercise.
Going from drinking copious amount of chlorinated water (and god knows what other fluids!) and half-drowning with every breath, I swam my first 1 mile the other week. 66 lengths of the pool. Even my 15 year old daughter was impressed and I don’t normally get much more than a raised eyebrow from anything I say to her right now.
So exercise doesn’t have to be the classic gym session. It can salsa dancing, yoga, walking … anything as long as you are moving.
TAKE AWAY: If you aren’t exercising, what can you try out this week? Do you need to go back and read Rule Number Two again? Don’t put this off. You need to be moving (and keyboard exercise doesn’t count.)
Rule Number Five Creativity never stops; you don’t need to act on every idea
Your body may start to slow down when you hit perimenopause but if you are a creative entrepreneur like me, ideas never stop coming. A few years ago I was getting extremely frustrated that I just didn’t have the inclination or the energy to implement as much I once did.
I would push myself to do more but all that ended up doing was making me more tired, frustrated and well, menopausal! I was cross at myself, but this often came out being cross with my family. And that’s no good.
After going on a journey with the very inspiring Nicola Bird who taught me much about simplicity last year, I’ve been shown that ideas are simply trains of thought that keep on coming, no matter where or what you are are doing.
Realising that I didn’t have to implement everything that came my way because I now trust that there are plenty of other ideas all queuing up behind each one, I can keep focused on the current project, without getting frustrated by my tiredness.
It’s why I see so many business owners flip flop from one new shiny toy to the next. There’s almost an addictive nature of acting on ideas but often never following them through because the next one comes along.
SQUIRREL!
Periscope is a classic example; an amazing piece of fun, creative and innovative tech but if you stay focused on the marketing strategy and business model that you’ve set out to create, you will see better results, quicker.
TAKE AWAY:When you get an idea, become consciously aware of what happens and how you act. Do you get frustrated? Are you bouncing from one thing to the next? Become aware of how your creativity impacts your energy levels and do something different. Sometimes just scribbling the idea onto a post-it note and throwing it into a shoebox can reassure you that you know where to find it again if and when you ever want to act on it. It’s the whirlwind noise in your head that often causes the anx, so get it out and move on.
Rule No 6 F&*% It Days are OK (and actually good for the soul!)
When you get to a “certain age”, you being to realise that you don’t need to take yourself, or anyone else, that seriously all of the time.
Perhaps this comes down to experience and having a decade of working for myself under my belt, too. But it’s incredibly freeing to realise that you can only do want you can do. And if you can laugh at your failures and shake off negative remarks and snidey comments, then running your business is really much easier to run.
Apologies for the language (and for sharing one of the all time annoying songs!) but any time you want to share a moment of F&*% It, then play this video below.
It’s very good for the soul … you just may want to plug in headphones if you are in a public place or have children in ear shot!
Rule No 7 Systemise, Delegate or Delete
To enable me to become more effective and efficient (AKA work less and earn more money), I process everything I do through the rule of systemise, delegate or delete.
I’ve come to realise that over the past few years, I am doing the same stuff over and over again. And when energy levels are so up and down, I just can’t afford to be wasting my time and energy over stuff I really need not be doing.
So becoming consciously aware of how I fill my days, I’m always reviewing and asking myself whether I could systemise, delegate or simply delete something that I find myself doing over and over, out of my day.
This is one rule I’m still working on.
I’ve got systemise working well; I’ve invested in and worked hard to figure out my marketing systems – both lead generation and conversion processes – and nothing delights me more than having appointments being booked into my diary automatically from people who really want to speak to me. (In fact, I now teach other business owners the exact system in Clicks To Clients, which I opened up the doors to this summer). It all makes a lovely change from having to rush around networking like crazy and using push-energy rather than pull-energy to bring in new business.
Delete ain’t too bad; it helps to have more F&*% Days!
But delegate is definitely a work in progress, I have to confess. I’m still a control freak at heart and let the tech side of marketing take up way too much of my time. Trouble is I love it so much, I don’t think I could bear to hand it over to someone else … but hey, I have my vices and I’m certainly not perfect. I’m only human, just like you.
So there you have it.
My 7 rules for perimenopausal women running their own businesses.
And having just read through this again before clicking the publish button, I’ve realised that these 7 rules were something I wished I had applied way before my perimenopause began. So whether you’ve hit menopause or you’ve found yourself to be a “certain age” or simply that you’ve hit a wall and you need to review and re-set your path because your business is just not set up to give you what you want or need right now, I hope what I’ve shared has helped.
I’d love to know what your thoughts are; what rules you may have and any other tips or suggestions you would like to share. Leave a comment below as I love to read them all.
It’s tough to get going some days, isn’t it?Knowing what you should be doing … could be doing.You feel fit to burst with your ideas and energies on other days. You get on a roll and everything you do seems to go your way.But the longer you run your business and the more time that goes by, the easier it can be to fall into a rut and get stuck.There is a cycle that too many business owners like you get into; good, well intentioned business owners who really, really believe you are on the right path and are determined to create a living out of whatever it is you love to do … but it feels that you are going round and around in circles.
I call it The P Cycle.
It’s hard to know exactly where you started in the cycle, however the most common place is with the problem of Perpetual Learning.
It’s real easy to keep learning about the latest strategies and fancy smancy tools because you want to make sure you end up doing the best marketing possible. There are endless free webinars and PDFs to download so it makes you feel that you can get all the knowledge you need to be successful without spending any money.
But all this learning doesn’t actually help you. It’s far more comfortable to keep watching, reading and listening than it is to start doing any of the advice that you signed up for, isn’t it?
This then starts sending you down the path of seeking Perfection.
You begin to believe you shouldn’t be making any newbie errors that may get people thinking that you don’t really know what you are doing. Or even worse, complaining about you!You know you are in this part of the cycle because you find yourself focusing on getting the colour of your logo just right and the dimensions of the image for your sales page just so. This is so much easier than putting yourself in front of potentially interested customers, isn’t it??
And then all this leads to is the third stage of The P Cycle – Procrastination.
You start to worry more and more about “making a mistake” and start to question your ability to be making the “right” decision.So instead of making any decisions, you decide to head off to Google again and find another webinar to watch and a report to read … good old Perpetual Learner rises it’s ugly head again!And so The P Cycle continues.This can creep up on you really quietly. You have no idea you are in it until it’s too late and you feel as if you are stuck in a washing machine cycle on a fast spin.You need someone to switch the spin cycle off and help you hang everything out to dry. Find out where you are at, put it in all order and get you taking action.This is exactly what happens during my GID Programme – the Get-It-Done Marketing Programme where we focus on implementation, working with you’ve got right now and accountability.Marketing is not always easy – in fact I more than happy to admit that it can be bloody hard work at times! – but it is simple.And when you take away your focus on making your marketing as simple as possible, you get caught up in the P Cycle; perpetually learning, seeking perfection and procrastinating which means you don’t the results you deserve.If you haven’t done so already, check out the programme right here: www.karenskidmore.com/wantedAnd if it’s not right for you but you are stuck in that washing machine spin cycle, let me know if I can help.Take a minute right now and leave a comment below and let me know what you are stuck with. I don’t believe in magic bullets but there is usually a simple solution to every complicated problem :O)
Many years ago, I came up with The P Cycle, the constant and exhausting swirl of perpetual learning, which leads to perfectionism, which leads to procrastination, which leads straight back to perpetual learning.
