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I’ve been working exclusively in burnout for 4 years now…

and I’ve seen a lot. Recently, though, my eye has been fixed on business owners, solopreneurs, side hustlers, and all the ways that hustle culture is setting them up for failure—hell, for burnout— in their businesses. Small business owners often find themselves burning out due to various factors and I’ve broken those factors into 6 areas, 6 steps that are crucial for creating sustainable success in business. For making their business burnout-proof.

Sustainable Mindset

Having a sustainable mindset might not be what you think. It’s less about your mindset being sustainable and more about your mindset sustaining your. Yes, it involves maintaining a positive and resilient attitude towards challenges and setbacks, building stress resilience, having a growth mindset, etc. All of those things are important, absolutely!

But when I think about building a sustainable mindset, more so I am thinking about doing that foundational background, behind the scenes work to really know what business you want to craft and how you are going to align your business with that vision. It's as much about creating a vision for your business and the impact you want it to have, as creating a vision for the lifestyle you want to maintain while building your business. It’s about knowing what success looks like to you. 10K months? The freedom of remote work? Being able to retire a significant other? Or is it merely about having another stream of fulfillment in your life?

It’s about knowing what your values are and how those values show up in your business. It’s about knowing whose opinion matters and when/how to weigh the opinions of others against your own.

Sustainable Schedule

Building a sustainable schedule is the next step and builds off of the sustainable mindset because it helps us shape the lifestyle we want in our business.

It's about laying out ideal work times, structuring our schedule, and working efficiently to tackle our to-do list. It’s about learning what your productivity style is, knowing when you’re most focused, knowing if batching is best for you and how to go about implementing that.

This is especially crucial for side hustlers, as time is precious and every moment counts.

It's about integrating the personal and professional, time with your kids, date nights, health activities, self-care, workouts, and our sleep. It’s about taking a holistic look at our schedule, and ensuring it's sustainable for the long haul. Too many of us only look at the professional sides of our lives, not asking ourselves how these business to-dos fit with the rest of our lives. I’m a big believer in master calendars so that you can see how all the parts of your life fit together.

And it’s okay to make a mistake. I did this WRONG this fall. My speaking schedule wasn’t sustainable with everything else I had on my plate. I mean, I somehow didn’t think have 5 workshops in 2 weeks was too much because they were local! 🤦🏻‍♀️ I know…I know. But sometimes we just don’t realize what our limits are until we experience them. Then, it’s about making the necessary changes so that doesn’t happen again.

That’s what this section is about. Making every effort to build a schedule that’s sustainable for you and making tweaks and adjustments accordingly if and when you realize that something isn’t working. It’s not about getting it perfect the first time. But it is about learning as you go.

Sustainable Offers

This is another thing I see a lot of people skip out on. They create an offer or service that they know their audience will just but sometimes they skip over how it’s going to feel for them to deliver that offer and how those offers fit with the rest of the things in their product suite.

Sure, delivering 4 VIP Days a month might sound awesome for your bank account, but is it sustainable for your lifestyle. Is it something you can keep up with your digital products, mastermind, membership, and all the recurring, continuous tasks like marketing?

Sure, you’ve got coaching clients rolling in like crazy, but do you have bandwidth for 10? Or are things slipping?

Yes, we have to make money in our business, but don’t trade your 9 to 5 job for 24/7 entrepreneurship because I guarantee that you didn’t start your business with a goal of working more than you did in your former career, am I right?

That’s what sustainable offers are all about. I’ll usually ball park how much time I think I’ll be spending each week on a particular offer in my business and then multiple it by 1.5-2 and that includes 1-on-1 coaching clients. Hell, it’s tempting even to say, “I only have face time with clients for 1 hour each week” and think you can take on 15-20, but you’re not counting the prep work, the follow-up, and all the other behind-the-scenes stuff you’re doing.

Can you sustain the content creation of new content each month in your membership? Are you accounting for brainstorming, researching, formatting the workbook, putting together the slides, and recording the video?

That old offer that you used to be so jazzed about but you’re dreading now, is it time to retire it? Is it time to take it off your plate?

These are all questions and scenarios that we need to think about when it comes to sustainable offers and creating a sustainable offer suite. But that’s not all…

Sustainable Marketing

…we’ve gotta talk about sustainable marketing. I used to roll sustainable marketing and sustainable offers altogether, but, if you were to ask me, the most draining part of my business has always been the marketing part. They don’t teach marketing in biology programs and this part of the process always felt so so foreign to me! So, naturally it took the most time…and it took the most out of me.

When I’m talking about sustainable marketing, I’m talking about creating a content schedule you can stick with on social media, a posting schedule you can maintain on your podcast/blog/YouTube channel. I’m talking about creating consistent communication with your email list but in a way that doesn’t drain you. I’m talking about sustainable launches. I’m talking about growth strategies and passive marketing strategies that can build your brand and your business, without draining you in the process.

That’s sustainable marketing and, I’ll tell you right now, marketers don’t care about burnout. I know. I dated one. He made me SEO on my website amazing 👌🏻👌🏻… but he was also the poster child for overwork. I can say that. He knows it. We used to joke about the irony of him dating a burnout coach. Marketers are super good at marketing and about getting you to buy, but I’ve met very few of them that even take burnout, consistency, and maintenance into their marketing strategies.

Now, I may not be a marketer but I know enough and I’ve learned enough over the years that I know there are ways to create more sustainability in your marketing. I’ve implemented them. I’ve learned them. And they’ve made a hell of a lot of difference in my business and my life. Especially as a side hustler.

Sustainable Systems

You might wonder why I haven’t talked about systems until now. Well, it’s very intentional.

From my experience, too many solopreneurs, side hustlers, and small business owners dive straight into systems. They test out the latest productivity app or coaching software (cough—Kajabi—cough) and think it’s going to be the end all be all of their business success. Honestly, I’m so sick of the Kajabi YouTube ads saying how “Kajabi is the reason I made 6 -figures in my business.” Honestly, how defeating! You didn’t have anything to do with it? You knowledge? Your tenacity? You know how? Your marketing? Your personability?

Your systems are a tool in helping you run your business but we put too much stock in them making all the difference. They don’t. If I were building a business from scratch right now—as I write this—I would take the previous 4 steps first before worrying about my systems. Because, here’s the thing, you have to know what kind of business you want to run, the schedule you want to have running it, the offers you’re going to put in place, and the marketing that you’re going to use before you’ll even know what systems you need.

Your systems include anything you use to create efficient, scalable processes in your business. It’s about automating recurring tasks, streamlining operations, leveraging automations, etc. It’s about your task and project manager, CRM, website hosting, scheduler, and more. All of these pieces of technology come together to run your business in the background but you have to know what business you need run (aka go through the previous steps) before you know what systems you need to run them.

This is not the first step. It’s one of the last, if you ask me.

Sustainable Self-Care

Now, you might have wondered why I put self-care at the end. Well, there’s a couple reasons for it.

1. We know we need to prioritize self-care. I haven’t met a business owner who doesn’t know this. But knowing and doing are two very different things.

2. Self-care doesn’t have a stage because it’s something we need to be doing consistently. It felt odd adding self-care any where as a step in the process because, well, it’s always important.

3. I want self-care to be the thing you leave here thinking about.

That. Of all the reasons I put self-care at the end, this is the biggest reason why. I want it to be the one you leave here thinking about. I want it to be top of mind. Because for most business owners, it isn’t. It’s an afterthought. Something they fit in when you “have time,” but I’m sorry…when was the last time you had time for anything?

We don’t “have time” for self-care. We make time. And we make time by realizing that we are our most important asset in your business. There is no business if there is no you to run it and there won’t be a you to run it if you don’t fit in self-care.

That’s why I call it sustainable self-care because it shouldn’t just be about self-care sustaining your business. Your self-care practices and habits should—in and of themselves—be sustainable. If you “can’t fit in” you self-care, you’re thinking about it wrong. Self-care works best when we wedge into pockets in our day.

It’s not just about getting in 2 hours in the mornings. It’s about fitting in 10-15 minute pockets throughout our day.

It’s not just about the perfect morning that you can only do on the easy day where you have time. It’s about having a morning routine that adapts to the busy and the slow seasons of life.

That’s sustainable self-care.

By adopting a sustainable mindset, schedule, offers, marketing strategies, systems, and self-care practices, business owners can prevent burnout and create a foundation for long-term success. It is essential to prioritize sustainability in all aspects of business to maintain a healthy work-life balance and ensure continued growth.