The importance of offering value to clients is spoken about frequently, but how often do we as Business Owners consider the importance of valuing ourselves, and ensuring we look after our physical and mental wellbeing?
We know that 2020 was a year like no other and at what cost to us, not just financially but also in terms of our physical and mental health ? Understanding the importance of valuing ourselves, is vital, if we are to be part of the movement that ensures prosperity returns to our planet in 2021.
Key Things To Look For!
What are the key aspects we need to be looking at, to provide us Business Owners with what we need to look after and value ourselves, well a good place to start is with the following?
- Create a workable structure or routine that works for you
- Establish clear boundaries
- Ask for help and support when you need it
- The right Mindset
- Self-Care
Creating a workable structure or routine for you, is recognizing that not everyone works well with a regular routine, but we all certainly work more effectively and see better results, when we have a plan. It may be useful to understand what works for others, to get an overview of a more effective way of working for you. However, it is important to recognize that what may work for one person, may not work for you.
The Early Bird Gets The Worm
You may not be an early riser, or work effectively first thing in the morning, equally you may love those first quiet hours of the day and prefer to finish earlier. Your routine or structure has to be just that, yours and one that works for you. Do not feel guilty because you have different habits to someone else. The importance is, how effective is your way of working, and does it produce the results you are looking for. If not, then by understanding what works for others, this gives you the opportunity to try a new approach.
Having a structure to your day will certainly help prevent overwhelm and in doing so, will make you more effective, but it has to be your plan, to make YOU effective. The benefit of avoiding overwhelm where possible, is greater productivity and with it, better results.
Another way to avoid overwhelm is by establishing clear boundaries, by putting these in place will create a sense of you being proactive and being in charge. Clear boundaries are a good way to set limits of acceptable behavior and helps ensure professional relationships do not overstep the mark, of if they do, a way to bring them back on track more readily.
Know Your Boundaries
Boundaries are also a way of ensuring everyone plays by the same rules and prevents you from feeling undervalued. Boundaries also protect your schedule, by being clear on what you can and cannot do and the timeframes you will work too, helps manage expectation and in doing so, also prevents overwhelm. As Brene Brown so perfectly said ‘ When we fail to set boundaries and hold people accountable, we feel used and mistreated’, so putting clear boundaries in place, is showing that you not only have respect for your clients, but a way of demonstrating respect for yourself, your business and the results you bring for your clients.
Another key element of valuing yourself as a Business Owner is asking for help and support when you need it. Being a Business Owner can be lonely, especially in the early years of building your business, before you perhaps bring on a team. 2020 has proved to be the year of networking and never has it been easier to connect and reach out for support. Do you know anyone who hasn’t been on a Zoom call, or benefitted from video technology?
Green & Growing
With the growth in online networking, there has also been a significant increase in the opportunity for shared learning and collaboration, something that possibly wasn’t as readily available on the scale that it is now, not without the need for significant travel. International barriers have truly come down and with it the opportunity to network on a much wider and globally significant scale. As Business Owners, we really can enjoy the benefits of the support we can offer each other and not be afraid to ask for help and support, particularly when we are living through a shared experience, the likes of which we have never seen before. So be prepared to ask for help when needed, you may be pleasantly surprised at the results this will bring.
A hugely important part of valuing yourself as a Business Owner is looking after your Mindset. The key to the right Mindset is awareness and being on high alert for anything that might get in the way of you being able to move forward positively, due to any self-limiting beliefs. Self-limiting beliefs can stop you in your tracks and be the difference between success and failure. If your Mindset is lacking, actually wanting to change this, is a really important step towards making it happen.
Put Your Mind To It
Once you have that awareness of what your Mindset is preventing you from doing and you have made a decision to do something about it, actively utilizing the right tools to improve your mindset, will help to turn it around and create the results you are looking for. However, it is important to know, it is not a once and won. Ensuring the right Mindset, is a lifetime’s work, something you must actively and consciously work on, but the rewards are significant, where belief leads, the mind will follow.
Then the all-in compassing piece to ensuring you value yourself as a Business Owner is the practice of self-care. Learning to look after you and therefore ensuring you can look after others. If you have ever sat through the Safety Briefing on an airplane, the instruction given, in the event of an emergency, you put on your oxygen mask first, before assisting others. It is the same with self-care, you must look after yourself in order to be able to do so for others, so remove the guilt if there is any, or feeling selfish, by looking after you.
Take Time Out For You!
It is important to schedule, yes actually schedule some time in your diary for YOU, if you do not schedule that time, and make it a priority, then it is likely to not happen. When you have set a clear boundary, that time for you is important and you make it a commitment in your diary, that is when you will ensure it happens. Listen to your body, it will do its very best to let you know when it needs something that you are not providing, be that more sleep, a change of scenery, a break from your working routine, but chose to actively listen to your body, be alert to your needs, because in doing so, you can be there for others, in the most active and supportive way possible.
The art of valuing yourself as a Business Owner, is to give yourself the respect for the journey you are on, and for that journey to be as successful, fulfilling and accomplished, as you want and know it can be.
Need a Hand?
Lesley Thomas is The Money Mastery Business Coach for service-based female entrepreneurs. Known for her Holistic Whole Business approach to money make-overs – Lesley works with entrepreneurial women who under-charge and over-deliver – to help them find their niche, create a new compass and crack their money code!
Having already created a very successful family business over fifteen years ago, she understands the intricacies and financial responsibilities involved in owning your own business. With a considerable corporate background in sales, marketing and mentoring across global joint ventures, Lesley developed a keen interest in the power of building strong relationships. Although Lesley is an advocate for practical business principles, she also believes that in order to lead a lucrative business, you have to create a brand that sets you apart from the cookie-cutter crowd!
As she affirms, “Doing what you love and being well-compensated for it, only materializes once you’ve transformed your relationship with money, concentrated on your niche and created a brand that captures your unique spirit!”
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