Are you choosing comfort over courage?
What part of running a business comes easily to you ?
I mean, the part that you love to do and want to spend all of your time on?
It's probably the creative work where you feel most comfortable.
The part of running a business that comes easy to me is anything numbers related or creating action plans.
So when I look at the vision I have for my business I can get lost in creating an action plan to get there and dive deep into for example the conversion of my website and look at anything from landing page conversion, to call-to-action buttons on the sales pages and testing if having other questions in the application form increases conversion.
Or when I worry about not hitting my financial targets I dive into recurring costs and how I can cut them down or review if I need to increase my pricing based on how much time I spend delivering my mentoring program.
What I don't feel comfortable doing? <-- Selling myself.
Because I find it so hard to write about:
how my left-brain thinking can complement right-brained creatives,
how my corporate experience as a business analyst and pricing manager can help them,
how my hands-on approach is different from other mentors
what kind of (life-changing) results clients have gotten from working with me.
So I pick the comfortable option.
And spend time working on creating another action plan and tell myself I don't have enough time to write content to 'sell myself' because one social media post can take me an hour (no joke).
So here's my question for you : What is a task in your business that is outside of your comfort zone, that you tell yourself you don't have enough time for?
As a creative, it's probably the thing that is my strength <- the number's side.
Whether that is website traffic, calculating conversions, or knowing how much revenue and profit you make.
Just thinking about having to use spreadsheets might break you out in a sweat.
And then you're not even thinking about the anxiety you feel because you don't know how much revenue you are making, what the contribution of each service is to the total revenue and if you're even making a profit.
So it's easier not to look at these numbers.
^^ Because what if it's even worse than you thought?
If this is you, you're not alone. This is very common in the creative industry.
But it's not something that is talked about often, let alone openly.
Because what if you publicly say you don't know how much revenue you are making.
Other business owners or a coach might think you're stupid (it makes me sad even thinking about the conversation I had recently when a designer told me this was how she felt).
So I am not here to call you out on this.
All I want for you is to feel:
like you are in control of your life and your business
comfortable with all parts of running a business
empowered because you know exactly where your business stands financially and have a clear plan to go from being overworked and burned out to being more aligned, more sustainable and more profitable
But as Brene Brown says about choosing courage over comfort: "It's about choosing what is right over what is fun, fast, or easy."
So if you want to transform your business to be more aligned, more sustainable and more profitable you need to choose courage over comfort.
Because as long as you are only working in your business on what you feel comfortable with (aka the creative side) there’s work that isn’t being done.
The strategic work, that will lead your business forward, so that it can support the way you want to live your life.
But if you stay with what is comfortable and keep skipping the strategic work that scares you, you're essentially not doing anything differently than when you would work as a designer for a design agency.
I know reading this might hurt.
But I am guessing you didn't start your business for it to be like any other job.
So I want you to think about the different roles you have in your business for a bit.
On one hand, you have - the designer
The designer wants a place to go to work, to be free to do what she wants, when she wants it and to be free from working for a boss.
As the designer, you live in the present and you are the one who gets client work done. You love to work on one thing at a time and thrive from working off a daily to-do list.
Then you have - the manager
The manager is pragmatic. Without the manager, there would be no planning and no order. But the manager also clings to the status quo.
As the manager, you sit down to map out client workflows and then build them into a CRM system like Dubsado or Honeybook. But you only do this once.
But there is also - the entrepreneur
The entrepreneur is the visionary and lives in the future. Without the entrepreneur, there would be no innovation, no strategies for growth and no need for change.
As the entrepreneur, you will make sure the business is run based on what the business needs to be profitable and sustainable, not based on what the designer feels comfortable doing.
My question for you now is; where does your business need to be in terms of profitability and sustainability so that it can support the way you want to live your life?
^^ And which of the 3 roles I mentioned above would you need to take on more so that you can work on becoming the design studio you want to be?
I think you know the answer.
And I want you to know that you are stronger and more capable than you think you are.
But you need to choose courage over comfort and be open to prove it to yourself you can have a business that supports your life.
What would feeling comfortable with all parts of running a business mean to you?
How would it make you feel if you would know exactly where your business stands financially and had a clear plan to go from being overworked and burned out to being more aligned, more sustainable and more profitable?
You've got this,
Stephanie
PS; If you’d like to know more about how I can support you in transforming your business to be more aligned, sustainable and profitable, let's have a chat and see what’s possible for you.
Click here to schedule a call. I’ll put the kettle on :)
This post was originally sent as a newsletter to my email list on 26/05/2022
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