I set up my first business when I was 17 and I’ve spent the last 12 years running and growing businesses, and 3 years ago, after working very hard in my businesses for a very long time, I got glandular fever which then turned into Post Viral Fatigue and everything came to a grinding halt.
After 6 months off to rest and recover I wanted to go back into business, however I knew that now I was going to have to do things differently to ensure I produced maximum results from my efforts as I wouldn’t be able to work the long hours that I had in the past.
Creating the vision
I realised the first step was to get really clear on my vision and what I wanted, not just from my business, but more importantly from my life as a whole. What work-life balance did I want, what was sustainable long-term, and what was going to enable me to thrive and continue to perform at my peak and generate massive results over the long haul. Then I started to look deeper – what did I want from my business? What were my values? What was my high-performance skill set?
Finding the goal behind my goal
Once I’d gotten clear on what I wanted my business to look like, I then had to go deeper and get really clear on why I wanted those things? What was it that was really driving me towards these goals? What would achieving this really mean to me? What would achieving this allow me to do/have/be? Tapping into the bigger goal behind the initial goal was key to igniting my passion and enabling me to take key actions and stay on track when I felt the tendency to succumb to procrastination and fear.
Moving forward
Once I was really clear on where I wanted to go and why, the first step was to build my action plan. I took myself through a planning process to identify succinctly where I wanted the business to be – long term (exit strategy), in 3 years and in 1 year. From there I broke my focus down into 90 day markers and from that created a detailed action plan for the next 12 weeks, being realistic about holidays, work-life balance and “down time” – you have to build in space for the unexpected as life will always throw you the unexpected, and if you don’t leave space for it you’re setting yourself up to fail – not good for motivation. I use a weekly planning process to maximise the use of my time, and to maximise my results, keeping me focussed on the core activities and ensuring they’re always the first ones completed
Keeping it going
Once I’d got the business off the ground, I then had to look at sustainability and how I was going to maintain this level of performance over the long term. This meant looking after myself to enable me to perform at my peak. As women we are often quick to place our needs bottom of the list, but if you want to be a high performer that’s simply not an option.
I structured my business to work in 4 days a week, working in a split shift format, with a 2-3 hour lunchbreak which allows me time to get some fresh air, exercise, rest and rejuvenate, and come back into the office refreshed and raring to go. Simple things like making sure I’m getting 7+ hours of sleep each day can mean an extra 20-30% performance vs just 6 hours, and also mean that I’m enjoying the whole process more!
