Being super busy is still a woefully outdated badge of honor for so many business owners. We equate busy with successful.
Why do we do this? Because we also have an outdated viewpoint of what success looks like.
We all need clients to be in business—the word itself reads like busy-ness. But being too busy will actually make your business suffer.
It’s understandable that you don’t want your business to be slow or have to worry about where you’ll get your next client. But that doesn’t mean we need to glorify being busy.
Here are three ways being overly busy hurts your business.
1. Being Too Busy Shortchanges Your Clients
When you’re busy, you tend to forget all the superior service details that set you apart from your competitors, and you end up shortchanging your clients. When your clients don’t get the attention they’ve come to expect from you, you risk losing them entirely.
2. Being Too Busy Isn’t Sustainable
Your business is reliant on your health and well-being, and, even if you have a team in place and can delegate tasks, you’re still ultimately in charge of it all. Studies show that we’re not using all our vacation days and are working longer hours. The stress to perform at top capacity is not sustainable physically or mentally.
3. Busy Leads to Burnout
When you’re in a place where you’re starting to hate your job and it’s a job you created for yourself, you’re in burnout or close to it. If you’re too deep in the day-to-day, you lose sight of the big picture and why you started your business in the first place.
Tips to Be Less Busy and More Successful
So how do you climb out of the burden of busy? Here are a few tips that can keep your business moving forward, but not buried in busy.
Stop Running Away
This tip may sting a little. Some of the time, being too busy is a symptom of low self-esteem. We can inflate our own importance and make ourselves unreachable by simply being “too busy”.
If you’re finding yourself overwhelmed and too busy to engage in the things you want to do, you need to do some soul searching and ask yourself why. Maybe you’re a people pleasing person or maybe you want your competitors or frenemies to think you’re important.
Spoiler alert: You already are. Sit with this for a while and ask yourself what being too busy satisfies in you.
Watch Your Mouth
Stop saying, “I don’t have time.” You do have time, but just not for everything. When you use your language to prioritize the things in your life, your perspective changes. When you reframe time by priority and not by activity, the game changes.
Try switching out the phrase, “I don’t have time to go to the doctor” with, “Going to the doctor isn’t my priority.” It changes the game, right? You’ll start to notice how “not having time” has been your go-to for everything. Only then will you be able to separate the things that are unproductive and useless from that which matters.
Raise Your Prices
If everyone wants what you do, that is fabulous. However, that does not mean they are entitled to it. If you offer different kinds of services that serve different needs for your clients, you need tiered pricing. What’s more is that, if you’re sought after to the point where you can’t take on new business, you’ll never scale. Growth is one thing; scaling is another. Your pricing should always focus on scalability.
Find Out How We Can Help
Being busy can be a symptom of a good business and a significant shift in the market. That said, busy should never be a substitute for running your business correctly. As business owners, we create our futures. Prioritize your time before you fill it!
GoBeyond SEO can help you automate some of your marketing processes and create a better way to sustain your business without jeopardizing the quality you offer your clients. Schedule a free strategy session with us for more information.
