Hafiz Iftikhar Ahmed Khan

You are listening to the Digital Branding Lab podcast Episode Number Nine. Separating yourself from the competition requires a strong Digital Brand. Juntae DeLane and he’s here to help enhance your digital identity, visibility and credibility. He’ll provide tools and tips to get you more customers, bring in more leads and close more deals. Welcome to the Digital Branding Lab. Now grab your lab coat, strap on those goggles, it’s time to get started. Hey everyone’ and this is Juntae DeLane here, thank you so much for joining me in the lab. Now be sure to add this podcast to your favorite RSS feed or iTunes. And as you know this podcast is brought to you by digitalbrandinginsitute.com. It’s a place for you to learn to grow your business and profit from your expertise. Now being entrepreneur takes grit. It takes determination and a strong work ethic and most entrepreneurs and solopreneurs act as boss, a manager, an intern so juggling all these tasks can lead anyone in this position to burnout. So if you wanna keep your business a float, you absolutely cannot afford this. So what should you do? To work smarter and not harder or you gonna burnout especially if you’re handling everything yourself. So if you’re reaching the point where you’re to do list is looking more likely to do book and you’re unsure how to get all that stuff done, in this episode I’ll give you three tips to avoid entrepreneur burnout. Now let’s get into the show. Alright, let’s jump right into here it is Three Tips to Avoid Entrepreneur Burnout. Let’s start with number one. DOA, Delegate Outsource and Automate. Now I know your workday is full of task that can possibly be handled by others so don’t waste your energy and your time handling those things yourself. So when you outsource basic task like scanning receipts or scheduling emails, you’re naturally gonna free up time so that you can focus on growing your business so whether that be some type of client interactions or outreach efforts, it could be shaking hands and kissing babies or doing whatever is needed to build your business. Spend time on those elements of your business rather than task that someone else can handle coz if done properly, it’ll allow you not only to avoid entrepreneur burnout but you can grow your business more quickly and efficiently. Now other ways to save time are by automating emails or experimenting with batching out some... some routine task or outsourcing anything that doesn’t require your personal or unique touch. So I would just start small, I will try to test different service providers, I have to go on automation tools and things like that and then you can find one that you can trust and that’s easy to use and so on. I would also look at asking some of your business context to see if they can refer someone or you know when it comes to finding just quality people, quality no virtual assistants or online business managers, something like that, maybe copywriters and all those things are keyed so you definitely wanna find the right person or the right resource for you. So if you’re having trouble with this, we’ve actually provided with some great resource for you in the show notes that will definitely help you to delegate outsource and automate. Alright, let’s go with number two. Take a Hands Off approach, hands off, stop touching things. Feel like you’re in a grocery store, stop touching things. Naturally your time is your most precious commodity, right? And it’s something that you... that you never gonna get back so you need to do what you can do to protect it at all cost. So this means that you need to make sure that your product or your services aren’t dependent on your personal touch. Now I understand everyone loves when things are personalize. I totally get it. But you don’t wanna over personalize things so much to the point where it’s going to burn you out. If everything needs your own personal touch, your own personal spin to it, it’s going to be difficult to keep that up especially is you want to maintain a high level of productivity coz you gotta have to think this way. You know what if you get sick and you’re just not able to be as productive as before? Just imagine if you were to take a week or a month off of your business with limited email access. What would that do to your business? I’m sure you already know the answers to that. And that answer is the reason why you should add more automation into your business process. So here’s some examples, you know if you run live events, consider recording them and selling them at a lower price or if you are a coach. Consider writing a book or creating a self league course coz at the end of the day, your clients and your customers care more about the results. Then how those particular sources are delivered? So if... if someone is able to get a quick result or a quick answer to their challenge versus a slow answer that’s personalized, I think they’re gonna go with the answers that comes the quickest. So you have to consider that and of course it’s a give and take. You wanna make sure that you provide personalized offerings but you also wanna make sure that they come in a speedy fashion. So you wanna make sure that you’re not burning yourself out by trying to create all these personalize offerings when you can streamline that process or streamline that offer so that you can maintain a nice balance of running your business efficiently without burning out. Now if you’re a solopreneur and you wanna avoid burning out, I would say keep direct access to you as a premium product. If someone is going to get direct access to you, whether that be through a mastermind group as an example, whether that... whether that be through personalize consulting sessions, one on one meeting with your clients, workshops so on and so forth. That’s a premium product because that’s gonna take more of your time. It even closes speaking engagement as well, speaking engagement are a premium. Naturally you have to prepare for your speaking engagements, you have to do your research, you have to rehearse, so on and so forth. So it takes a lot of time to get into that process preparing for a speaking engagement. So you definitely wanna consider that a premium product. But what you’re able to do is you’re able to take that speaking engagement, record it and then pass it along to your target audience. So those are some ideas that I have for really keeping balance when it... when it comes to creating efficient offering without burning out. Alright, let’s talk about number three. You need to unplug and just take time away from doing business. Now that means unplugging from your mobile device so that you could be more creative. Now having a clearer mind is naturally going to allow you to become more creative. There’s less things to think about. There’s less destructions. So you need to figure out a way to unplug. And also, I’ve always heard that the best way to maintain a highly level of productivity is actually take brakes and this is very important. Because if you don’t take brakes you’re not gonna be as productive because you’re gonna end up finding yourself backtrack, redoing some of the things that you did when you were multi-tasking. And you also are going to be less creative because you don’t have enough time and space to have something crystallized in your head and have an idea come out as a creative product or service, a creative campaign without that time to really unplug from the destructions. Now wherever you spend your time away is completely up to you so I like to do some things like you know go on a long run or work out, do some type of physical activity. I even like to have staycations and staycations are pretty much is getting away from the house and you know maybe getting a hotel in the city and just lounging and just sort of getting away from things... again, turning your phone off, not connecting to the... to the hotel wifi. These are things that you’re able to do, to really just step away from your business. Now it’s very, very important that you aren’t working on something new. Now listen, I understand as a busy person and as a person that’s you know always thinking about different things, it’s very hard to get your mind off of these... these new ideas especially as I come to you coz you like to see them scale, right? And so you start thinking about a whole bunch of different things. But the fact of the matter is you should completely remove yourself from any type of business activity which includes the thinking about business. So as I’m on a staycation, I try not to work on any new projects. I just try to live and have a good time and enjoy my surroundings. Now remember, taking time away doesn’t mean reading self improvement books or catching up on blog post or even listening to business podcast. I normally saying this now because you’re actually listening to my podcast and I thank you for that but I just hope that you’re not listening while you’re taking time away or you’re unplugging because the bottom line is you need to get outside of your business brain in order to create a balanced workflow that will keep you from burning out. There it is. Those are my three tips to avoid entrepreneur burnout and that about wraps it up, thank you so much for listening to the Digital Branding Lab podcast. Again if you like what you’ve heard, please tell a friend about the podcast, share it with them, keep bugging and tweet whatever you gotta do. Also, be sure to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or wherever you consumed podcast. And remember, “Work smarter, not harder” If you’re ready to take your business to the next level, don’t let your Digital Branding lesson end here. Visit digitalbrandinginsitute.com for incredible resources, training and guide. You can also check out the show notes for this episode. That’s all for now, we’ll see you next time in the Digital Branding Lab.