[00:00:00] Emma: Today I would love to explore what it's like to have anxiety as an entrepreneur or a small business owner. It can pop up when you least expect it and it can be tied to so many different facets of your business I liken it a little bit to grief. My mum died about 8 years ago and I naively thought the grief would be able to be popped into little compartments when I got around to thinking about it.
[00:00:30] That doesn't happen and sometimes, sometimes when you least expect it, It hits. A song might come on the radio and you remember that. You might have an iced chocolate or an iced coffee and you remember that person. Or there might be something that you say, me, now as a mother, to my daughter and I think, oh, that was my mum.
[00:00:51] And so I feel like anxiety is a little bit about that. And I feel like anxiety in small business is really magnified. because we're often as small business owners, we worried about the future, right? This is our bread and butter. We worry about the future. We worry about our revenue. We worry about whether we've got enough clients.
[00:01:12] We worry worry worry worry worry
[00:01:14] there are four things I want to talk to you about today around the things that we might have anxiety about and also how to combat those things. And I would love you to, to think about these things as you go through it. If you don't suffer with anxiety, that's okay. You will know someone who suffers with anxiety for sure.
[00:01:35] The first one that I'm seeing a lot of at the moment is that social anxiety. To be fair, I've seen it since we've stepped into COVID. Working from home most of the time can make people feel anxious when you need to go out. it starts little bit like I'm just a little hermit. I want to just stay in my comfort zone.
[00:01:57] And then it builds into this great big thing where we actually don't want to leave the house to attend social events. to do networking, to go to conferences, and you feel a little lost speaking to a lot of people and that gives you anxiety. To combat that, what we want to do is we want to just take small steps like what's the smallest step?
[00:02:17] So if I was talking or coaching someone about this, I would say, what's the smallest step that we could do? It might be going into a little co working space. It might be going into a library. It's literally just getting out the four walls of your house. Now. I have said to my husband over the last week, I'm allergic to my office because he'll come home and there will be stuff all over the kitchen table.
[00:02:41] And he'll be like, what are you doing? I'm like, I'm working. And he's like, you have an office. I'm like, I know, but somehow I just feel a little bit allergic to my office at the moment. It's like I've got groundhog day in my office. And so I know I'll get over that, but I know I need to move out of my office for a little while and work somewhere else.
[00:02:58] And that might help me combat that feeling of my walls are closing. And for those of you who suffer with social anxiety, it's just little steps. It might be talking to a couple of people a day. It might be going to a coworking space. It might be finding a smaller networking groups. You don't have to walk into a room of a hundred people.
[00:03:17] You could just catch up with a business bestie. It's just, how do we get out of the space of feeling that social anxiety? Number two, I think we really worry about. cash flow We worry about revenue. Am I making enough top line? We worry about, am I making enough profit? And businesses are closing around us. It kills me.
[00:03:40] It's so heartbreaking. I just want to say to them, let me help you. We've got inflation, housing costs, Going up, cost of living crisis. So many little anxieties can creep in as a small business owner, and it can be crippling. I choose to not watch the news for this very reason. Sometimes It means that we act from a space of scarcity, putting together offers or services that seem desperate or not really what you'd normally offer just so that you can try and get more money in the door versus stepping back and going, actually, what gives me joy?
[00:04:21] What can I offer And what is commercially viable for my business going forward to have a great business, a sustainable business. It's all well and good to have a business that makes money, but bringing home profit is actually what we need to be focused on. Yeah. To combat those financial worries, the things about cashflow, revenue, businesses closing around you, inflation, all the things.
[00:04:49] I think it's a big part of working on your mindset. It's about having strategies to help you snap out of that. It's about not watching the news. It's about not doom scrolling. It's about making sure that you're listening. To stories of abundance. You're listening to podcasts. You're listening to music that keeps you upbeat.
[00:05:13] I've said it before. 80 percent of business is mindset and we have to do the mindset work. Number three, I think there's this just generalized anxiety going around. If you've already had um, Then you add in on top of that, the pressures of running a business, it can be so hard to handle sometimes.
[00:05:34] I had a potential client who came to me and she had a beautiful business, but literally she woke up every single day with anxiety about her business. And we went through a bit of a process because I'm like, please don't give up unless you're really sure that you want to do something different. And actually what happened is that she decided that actually the business didn't give her joy.
[00:05:55] And so she threw that business out, started again with a blank sheet of paper, only doing stuff that she really wanted to do. Did her anxiety go away? No. Did it reduce significantly enough to her for her to get on with it and make some decent money? Yes. Did we put a plan in place for her anxiety? Yes, we did.
[00:06:19] I'll talk about that in a minute. Anxiety might flare up. You might struggle to get motivated. You might start spiraling out of control. You might go into overthinking so many things that could happen. And I think that's part of anxiety itself. We worry about all the things that could happen, not necessarily all the things that do happen or are likely to happen.
[00:06:48] Yeah.
[00:06:50] So how do you manage it? How do you help someone? When they're feeling like that. And how do you get to the root cause? Now I have to say, I'm not a psych. I'm not a therapist. I. advocate very highly for both of those professions. And a lot of the times when I'm having conversations with someone with anxiety, I will ask them about extra support that they've got going on, right?
[00:07:19] Because I also think that that extra help, you can wrap that extra help around some other things to make sure that you can not keep your anxiety at bay, but you can manage it when it comes up.
[00:07:32] A couple of my clients who suffer with anxiety still run fabulous businesses. and I want to share with you what they do that works for them. First of all, we got to get the basics right. The basics being sleep, diet and exercise. Those three things we have to put some kind of routine into place to make sure that those three things are happening.
[00:07:56] You would be stunned at the amount of business owners who do not do those three things and then wonder why their cognitive skills, their decision making skills. All of the skills aren't quite there. We've got to get the basics right. We might talk it out. They might just Marco Polo me or we might have a session or they might just call me and go, this is what's happening today.
[00:08:17] And we talk about it. a problem shared is a problem halved. Yeah. We make sure that they've got supports in place. Do they have a psych? Do they have a social worker? Are they in counseling? Do they have some physical things like a chiro and Osteo, whatever it is that supports them. And sometimes, this might be controversial, but sometimes they go back to bed. Sometimes, that's the best thing that you can do. Your body is saying, not today, not today Emma. And then you take yourself back to bed. It's okay to have days where you have self compassion, and you don't have to worry. Go for a walk or you do something else that helps you.
[00:08:57] And if that's going and having a nap or going back to bed, that's okay. What we don't want to do is we don't want to get it to a point where we're in bed for weeks and weeks and weeks or days and days and days. But if we can catch it early enough, we're good. I think the biggest thing that my clients say that is super helpful is when they're feeling good, I get them to write a list of things out.
[00:09:21] to support them when their anxiety hits. So it's when they're feeling good that they write a list of things that helps them when anxiety hits. Some of those things might be going out for a coffee with a friend, talking to a friend, talking to a friend. Booking some kind of appointment, uh, heading outside for a walk in the sun.
[00:09:42] If you're in Melbourne, maybe a walk in the rain, uh, walking on the grass and doing some grounding techniques, some breathing exercises, some meditation. And my favorite, my favorite, which has helped most of my clients is scheduling worry time. I kid you not, there is an app called the worry time app. Feel free to look it up and basically you can pop your worry in there and you can schedule a time to worry about it.
[00:10:13] and this is specifically. Great for business owners who are busy. We are all busy and we've got things to do, but worries pop into our head. Instead of grabbing that and that worry, ruining your whole day, we can schedule it in the Worry Time app with a time where you get to worry about it.
[00:10:32] I mean, It sounds funny, doesn't it? I don't know how it works. It just works. And my clients love it. So there are a few tips on how to, if you are a business owner and you've got anxiety, or you know a business owner who has anxiety. One, if you need to have some self compassion for yourself, and some compassion for others.
[00:10:53] People struggling with anxiety. It is so real and it is on the rise. And when we bring anxiety in to the loneliness epidemic, wowsers, people are feeling really isolated. So we need to make sure that we're looking out for our business besties, that we're looking out for people who we know suffer from anxiety.
[00:11:13] we might not be able to do anything. But we can work them through. And if you've got that list of things written out, share it with someone so that if you're having one of those days and you bring them, they can say, have you checked your list? What else do you need to do? Again, I'm not a psych. So if you need support, please find the support.
[00:11:32] If you do need some support and you need some recommendations for psych support or social work support or counseling support, please reach out. I'm so happy to open up my black book and recommend some people to you. Do you want some homework? You're probably walking thinking, No Emma, I don't want homework.
[00:11:49] If you suffer from anxiety, do yourself a favour and on a good day, write out five or six things that you can do on the day when you're not feeling that great. Laminate it, because I'm a stationary queen. Laminate it. And have it somewhere close. I hope this has helped. It's a, it's an unusual one for me, but I'm seeing a lot of anxiety out there at the moment with all the events that are happening across the globe.
[00:12:14] I have global clients, so there's a lot happening, especially in the U S and so anxiety is, is reaching. a point where it needs to be talked about in a nonjudgmental way with help in place or structures in place so that we can all thrive. I hope you found this episode helpful and I look forward to seeing you next week.
[00:12:38] Bye for now.
