You may procrastinate because you don’t want to do the tasks in your business. For example, you don’t want to do your accounting. When you think of accounting and numbers it causes your brain to stress. You end up doing everything else possible as opposed to looking at your numbers. The negative association you have towards accounting, prevents you from following through.
You’re scared of failing. You may believe you are productive distracting yourself with books, reading and courses. Perhaps you even distract yourself with youtube videos or Netflix series as opposed to working on your business. You say to yourself that you don’t know enough, you aren’t ready yet or that you need more time. Yet, the truth is that at your core, you have a fear of failure
You know what you want in the future but it seems so far away that you can’t bring yourself to take action right now. You can’t seem to fathom how you could build up a business that runs without you. You don’t see the steps you have to take now and it leaves you feeling uninspired. This leads you to distract yourself with tasks that make you feel you are progressing, but the truth is you are just keeping yourself busy.
In the world we live in today, it is easy to procrastinate. Would you like to work on your business plan or quickly respond to a friend who sent you a message? You have employees knocking at your door wanting guidance and emails coming through every 5 minutes. It is easy to be distracted with so many notifications continuously throughout the day
You want to make sure that you make the best decisions for your company. But this often leads you to take a very long time to make important decisions. Your indecisiveness means that you can’t make hard decisions quickly. Instead you distract yourself with less important tasks. You are hoping that someday in the future you can be 100% sure of the decision you need to make.
You may have tasks that you feel are too big for you to tackle. This causes you to not even start the task, as you don’t even know where to start. This feeling of paralysis can go on for days or even weeks, where a task is too daunting to do. You may even attempt to do it once, but after realising all the factors involved you avoid it all costs.
You want to make sure that everything is right before you launch your product. You worry that if something goes wrong you will receive negative press. This causes you to revisit various elements of a product until you feel it is perfect. The fear of negative criticism causes you to delay on your tasks.
There are 6 types of entrepreneur procrastinators. By understanding which type you are, you can more clearly identify where you need to focus to overcome your procrastination
This type of procrastinator struggles to build a business due to avoiding important tasks. An example you may experience is becoming obsessed with content creation and procrastinating on marketing. The root cause of your issue can be Imposter Syndrome. You are afraid of being revealed as inferior so tend to procrastinate on tasks that aren’t necessary.
You believe that you shouldn’t have to do anything to be successful. Since you are great at what you do, you should be paid well for your work. You feel frustrated and become bored when you don’t do tasks that relate to your calling.
You’re too obsessed with making everything perfect. This stops you from following through on business tasks, as you are in constant planning mode. This focus on planning and avoidance of execution stems from a core belief that if it isn’t perfect then you are a failure.
You will find that you have too many projects and often feel overwhelmed with the amount of work that you have to do. You tend to have the Shinny Penny Syndrome. You keep switching projects believing that the new one will lead to more success. Fuelled by a rush of creating business, you forget to focus on the long-term value of each business project.
You need pressure to start a task. Without urgency you tend to focus on other less important tasks. You believe that you have enough time, until you don’t. This causes you to move through cycles of overworking followed by lazy procrastination.
Here is a quick summary of the video above:
If you are struggling to change your mindset to overcome procrastination, it will be due to one of these 8 reasons.
7 ways to quickly reduce stress and anxiety
The Entrepreneur’s Ultimate Guide to Goal Setting
It’s easy to overcomplicate what you have to do to reduce stress and anxiety.
I hope the following 7 points help to offer a simple perspective to help you overcome these negative emotions.
If you feel like you know some of these points already, I want you to consider this: If you know something but you don’t do it, do you really know it?
I’d challenge you to implement what you learn below and I hope it can help you, just like these strategies have helped many other entrepreneurs.
1. Positive questions
This is such a key technique that has helped hundreds of the people I have worked with over the years. I find it is very common for entrepreneurs to ask questions such as: what is the worst that could happen?
The answers to these types of questions lead them on a downward spiral, where they keep coming up with even more terrible possibilities.
An alternative question to ask yourself could be: how can I appreciate that this moment is perfect just the way it is?
This alternative question allows your brain to focus on what is right as opposed to what is wrong. This in turn can help reduce your stress and anxiety in a very fast way.
2. Keep Walking
Walking is one of the best techniques that I use to help myself reduce stress during the day. Yes it is still possible to feel stress! What differentiates those who have a great lifestyle vs those that struggle, is the way in which you manage it.
By going on a walk it helps you relax, your mind is stimulated in a different way and you can start thinking in a much clearer way. I challenge you to walk 10,000 steps minimum per day, to keep your mind and body in peak condition.
3. Hydrate more
Do you ever find that how your feel energy wise, affects how you respond to challenges as an entrepreneur? Some days you can deal with everything, but other days, something small can really stress you out.
Even more so there are even days where you feel a build up of stress over time until you feel like exploding like a volcano. One of the best ways to tackle this is actually through hydration.
Since our bodies are 60% water and our brain is 80% water. Anything that we do that dehydrates us will negatively affect us operating at an optimal level of energy.
Losses of 5% of your body weight in water decrease the capacity of work by 30%! You want to make sure that you’re adequately hydrated during the day, as it will help you have more energy to deal with issues.
4. Change perspective
Put it into perspective, does it really matter? Have you ever felt extremely frustrated that an email wouldn’t send, or a person hasn’t finished an item that you need ASAP? All entrepreneurs have been in these scenarios, yet can you change your perspective to maintain relaxed and avoid stress?
The key here is to think, will this really matter in 5 years time? What could I appreciate about this moment right now? Perhaps even taking a break for 5 minutes and coming back can help give you that new perspective to tackle something from a different angle.
5. Consistent Exercise
If you’re struggling, frustrated and angry at a situation, one of the best ways to help reduce these negative emotions is through exercise. Whether this is going to the gym and lifting weight, doing gentle yoga or going for a run in nature.
You need to have a simple exercise practice that you can turn to, that will help shift your emotional state. Make sure that you pick an exercise that you enjoy doing that helps change your mood in a quick way.
6. Relax
You can’t focus on work 24/7 yet I find the people who are most stressed and anxious don’t ever relax. Go for a massage, have a bath or even a spa retreat! I am not sure what your guilty pleasure is to unwind, but whatever it is, do it.
If you’re constantly working on the business and on your breaks, are still thinking about the business, this is a must! You need to create a relaxing routine that allows you to let go of your stress and anxiousness each and everyday.
7. Breathing
Breathing is a great way to control your emotional state. When you’re anxious and stressed, your breathing is shallow. Instead choose to take deep breaths and focus on your breathing. This can help you more easily control how you feel and what you experience.
Remember, where focus goes energy flows. You want to make sure you focus on what makes you feel good, and not what causes you to feel anxious.
Want to reduce stress and anxiety even faster? Check out The Entrepreneur Lifestyle Accelerator.
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Why Perfectionism Is Killing Your Business?
The Entrepreneur’s Ultimate Guide to Goal Setting
Are you someone that likes everything to be purfect?
I’m guessing reading purfect may have annoyed you and you’re already thinking of writing in and saying that it’s spelt PERFECT BEN!
If you are someone that likes thing to be PERFECT, then why is it a bad thing?
Well let’s dive into Hannah’s story so you can understand how it affected her multi million-dollar property business.
Hannah is a business owner who has been running her property business for over 30 years. She has created a property empire but for some reason is always on edge!
She told me that she can never relax and that her mind is constantly wondering onto problems in her business. She can’t stop thinking about it. She said that the most peaceful time in her life was when she got injured and couldn’t work on the business.
She even asked me if a life of doing nothing is what she is created for, in order for her to be happy!
Now as you can imagine as we started working with each other, there were a few core patterns that I want you to see that she had in her life.
As you read, do reflect to see which ones relate to you:
1. Excessive stress
Hannah knew that things could always be better. She would find herself always looking for things that were wrong in her business. No matter how many things she did, there was always an issue. Whether this was someone complaining about an issue they found with a property, staff that are ill or issues with the wifi! It always seemed that there was stress.
Not only this, when she would do fun activities, golf for example, she would get even more stressed! This stress meant that her business suffered, as she couldn’t handle taking on even more projects and clients purely because it was overwhelming.
2. Crushing failures
This pattern occurred for Hannah when there was a trigger that set her off. For example, she had an expectation that she would win a project. Yet many times she would lose out, in these moments, Hannah felt that she must have done something wrong.
This in turn meant she was looking for more issues and experiencing even more negative emotions. This would lead her on a downward spiral where literally for days she wouldn’t do any work due to being overwhelmed whilst constantly asking the question of: “what did I do wrong.”
When you fail and you will most certainly do, this probably hits you so hard that you may also go on a downward spiral. This pressure you feel to always succeed isn’t just in your business though, but also in other areas of your life.
When you are going through these downward spirals resulting in negative emotions you will perform even worse. This affects your productivity at work, as well as the team as they take in all of the negative energy you’re giving off.
3. Can’t trust people
Trusting people was something Hannah struggled with for a long time, especially when it comes to very important clients! Why would she trust them? She can do it better herself!
She can trust employees and managers to do the easy tasks that aren’t as important but when it comes to the big projects. It’s better that she checks on everything and makes sure that it is done because if they make a mistake then that would mean severe consequences!
You can only imagine how this stopped her expanding her business as she was always working in the business as opposed to on the business.
Unfortunately due to this lack of trust it meant that she would never be able to leave her business that she had created over the past 30 years. Only when this pattern was removed could she start to look into other projects in her life.
4. No compromise
Hannah would also have a no compromise attitude when it came to negotiations in business. You can imagine the issues she faced, as she wanted everything done her way.
It was very difficult to negotiate new business opportunities and make her a better innovator by being open to other people’s opinions. This meant that despite her success, she didn’t have the success trajectory she was truly capable of.
When we look at successful entrepreneurs around the world it’s often their flexibility and ability to act quickly that helps them most. This is especially important through periods of uncertainty where companies must innovate to stay ahead of competition.
5. Lost opportunities
Another pattern that was an issue was Hannah’s belief of: all or nothing. This can be seen as a pro and a con in different circumstances.
In some cases it is great to be a person that can go all in or not at all. However, if that’s all you can ever do then big issues will occur. For example, when Hannah looked into side projects or trying new things it would be something that would be pushed to the bottom of the list. She wasn’t willing to give things a go.
Alternatively when she finally did try something. She would go all in and end up wasting a lot of money, time and energy on something that wasn’t that important.
Perhaps you’re in a similar position, where you won’t take projects on if you feel you can’t complete them to your standard. Maybe you’re wasting opportunities right now and losing vital time as a result?
6. Unrealistic expectations
As a perfectionist, Hannah would expect results that were way above what many of her employees were capable of. Despite that she knew this, she would still push for this standard. Unfortunately this would often lead to issues for her employees as well as problems with motivation.
Moreover, conflict would occur if things were not done her way, as opposed to just getting the job done. Instead of expanding business, her actual outcome was to expand her business in “her” way.
This would work for people that are like her but for others it creates conflict. Are you causing conflicts in your business through too high expectations?
If you can learn to let go of the perfectionism holding you back and start to allow yourself to be happy. The reason I say allow is that when we look into the top 5 regrets of the dying, one of them was actually: “ I wish I allowed myself to be happier” So once again, you need to allow yourself to be happy, then you are going to have a much more fulfilled and successful life. The best strategy I can give you is to trade your expectations for gratitude in every area of your life. If you can start to do this then your world will shift in a very different direction.
If you too are struggling with the challenge of perfectionism. Do book a call with me below so I can share how we help entrepreneurs like yourself to make the shift, and massively boost business success.
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How to create a great lifestyle whilst building a profitable business?
The Entrepreneur’s Ultimate Guide to Goal Setting
1. Be persistent
On the entrepreneurial journey you will face challenges. There will be times where you want to give up, moments where you can’t see a clear path and even times where you just want to quit completely. Yet it is in these moments that you must remember why you wanted to start a business and take the steps necessary in order to make it happen.
2. Be consistent
You can become the most motivated person in the world. But if you aren’t consistent then it doesn’t matter. You must be held accountable and move yourself forward in a sustainable way. The best and most effective way by far to do this is to hire a coach. Have someone to help keep you accountable and call you out when you aren’t sticking to your goals. This will help keep you on track towards what you desire.
3. Clarify your vision
What is the vision that you have for yourself and your business? Do you want to carry on working in the business for the next 10-20 years or perhaps you want to create a business that runs without you. You must clarify what you want to create, so that you can build the business so it isn’t a burden.
4. Create lifestyle principles
You want to make sure that your lifestyle and the business grow hand in hand. Most people want to have a business that runs without them and then they will live their life. However, you want to make sure that you’re enjoying the journey.
The key here is to define how you want to live your life no matter what, so that you keep balanced despite business challenges. It’s important to define these clearly and stick to these 80% of the time. Remember no one is perfect! By doing this you’ll have created a great foundation to build a business.
5. Create a business not a hobby
Do what you love and the money will follow is as stupid as saying, eat whatever you want and you’ll be thin. It doesn’t work. You need to become business minded and actually create a business. It doesn’t matter how passionate you are about what you do, you have to be able to market it to the right people in order to make a business.
6. Do business in the cloud
If you want to live a great lifestyle, being able to move remotely is of paramount importance. Now more than ever, we see how much easier it is to be able to work from anywhere in the world. If you build your business like this, it will enable you to have much more freedom to do what you love.
7. Master your time management
You can have the best of intentions to be an entrepreneur, yet if you don’t master time management, it could be a VERY long journey for you. One of the most important skills to master is your time. You want to become more efficient with your time so that you can achieve more in less time. This skill is not optional but is a MUST for all entrepreneurs who really want to excel in their lives and business.
8. Overcome your fear
Fear is what will hold you back. Through working with entrepreneurs from all walks of life, I have come to found that many entrepreneurs fear failure. They fear not being good enough and they fear they can’t create what they desire. The sad result that arises is that they don’t take the risks they need to in their business in order to create success. I would challenge you to embrace the fear and do it anyway. This is where you can become the courageous leader you want to be.
9. Avoid burn out
10. Find a mentor/coach
No one in life has ever achieved anything great, without having guides and mentors along their journey. As an entrepreneur you will want to make sure that you learn from the best people possible to help you short cut your way to success. Learn from their mistakes, optimise yourself and become a truly remarkable business leader.
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10 great lifestyle tips for entrepreneurs
The Entrepreneur’s Ultimate Guide to Goal Setting
1. Business Boundaries
A business boundary is what you put in place so that you don’t burn out. You might consider having a business boundary such as turning off emails in the evening, having a cut off time from work, or even choosing to not work one day each week. These business boundaries help create space for you to enjoy your life whilst you build your business.
2. Lifestyle Principles
You want to make sure that your lifestyle and the business grow hand in hand. Most people want to have a business that runs without you and then they will live their life. You want to make sure that you are enjoying the journey. The key here is to define lifestyle principles to help you stay on track. When do you want to workout, spend time with family, socialise with friends …etc. These principles act as a guideline to keep you on track.
3. Energy principles
4. Weekly Evaluation
A weekly evaluation is one of the most important habits you can have as an entrepreneur. This is the golden nugget of advice, and I urge you to please do this, as it will change your life. A weekly evaluation consists of answering a series of questions each week to keep you on track. This helps you understand what to measure, what to improve on and prevents you from falling off track. This is single handedly one of the best habits that has helped me excel in all areas of my life.
5. Daily Power
Daily power is a habit that is of fundamental importance to keep you on track. In essence you want to have a few core things that you do each day that helps you stay in a great emotional state. By doing this, you can more effectively lead your business, make better decisions and enjoy the journey. This is your daily power. You want to create a daily power that consists of gratitude, visualization and affirmations. This helps give you an unshakeable emotional state throughout the day.
6. Financial Freedom Progress
Do you know exactly how much money you need in order to live an incredible lifestyle without working? Have you ever thought about breaking these numbers down into tangible goals to see if you’re on track? If you haven’t, this is something to seriously consider doing, you want to make sure that you know with complete clarity exactly what amount you need to never have to work again. This is a target that is built up over time and helps keep you focused towards your end goal.
7. Mentor/mentee
You want to make sure that you are mentoring other people and being mentored along your journey. I have found that mentors have been invaluable in giving me the confidence, insights and skills to accelerate my success. Moreover, being able to mentor others reinforces everything I have learnt and gives me an opportunity to give back to those who need me most.
8. Constant growth
Your business growth will never outgrow your personal growth. This means that you MUST keep growing as an entrepreneur in all areas of your life. Investing in courses, programs and training so that you stay ahead of competition. Moreover you can use these resources to optimise yourself, tweak your systems and learn to live an even better lifestyle.
9. Time management systems
Time management is more important than money. Why do I say that, well it’s very simple, money you can earn back, time you can’t. Unfortunately we all have a limited amount of time on this earth, yet money is in abundance. If you can learn to master the finite time you have, you can become more efficient, get more things done and do much more with what you have. This is key to enable you to become an outstanding entrepreneur.
10. Holiday Time
Yes as part of a lifestyle you need to have a holiday! You need to rest, unwind and relax. You want to make sure that you schedule holidays far in advance so that you can plan around them. It’s key to build your business around the lifestyle you want to live. Make sure to book them in and give yourself that space. It will help you look at your business with fresh eyes and be even more efficient on your return.
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Does your Business Personality Type impact business growth?
The Entrepreneur’s Ultimate Guide to Goal Setting
As entrepreneurs we have a business personality type, which is at our core. By understanding who you are at your core, it will help you better perform as a business owner.
The Artist
– Enjoys working on their skills and developing their chosen craft
– They love their work and can’t imagine doing anything else
The System Manager
– Consistently builds systems to serve their clients and deliver products
– Enjoys building business processes to more efficiently run the business
The Business Creator
– Is the risk taker that enjoys the thrill of making money
– Enjoys the challenge of building a business and often takes on multiple business ventures.
Now that you have identified which one you are at your core, make sure to watch the video to understand how it impacts your business growth.
Interested in accelerating your business growth whilst living an extraordinary lifestyle? Check out the Entrepreneur Lifestyle Accelerator
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The Master guide to overcoming procrastination as an entrepreneur
The Master guide to overcoming procrastination as an entrepreneur
overcome procrastination worksheet
This worksheet shares the 5 reasons why you’re still procrastinating and exactly what to do to overcome it.
Download now to help you have the business success you desire
Overcome procrastination as an entrepreneur with templates, videos and resources.
Procrastinating as an entrepreneur has a negative impact on your business in many ways. Perhaps you are not dealing with unproductive employees, avoiding challenging business decisions or even wasting hours distracting yourself from the business. Yet by overcoming this negative habit, you can build your business to higher levels of profitability, success and growth.
What is procrastination?
Why do entrepreneurs procrastinate?
6 Types of Procrastination for entrepreneurs
How to stop procrastinating (step-by-step Guide)
8 Proven methods to remove the habit of procrastination
What is procrastination?
Why is procrastination so important to overcome?
If you know what to do but you don’t follow through, you are stunting your business growth.. It doesn’t matter how driven, organised and motivated you are. If you don’t overcome procrastination, you will waste valuable time, distracting yourself and becoming frustrated you aren’t progressing in business.
The longer you wait to overcome procrastination the worse it can become. You don’t want to look back and think why your competitors have expanded so much faster than you. You don’t want to look back in 3 years time knowing you haven’t achieved your business objectives. You don’t want to not be able to provide for your family and those that you cherish. Procrastination is not an optional habit to overcome, it is a MUST to help you grow a successful sustainable business.
Why do entrepreneurs procrastinate?
Negative associations
Fear of failure
Abstract Goals
Lack motivation
Constant distractions
Indecisive
Overwhelmed
Fear of negativity
The 6 types of entrepreneur procrastinators
The Avoider
The Dreamer
The Perfectionist
The Worrier
You worry that you can’t succeed. You believe you aren’t good enough, aren’t skilled enough or it’s not the right time. This fear of not succeeding, creates a cycle where it is better not to start the task. The constant focus on failing leads you down a destructive path of self-sabotage.
Novelty Explorer
Crisis creator
How to stop procrastinating (step-by-step Guide)
8 Proven methods to remove the habit of procrastination
Focus on a clear goal
You must understand what your goal is. The reason you often procrastinate is that you don’t have a clear business objectives that you are working towards. Your mind becomes side tracked onto other more interesting tasks.
You need to create a clear outcome, break it down into smaller tasks and plan them out. This will help create clear deliverables and objectives to achieve during the day. Not only does this help keep you focused but it also helps you progress even faster towards your goals. For help creating clear goals check out the The Entrepreneur’s Ultimate Guide to Goal Setting
Know your why
If you don’t know the reasons for you doing a task then it is difficult for you to follow through. Using our previous example of accounting, you may avoid this for as long as possible. Yet if you clarify the reasons why you need to this it can help you follow through.
Perhaps you want to save money efficiently, avoid a big tax bill or become a smarter money manager. By becoming aware of your reasons, you will be more likely follow through on your tasks.
Change your environment
You want to make it hard to procrastinate. Put your TV in a box, lock it and put the key downstairs in a jar. Put your phone on airplane mode and leave it out of sight during the time you are focusing on tasks.
It may sound ridiculous, but these methods will help you overcome procrastination. You need to recreate your environment to help remove distractions. Think about what distracts you the most and remove it from your business hours.
Focus on the next step
You often become overwhelmed in business when you take too many projects on at once. You don’t know where to start and can’t focus on the tasks you need to do. You become stressed out and often avoid doing anything altogether.
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time! Yes this is absurd and of course I am not encouraging you to eat elephants. However, sometimes our projects feel so big that we don’t even start. Break them down into smaller pieces and you will find it easier to manage. If you feel stuck think about this question: what is my next step?
Take regular breaks
That’s right, you need to allow a break in the day to chill out. Planned relaxation is what you can call it. Here you aren’t procrastinating as you planned not to do anything. You can’t work all the time, every minute or every hour, for the rest of your life. You need to spend 5 minutes relaxing and then move back onto your tasks.
Make sure to not create a back-to-back schedule during the day. You also want to slightly overestimate how long it will take you to complete a task. By doing this, you can take the much needed breaks or planned relaxation which you deserve!
Tackle challenging tasks first
It is easy to put the hardest tasks at the end of the day, or even the end of the week. Yet by scheduling the hardest tasks first in the day you have a clear mind to tackle them. This will help enable you to utilise the energy you have in the morning to the best of your ability.
You can then use time in the afternoon for tasks that need less energy. You can also be more flexible in your schedule as you’ve completed your hardest task of the day. Make sure you give yourself more time than you think to ensure that you complete the task in time.
Make yourself accountable
You can set deadlines for other people, but you must also set deadlines for yourself. Make sure that you state when you are going to finish your tasks and make them public to the team. To further increase your accountability, share the aims you have on your social media.
This is not something that you do once. This needs to be a regular practice that you adopt so that you can keep pushing yourself. By using accountability, you can have a clear outcome to work towards. This will help keep you on track and inspire your team with your progress.
Use time management strategies
There are various time management strategies to use to best utilise your time. You could time block your day into 1 or 2 hour segments for a specific task. You could start using the Pomodoro Technique. You could do creative tasks in the morning and meetings in the afternoon.
The key here is to create a system that works for you. You don’t need to overcomplicate it. Test a strategy that you think will work best and then see what results you can generate.
Ready to take the next step?
If you haven’t already, make sure to download the procrastination worksheet here. You will learn the 5 reasons why you’re still procrastinating in business and how to overcome them.
You will want to have support on your journey to help you overcome procrastination even faster. If you haven’t already do check out the Entrepreneur Lifestyle Accelerator. This program will help you overcome procrastination, improve your business growth and create the freedom you desire.
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