The reason people start businesses is generally for the freedom it offers. Let’s explore how this freedom in business often diminishes over time due to unrealistic expectations, lack of boundaries, and the challenges of managing staff and outsourcing. Through personal anecdotes and practical advice, I provide tips on how to reclaim this freedom, focusing on time management, setting realistic goals, and the importance of self-awareness and personal boundaries.
Watch the full episode on Youtube: https://youtu.be/UnFRG8KuGck
Listen to the full episode on podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/many-hats-of-business/episodes/002-Tanya-Talks—Freedom-in-Business-e2m8h1c
Podcast Timestamps
00:00 Introduction to the episode
00:37 The initial allure of business freedom
01:11 Challenges to maintaining freedom in business
01:23 Setting realistic expectations and boundaries
03:31 Adapting business to suit personal preferences
06:38 Plan realistically and practice gratitude
08:29 Respecting personal time and maintaining creativity
09:45 Importance of setting personal goals for freedom
12:30 Conclusion and teaser for next episode
Freedom in Business:
So many people start a business for the freedom it creates. They get to pick their own hours, work with clients that they like, do the school run. And go to the 65 concerts that we have to go to on the lead up to Christmas. Go on holiday whenever they want without making holiday requests and waiting for approval. No more working weekends or shifts and ultimately the choice to work from wherever you want to. There’s a lot of digital nomads now as well, isn’t there?
But Freedom in Business needs prioritising
When people start businesses, the freedom piece can often be one of the very first things to go. And it’s often just elements of it. So they don’t really notice it first.
Perhaps they’re still doing the school run, but they work when the kids were in bed. And they never intended to do that, for example. Sometimes, this is down to setting unrealistic expectations in the first place. How can you know everything about what it’s like to run a business before you’ve taken the plunge?
And there is also an element of boundaries that come into play here. We have to defend our time and be strict with it. If we want to protect it, no one else is going to protect it for you. It’s something I’ve struggled with for many years as I’m a known people pleaser, so don’t beat yourself up because it can take a while.
And interestingly, I’ve talked about building your business your way last time and people pleasing is a good example of this. I’ve seen so much about people pleasing being a negative trait in recent years. In a business sense though, as long as you’re charging enough to allow for you to work in that way, it isn’t a bad thing.
People pleasing in business
Hear me out. I know I like to please people, so I deliver a high quality service as standard and then you have to price accordingly for that. A low cost, high quantity business wouldn’t be my go to because it wouldn’t serve me. This is because I would want to give the best level of service I could as my standard. And I wouldn’t be being paid for that. Then you potentially start losing some of these boundaries and freedom because of it, and you start to resent your business. Essentially you’ve built your business, so you have the power to change the thing that you’re starting to resent.
But you can see how if you work around how you like to work, then how beneficial that can be. I found out more about human design recently, in the last six months or so. And I found out that I’m a manifesting generator. Now I’m not really good on human design, so, don’t take my information here to the letter, but essentially a manifesting generator, you’re designed to respond as well.
I’d created a business to suit me almost accidentally.
So for years I’ve wondered, because some people naturally create far better than I would. I struggled to think of new things if you like, but my entire manufacturing business is really responsive. And actually people just come to us for quotes. I talked about that last time with the lead generation and we get asked things all the time.
Can you do that? But then I have a looked at it, and yeah, we can do this or no we can’t. And so I’d respond to the enquiry, and so actually it works really well for me.
It’s exactly how I like to work. And yet, as I’ve got more understanding of myself, it’s been really interesting because it shows that that’s how it’s set up to do. And it was interesting that without that knowledge, I’ve actually been setting it up in this way because it works for me.
Back to freedom in business
So anyway, back to freedom and business or lack thereof, sometimes it is around having to or feeling like we have to pick up the pieces when someone lets us down, whether it’s a staff or contractor or supplier, etc.
And sometimes it’s because we’re trying to be all of the things to all of the people. We can’t do everything in business and the sooner we realise and get people to help us, the better. Remember, it’s your business – you have the power to shape it according to your vision of freedom.
Delegate to get freedom in business
It’s daunting taking on staff. You can do outsourcing, which often works out cheaper, but it’s very expensive from an hourly rate point of view, but these are experienced people and you can just do it for the amount of hours you need.
So when you’re first taking on someone to do a job, it can be quite good because you start to assess what is fully needed.
The first time I took someone on to do admin in my engraving business, it was very difficult in that it was a new role we were creating. So we didn’t really know the full extent of it. But you’ve just got to test these things in business, really, and that’s why often things don’t work out exactly right first time. Because it’s a trial and error thing, that’s how it works really, it’s the nature of it.
I appreciate that sometimes funds don’t allow us to take people on in the first instance. I wrote a blog on this a while ago. You can start a business with no money, but the trade off for that is time.
And everything takes longer if you can’t throw money at it, which is absolutely fine because you do learn so much along the way. It actually is the way I prefer because it feeds my quest for knowledge.
Use a plan to create freedom in business
The way to achieve freedom in your business is to have a plan and a realistic one. And then to not berate yourself because you’re comparing yourself to everyone else, especially because we never know the full picture.
So we tend to compare ourselves to someone further along the journey. It’s just natural. On top of that, it’s usually the Instapolished version of that lesson’s journey, not the actual real version, warts and all. You have to know somebody very, very well for you to get that version of that. So, it really isn’t ever the case.
You need to enjoy the journey. Gratitude journaling practice is a great thing to implement, excellent time management, including time blocking does help, and fiercely protecting time for you. Whether that’s a workout, time with family or friends, time out to think, or hitting your daily step target with a nice walk out in nature. That’s a particularly useful one because you actually end up getting good ideas whilst you take that time out for a walk. It’s something I’ve done quite a lot of recently.
Mindset is huge in creating freedom in business
I always struggled with feeling like I’ve got to be working all of the time. Because it’s just something we’re brought up with and it comes into our business journey. But actually when you start taking that time out, for example, I sometimes go for a run before lunch, I do quite a lot of thinking at that time, it clears my head.
So actually I would be more productive by taking that time out, half an hour to go for a run and then have a quick shower before lunch. Than sitting, just trying to work through, because so much of what we do in business, we need to be creative. We need to be thinking about marketing. We need to be creating the content for social media. It requires thought, but when you’re busy trying to do everything, you can’t get that creative thinking or a lot of us can’t. So that works really well for me. And so you’re still always working. But, you’re actually getting something done that’s good for you as well, and giving yourself a break.
We underestimate the long-term achievements
We do tend to overestimate what we can get done in a short amount of time, for instance a year. But we grossly underestimate what we can get done in a longer period of time, say 10 years or 5 years. If you don’t believe me, have a think now about where you were 10 years ago. Have you progressed further than you thought would be possible in this time?
Go back to your 10 year ago self and look at where you are now what would they say? Would they be surprised? Would they pat you on the back? Because if you’re not patting yourself on the back, maybe now’s a good time to talk to an older version of yourself and see if they would pat you on the back instead.
Set your own goals for freedom in business
You do need to set your own goals when it comes to the freedom you want in your business to create. And it can be so hard to do that on your own. I’ve had this experience of that. If you do want to help with it, I run clarity to catapult sessions, which is a one to one online via zoom 90 minute session. Which could be perfect to help you with this. I’ll pop a link in there below, but essentially if freedom, which for most people is one of the big reasons that they started the business.
If freedom is one of those things for you, you need to have a look at making that happen. No one else is going to make it happen for you. You will become more in demand as well. So more people start to put their demands on you. And even when you’ve got staff and outsourcing staff, essentially people come to you with the questions.
So as you build and you get more people in place, you need to protect yourself in that way as well. By putting in someone that is that middle person to do that. It can be really beneficial just from so many things because our time is something we can’t get back. It is the most important asset really, so we need to use it as such and we really need to protect what is important to us.
Find out more about my Clarity to Catapult sessions – Clarity to Catapult – Many Hats of Business
Notice and adapt quickly for freedom in business
I’ve got a lot of examples of things where people haven’t done that and then suffered. I’ve got a friend who did a training in being a PT and nutritionist. Because it was something she was very interested in. And in time, she had to stop doing it in the way she was doing it because she ended up teaching spin at like 6am. Which she didn’t really want to do, and it was inevitably impacting her health. Also, all that ended up happening was her interest, her hobby of going to the gym, ended up being put on the back burner to help everyone else. And she was very quick to notice and sort it out, but it’s something a lot of us go through.
And I think, a lot of the things with these business issues, we all think that we’re on our own, we think it’s just us, and it’s almost never the case. So surround yourself with like minded people, use your network and talk to them. And obviously if you haven’t got that to reach out and I’ll be happy to help you.
I hope you found this session useful. And I’ll be back next week, talking about the dreading I’m thinking about going back to work. Because I know a lot of people whose businesses aren’t serving them in the way that they wanted to. Then they’re thinking about going and getting a job.
