Bad things do happen, and sometimes, they may happen to you. But when you have a business to run, you need to make sure your crisis period doesn’t interfere with your decision making.
Here are a few tips for you to help with managing your business while in a personal crisis:
1. Get Support
A good thing about the experiences we face in life is that we’re not the first to pass through such. There are friends, colleagues and mentors that can offer guidance having been through the same path. If you’re going through a medical condition yourself, support must include medical or psychological assistance too.
You need to be aware of your emotional health at this point.
- Are you waking up happy or sad?
- Is your work beginning to bore you?
- Are you giving positive or negative vibes about your business?
Try to break routines that you feel are contributing to those negative emotions, if your work environment is stressing you, maybe you can move stuff to your home if it helps put you in the right frame of mind.
Changing your environment can be that push that brings in fresh ideas especially at this moment, try to exercise to deal with that stress also. Keep your workspace clutter-free as it helps to direct your brain on the need to focus.
This is the perfect time to get a to-do list, it helps keep your work organized and this is something you need when you may be sending emails from the hospital car park.
Write down your goals so you can stay motivated to get them accomplished, it’s okay to take a few days off if you need to clear your head, just don’t allow yourself get drained emotionally.
2. Take Care Of Your Health
Business requires that you do the hard work, while that’s not a bad thing, your health shouldn’t suffer for it. When you’re handling a crisis, you may need to reduce your working hours to focus on those personal issues.
You need to develop a productive workout routine to cater for your physical and mental health. Physical exercise raises the serotonin levels in your brain and this chemical helps in mood control so those switches won’t be a common thing.
You need all the confidence you can get at this point and implementing high-intensity workouts builds on that confidence.
Don’t neglect sleep. Your body needs to recharge to keep you at the top. Sacrificing sleep for work to make up for time spent handling your crisis keeps you in a very poor mental state. So don’t fight the natural timer, sleep does fight depression and that’s better than using pills for them.
And it’s time to eat right. See a dietitian, go over the foods and drinks that can provide the minerals you need at this point. You’re what you eat, remember?
3. Start Saying No Or Postponing
So now you have a to-do list or at least something that keeps you abreast of the work you have to do. While that’s a good thing, you shouldn’t take on everything, it’s okay to delegate, postpone or just say no to some things at this point.
A huge part of running a successful business is decision making and when you don’t have enough time to think through a decision, there’ll be mistakes.
So you can reschedule those meetings you’re not ready for and say no to some things, you’ll be in better control of your business if there are only a few things you need to get done. Of course, you can’t say no to everything, some of those rejections can hurt your business in the future.
But you can say no to toxic clients. This is not a good time to accommodate stressful clients, be clear on what you’ll accept and what you won’t, it’ll repel those who you don’t want to work with anyway. Say no to people asking for discounts or freebies you can’t provide. If they’re proposing something like an affiliate partnership that’ll benefit both of you in the long run, you can run with it, but don’t be afraid to say no to huge requests that will affect your business.
And set a work schedule, since you’re not as free at this point, let your clients know the hours you’ll be available for work. This helps so you don’t have to sacrifice sleep for a project that came in late.
4. Outsource and Delegate
If there’s something you don’t have during a crisis, it’s time for your business. Look for those responsibilities that are beginning to stress you, outsource them so you can have your head in a good place. Start a time log and record the tasks you completed on a particular workday.
Look for those ones that you spent more time than necessary, maybe you lack the skills to get them done so it’s time to recruit backup.
And this is the right time to delegate more tasks to your highly skilled employees. Show you trust them to deliver on a project and it may give them that push to see it through.
So it’s time to only work on projects you’re very comfortable with and outsource your weaknesses as much as you can.
5. Improve Your Relationship With Key Clients
Chasing new clients in your moment of crisis can be overwhelming so it’s time to dedicate the limited time you have to your key clients. Look out for your high-paying clients and clients that provide you with a lot of work, you can provide them with offers that’ll encourage them to give you more work.
Make sure you provide them with your best work, that’ll help draw them closer to you also.
6. Avoid Social Addiction
Try to avoid social media if it’s taking your valuable time or demanding a lot from you, don’t feel pressured to share information.
Try to talk to those who support you if you need to get stuff off your head. Don’t isolate yourself but develop more offline relationships than the online ones so it helps fight any depression you may be going through.
