38 - The one thing you must do to reduce your business stress by at least 20%

Welcome to the business of Executive Coaching Podcast. So, before I start next week, I'm going to be sharing some really exciting news, and it's about the evolution of the Impact Coach Collective into what is going to be called the Corporate to Coach accelerator. But if you want to check it out just for now, have a quick look at www.elliscarf.com ICC and next week, you're going to see the new, new offer, and it's all going to be very exciting. So stay tuned and listen in next week to get all of those details or head over and join now. Okay, so I've been planning this episode for ages. Planning, not actually recording, because there's always something that I want to talk about and, you know, there is a process of selection that I have to go through, and usually it's what I'm interested in at the moment. But I had to laugh because the universe has given me a stark reminder this week about why this concept is so important. So the trap I've fallen into. Would I call it a trap? Maybe the habit I've fallen into over the last couple of months is that I have been recording my podcast the week before. And I think in some ways that's great because it means that what I'm talking about is up to date, but it's probably not best practice because I don't have a bank of episodes ready to go. And it makes me a bit of a hypocrite, really. And you'll find out when you hear my tip today. So I've had a little reminder. And, you know, business is stressful, right? And the reason I realize that stress, the reason I am recording this podcast on Sunday before we go live on Monday, is that my whole family got sick this week. And when I say sick, I mean, you know, mystery virus, with every symptom under the sun. Everyone having different symptoms. Yeah, lots of, like, everyone just in bed. And so I didn't have time to record a podcast and I didn't have an episode buffer, so I didn't have a spare podcast that I could just put up. I didn't have a bank of them, which is. Which is my dream and is always my intention, ready to go. And you know what would have reduced that stress? Having a buffer. And so my hypothesis and my tip for today is that we can reduce our stress in business by at least 20% if we are really intentional about the buffers that we have in place. Now, is my 20% scientific? No, it is not. This is my gut feel. My gut feel is that When I. And when the people I know have got a series of buffers, and I'm going to go through the categories of buffers that I like to have or that I recommend, when we have them in place, it reduces our stress at least by 20%. And it does that for a number of reasons. Firstly, it helps because we know that if something goes wrong, we've got a backup plan, right? And that's often a source of our stress, which is the unknown, the uncertainty. Are we prepared for things to be, you know, not how we expect. And I think it's also helpful, and it also reduces stress because it is very intentional and it means that we are doing the things that we intend rather than being reactive. And the truth is, when it comes to the podcast, I've been feeling a little bit reactive and not in a bad way at all. What the reason I, I don't have it set up with many in advance at the moment is because I'm excited about, about recording these podcasts. I want to do it weekly. I want to be, you know, talking about things that are important to me as we go. So, you know, I'm not saying it's bad, but I am saying that if I had a buffer, my stress would have been reduced, particularly while I was feeling pretty sick anyway. So other than podcast recordings, what types of buffers might we have in our business and how can they reduce our stress? The first and probably most obvious is our financial buffers. So having a financial buffer is. Allows us to literally be buffered from the roller coaster of the work that we do. And when you're in business, when you're running your own business, particularly something like a coaching business, it is a roller coaster. We will always have highs, we will always have lows. And while there are things we can do to sort of smooth off the edges of the roller coaster, there's always going to be ups and downs. And so our buffers can really help us out there. And there are a few types of buffers that we could consider. One is an emergency fund, right? Which means that are you going to have a financial buffer in case something goes wrong, either personally or in the business? Are you be able. Are you going to be able to, you know, pay an unexpected expense? Are you able to handle it if you have three months when income that you are counting on simply doesn't get paid? Right. So. And you know, my experience is that the biggest the company, the. The bigger the company, the longer they take to pay. Do you have an emergency fund for that? And when we do have an emergency fund. It just means that we don't have to be on tenterhooks waiting for the income to come in or tapping into, you know, our personal investments or our personal savings funds. So all of that, that is why we should have an emergency fund and that's why it reduces our stress. The another type of financial buffer that we might want to have is a, is a fund that is specifically for income smoothing. And so this is for you if you are a person who is really very affected by the ups and downs. So some people love the ups and downs. Yes, there are down months, but in the up months it means they get, you know, big, big payoff, right? It really comes through all at once. And it might be you have $0 one month come in the door and you have 30 or $40,000 come in the next month. And, and yes, some people love that. Other people find that extraordinarily stressful. They want predictability, they want. And one way that we can make that happen is by having a buffer fund that allows us to create a salary like process. So we take the money that we get paid and then on a monthly basis we pay ourselves a lower amount that we know consistently we can keep paying. And then we gradually increase that over time. But that requires a financial buffer in place. So the third one I sort of covered under emergency fund, but that is just having a cost of business buffer. And that might mean that we are not expecting that every month the income we generate is paying the expenses we incur in that month. It means that we might aim to get, say three months ahead with our predictable costs. And that might include our, like our subscriptions, right, all the software subscriptions, it might include memberships, it might include, oh, those sorts of things, you know, assessment costs, all of the above. And if we have a few months of that banked away, and this is slightly different to having an emergency fund. I think it's just knowing that you've got security for that predictable amount of time and I think that that reduces stress because if we're, you know, waiting for every, every invoice to be paid on the day it's due, we're going to get so stressed out when it isn't. Right. So having those buffers in place is much less stressful. Another category of buffer that I think is relevant is our time buffers. And to be honest, time buffers are probably my favorite ones. And these are the ones that I always have in place. And one of those time buffers is allowing more time than we think things are going to need. And you might say to me, well, that's not very efficient and you'd be right. But for me, when it comes to my time management and my productivity, I would prioritise is, you know, feeling comfortable that I've allowed more time for things ahead of doing things as fast as possible, if that makes sense. Now, the funny thing is, I find that when I allow plenty of time, I'm actually possibly more efficient and I do things quicker because sometimes I just let myself, if things don't take as long as I plan for them, I let myself rest or I let myself do something fun or, you know, do something in my business that I really enjoy in that time instead. And so, so firstly, it's less stress because I know that, that I'll be, I'll be on time. And it's also less stress because, you know, it is, it is spacious and it allows me to spend extra time on things that are important to me. Another time buffer is, and it's probably related to this, allowing plenty of time for things, and I guess that includes travel time and things like that. But another, you know, building in your preparation and reflection time for things. And I think preparation is a really important one when it comes to buffers, because when you start out, things are just going to take longer than you think, no matter what. Like whether it is, you know, preparing a psychometric assessment before you run a coaching session and you've just been accredited in that assessment, like that is going to take you some time to go through and prepare to be ready. Whereas, you know, for example, with a Hogan, I can prepare a Hogan for a debrief in under 15 minutes. Now, because I'm so familiar with the tool, but when I started out, it probably took me 45 minutes to an hour to be prepared, and that was just part of the process. But if you allow the time to do that based on a realistic assessment of where you're at, you're going to feel much less stressed than if you allow yourself 15 minutes to do it, because you're going to get into that 15 minutes and you're not going to feel like you have enough time to do it justice. Equally, you know, if you're building a workshop, a session plan, you're going to need more time than you think at the start. And buffers will be your friend. And, you know, related to that, I would say you're going to experience much less stress if you build in a buffer the day before your session to give yourself a few hours to run through, to finish things off, to print out notes, whatever it is you need to do. So building in time buffers for preparation, building in time buffers for reflection after your coaching sessions, for follow ups, those things are going to allow you to feel a lot less stress. And from a time perspective, one other buffer that I would suggest you put in place is deliberately building in white space into your calendar. White space is the time that does not have any specific target, so you don't have to talk to anyone in that time. You don't have a specific task allocated to, is able to be used as, as it's needed at the time. Now, the benefit of this is, yes, you get this space that you can use for your priorities rather than sort of reactive tasks, but it also allows for emergencies, right? So if you have a client who is sick and needs to reschedule, well, you do have this available. So it is a lot less stressful. It allows you to, you know, feel prepared, which I think reduces stress. And, and really make sure that also you. For the things that are important to you as well. And, you know, some, some other examples of this is that, you know, you might build a day of the week where you don't have meetings. You know, sometimes I do and I do it because I want to, not because I have to. But that, that buffer allows me a lot of, a lot of space for the things that take a little bit more mental energy to, to get done that I find it hard to do in between zoom sessions. Okay, so another category of buffer is getting ahead and hello, podcast. So that is an example of where you could get ahead. Ideally, I would be recording podcast episodes, being really planful about them, and having, you know, a bank of three or four ahead ready to go. In cases like this week where we all were sick and unable to record a new podcast and not do it on a Sunday afternoon, as I am right now. So that's an example. But an example that might be relevant for you could be things like writing your blogs ahead of time so you aren't scrambling on the day that you've committed to publish them or newsletters that you send out. It could also be preparing your LinkedIn posts in advance, you know, and it doesn't have to be far in advance so that when you go to post and you get that familiar voice saying, oh, I feel really awkward about this, I don't want to do it, I don't want to write it, I don't want to post it, then you actually don't have to make Any decisions at all, you're just executing the plan and that reduces a lot of stress. And I think that's why some people find that using, you know, post schedulers on LinkedIn, where, whether it's the, the native one or, or an external one, they find that helpful because it can just reduce the second guessing that they might have and it can reduce the, you know, the avoidance or the last minute freak out that, that I know happens for a lot of people when it comes to posting thoughts on LinkedIn. So all of these things reduce stress because, you know, if something comes up, you don't have to worry about it, you have done the work, you don't have to overthink it. All of things that are going to reduce your stress. And then finally, I would say have some buffers built into your planning processes. And for that, for example, I mean, firstly, be realistic with your plans. If you have 20 goals, it's probably too many. You need to cut it down. You need to be realistic because you need to have a buffer for things not going to plan. You need to have a buffer for things taking longer than you think. And so you know, as well as being realistic in your plans and your strategies, I think you also need to have contingency plans. And these are a type of buffer. And it's almost more of a psychological buffer because it is, it is really that, well, if this is my goal and my initial way of trying to get there doesn't work, what will I do then? How else might I get there? And so if you have pre, pre planned that, I've heard that called a pre mortem, which is quite cool, if you have that pre planned, then it is a lot less stressful than when you have to suddenly come up with a different route to your goal on the spur of the moment when things have not worked out and you are in the thick of it. So having those plans, always having a, well, what are my alternative pathways? And as coaches, you know all about the importance of pathways, thinking, for example, and hope theory and all of those good things. And I think they're really a type of buffer and they will reduce your stress significantly. The final type of buffer I want to share is support buffers. So support buffers is, you know, the, the things that are around your business that allow you to be less stressed in your business. And the first one that comes to mind is childcare. And that means what are your being really clear about what your backup plans are? And sometimes it means having a little bit more childcare than you need so it means that, you know, if something happens and you can't pick up your child from school or daycare, do you have a plan in place if that happens at the last minute? Do you have a buffer if your child carer is sick, who do you go to in that case? So having those buffers and takes a whole lot of mental energy off your plate so that you can be prepared. And the answer to it, of course, will depend on your circumstances. And you know, to be honest, the buffer might be that you stop working for the day, right? And that's okay, so long as you've got a plan in place and you know what you'll do. And then, you know. Another buffer that I like to have in place is making sure that you make space in your calendar for things that are important to you. That might be exercise, it might be time with your friends, it might be doing those things that are important to you. That buffer of making sure that you have time ready for the things that you care about is going to reduce your stress because we all know what it's like when we don't do those things. And I hesitate to call it self care because I think it is, it's bigger than that. It's about prioritizing ourselves and our, our, our own personal priorities, not just our work priorities, not just our child caring or family priorities. But what is really important, make sure that you put it in there because it is, it's a buffer for your wellbeing, really. And I think we should all have that. Okay, the big tip I have is having all these buffers in place are all good and well, but you have to remember to use the buffer when you're in the stressful moment, right? So, you know, enact your contingency plan, take advantage of your childcare buffer, use the emergency fund, you know, allow yourself to use the extra time you put in there and feel good about it. Because if we don't use our buffers, then we might as well not have them. Okay. So I hope that's been helpful to you. I, I'm really looking forward to the episode next week. I'm going to share all about the new version of the Impact Coach Collective, which is the corporate to coach accelerator. It is the same program but with a whole bunch more, more inclusions and a lot more curriculum and new stuff that I'm including it a price increase. So if you want to get in at the current price, I suggest you do so. And you'll have a couple of days after the podcast episode next week. To to get in as well. And you know I look forward to sharing it. I'm really super super excited about about how it's going to help people reach their goals in their business. Okay, have a great day. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Business of Executive Coaching. If you found it helpful, please share it with a colleague or friend on LinkedIn. And don't forget to tag me so I can say thanks. I would be tremendously grateful also if you would leave a review on Apple Podcasts. More reviews means more people can find us. This episode was brought to you by the Impact Coach Collective where executive coaches grow their businesses in a community of peers with business education, mentoring, deal clinics and more. If you'd like to contact me or work with me further, all my free resources, courses and more info on the Impact Coach Collective can be found@elliscarf.com. have a brilliant week and I look forward to talking to you again soon.