MBA2102 How To Reduce Stress In Your Business + Free Ride Friday

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Hey, welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA show helping you make sense of your business every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started by co founder back in 2014 and today's episode is Free Ride Friday. On Free Ride Fridays, we give away a lifetime membership to one of our programs. If you want to win a free ride, just leave us an Apple Podcast rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw. Listen in on Friday just like today to see if you won. We announced this week's winner a little bit later in the episode. This is our way to say thanks for showing us love on Apple Podcasts. In today's lesson you will learn how to reduce stress in your business. They say stress is a killer and it's true.

It's also a business killer.

Stress leads to burnout and burnout leads to a business that is not successful and that could take different shapes or forms whether whether it's not being profitable or not, growing at the rate you need to or even going out of business. We can't think strategically, creatively, with energy and purpose when we're stressed out. Now I'm not here to tell you that you can cut out all stress out of your life or all stress out of your business. Because with all challenges or things that we do that are hard, it can be a little stressful. But in today's lesson, I'm going to show you how you can reduce stress in your business. Believe it or not, and I found this in my own business and my own self, we actually unintentionally bring in stress in our business. We put it on our plate. So we got to be vigilant when it comes to keeping stress at bay, not creating things in our business that causes stress. So in today's lesson, I'm going to give you a to do list of things you can apply to your business to reduce stress. This is going to make you happier, more motivated to do your job and your work. Therefore, your team will love to work for you because you're a happy camper. They will produce better work. You'll have a better product, a better service and a better business. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

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So I'm going to share with you my top five strategies when it comes to reducing stress in your business. These are things I've tried myself, I've worked out throughout the years on what works and what doesn't. And these are the five that really make an impact, like they're worth doing because they actually are going to move the needle. They're really going to drop stress at a significant rate, a noticeable rate. Let me start with number one, and that's meetings. In your business, whether you have a small team, a big team, maybe just you and your assistant, you need to audit and evaluate your meetings. Meetings can cause you a lot of stress for different reasons. They might be scheduled at a time that's not really your favorite time to meet people, or you're fresh. Maybe you're dealing with time zone differences. Maybe your meetings are not productive. Maybe you don't see a result, meaning that people don't take action and do what they're supposed to after the meeting, and that causes you stress. You feel like the meetings are a waste of time. You might have the opposite problem where you're not meeting enough. So therefore you don't feel assured, you feel stressed out, you feel things are not organized or sort of under control. So to help you with this audit, ask yourself the question, how do you feel after a meeting? Do you feel energized? Do you feel empowered? Or do you feel like, oh, I'm so glad that meeting's over, now I can go on with my day and do something else. If that's the case, you need to rethink these meetings. What's going on here? How can you reformat these meetings so they are productive and energizing and creative and bring out the best in you and your team? The other thing I want you to ask yourself is, do you prefer longer meetings once a week or so, or shorter daily meetings? For example, I prefer to have a 10, 15 minute sync every single day rather than having a one hour sync once a week. It doesn't mean that I don't have any one hour meetings. I have a few. But for the things that are really important in my business, that could cause me stress, I like to meet in those apartments or I like to meet with those people more frequently. So I feel like everything's under control. Also, a 10, 15 minute meeting can't be that bad because it's over before it starts, right? It's really quick. It's very to the point. It forces everybody not to, you know, fluff around and to have an agenda and to stick to it. Cut out meetings that are not necessary, right? Maybe you could do this offline, like asynchronously with messages, with your tool that you use to manage projects like Basecamp or Asana, something. As leaders, we just call meetings impromptu whenever we want to. Ask yourself, does this require a meeting? Can I address this with an email or a message or just a video? Sometimes I just shoot a video, a screencast, explaining what I want to get done. I sign some to do's, off to the races, no need to meet. If they have questions, they can ask me. All offline. Offline meaning not in a meeting. By doing some of these things, you're going to reduce a lot of stress because you don't feel like you're wasting your time, you don't feel like they're unnecessary meetings and you don't feel the pressure of your calendar being chock full of meetings. Number two, the tools you use get as basic and as simple as possible. Simplify the tools you have, okay? The more tools you have, the more complexity in your business, the more stress, the more things can go wrong. The more training you need, the more things you have to pay and update and all that kind of stuff, okay? So use the Tools that you need, the things that really move the needle in your business, the things that add value. If you can prove it adds value and actually brings in money to your business in some shape or form, then it's worth having. But just because it's a fancy tool or something that might be fun to use or make you feel professional, cut it out. It's just adding more complexity to your team. You got to train people. They have to be up to date. It's another security risk. The less tools you have, the less stress you'll have when it comes to managing these tools. Recently, in the last few months, we actually audited all the tools we use and we cut out a whole bunch. Or we basically replaced them with tools we were already using. So there's no reason for us to have Slack and Basecamp. We cut out Slack and just use Basecamp. Yes. Basecamp doesn't do everything that Slack does, but it does the important things, and that's all matters. We can live without those bells and whistles. There's no miscommunication. There's no million places to check. Less tools, less stress. Number three, the one, one, one principle. This principle is very important. If you are new to business or you're in the early stages of your business. When I say early stages, it means that you haven't hit six figures yet a year. I would even recommend this beyond six figures to seven figures. And what's the one, one, one principle? And that's just one channel of marketing. One product, one offer. Okay, some of us, we like to mix things up, add a bunch of things, be everywhere. I want to kill it on social and YouTube and make sure that I'm doing webinars. And also I want to make sure I have a great podcast. And we're trying to do everything, but in the beginning, you just need some traction. And the only way you can get traction is if you focus. So focus on one channel to acquire customers. Focus on one product to offer this customer or the customers you're trying to attract. And lastly, what is the offer you're going to make? Make the price point, the package. This is very important because this allows you to just focus and not worry about tweaking and changing until you have some traction. Once you mastered one channel of marketing, let's say, for example, you're killing it on podcasts. Then you could say, all right, let's keep this machine going. Let's start now on a new channel, YouTube. But don't jump around until you actually get an ROI, until you get A benefit until you have traction with one. One, one. One channel marketing, one product, one offer. This is gonna allow you just to wake up in the morning and focus on one thing and not a trillion things that keep you feeling overwhelmed. Number four, this one is huge. Cut out what you hate. If there's something that you just don't like doing in your business, maybe it's payroll, maybe you don't like meeting with a particular person. Maybe you hate doing documentation. Identify. What are the things you hate doing? I'm not talking about like you rather not do or is a little bit boring. I'm talk like it just gives you a sense of sadness. You just don't want to deal with this. It frustrates you, makes you really stressed and angry. Cut those things out. Life is way too short. This is your business. You could do what you want to do. When I say cut it out, I mean literally. Don't do this anymore. Find a tool that could do it for you or get somebody to do it for you. So you are totally off this project. If there's somebody on your team you just don't like interacting with, fire them. This is your business. You shouldn't have to deal with people you don't like or ruin your day. Now, this is not legal advice, and I don't know the laws are in your country, but most likely this person is not actually getting you results. They're not doing their job and they're just causing you more pain than you need. Cut them out of your business. If your teammates are not giving you energy, they're not making you feel better about your business, then you need to cut them out. And when it comes to the tasks you hate, again, find a tool that can automate it. Find somebody that could do it for you, outsource it, even if it's just part time. Find somebody to take it off your plate. For me, it was payroll. I didn't like running payroll every single month because I felt like I was kind of shackled to my desk. At the end of the month, I couldn't plan to travel or do anything or maybe just take a break at home because I knew that everybody's pay was reliant on me. And I didn't like that dependency. It was causing me stress. So we hired a bookkeeper and she takes care of all of her payroll. I don't have to think about it. She has everything she needs. She knows exactly how much everybody should get paid. She takes care of it. I can travel. I can do whatever I want any time. Of the month, less stress.

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All right, let's get to number five. This one is a tough one to start implementing, but it's a game changer. You need to really just do it. And trust me, because once you do it, it's going to change the way you feel about your business forever. It's going to reduce your stress. You're going to feel much better, your life in general. And overall you will be healthier and happier. And that's starting with your time off. And when I say time off, I'm not talking about just holidays or weekends. I'm talking about hours or minutes that you need for yourself. What I mean by that is you should look at your calendar and you should book your time, the time you need to be healthy, happy, satisfied, leader of your business. That means booking your holidays and your time off when you feel like you're going to need them. So you pace yourself so you don't get burnt out. So if you look at our calendar, you'll see that all our holiday is booked in advance. I'm making sure I give myself the time I need to recharge. If I don't take care of myself, no one will. And that's just the reality of it. Everybody's looking out for themselves. You got to look out for yourself. Two weekends or long weekends or holidays, make sure you make the time in your calendar to take that time off. Personal time. Hey, we have family, we have friends. We need to make sure that we schedule this and put time in the calendar to take care of our personal obligations. That could be half day Fridays, this could be half day Mondays. You could take a full day off every week if you can do that. The point is that if you don't put in the calendar, if you don't schedule it, it's just not going to happen. If you just try to wing it, that that day will never come. That break will never come. The gym, exercise, yoga classes, whatever you do, put it in the calendar like it's an appointment, like a meeting. Even if you're like, I have the intention to work out four days a week. Put it in the calendar. Have it in the calendar. So you have no excuse. No one could book you during that time. You're not doing any tasks. You just have to show up to where you have to go to exercise. This ensures that you have no excuse to take care of yourself. We're going to go to another level. Personally, I don't think there's a lot of difference between work, life and life, because it's all time in my book. It's all using the resource called time that is not infinite. Once it's gone, it's gone. So I got to use my resource well. So in my calendar, I might put grocery shopping or date nights or laundry or whatever I have to do to maintain my life.

Why?

Because if I don't, what happens? The laundry piles up. I open the fridge and there's nothing there. We run out of cat litter and we're in trouble. What does that do? It causes stress. It causes us to feel a sense of guilt and a sense of lacking and a sense of like, I'm not taking care of myself because you didn't put yourself first. And the best hack I can think of is to put it in the calendar. Because if it's in the calendar, it forces you not to do anything else other than that. Or at least it forces you not to do something that replaces that. Your job then is just to follow your calendar. And. And I think this is a huge stress relief. The calendar is a huge stress relief because you don't have to think the decisions are made beforehand and you just implement what the calendar says. There you have it, guys. Let me give you my five strategies to reduce stress in your business. Number one, Meetings. Audit your meetings. Cut the ones that you don't need to do. Figure out if you want to do shorter, regular meetings. Make sure you're meeting at the right time for you. Be efficient. Have an agenda. Number two, Tools. Reduce the tools. Minimize the tools. The less tools you have, the less problems you'll have. The less things can go wrong. The less learning curve, all that stuff. Less communication problems. Number three, one, one, one. One channel of marketing, one product, one offer. Number four, cut out what you hate. Stop doing things you hate. This is your business. You build what you want. You live what you want. And number five, start with your time. Okay? Book your time on the calendar. All the big things, all the small things. Make sure you put yourself first on the calendar. And then you look and see, where am I going to schedule my meetings? Where am I going to schedule my time block for building my and my content because this forces balance. This allows you to feel like you're in control. And the opposite of stress is control is contentment is feeling like you got this. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. If you love what you hear, let the world know. Share on social media. Let people know. I'd love for you to do that. It's the best way you could support the show to get on your favorite social media app. Share our link 100-mba.net so people can subscribe to the Pod podcast just like you are. But today's episode's not over. It's Free Ride Friday. Let's see who won this week's Free Ride. And the winner is mikem64 says easy to follow tips 5 stars. These episodes are really helpful, short to the point and great takeaways. Great listen. Thanks Mike for that amazing review. Your mission is to email me over at omar100mba.net so I can hook you up with the lifetime membership to EZcourse, our 30 day course on how to build your own online course over at easycourse co. It retails for $500 but you just want it for free. And you can win it for free as well if you just leave us an Apple Podcast rating and review. You enter our weekly random draw. Listen in on Friday just like right now to see if you won. It's that easy. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. When you start your business, you might be hustling hard and working and working the midnight oil and really pushing. But that's not sustainable forever. Know that you can't do that month over month, year after year. This is a marathon, not a sprint as you heard many times. So the way you break out of that cycle is you actually take control and you start using the strategies I shared with you today so that you are working smarter and not harder. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in Monday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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