Grief and Business
Ten days ago, I lost my dog.
I adopted Gracie Lou at 3.5 months, and had her almost 13 years to the day.
I called her my soul-dog. She was my CMO - chief morale officer.
There are a lot of things I could tell you about making decisions about pets, and what the grieving period is like. (it sucks)
But the reason I’m writing this post, is to offer guidance on how the F you keep running a business while all of this is happening.
Give yourself some grace. I talk about this a lot, as something we should do anyway as entrepreneurs. I’ve found it’s extra important to be nice to yourself, and take it easy.
Your business is not a fragile snowflake. I signed up with a coach, when I knew this was coming. #cancerdiagnosis. I knew I would want the support. It’s a high-level group, and when I reached out to ask for how these women would approach their biz during times of personal upheaval, they echoed 1 and 3. My coach gave me this nugget. Our businesses are not so fragile that if we go dark for a while, we can’t recover. It was an important message. I’ve taken social media breaks because of burnout, and the world didn’t end. Neither did my business.
Take time to grieve. I’m pretty sure the Universe wanted to rip its hair out with all the signs it was giving me to take time to grieve. I wanted to work my way through it. Oops. A few days, I checked email in the morning; got done only what had to be done; and then took a nap the rest of the day. It’s ok to do this.
Only do what feels ok to you. Gracie was diagnosed right before Thanksgiving. I was one week into promoting a new program. I remember sitting at my computer, thinking “I don’t think I can do this.” How could I be happy about a program and try and translate that energy to my content etc, when I literally wanted to do nothing but stare at G and feed her treats?
Here’s the deal: it’s your business. You get to decide what you want to do. So I decided to stop promoting it. If someone reached out and had questions about it, or wanted the program, I was prepared to offer them 1:1 at the same price. Which leads me to #5
Focus on what you to want to focus on. Right now, I get joy from my FB group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/autthenticempowerwedwomxn and my 1:1 clients. So that’s where I focus. If I don’t feel like posting on the ‘gram, I don’t. Newslettter? Nope, haven’t sent one of those in a bit. And guess what? It’s ok.
This isn’t a tip, but the other thing that’s been coming up right now is planning for 2021. You don’t have to be grieving to feel wtf about planning right now. So here’s what I’m doing:
I’m only planning Q1. I have a general monetary goal for the year, that I split into what I want to aim for each quarter. Honestly, this one was just an easy target - vs I’m going to be upset if I don’t hit it.
I have a “focus” each month. January will be taking on new 1:1 clients. On Feb 1, I’ll evaluate if I want to keep my books open or not. If an idea comes up about a different program or offer, it gets slotted to Feb 1 or Mar 1. This worked really well for me last year - eg I wasn’t going to think about Pinterest marketing until Q3. lol no that didn’t happen #pandemic
And those are my thoughts. You can use this as a guide for anytime you just aren’t feeling it with your business.
Have a thought or a comment? Post it below or contact me :)