When you’re running a business with a chronic illness, it’s really important to consider the type of business strategy that you’re going to follow. If you are trading time for money and you don’t have much energy, then you’re going to find it very difficult to grow your business and increase the amount of money that you’re earning.
Without the right strategy you’re also more likely to follow a boom and bust cycle with your health. Many business owners with chronic illnesses find that they go through periods where they’re putting a lot of energy into their business and their health cannot keep up with it and they end up having a flare of their symptoms. They then have to take time out of their business in order to recover. This can have huge implications on your health, your family and your business.
Looking at your business and understanding how you can make the biggest return on your energy investment can really help you to have a financially successful business.
This is why it is key to find the right business strategy for you, your health, your lifestyle and your business.
I have to admit that when I started my first business I didn’t really consider the best strategy for my health and the limitations that would be caused by my health conditions. Part of my business involved running birthday parties showing children how to make natural vegan bathbombs and lip balms, which were great fun and which I loved doing. However, I was trading time for money. I could only run one party at a time and it took a lot of energy for me to run those parties. I had to prepare beforehand, I was then on my feet for the best part of a couple of hours, and then I had to wash everything and sterilize it when I got home. I realized after a while that this strategy wasn’t going to be possible to maintain on a long term basis without having a serious impact on my health. There was a limit to the number of parties that I was able to run and so I could never grow my business to its full potential. Plus, I also found that my health often suffered if I did too many parties in a row.
It was a difficult lesson to learn, but it was an important one. I had to be honest with myself about my health situation and understand the limitations and the impacts that my health had on both my energy and the time that I was able to put into the business. Fortunately, I didn’t just do parties, I also made bath bomb kits and lip balm kits which worked much better with my health. And during the pandemic I was able to run the parties over zoom which had much less impact on my health and worked really well.
There were quite a few different strategies that I considered. I could have employed people to run the parties, I could have franchised the parties or I could have moved that part of the business entirely online.
If you’re starting a new business, it’s really worth considering your business strategy to make sure that you are getting the biggest return on your energy investment as possible.
If you’re already running your business, then take a step back and look at your strategy and ensure that it really is working for you. Sometimes it’s possible to make small changes that increase your return on energy investments. Taking that time to look at your business with a critical eye, with the focus being on your health, can enable you to make changes to your strategy so that in the long term it works better for you. This will enable you to increase the amount of revenue that you’re taking, increase your profits, and ensure that you don’t keep going through the cycle of boom and bust that a lot of chronic illness business owners face.
So what do you need to consider when you’re looking at your business strategy?
You want to look at the impact that delivering your services has on your energy and on your health condition. It’s then worth considering whether there are any other options where you can either make more money, expending the same amount of energy or whether you can deliver your existing services whilst expending less energy.
Many people deliver their services by exchanging time for money. So they might be working on a one-to-one basis or they might be delivering one thing at a time.
It’s worth considering whether it’s possible to change your business model so that you are delivering your services on a one to many basis instead. This way you expend the same amount of energy, but you increase the amount of revenue that you’re bringing in.
Alternatively, it’s worth considering whether you can introduce some passive, or semi-passive income into your business. If you deliver training, can you have some training available to purchase on your website which require zero interaction from you. The only energy effort required is to create them in the first place, and then market them. The rest of the time they are available to buy and they can be purchased without any need to interact or use any of your energy.
The other business strategy to consider is whether you can make your business use up less of your time and your energy. For example, you could look at using automation in your business on a daily basis so that you reduce the number of tasks that you have to do. If you have reoccurring tasks then look at ways of automating them. You can also consider whether it’s possible to delegate some of your work, possibly outsourcing to people who are experts in that area. This frees up time for you to do the things that you love and that you are good at and which are directly bringing revenue into your business.
It’s also worth looking at your pricing as well to make sure that you’re getting paid enough for the amount of energy and time that you’re putting into providing your service or product. We often undervalue what we are offering and it’s important to ensure that we really are getting the right price for the services and products that we deliver.
I’ve spent quite a lot of time looking my own business strategy and whilst I still do offer one to one services because it’s something I absolutely love doing and in fact it energizes me and gives me a really positive energy for my business. I’ve also looked at how I can get a bigger return on my energy investments by looking at one-to-many offerings, passive income and ways of working with other audiences where I can increase the revenues that I receive.
There are so many different things that you can consider when looking at a business strategy that it’s good to take a step back and spend some time just looking at the different variables that are available to you. It can also be useful to ask for somebody else’s advice as often having fresh eyes on your business can help you look at it in a different perspective.
I’m currently offering business strategy power hours. In these power hours we will look at your business strategy to ensure that your business is working to its best potential. We will look at whether it is possible to decrease the amount of energy that you are spending in your business, and whether it’s possible to increase the amount of revenue that you’re bringing into your business without increasing your energy spend.
This is the one of the best things that you can do for your business and for your health. Prioritizing yourself and your health has to be key when running your business. Looking at ways that you can reduce the impact that your business is having on your health is not only good for your health but also good for your business.
If you’re interested in booking a business power hour then please do send me a message and I’d be delighted to have a chat with you to see whether that would help you and your business.