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How Self Care Impacts Women Business Owners

Writer's picture: Jen MartinJen Martin

May is Mental Health Awareness month which I think is a little ironic, seeing as how May is typically the busiest month of the entire year -also known as Maycember. School programs, end of year parties, spring sports, final projects, piano recitals, dance performances… it's enough to make anyone feel a little overstimulated.


It’s also Mother’s Day, which, let’s be honest… is Mother’s Day ever a day where we spend the entire day feeling great about ourselves as mothers?


In celebration of Mental Health Awareness month AND Mother’s Day, I wanted to dedicate a post to some of the things we don’t talk about often enough as Female Entrepreneurs and Women Business Owners… how are we caring for OURSELVES? And how can self care help us grow our businesses?


How Self Care Impacts Women Business Owners Bathroom Vanity Reset Solutions Consulting Pro Organizer

Business Women & Self-Care

Traps we fall into as women, mothers, and business owners:

  • We wear ‘busy’ as a badge of honor.

  • We sacrifice our health in the name of ‘hustle’.

  • We tell ourselves that “after this next big project” or “once I have X number of clients” or “once I have X amount in profit, I will slow down.”

  • We think we need to ‘invest in our businesses in order for them to grow’ even if that means sacrificing top priorities.

  • We say that we will outsource once we have hit goals that are a long way off.

  • We don’t think anyone else will be able to do [fill in the blank] as well as us or with as much heart.

  • I’ll take a paycheck once I hit ____ goal.


Please note, I'm not a mental health professional, however, I HAVE come a long way in my own personal journey and I DO know what it's like to be a driven business owner who also wants to show up for her kids and family and home and friends and community and self. For so long I just thought; work harder, sleep less, sacrifice more… and then I realized that those sacrifices came at a much greater cost than the return I could ever hope to make.


Burnout is real AND really hard to come back from.

As professional home organizers, we do a great job of creating calm from the chaos. We are empathetic and help others work through letting go of things. We listen and develop systems that make busy lifestyles easier to manage. We are designers. We are leaders and often train others in our methods. We wear 100 different hats and what we do is so hard.


We are everything from business strategists, to social media content creators, to bookkeepers. Doing everything for your business is exhausting and the only way to truly scale without hitting burnout (because we can’t realistically wear 5 hats, much less 100) is to have backend support.


I hit burnout a couple of years ago after getting less than 4 hours of sleep at night for 2 years. My business was growing like crazy, my numbers were insanely good, and I felt like I was at the height of my success… but my kids missed me, my health was horrible, and at the end of the day I was unhappy because I was stressed running a company that had grown beyond my capabilities to manage and I was doing it on no sleep.


After hitting burnout I was surprised at how long it took me to find joy in my business again. On the outside I continued to work hard, but every day I was dragging my feet to get the motivation to check simple things off my list.


My Journey

You can read more about my full health journey HERE, but my journey has mainly consisted of me prioritizing sleep, nutrition, and exercise (the kind my body loves as a 40+ year old). It has also involved letting go of relationships that weren’t serving me and really focusing on my family and being present for my kids.


You can still find me working in the evenings and for a few hours on the weekends, but by and large, I have set boundaries that didn’t exist for years when starting my business. I recognize when I am getting overwhelmed and instead of putting my head down and plowing through, I usually head to hot yoga or jump in the hot tub with my kids. I try to put my phone down, close my laptop, and give my mind and body what it needs first, then I come back to my business.


This year I have prioritized spending time with friends that I never would have had time for in the previous 4 years. I know everyone is different with what fills their bucket, but I have found what fills mine and I make time for it. I always thought that if I was a little more organized or more efficient, I could fit a little bit more into my day, but I have learned that there really is a limit to what one person can do in a day.


Prioritizing me and my family has left less room for running my business. I have had to learn how to delegate. I am not making as much of a profit as I could if I wasn’t outsourcing all the things… but I am now living my life in a way that I won't have regrets.


Mindset Shift: Building a Sustainable Business

Would you rather have a business that grows 10-15% year over year and lasts 10, 15, or 20 years… OR a business that grows exponentially but is too much to manage after just a few years?


Guess what? If you are taking the time to take care of yourself AND scale your business and backend processes in a strategic way, your business might NOT grow as fast. But I assure you, it will still grow, and you will be happier while it does. And this is a great test.


You might miss out on things. A few months ago, I missed out on a great speaking/partnership opportunity because I didn’t respond quickly enough to an email. The old Jen would have dwelt on the missed opportunity for days and tried to salvage or reignite it, but the new me was proud that on that particularly busy week I hadn’t stayed up till 2am every night trying to dig myself out of my emails.


I hope you found this helpful. We at Reset Solutions Consulting are on a mission to level up the organizing industry. What we do in the home has so much value and we see too many Professional Organizers hitting burnout, giving up, not paying themselves, not increasing their profit YOY (year over year), not knowing how to find clients, not knowing how much to charge or what to charge for, and we want to help.


Whether we are your business BFFs here on the blog or on Instagram or you are interested in one of our programs (the Intensive, our Group Coaching Business Builder Program, or our 1:1 coaching calls), we hope you know that you have support and you are not alone in the journey to finding balance as a professional home organizer who makes GOOD MONEY, but also has time to spend with family, friends, and pursuing hobbies and life outside of entrepreneurship.


How Self Care Impacts Women Business Owners Reset Solutions Consulting Pro Organizer Pinterest

 

Jen Martin

Jen Martin

From a young age, Jen Martin, always loved organizing. As she grew older and had a family of her own, her love and value of an organized home just continued to grow. With four kids of her own, she knows how important organizational systems are to the foundation and well-being of a family's day-to-day life.​ Jen started Reset Your Nest in 2020 to bring her organizational skills to the rest of Utah. Her team of trained organizers has carefully and lovingly transformed the homes of over 500 homes. Jen has been featured on numerous television shows, podcasts, blogs, and books including Organized Living by Shira Gill, KSL Studio 5, AG Clever, and more.



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