So, I asked you guys recently how it is you’re feeling in your business. And the number one thing that I heard from almost every one of you is that you are feeling overwhelmed. You’re spread too thin. You’ve got so many different things going on, all these different social media platforms, different clients, customer problems, marketing things, sales things, all these things that you’re juggling plus your life, your health and your family.

And you know, this desire to have something outside of our business as well. And when I looked through the things that you said that you were struggling with, and I tried to really understand how it is that I can serve you, where can I support you in this? The number one thing I must tell is that the answer is not always going to be clear-cut. Every business has different things that they’re going to feel overwhelmed with, but underlying those things (yes, you have to fix those things) there are some commonalities that I want to focus on to help you to be able to do that. So let’s walk through some things that you need to do if you’re feeling overwhelmed in your business and spread too thin.

I’m Tara Wagner breakthrough coach and lifelong entrepreneur. I help other entrepreneurs use a holistic approach to business so they can create profits they can depend on without burning themselves out. If that sounds like your jam, be sure to check out my free training on how you can do this same.

#1. Learn to (De)prioritize

The first thing that I want you to do is learn to deprioritize. So many times, I have people come to me saying, how do I prioritize all these things? How do I get them all done? And the first thing you must understand is that you can’t, you won’t, and you probably shouldn’t even try.

It’s impossible to be able to be in a hundred places at once to be doing a hundred things all at the same time. That’s why you’re spreading yourself so thin because you’re not willing to let something go.

It’s not enough to just learn how to prioritize what’s important. You’ve got to learn how to deprioritize things and take things off of your to-do list.

For some of you that might mean focusing on one business at a time. Yes, you can have multiple businesses, but people who successfully run multiple businesses build one at a time, they build it up, they get it successful they get the right people running it, and then they go off and they start the next business.

You may just have one business, but maybe you need to be focusing on one strategy at a time, building it up, getting it solid, outsourcing it to your team before you go off and you create something new.

The more you’re trying to do, the more you’re spreading yourself too thin what do you deprioritize? Not forever, but just for now.

In order to do this, it also means cultivating a mindset of discernment, which just basically means the ability to judge well.

You need to be able to judge which things deserve your time and attention now, and which things don’t. And when everything is vying for your time and attention, including your own great ideas, this is tricky. But just because it wants your attention doesn’t mean that it deserves it. You really get to discern for yourself what is worth it, or what comes first or what to focus on now?

Yes, this is hard, but this is the most important skill of a CEO. Decision making, learning how to make the right decisions and saying no to the wrong things, including saying no to ourselves.

So, you might as well start practicing this now it’s going to be painful. You’re not going to want to say no to some of the things you’re doing. You’re not going to want to put things on pause or put them on the back burner or ditch them altogether, but you’re going to need to if you want to be able to function and just remind yourself, you can always pick it up again in the future. But what is the most important thing to double down on for now?

#2. Set Time Goals

Number two, I want you to start setting time goals. Usually, as business owners, we are focused on our financial goals. How much money do we want to make this year, this quarter, this decade? What is our ultimate financial goal with this business and how big we want it to get?

And those are great goals to have, don’t get me wrong. But when that’s your target, then what you’re going to be doing is focusing on what are all the things I can do to reach that target, which is generally going to put more things on your plate and not help you to deprioritize.

If you set a time freedom goal with your business, this allows you to start asking yourself, how can I reach that financial goal in this amount of time? This means you’re not just putting anything on your plate, but it’s forcing your brain to start looking more strategically for just the right things (the things that are going to create the biggest financial impact) but also give you the most time freedom. I want you to remember you didn’t just get into business to make more money, you got into business to have more time. But if you don’t keep that as your target, it is very easy to lose sight of it.

There’s a quote that I love that says, “My goal is no longer to get more done, but rather to have less to do.” I want that to be the goal in your business.

You can have a successful business that does not require you to work 80 hours a week, but only if you set those goals and make sure the actions that you’re taking. the strategies that you’re implementing are leading you, not just to more financial goals, but also to that time freedom that you’re wanting. This is going to naturally lead into number three.

#3. Makeover Your Business Plan

You need to makeover your business. The reason that your business is draining you, wearing you out, you’re feeling overwhelmed, you’re spread too thin is because it was designed that way. If you didn’t design it with time, freedom in mind, it’s easy to, again, get totally overwhelmed, right?

You need to design a business plan, a brand-new business plan to match those financial and time freedom goals.

Because your current business plan, I guarantee you is not set up that way. Yes, this means that in order to stop feeling spread so thin, you don’t just wait until you make a lot of money because you can make a lot of money and you’re still going to be spread too thin because your business wasn’t designed to free you up in order to do so. You need to sit down and make over that business.

This means looking at:

• Your Offers
• Your Marketing
• Your Sales Strategies
• Your Systems
• Your Team

The entire package needs to be redesigned in order to allow you the freedom that you’re wanting.

So what is it about your business that is draining you of time and energy? That’s spreading you too thin? That’s leaving you feeling overwhelmed? Tackle one thing at a time.

#4. Cultivate A CEO Mindset

And as you do, number four, you need to be cultivating a CEO mindset. As a small business owner, you’re probably operating as an operator, right? You’re in the business doing the things, but a CEO does do all the things, right? They sit in charge of all the things, making sure they’re getting done and going in the right direction. Like the captain of the ship, not the person pulling all the ropes.

As the CEO of your business, I want you to ask yourself, what is my Zone of Genius? And your goal is to design your business, to put you more and more into that Zone of Genius. Then your next goal is to hire people to come in with their own unique Zones of Genius that complement yours so that you can move things forward easier, but you can take your mind off it.

When you’ve got the right people in the right seats, you don’t need to be worrying or thinking about everything that needs to be done. They’re handling it. They’re on top of it. And they’re probably blowing it out of the water for you.

And cultivating that CEO mindset also means making decisions based on data and not emotions, which ties back into what we were talking about with deprioritizing. Emotionally, you’re not going to want to, but you need to look at the data to help you make the right decisions that are going to move your business forward without wiping you out.

Now, all of this, the mindset work, the resetting of your goals, how to systematically make over your business plan and your business to create more time as well as more money is what we do inside the Breakthrough Boss Inner Circle. And if you would love to learn more about how I can support you with that, I recommend you first learn more about my Healthy Hustle Roadmap.