Erin (00:00)
Hello and welcome back to the Life-Friendly Business podcast. I'm Erin Thomas Wong, the Life-Friendly Business Mentor and I'm on a mission to help women realise they are not failing at business. They're simply following a model that doesn't fit their real lives.
I help female solopreneurs take a capacity first approach so they can grow their business without sacrificing the very life they're building it for. And in this season, I'm sharing a different way to think about your entire business.
Today I want to talk about something that is coming up a lot this year from the women that I'm speaking to. And that's the feeling that business just feels harder than it should be, heavier, messier. Like no matter how hard you work, you just can't quite get on top of it. And I know I've been feeling like this as well this year. And I think it's such an important conversation because when that's how things start to feel,
It's really easy for that frustration to turn inwards, to assume that the problem must be you, that it's your own disorganisation, that you're being undisciplined, that you're bad at time management.
Maybe that you're not cut out for business. But very often that isn't the truth at all.
Business feeling harder than it should could look like that constant feeling of being behind, never getting to the important work because the urgent stuff just keeps taking over. Having lots of ideas but struggling to actually follow through on them.
feeling busy all the time, but not moving forward in the way that you want to.
starting every week already feeling on the back foot. Feeling guilty when you're working because life needs you elsewhere and then feeling guilty when you're not working because your business still needs you.
It can feel like you're really trying hard to hold everything together, but never feeling quite in control of it.
And the issue is that most of us have been conditioned to interpret that as a personal failing.
We think I need to get more organized and be more disciplined. I need to stop procrastinating and actually take action. I need to be more productive. I need to get better at managing my time.
I need to push harder. But what if that isn't the real issue?
What if the problem is not that you're failing at your business, but that you're trying to run your business in a way that doesn't fit your actual life?
because so much business advice assumes a level of capacity that many women simply do not have.
It assumes uninterrupted time, endless energy, consistent childcare, a quiet brain,
plenty of support around you and no invisible load sitting in the background.
It assumes that you can keep showing up in the same way regardless of what else is happening in your life and for a lot of women
That just is not reality.
And this is one of the biggest reasons that I do the work that I do, because I speak to women every day who have been made to feel like they are failing simply because they are trying to juggle business alongside caring responsibilities, family life, the mental load, perimenopause, or just the sheer reality of being one person wearing too many hats.
And so often the issue is not that they're lazy or incapable or not trying hard enough, it's that the model that they've been following does not honour their real life.
Sometimes business feels harder than it should be because there is friction built into the way that you are operating. That friction might look like too many offers pulling you in different directions, unclear priorities so everything feels urgent.
No real structure or rhythm to your week.
Reactive marketing where you're always scrambling to show up.
Trying to do everything yourself and constantly comparing yourself to women with completely different lives, teams or capacity.
making plans based on what you think you should be able to do rather than what is actually realistic. And when you layer all of that on top of real life, of course it's hard.
it's not all in your head. I want to say this because I think it's really important. Sometimes business feels hard not because you're doing something wrong
because times genuinely are hard right now. A lot of business owners are finding that things that used to work aren't working in quite the same way anymore.
People are making different spending decisions and that's affecting all of us. They're taking longer to buy. They're being more cautious. We are in a trust recession and that can have a huge knock-on effect on how your business feels day-to-day.
So if things are feeling hard because sales have slowed down or the strategies that used to work aren't converting in the same way, or you're having to rethink parts of your business.
you are absolutely not alone in that. And I think it's important to acknowledge that because sometimes we can be far too quick to turn every business challenge into a personal failure.
when actually there are wider things going on too that we don't have control over.
But even with that said, this is where self leadership still matters so much. Because while we can't control the economy, the war, other people's spending decisions or the wider market, we can control how we respond. We can look at what is in our control.
We can protect our own headspace.
we can make more intentional decisions. We can stop throwing ourselves at everything in panic mode and instead start asking, what actually needs my attention right now? What actually can I control here? What needs to change in my business right now?
and what support do I need in order to navigate this?
Because when you start leading yourself differently, when you protect your boundaries a little more,
when you stop filling every spare second with noise and urgency.
When you create even a small amount of space to think, you will be so much better equipped to cope with the outside pressures and the strains that are already there. And it's not because they disappear,
but because you're no longer meeting them from a place of complete depletion and reactivity.
And I think this is a big one too. So often we are simply moving too fast to hear our own gut instinct. Too busy reacting, too busy consuming, too busy firefighting, too busy trying to keep up. And when that happens, it becomes much harder to hear the quieter voice inside you that already knows what isn't working, what feels out of alignment.
what needs to change
and what your next right step might be.
Sometimes what we need most is not another strategy, it's enough space to hear ourselves think.
I know this from my own business too. I've had times where I've looked at my plans on paper and thought, why does this all feel so heavy? It just feels too much. And when I really zoom out, it's usually because I've created a plan based on the version of me who has endless head space and resilience, not the real version of me who's actually juggling.
Family logistics, emotional load, life admin, client work, and everything else that comes with being a human and a business owner. And when I notice that, the answer is rarely, I need to work harder. It's usually, I need to pause and simplify and get honest about what actually fits right now.
And this is why I talk so much about capacity before strategy. And I know this is really resonating with people because before you pile on more ideas, more plans, more marketing and more content, you need to understand what you actually have the capacity for. Not in an ideal week, but in your real life, in this season with the energy, time and headspace
that you have available.
So if business feels harder than it should right now, I want to offer you a different question.
instead of asking what's wrong with me?
Try asking what in my business isn't currently set up to support my real life. That question alone can change so much because it moves you out of blame and into self leadership.
The answer might be the way that you've designed your offers the schedule that you're trying to keep to, the expectations you have of yourself, your visibility and marketing plan, your boundaries or lack of, your lack of support,
the fact that you haven't had space to stop and think in months.
Whatever it is, you don't need to shame yourself into sorting it out.
You need to get curious.
You need to zoom out and you need to be honest about what's actually making things harder than they need to be.
So I want you to think about this.
Where does your business currently feel harder than it should?
And if you were brutally honest, what might be contributing to that?
Not from a place of blame, but from a place of compassion and self leadership.
You are not supposed to build a business by endlessly overriding yourself and your needs. You are not supposed to create success by pretending that your real life doesn't exist. And if things feel harder than they should right now, that doesn't automatically mean that you're doing it wrong.
It may mean your business needs more support, more structure and more honesty about actually what is working in your life this season.
may also mean that you're navigating a tougher business landscape than you were a few years ago. But even then, the answer isn't to abandon yourself in this process.
It's to lead yourself with more intention, protect your capacity, focus on what's actually within your control.
And if this episode has hit a nerve and you know your business feels heavier than it should be, the best next step is my free, Life-Friendly CEO Reset. It's a short, practical, guided reset to help you work out what's actually causing the friction in your business, where things feel out of alignment and what to focus on first.
If you like the podcast, you will love this.
and I'll pop the link in the show notes. And if this season is helping you think differently about your business,
I would love it if you hit follow or subscribe on the podcast so you don't miss the next episodes.
And if you know another woman who needs to hear this message, please send the episode her way. And remember, you get to do this on your own terms. See you next week.
