In a world of hustle culture and “lazy” workers, it’s important to remember that your mental health can impact your small business. There are numerous ways it shows up. Thankfully there are ways to make the best out of it when mental health starts to impact business.
The inability to show up on social platforms
An inability to show up can be a form of self-sabotage, negative thinking, or purely being energetically drained. This can be both on social platforms or networking events. As business owners, it’s important for people to know who we are and how we can help. When we aren’t known or seen, our businesses can struggle financially.
Some ways to counteract this is by doing paid advertising or outsourcing to a virtual assistant.
Difficulty in completing business tasks
It doesn’t matter if you’re a service based business or a product based business. Mental health struggles can make it incredibly difficult to complete regular business tasks. This can lead to being behind in projects, and even upset clients. In turn adding a whole lot of stress, anxiety, and even depression on top of it all.
Consider connecting with high school or college students interested in your field of work to come help complete projects.
Decision fatigue
Business owners wear a LOT of hats. It can be overwhelming even getting out of bed. Knowing how much needs to get done, and how much you can realistically accomplish in a day. Sometimes it’s hard to decide where to begin or even when to stop.
Look into a trusted advisor or business partner to help designate high priority tasks over lower priority tasks.
What can you do to help prepare your business for the impact of mental health days?
Have a game plan on your good days and do a test run during this time too. This is a great way to see if your plan is good to go. Should a plan ever need to be put into action, you’ll know it works!
If you know that there’s a pattern or mental health cycle, you can pre-plan. Have a temporary second set of hands, bulk prep products, or pre-schedule content.
Don’t forget to schedule in rest.
It can be easy to prioritize everything but ourselves. Don’t. While there is some hustle needed, especially at the start, rest is important too.
Give yourself grace if your mental health impacts your small business.
Try your best to not beat yourself up when mental health gets in the way. Speak with a therapist. Talk to your provider. Know when to ask for help. Rather than trying to do everything alone, remember that you can have support.
If you don’t feel like you do, consider joining the startup collective. This is where we host monthly masterclasses, live Q+A’s, and accountability check-ins. The aim of this membership is to help support one another as we grow our businesses. It’s an opportunity to connect with similar minded people!
Resources:
Some resources that have helped me along the way include Youtube meditations, Tiktok Therapists, self-help audibles, and acknowledging that it’s okay to get help. I’ve used things such as TalkSpace when I couldn’t get an in person therapy appointment soon enough. This mental health screening tool can also be helpful!
