Insight & Wisdom

for creating success.

Meet Michela

When Scaling your Small Business isn’t Worth the Stress

Have you ever scaled your small business only to realize that the stress just isn’t worth it? Have you ever felt like your business is bigger than you and is a bit too much to handle? Perhaps you feel like giving up sounds like a relief and a defeat simultaneously – you’ve come so far!

A client came to me after being in business for 10 years… yes, a decade. Even though she had built a 6-figure business, her profitability was next to nothing and therefore her ability to grow let alone sustain her business was an uphill battle.

She was on the verge of shutting her doors. Coming to me was her last ditch effort at creating some sort of positive shift.

She was hiring employees and then having to let them go. She was forgoing her own pay check to make sure her employees were taken care of first. She was working way too much and way too hard. She was making way too little money to show for her big efforts. It didn’t help that on top of all the business stress she had, she also suffered from physical body pain (due to several car accidents) and her marriage was on the verge of falling apart. She was kind of a mess, and her business was too. No surprise there. I see this a lot.

When you let things get really bad without addressing the core issue, they tend to escalate – but, it doesn’t have to be that way. We are not a victim of our external circumstances.

I’m a big believer that our outer world is a reflection of our inner world. As I like to say, your business is your greatest spiritual teacher. Whatever shows up in your business at a tactical level can be mapped back to you, the business owner at a subconscious level. A personal block – and most of the time the root cause of that block is a limiting belief or emotional wounding that resides in the mind, body, spirit level that is fueling your habits, emotions, words, and actions. (There’s always a metaphysical point of view.) The personal block negatively influences the business owner’s ability to execute strategies and tactics in an effective way.

I often have clients come to me when they’re at their wit’s end and on the verge of shutting their doors. (And when we work together, they become re-inspired, happier, more productive and profitable.) Although, I really wish they would come to me BEFORE they get to this point of suffering (I can’t stand to see people suffer), for whatever reason that’s not always the case. No matter.

When the student is ready, the teacher appears.

When you grow a business, there are six main blocks to business growth that present themselves. (More on this in a different post.) And whenever a new client comes to me, it’s an indication that they’ve hit one or more of these blocks, and need some help to move through them. (Because let’s face it; if you could move through them yourself, you would have done it already. Like I said, no need to suffer.) Hitting a block is totally normal. Why? Because when you are running your business you are typically head down and focused on working IN the business – doing the work – perfecting your craft, delivering your service, taking care of administration, servicing your customers, doing the sales and marketing, etc. Sometimes, when you’re stuck in the weeds of your business it’s hard to see the forest for the trees – I get it.

There is a way through though, which doesn’t involve shutting down the business or shrinking back to ‘good enough’.

I help my clients with this all the time. Each case is a little different, but they all start with you, the business owner and what’s really important to you. Then we design the business to support that, so you build a business totally aligned to who you are, rather than being a slave to it (and hating it!).

If you’ve hit a bottleneck in your business and you feel like it’s time to either change careers, call it quits, go get a job, sell your business or hide under the duvet – then it’s time to take a serious step back and regroup before you make any final decisions.

Here are 5 steps for getting a fresh perspective on your situation (which, by the way is really sound advice for any situation in your life that you might be jammed up about):

  1. Stay in the present moment. Clear your mind of the static and mind chatter. Wipe away the internal whiteboard of expectations, worry, frustrations, and the trying mind about the situation.
  2. Get crystal clear about what you really want. What is your head telling you? (And if you’re not sure what you want, start with what you don’t want, and then flip it to the opposite.)
  3. Tune-in to your heart. What is your heart’s desire? Get quiet and meditate on the question: “What feels true for me right now?” Write down what your body wisdom is telling you.
  4. Visualize. What does a perfect day, week and year look like and feels like for you? How do you want to be spending your time? Envision the scenario like a movie playing on the movie screen of your mind’s eye.
  5. Tap-in to your second brain. Your gut, otherwise known as your intuition speaks to you all the time. Are you listening? Your higher self has a message for you. Lean in. Listen to the stillness and hear the whispers of your soul.

Like the archer with the bow and arrow, sometimes we need to stand still and pull back, in order to catapult ourselves forward again with more purpose and focused action.

I’m curious about what comes up for you as you work through the five steps above. Please share your comments in the box below.

To your success as you listen deeply.

About Michela Quilici

International Business Growth Coach, Award-winning Marketing Strategist, Best-Selling Author, Speaker and Forbes Coaches Council. Known as a Business Navigator, Michela works with growth-minded business owners, service professionals and CEOs who want to ignite their businesses and accelerate growth, while building a business aligned to who they are.

She is passionate about creating roadmaps that ignite leaders to take inspired action to navigate their growth on purpose using strategy, systems and self-leadership, so they can get noticed, get clients and get profitable.