The Business Guide
Just a regular guy that decided to quit his stable job and start a business. After successfully being in business I've learned a thing or two, unfortunately the hard way. I've created this podcast to share my successes & failures and to talk about the "real" ins & outs of business. I'll be personally sharing my stories along with guests.
As Business Owners we wear so many different hats and we have so many different struggles, we will breakdown those struggles together and talk about how we've overcome them and how it's shaped us to be better. If your a business owner currently going through a struggle, I hope this content helps!
The Business Guide
The Power of Rest: A Path to Business Growth
Mastering the balance between relentless hard work and necessary self-care is a vital skill for any entrepreneur. Imagine working 14-16 hour days only to discover that your health and productivity are plummeting. That's exactly what happened to me. Today, I share how embracing self-care practices like scheduling gym sessions, taking weekends off, and making healthier choices turned my life around, boosting both my energy and business efficiency.
Emily from our audience, who runs a tutoring business, wanted advice on scaling without losing service quality. My recommendation? Hire the right people to manage administrative tasks, allowing her to focus on core business functions. Meanwhile, Alex, who owns a real estate group, is navigating a crowded market. I advised him to harness the power of social media by creating engaging, niche content that resonates with the local community, fostering authentic connections and driving growth.
Neglecting self-care can lead to severe consequences like burnout and decreased productivity. From my personal journey to actionable tips, this episode underscores the importance of integrating self-care into a busy entrepreneurial schedule. Whether it's taking weekends off, trusting your team with responsibilities, or scheduling regular breaks and vacations, these practices can rejuvenate your energy and enhance productivity. As we wrap up, I emphasize the value of consistency and routine in sustaining long-term success. Join me for another episode of the Business Guide, where self-care meets business success.
Hey everyone, what's going on? It's Jonathan Wagner and I want to welcome you back to another episode of the Business Guide. Today we are diving into a topic that every entrepreneur needs to hear about, and that is self-care. As business owners, we often put our work before everything else. Hey, I'm guilty of that, but the truth is taking care of yourself is just as crucial as taking care of your business, but it is absolutely more important to put yourself first right. Without you, there's going to be no business. So if you're feeling burnt out, consistently stressed or just like there's not enough time in the day, you are not alone. Most business owners are feeling the same way. So in this episode, we're going to talk about why self-care is not just a luxury, but it is a necessity for the success of your business, and how you can start incorporating it into your daily routine.
Speaker 1:But before we jump into this episode, I want to rewind back to the last episode. I was able to get some very generous comments from some business owners and I was not able to answer them all, so I wanted to take a few minutes in this episode to answer the remaining questions. Let's go ahead and dive into that. Let me pull it up here. Okay, so the first one is from Emily. Emily, thank you for reaching out. Emily owns a tutoring business. I mean that's pretty cool. Thank you for making the world smarter, emily the administrative side and providing quality educational services. What advice do you have for scaling a service-based business without compromising my actual service? So we've talked about this on previous episodes, emily, if not, go back to the episode with my brother. There was some. It's Matthew Wagner, it's the franchise. One great episode to listen to.
Speaker 1:But there's a couple takeaways in that episode that I want to point out that might work for you. Number one is you've got to hire the right people, and that starts with you know, when you're negotiating a lease, it starts with having the right attorney to negotiate that lease. I mentioned in that episode very quickly, but it is having a good CPA. I mentioned in that episode very quickly, but it is having a good CPA. So I think what you need to do if you're getting caught up on the administrative side if that is your accounting, your bookkeeping, your accounts payable, things like that you need to hire the right people. As business owners, we often want to do everything ourselves right. We have this control that we want to hang on to to do everything ourselves right. We have this control that we want to hang on to. I was really able to grow my business when I let go of that control and started hiring the right people. So surround yourself, emily, with the right people in your business to tackle these issues. So if you're having issues with answering the phone, if you're having issues with maybe getting out proposals to new clients, it sounds like you need an office manager or a receptionist. That could really benefit your business. Again, if you are dealing with bookkeeping issues or things like that, you need to have a good accountant. I cannot stress to everybody listening to this podcast make sure you have a good accountant in your corner. That is something that I did not have in my corner for a couple years and I completely struggled with and guess what? You do not want the IRS coming to your door, so make sure you got a good accountant. All right, Emily. Thank you so much for the question.
Speaker 1:Alex owns a real estate group, so I don't okay, owner of by real estate group, so not just a realtor, he is an owner of the actual business. Jonathan, in the real estate market, building trust is crucial, but it is also tough to stand out in such a saturated industry. What are some unique branding or marketing techniques that can help differentiate my business from the competition? So I have definitely spoken about this in past episodes standing out in crowded markets, adapting to change. Alex, I suggest you go and listen to those episodes if you haven't already. But you are completely right. The real estate market is absolutely saturated. There are so many people in it that think that they can do it. You've got part-time people that do it. It is a market that is very competitive. Nonetheless, a lot of people thrive in the real estate market. Matter of fact, some of the most successful people that I have met have had their hand in real estate. So congratulations on standing out and owning a real estate group. My hat is off to you.
Speaker 1:I mean, my first thing goes to embracing social media. I have a couple accounts that I belong to where I have some realtors on there. One makes absolutely funny, engaging content that engages a lot of people. So I think that standing out making niche videos that your audience is going to enjoy and appreciate, I think is a good marketing strategy. I think that it it does translate to dollars because throughout the years, this particular gentleman's account and his team has grown. So I think you're going to need to embrace social media. Most of the stuff I'm going to go to and say right now is social media, because it's what comes to mind.
Speaker 1:Another guy in my area. He owns a real estate group and he goes around and goes to different developments in our area and explains to the community what's going in there, why it's important, different phases of construction, whatever it may be. Nonetheless it gets a lot of super hyper local engagement that is absolutely crucial in the real estate business. So, again that social media, and it's this guy that surprisingly I mean when I first started watching his videos and they started popping up, I mean, you know, button up was a mess, shirts were a mess, hair was a mess, a little cheap microphone, but it went a long way and the community absolutely embraced it and I know that that translates into sales. So I would say social media again for you is going to help you stand out in the market, out in the market.
Speaker 1:Now another person that I work with that is in real estate has done a really good job at building a really friendly and fun environment. This particular company is a real estate group that sells homes but also does property management, and in our area we struggled with Airbnb being shut down, so people that had boughten these houses to do Airbnb with then went more towards the traditional property management route and she was able to take her image of this online very active. She's involved in the school district board. She's in her local. There's like a local city council, but it's not quite city council. It's like a governing board for the little kind of subsection of the city that she works in or lives in. So she is hyper-local, has put that out there.
Speaker 1:And you're not pushy with the real estate, right, I think this market is oversaturated, but you've got these pushy people. I mean I'll pop on into LinkedIn and I'll have three people saying, hey, would you like to buy a home? Not from you, absolutely not. There's a ton of other people I would rather choose than you. So you need to be careful at crafting your message. But I got to say I think social media is something that you can go out and really put yourself out there. I think in real estate, right, like me, I work with people that I would know. I have people that I would have relationships with that I would go to. But when you're on social media you're reaching a wide audience. So now if you've been putting out super hyper, local, engaging content and now maybe somebody's family or friend is looking for a realtor and they ask for a referral and that person doesn't know anybody, they say, hey, I don't know anybody, but I've been following this person for a couple years now and I really like their content, you should reach out. So I think super crazy, creative, crazy content on social media is going to help you engage with your audience.
Speaker 1:And then one I have another real estate lady that I've got to give a shout out to has done a great job. But we have this little community in one of the cities I live in Again, I guess more of a section of a community, right and it is all high priced, million dollar homes, very fancy homes. This particular lady has absolutely dominated that market and it has taken her about 20 years to do it. She goes to all of these different fancy events, engages with different what do they call them galas, things like that, and she has really positioned herself to be an absolute leader in this little luxury area. She does not go past that and everybody goes to her. So if you need a room addition, guess who they go to? They go to her and ask her. So you want to position yourself as a local resource. I think that is the biggest thing a real estate company could do is be a local resource. Take the sales out of the picture. We know you want to sell a house. Be a resource and people will come to you. Okay, one last question we have from oh and thank you, alex, for the comment, I really appreciate you sending it in Next up is Rachel.
Speaker 1:Rachel owns, she is the founder of a skincare beauty product and she says I've developed a line of organic skin products and, while online sales are decent, I'm finding it challenging to get my product into retail stores. What steps should I take to break into the retail market and grow my presence? Now, rachel, I'll be completely honest. I do appreciate the feedback. I appreciate the comment. I'm going to say online sales, specifically with selling a product online. I've really had no experience in doing so. This is just going to be me talking completely on a whim with absolutely no experience, and I would like you to know that full disclosure. So a couple things that come to mind is you now want to take. You've got this online business right and you want to get it into actual retail stores. You know, some things that I can think of is what's popular and I know this with my daughter right now is main streets. Right, downtowns are huge right now. For the younger generation, I think, organic skin product that's in right now that's a popular product. Go down to your local downtown area where it's busy during a weekend, busy during the days, and maybe start talking to some super local retail stores, right.
Speaker 1:I would not go for the larger box chains. Again, I don't know how to do that, to be completely honest, but I wouldn't show up there. I have experience working for a large corporation. I can tell you people would walk in and try to get their product on the shelf and we would just take their information, but there was literally no follow-through. That was done because we weren't allowed to do that. There are buyers, there are other people that that goes to and we were not privy to that. So I cannot tell you how to get into the big box, but I would think that you could start small scale and get into local downtown areas and make them a deal. Right, don't charge them for the product.
Speaker 1:I know this is an expensive game that you're running where you've got to have inventory on hand, but put this a part of your strategy. Get a nice display. Make the business owners a deal Once you start having sales there of, look, I put this in here, I did this, I'm generating this sales. Now you can take this to maybe a bigger local store that you might be able to go into and say, hey, I've got this, I've got this product. These are the sales and I think it would perform well at your store.
Speaker 1:Now I do want to say I know you want to get into actual physical retail stores, but I do have to say, with online sales and I do have to bring up my wife my wife is a sucker, an absolute sucker for Instagram and Facebook marketing. They capture her. If you have a good message and a good story and your product is the product that is organic and healthy, my wife would absolutely buy it. Get in her Instagram feed. There is a huge market there. So I do really like you going into retail stores, but the fact that you're online keeps your overhead significantly lower. I think you're able to adapt to selling to a nationwide business. I love nationwide models. So, yeah, maybe just beef your online sales kind of through the roof and take those numbers to those big box stores later and say, hey, this is what we're doing online. I'd love to do it in your store right. At the end of the day, they want to sell product, they want to make money and you want to make money too. So, uh, rachel, I really do appreciate the comment. I'm sorry that I don't have too much experience in actual product sales online. I hope that maybe that feedback, uh, has helped you.
Speaker 1:Okay, everybody jumping back into the episode, let me get back my notes and let me just grab a sip of water. A sip of water, okay. So remember, this episode is going to be all about self-care and we are going to explore why self-care is important for all business owners and the impact of neglecting your well-being and then practicing practical self-care strategies that you can start today and how to look after yourself. So I want to go back to some of my early days of you know the grind. I remember waking up super early. That is a habit that I still have to this day.
Speaker 1:I wake up early and I do work late. I mean, when an idea comes to me, I'm on the computer. I am working, I'm doing what I need to do and now putting this podcast here. I can totally understand working late. But back in my early days of the grind, I mean I would work these 14, 15, 16-hour days, huge days sometimes, then having to pull overnight shifts because we had restaurants that we were doing.
Speaker 1:It was a very tedious work schedule and I remember having a friend she had lived in so I'm in Ventura County, she lived in San Francisco, it's about a five-and-a-half-hour drive and she'd always invite me over to her house to go hang out and have a good time and whatever it could be catch up. And I would never go. I was. It was the hardest for me to break away. And I remember her coming to town one day and talking with me and saying like why don't you ever take a break for yourself? And I mean I kind of told her. I say, look, I'm a business owner, the business needs me, I'm going to be here, the business is more important than my downtime. Well, that came and bit me full around in the butt Because you run in very quickly to something called burnout. I remember one night working super late at my office like my competitors will never catch me because I run circles around them. Yeah, I ran circles, but it was completely devastating my health. No-transcript, right. Stress, heart attacks they kind of go hand in hand.
Speaker 1:So I really started prioritizing taking time off, and that has been completely gradual. I started scheduling time off. I started scheduling random time off. So I happen to know that some of my busier times is in the morning. Now that I have a team developed, right, some of my busier times are in the morning, and then my afternoons kind of get a little bit slower and then maybe it peaks back up later in the evening because I'm working on stuff or doing whatever I need to do.
Speaker 1:So I started prioritizing gym workouts. I'd go to the gym, I'd go grab a healthy bite to eat. I would take a little bit more time for myself. Now, guys, these aren't huge changes that I was doing. I was just starting to integrate certain things into my life that I found were going to help, and when they were going to help, a lot of people wake up before the sun's up. They'll go to the gym, they'll knock that out. That doesn't work for me. I don't know if you're like me, but I cannot get out of bed to go to the gym. I can get out of bed to start working. I can get up at five o'clock in the morning and head right to the office, but if I wake up at six o'clock I cannot go to the gym. So, prioritizing yourself and what works for your schedule, we are in this beautiful thing called being a business owner. We create our own schedule and, yes, the business absolutely needs us to work and be on our A game. But you're not on your A game if you're burnt out, exhausted, stressed. You can't, you know, you're mentally just not there. So taking a step back and saying, hey, I need a breather is absolutely crucial.
Speaker 1:Going back to that story with my friend, I started making it a priority to going up there and seeing her and you know it wasn't something I'd go up every single month or every other month, but at least once a quarter I would go up there and see her. And it started, and just for the weekend, nothing crazy right? I was not able to take weekends off as my first couple years in business. I would work that hard. I was working all the time. So being able to take off a weekend was a real treat for me. Those initial baby steps ultimately allowed me to say I don't work weekends anymore. Now there is occasion where I will get up and I've got something in my mind or something I need to get done, or I just want to go into the office because there's peace and quiet. But for 90% of the time I do not work weekends. I take that time off, and that was huge for me. It's something that I didn't do in the early years of starting my business. So, going into the importance of self-care, I feel like I I kind of jumped over some of that um and started talking about that. See, I'm trying to trying to stick to my notes and it's not really working. Get another sip of water so quickly.
Speaker 1:Research shows that that business owners who prioritize self-care are more productive, more creative and better able to handle stress the stresses of running a business. I can attest to that I mentioned. I started going back to the gym, I started eating better and I wouldn't say that I changed my life completely, but I started to make slow changes, slow changes. Last year I got more on a health kick where I was really going to dial myself in and for probably about seven months I mean, I felt great, absolutely great. I was doing some of the early wake-ups, but a lot of times I was working out after work. I was prioritizing an hour and a half for myself. Everything I was eating was clean eating. I was not eating any junk and at first it was just I didn't feel like it was going to make any progress. But as month one, month two started to kind of chip away, I felt that I had more energy. I felt that I could clearly think, I felt that I could just be more productive in my business. So I can absolutely attest that this is true. Matter of fact, now I've put myself back on that same routine. So today, as we speak, because I've noticed I did not follow through with keeping that up, I just went more on a maintenance and I really liked the way that that felt.
Speaker 1:A couple episodes back we had Shane in here. Shane is an avid person that is always working out in his you know excuse me he has got his business very busy, has a family and is prioritizing working out and self-care. You have to determine what it's going to take for you to take that to the next level. Now this episode is not just about jumping into the gym. It is taking the time that you need to decompress off of the stresses of being a business owner. Every single day, we are hit with something new or another challenge. Our brains are consistently working overtime. Right, we are not an employee that goes in, clocks in, makes a sandwich for eight hours out of the day, doesn't really have to think, and then clocks out and leaves, and then they get to enjoy their time with their family. We are dealing with growing our business. We're dealing with an issue that popped up during the day. We didn't get our work done. We're going home, we're a little stressed out from that and then oh, by the way, I have some work that I need to catch up on. This is the reality of most business owners. So when you're feeling burned out, you need to make sure that you have the resources to set aside and we'll go into that.
Speaker 1:The impact of neglecting self-care. What happens when you neglect self-care? Burnout, decreased productivity and even serious health issues can arise. I'm not only seeing that to myself, but I have seen it happen to other business owners. We get in our every day of doing what we need to be doing and we forget to take care of ourselves. Our productivity completely decreases when our productivity decreases. Our business decreases when our business decreases. We're now stressed out that the business has decreased and it's this endless circle, downward spiral and it takes more energy to pull yourself up. So being able to step back and saying, hey, I need to take a break, this is absolutely mandatory.
Speaker 1:Me and my wife, a couple years ago, started taking lunches together. This was something that I liked, going and getting a break from the business. Remember, afternoons are easier for me, so that's where I started working in a little bit more off time. Go see a movie, go do what we needed to do, hang out time. Go see a movie, go do what we needed to do, hang out. But being able to figure out when you need it is important, but neglecting yourself is only going to end in a downward spiral for you, and there are plenty of business owners that are overworked, that are stressed out and they're running their business and you think, or they think, that they are being successful. Best, believe when I say this there is somebody going to be out. There is somebody that is going to be out there and it may be a competitor that is working a couple less hours than you, but they have their self-care figured out. In the long run, they are going to be around or more productive than you, so self-care is something in your toolbox that you need to make sure you absolutely work on. The bottom line is neglecting self-care can have serious consequences, both personally and professionally. All right, so let's go over some strategies.
Speaker 1:I started working in weekends off. That was huge for me. I would still take phone calls, but I had weekends off. I slowly took myself off of taking phone calls to somewhat putting my phone on airplane mode during the weekend, to where people knew they could not get a hold of me. Now again, I am in the emergency service industry. At that time my phone needs to get answered. That could be a huge project on the line Talked about this on a previous episode. But it is trusting your staff, building a team surrounding yourself. We created an on-call schedule that was now shared between people that I employed, so that was solved.
Speaker 1:I would take time off. I started taking afternoons off. I really liked that. I enjoyed it. It gave me a breath of fresh air and probably about seven or eight years ago I took my first week-long vacation. I packed up and shut my phone off and went on a vacation. Wow, was that stressful. There was definitely anxiety that was built into me not being around my business, me being gone for so long, yada, yada, yada. But what an eye-opener to finally have a solid week off to show me that it was so important for me to have that time off. After that one week, I started making longer stretches available to me and I'll go into that, but it gave me the power to come back to my business energized. It gave me the power to come back and be more productive.
Speaker 1:Yes, my business lost me for a week and that was scary. Right, are my employees going to work? Are we going to keep up the pace? Are we going to keep up? Yes, when you hire the right team and you have the right people, you will make it and you will do okay. Trust me, I've been there. You have to go out on the trust side Now if you're a business owner. I've got a friend that's a business owner. The guy takes more vacations than the president of the United States, but he's able to balance that so perfectly and he has done that since day one in business. He doesn't have to worry about time off. So this does not apply to him or the people that have that figured out.
Speaker 1:So after that week off every six months, I started really integrating about a week off. Now there is days that I take off right, we have a slower day. I'm taking off, spending it with the family doing whatever I need to do, but actually giving myself a reset. I actually implemented it this year. I'm fresh off of that vacation. I can talk about that and how it really helped me. So for the first time in my business career, I took an entire month off. Now, this was not me going in and checking on my businesses. This was not me doing a ton of work. This was me completely off from my businesses. Now there are personal business projects that are in the cooker. There's some fun stuff. I filmed a couple of these podcast episodes on my vacation but nonetheless I got to work on myself without being tied to the business. What a great game changer.
Speaker 1:Being able to completely separate myself from my businesses absolutely gave me the clarity to come back re-energize. I'm butchering that. I came back in re-energize. Why am I not? Hey, leave me a comment in the section. How do you say that? Right, but I was able to come back and completely just be refreshed and while a month was absolutely a luxury and I don't know if I expect to do that again I can tell you that I have come back better than ever. I have come back with a better health routine. I have come back with now integrating better meals, better workout routines and getting myself back to a optimum standard. So, taking that month off if you have the luxury or there's any way that you can do that, I would probably suggest doing that. Do a master reset. Maybe don't do it once every year, once every three years, do a master reset, but I can tell you that that has absolutely helped me out and I am so thankful I was able to do that and fortunate that I have the resources to do it.
Speaker 1:So, at the end of the day, it comes back to you taking care of yourself and prioritizing yourself for your business. This is ultimately going to trickle into your leadership, right. If you are overstressed, you're overworked, you are going to be unapproachable as a business leader. That is going to trickle off into your employees, which will trickle off into your customer interaction, right. If you're not good to your employees, which will trickle off into your customer interaction, right. If you're not good to your employees. You're not good to your customers. It is, overall, a bad situation Anybody you interact with. If you're short with things like that, you're not going to understand business problems.
Speaker 1:So, being able to identify when you need self-care, identify what that self-care looks like, implement that self-care, watch how it trickles into your business, which ultimately ends with the bottom line of dollars in your account. We're business owners. We work all the time. We do everything in our business. It is so amazing when you step away and you have a skilled team there that you trust to take over and you can say, hey, I'm going to go check out for a couple of weeks and you are able to do a master reset, master reset, game changer, game changer.
Speaker 1:When you are so busy waking up super early, you're getting home late, you're getting dinner done, get the kids to bed whatever your story is and you put off maybe going out on that walk, going out on that run, going to the gym it's easier to grab maybe a burger on the way home and maybe have something prepared or go home and prepare it. Start making these slow changes and it will help you personally, which is crucial here, because you are the vessel behind your business and you are the driver. So I can't stress enough. Guys, get out there, driver. So I can't stress enough. Guys, get out there, dig deep, find out what it's going to take for you and what your avenues of self-care are going to be. But do not forget you need self-care, you need to take care of yourself. Be good to yourself and you will be good to your business. Be good to yourself and it will and you will be good to your business. Okay, that's it for this episode.
Speaker 1:Guys, I want to hear from you, um, if you have, successfully, a good routine down for your self-care, drop a line. Let me know what works, what works for you, what, uh, you know? Are you going to the gym? You eat a little healthier? You're going to therapy? What works for you as a business owner to break away from the business and re-energize it? Let's see I can't say that word To give you the energy you need to run your business.
Speaker 1:And, as always, I mean those comments at the beginning of the episode and on yesterday's episode was so cool. So, please, if you have any questions about your business or anything you're going through, drop me a line, send me a text message. I would love to hear them. I would love to have you on the show and talk about them. So, anyways, that's it. That is a wrap for today's episode. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day. You know really appreciate the time you've taken to listen to this and, yeah, hope you're able to get yourself routine down so you can thrive as a business owner Again. This is the Business Guide and I am your host, jonathan Wagner. Catch you on the next one.
