Avoiding Burnout in your Mom-Owned Business

Growing a small business alongside your children can be an extra kind of challenge. You’re juggling kids’ activities and childcare with balancing your books, posting to Instagram, and then turning around and getting everyone tucked in and ready for the next day. Moms building businesses have superpowers of multi-tasking and getting shit done but that doesn’t make us immune to burnout! So many nights everyone is finally sleeping and you’re up trying to decide if all that’s on your plate is even worth it. I’ve been there. Here are 4 tips for avoiding that feeling and building a business that fits your life!

1. Set your prices right. Knowing your value and what your time is worth is huge. But so is setting prices and your pricing structure to support your life. For service providers, there are so many ways to set up pricing and use psychology to guarantee your income per client. Think through ways you can set your pricing to increase income and decrease the time spent with each client to maximize the value for both of you!
2. Learn to say no. Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. This one took me some time to soak in! I knew what genres of photography I wanted to do but it was hard to say no when someone asked me to do something outside of that. After some time, I realized that those clients would be much better served by someone who loved doing what they were asking for. And I was able to reserve my time for the clients who loved what I was offering.
3. Find the marketing methods that give you the best return on investment. There are so many ways to market your business. Social media, blogging, word of mouth, networking, email newsletters, printed materials, and on and on! Knowing what methods work best for you and give you the biggest return on your investments (financially or time-wise!) is huge! We can’t do it all as solopreneurs. Figuring out where to go all out; give yourself grace on the things that don’t work as well. This will help you avoid that burnout feeling!
4. Outsource. Take some of those items off your plate. I know it can be hard to spend money when you feel like you aren’t making enough. When I finally took some of those tasks off my plate though, I learned that other people are much more efficient at them! I was able to spend my time doing the things I was more efficient at. In turn, I could also take on more clients, and my outsourced help more than paid for itself! Still not ready to make an investment? What can you delegate? I know that I forget that my kids are fully capable of helping out in our house more! When they take over some of the chores, it helps occupy their time, teaches them responsibility, and allows you time to do the work that makes you money.

Still not sure where to start with all this? Make a list of your strengths and weaknesses. Look at what’s causing you stress in your business and work around which option above will help. It’s ok to cross things off your list too! Is some part of your client experience stressing you out? It’s better to drop that step than not deliver on a promise.