#34: Strengthening Female-Led Online Businesses through Self-Care
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Self-Care for Women Entrepreneurs: Boosting Productivity and Creativity
Something I believe can truly make a difference in how much we enjoy our business and the impact we create for our clients is how well we look after ourselves.
Yet we’re usually so busy looking after everyone – and everything – else that we forget to nurture ourselves.
That’s when the wheels can fall off!
Self-care and finding time to do things that make us feel amazing should be locked into our schedule with just as much importance as talking to new leads and doing our client work.
Think of wellness as the secret weapon to running an online service business.
In this week’s episode of the Brilliant Business Beautiful Life Podcast, "Strengthening Female-Led Online Businesses through Vital Self-Care Strategies", I'm talking about why self-care isn't just some fancy buzzword but is a non-negotiable for long-term success.
Are you ready to find out why wellness practices aren’t just about treating yourself (although that’s also important!); they’re about feeding your body, mind, and soul what they need so you can show up as your best self? Let’s jump in!
(full transcription below)
Main Points
01:31 - The Intersection of Good Busy and Self-Care for Female Entrepreneurs
03:05 - The True Meaning of Self-Care for Female Entrepreneurs
04:11 - Empowering Female Entrepreneurs: The Critical Importance of Prioritizing Self-Care
05:20 – How Self-Care as a Daily Practice Enhances Business Performance and Personal Well-being
06:45 - How Skipping Self-Care Affects Productivity and Creativity in Business
08:27 – How to Weave Self-Care into Busy Entrepreneurial Lives
09:29 - Practical Self-Care Tips for Busy Female Online Business Owners
12:35 - Implementing Effective Self-Care Routines for Entrepreneurial Success
13:44 - Lessons from Successful Female Entrepreneurs
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Links and Resources
Podcast Ep# 11: CEO Breaks: The Secret Weapon for Entrepreneurs
Podcast Ep# 3: Harmony not Hustle: Mastering Work-Life Balance as a Female Entrepreneur
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Hi, I’m Samantha Bell
I’m all about helping you build the business – and life – you’ve always wanted.
Listen in for the simple, actionable strategies, mindset shifts, and practices you need to make your business thrive. Plus, a healthy dose of self-care, health, and wellness so you can live the life you absolutely adore while building your beautiful business.
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Transcription
00:00
The thing I believe can truly make a difference in how much we enjoy our businesses and the way we create impact for our clients is how well we look after ourselves. Yet we're usually so busy looking after everyone and everything else that we forget to nurture ourselves, and that's when the wheels can fall off. In this week's episode of the Brilliant Business, Beautiful Life podcast, I'm talking about why self-care isn't just a passing fad, but is a non-negotiable for our long term success in business. Ready to find out why wellness practices aren't just about treating yourself? Let's jump in. Welcome to the Brilliant Business, Beautiful Life podcast, where we share simple, actionable strategies plus the mindset and wellness practices you need to build the business and life you love. Head to 16thavecreative.com/playbook and download your free guide to design the business and life you deserve, today. I'm your host, Samantha Bell, and this is the Brilliant Business, Beautiful Life podcast. Are you ready for the business and life of your dreams? Let's get started. Self-care and wellness practices aren't just about treating yourself. They're about feeding your body, mind, and soul what they need so that you can show up as your best self every single day.
01:31
It's so easy to be busy, but is busy good? Is there such a thing as good busy? And if there is, what is good busy, well, I'm going to wax lyrical for a moment and share a poem with you that explains it beautifully. And it goes.
“I lied and said I was busy.
I was busy;
but not in a way most people understand.
I was busy taking deeper breaths.
I was busy silencing irrational thoughts.
I was busy calming a racing heart.
I was busy telling myself I am okay.
Sometimes, this is my busy -
and I will not apologize for it.”
― Brittin Oakman
I think that is such a beautiful way of explaining what good busy is, and I call good busy self-care. So, let's talk about self-care, shall we? When I say self-care, what comes to your mind? For most people it's bubble baths, it's books, it's going to a fancy day spa and, yes, those things are self-care. But it's much more than that. True, self-care goes far deeper. It's more than just those surface level enjoyable activities. It's something that is truly going to refresh your mind and your spirit and reconnect you with your soul. That is what self-care is all about.
03:05
Parker Palmer is the author of Let your Life Speak, and he says that “Self-care is never a selfish act. It is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer others. Any time we can listen to our true self and give it the care it requires, we do it not only for ourselves but for the many others whose lives we touch.” That is so beautiful and so powerful, and for me, Parker's words put the thoughts of self-care or taking time out for myself into such a beautiful space, which is a huge difference to where it normally sits. For most people, when they think about self-care, they think of it as being selfish or an indulgence, so it has more negative connotations. But his words put it into a beautiful, nurturing space, and that's what we need to cling on to. I encourage you to think about self-care in that way.
04:11
So why am I talking about self-care and wellness and its importance for being a female entrepreneur? Well, it's all about finding the time to do those things that make us feel amazing, but not just those surface-level things because they're a bit of a band-aid. It's looking more deeply, as I said before, and it really needs to be given as much importance and locked into our schedule, just like we do when we're scheduling discovery calls, talking to new leads, doing our client work, but that's often very difficult for most of us female founders to do because our natural instincts are to take care of everything to the point of exhaustion or burnout, and that is where it's super critical for wellness practices to come into our daily lives. In entrepreneurship, self-care is often tagged as a luxury, but that is inaccurate. It needs to be given a higher level of importance and disassociated with being selfish and associated with being essential.
05:20
As I said, self-care and wellness practices aren't about just treating yourself. They are all about feeding your mind, your body, and your soul what they need every single day so you can show up as your very best self. And thinking more deeply about nurturing yourself just takes you on a different path than the bubble baths and candles at the end of a busy day. It's about nurturing yourself through every moment of the day, remembering you are the most important cog in your business wheel, you're the visionary leader, and you have to protect and respect your energy so you can keep honouring yourself and your business and your clients at the highest level every day. And for a lot of us, that means we need to unlearn and relearn how to be. Most female entrepreneurs started their businesses to do what they love, to make an impact and to live life their way. But the reality is that it takes a whole lot of resilience, grit, determination, and hard work to get to the stage where you can enjoy all of the lifestyle benefits that being an entrepreneur brings you. And for many women, they quit before they get there because they're exhausted, because they haven't practiced self-care or put it as an important part of every day.
06:45
Ariana Huffington who, if you've heard me speak before, you know that I really respect her she says “Entrepreneurs, especially, have a great deal to gain from freeing themselves of our collective delusion that burning out is necessary for accomplishment and success.” She says the “Western workplace culture is practically fuelled by stress, sleep deprivation and burnout. And even as stress undermines our health, the sleep deprivation so many of us experience in striving to get ahead at work is profoundly and negatively affecting our creativity, our productivity and our decision making the very things that entrepreneurs need in order to succeed.” And she's right. It's time to change the narrative on entrepreneurship and make taking good care of your body, mind, and soul a natural, beautiful part of each day, and to start thinking of self-care as an investment in your business in an environment where work is just a click away. Because most of us entrepreneurs work from home, we have a beautiful office or a back room or somewhere in our home where we work and that makes it so simple to keep switching out of real life and switching back into business. Like you could be watching TV or having dinner and say, oh, I've just got to quickly go and do this, so you walk away from whatever relaxation you were doing, and you get back into work and it's really hard not to do that.
08:27
But doing that means there's such a crossover between your personal and your professional life. It can become quite a challenge to delineate and have a firm line in the sand and this really creates chronic stress, anxiety, and exhaustion. These are costly to yourself and your business and all the stress, the anxiety, the exhaustion it means you're going to actually become less productive, you're going to be less creative and your cognitive functions are going to have slower response times. You're going to find it more difficult to make good decisions because of your anxious, busy, stressed mind that is not relaxed and hasn't had any time to recuperate. As you also know, stress and anxiety are linked to increased risks of heart disease, of diabetes, Alzheimer’s, depression, some pretty serious side effects that it can lead into.
09:29
So, it's here that you need to understand that self-care is your lifeline and it is what's going to help you manage your stress, maintain your focus and avoid burnout and all those other terrible outcomes, because when you're rested, when you're stress free, you can accomplish more things more efficiently. And regular self-care practices things like taking exercise, healthy eating, getting lots of beautiful sleep it really boosts your energy levels and can help keep you productive throughout your day and activities like meditation, journaling, doing hobbies that stimulate the right side of your brain and the left side of your brain. They can create more creativity, innovation, as well as rational thoughts, and that's essential for you to thrive in your business. Self-care reduces stress, it increases your mental clarity, it empowers you to make really good business decisions. But here are some more practical ways that you can care for yourself and your business every single day.
10:38
Start simple, start small, just by taking a small break through your workday, drinking lots of water, going for a quick walk, all those little things that you can naturally build into your day. Make sure you get at least seven to nine hours of sleep every night and stay active. When we work from home, we tend to sit down all the time and that's where we become lethargic, our thighs start spreading and we get really unfit and it's because we're so engrossed in what we're doing, and we don't get away from the desk. So find something physical that you love to do and do it every day. Just make it a part of your routine. If it is something you love to do, not something you've been told to do, you're more likely to do it every day. Something else you can do is to schedule one thing every day that's just for you. So, for example, if you're feeling stressed, if you're feeling time-pressured, or you've just had a really heavy meeting with a client, or something's just not going right and it's affecting you, stop Ask yourself what do I want and need right now? What's going to make me feel better? What would fill up my cup? And think about that. It could be something as simple as just getting outside and into the fresh air, turning off your phone, walking away from the desk for a moment, going and having a coffee, running around the block, reading a book, just taking five or ten minutes to reset and get away from whatever it was that's made you feel depleted. So fill up your cup. Ask yourself that when you're having those moments, and do schedule in that one special thing that's just for you and it makes a huge difference. Learn to say no. Create some boundaries, plan your schedule. Do take those breaks.
12:35
I've mentioned exercise. Really important, when you can, is to outsource and delegate. I spoke about that in last week's episode, so have a listen to that. It's episode 33, and once a year, I like to take a CEO break. They're super powerful. They are such a great way to reset your body, mind, and soul, and I do it once a year. I've spoken about this earlier in.
13:04
Episode 11 of the podcast is called CEO Breaks the Secret Weapon for Entrepreneurs. So do have a listen to that one. It's a great episode, and it will tell you what CEO breaks are, why you need them and how important they are and the impact that doing this at least once a year will have on you personally, you professionally and on your business. And for some other tips on creating a beautiful balance of self-care and managing your days as the CEO of your business, have a listen to episode 32. It's called Harmony, not Hustle Mastering your Work-Life Balance As a Female Entrepreneur.
13:44
I will give you in that episode lots of great ideas you can do every day in your business. So have a little listen to that one. And I also want to look now at some successful, very well known female entrepreneurs who do prioritize self-care. Just briefly, Sarah Blakely, the founder of Spanx she swears by her morning routine to get her through every day, and that is doing yoga and meditation. Not for everyone, but it works really well for her. So, if you love yoga and meditation, maybe try creating a morning routine where you do that and set yourself up for the rest of the day.
14:27
Ariana Huffington, who I quoted earlier. She is a huge advocate for the importance of sleep. She talks and writes regularly about being self-aware, the importance of taking breaks, getting lots of sleep, eating well and doing whatever you need to do to refresh your body and mind. Oprah Winfrey, who you're all very familiar with. She's always been a wonderful advocate for mindfulness, self-care and what I was talking about earlier thinking more deeply about self-care and how we move through life. There's an episode or a little snippet on Oprah Daley where she really encourages us all to deepen our relationship with self-care. She says we should ask ourselves this what do? I need to feel more whole in this moment. She says ask yourself this often Self-care should not have to come out of an imminent need for relief when everything comes tumbling down. Self-care should be deliberate, it should be scheduled, and it should become a habit, because what I know for sure, you don't have anything to give that you don't have. That is a fabulous piece of advice. It's quite simple but it's quite powerful and it's reinforcing the message I'm trying to give in this episode today of prioritizing self-care, where she says it should be deliberate, should be scheduled, it should become a habit. So, give that a go.
16:04
Reflecting on my own journey, a woman's retreat I attended last year was a game changer for me and it was more than just taking a break. It was more than just hanging around with some like-minded women or getting away from the family and business and normal life. It was a profound transformation that still resonates with me today, over a year on. Self-care is that powerful. It's not an indulgence, it is an investment in you and, by extension, it's an investment in your business. And you can read about that experience I had at the women's retreat in my journal, and it's called “The Power of Self-Care and Positive Self-talk In Business.” So self-care should not be an afterthought. It should be right there in your business plan. Prioritising self-care isn't just about feeling good. It's all about enhancing your performance, your creativity, making better decisions and ultimately achieving sustainable success so that you can go on to build your business to the level where you are living like the true entrepreneur, enjoying the fruits of your labour.
17:27
I would love to hear about your self-care practices. How do you take care of yourself while running your business? So, share your tips and stories on our social media platforms. Get in touch and let me know. I really would love to hear about them and remember that you can't pour from an empty cup. So, fill yours up with self-care and watch your business thrive.
17:51
So that's a wrap for today's episode. I hope you're feeling inspired to integrate self-care into your own entrepreneurial journey, and next week I'm going to be talking about building a business that aligns with your values, so be sure to tune in then. Thank you for joining me today on the Brilliant Business, Beautiful Life podcast, and until next time. Remember, now is the time for the brilliant business and beautiful life you adore. Thanks so much for listening. I'd love to know your biggest takeaway from today's episode. So, leave me a comment below or send a DM on Instagram. If you enjoyed this episode, hit the subscribe button wherever you listen to the Brilliant Business, Beautiful Life podcast, and feel free to share it with someone else who'll love it too. I look forward to seeing you for the next episode and remember the time is now for your brilliant business and the beautiful life you adore.
