You started your business to grow yourself, your income, your impact and so much more. You also got into business to bring in and support your amazing clients. But one of the biggest mistakes you can make is to prioritise growing your clients’ businesses and forget about growing your own.

In this episode, we’re talking about how to prioritise your client work vs growing your own business. We’ll be talking about the mindset, energy and strategy behind balancing this, as well as 3 simple shifts you can make in your business that will make it SO much easier for both you and your clients. 

If you’re getting to the end of a day and wondering: “Did I even do anything to move my business forward today?” then let’s dive into this episode because what I’m about to share with you is going to be so freaking helpful.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why it’s so damn important to never put your business on the backburner!
• That it’s okay to want to serve your clients AND grow your own business
• How your business structure impacts your growth, your clients and your life
• The 3 key shifts that changed the game for me

Tune in to the episode here:

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The Episode Breakdown:

Today, I want to talk to you guys about how to prioritise your client work vs growing your own business.

Now, I want to put my hand up and say that I used to be the worst at throwing everything that had to do with me out the door and just doing the client work. Maybe you’re in the same boat and you’re doing so much client work that you’re just not getting anywhere with your own business. But one of the biggest mistakes anyone can make as a coach or a service provider is to prioritise growing your clients’ businesses over your own.

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t be prioritising your clients. Your clients are the backbone of your business. So I’m not saying you shouldn’t prioritise growing your clients’ businesses or helping them achieve the transformation that you provide, but I’m saying the mistake lies in putting 100% of your energy into growing their business, leaving no energy, time or mental capacity for you to grow your own.

I’ve worked with a lot of coaches and service providers in my time as a business coach, and I’ve seen far too many women putting the growth of their own business on the backburner because of a bajillion different reasons.

So how do you actually navigate prioritising your client work vs growing your own business?

Today, I want to talk about the mindset and energy behind it, and of course – the strategy. As you know, energy and mindset are nothing without the strategy! I’m going to share 3 simple, easy shifts that you need to make to have a healthy balance between prioritising your client work as well as growing your own business.

When you start to prioritise growing your own business whilst supporting your clients, I promise you that your clients will thank you for it.

1. Shift your mindset

This is the most important one. The very first thing you need to shift is your mindset. You need to shift your belief system and know that it is okay if you want to serve your clients and grow your business at the same time.

Yes, your clients are the backbone of your business and they do bring in the money, but if you aren’t growing your business whilst you’re helping them grow theirs, then your business can never really grow.

There can be a million beliefs going on inside your mind. I actually encourage you to take a second now to grab a journal and think about what you believe about prioritising client work over your own? What are the beliefs that come up for you? Do you think that your clients are going to leave you or judge you? Dive into those beliefs about what it would mean for you to start prioritising your own business and your own growth while still balancing supporting your clients and showing up for them.

Some of my clients have thought: “But if I prioritise my own business, then I won’t be giving my clients my best work.” That comes from perfectionism, not from wanting to serve your clients in the best way possible.

The reality is that if you give something your best, you do your best work for that person. You can only ever do your best, and your best is better than trying to strive for perfect.

You also get to set the intention to only bring in soulmate dream clients who respect your boundaries, who aren’t codependent and don’t expect you to drop everything for them. When you create a sense of codependency, you act from a place of reaction. You don’t allow your clients to create a sense of self-trust, and that’s a really big part of being an incredible coach and mentor. It’s so important that you shift your mindset to understand that it’s okay if you don’t respond to your clients immediately.

You have to trust that it’s okay to grow your own business’ impact and income. That’s why you started your business, to do those things *and* serve your clients. It’s okay to want to do both.

2. Shift your structure

I’m talking about shifting little things in the way that you structure your business – in the way that you structure your time, your days, how you respond to things and how you get things done in your own business and in your clients’ businesses.

Simply put, you can just choose some days and times to do your client work and then choose some days and times to do your own business work. Do you have specific days where you do your client work? Do you have specific times each day?

Then, you can choose days and times to do your own business work. What days and times do you want to be creating content, building offers, updating sales pages and everything else?

It totally depends on what works for you. Some people need the strict structure of choosing days or times to do client work vs your own work, while others can just totally go with the flow and create a good sense of balance. I recommend starting out with a bit of structure to test it out and see how it feels, and shift it if it doesn’t feel aligned anymore.

The most important thing is that when it comes to the structure of your business is to really think about not only how you want to run your business, but also how you want to live your life.

For example, how many hours a day do you really want to be working? Not how many hours a day you *think* you should be working.

How many clients do you really want to be working with? Not how many clients *could* you take on. You get to make that decision.

How much of your time do you really want to be spending growing your own business? When you’re choosing your structure, will you be choosing set days of the week, or will you choose a time each day because you want to grow your own business every day?

Are there any personal things that you’d like to do more often? Get really clear on not just the business that you want to run, but the life that you want to live and then create your structure around that.

If you go about business with no plan and without prioritising growing your own business, moving the needle forward and living your dream life, you can’t be surprised if your business isn’t growing as fast as you’d like it to.

You get to shift the structure and take your power back. You’ve already shifted your mindset and you know that you can do it, now you get to think about how much time you want to spend in your business and how much time you want to spend just chilling out and doing what you enjoy.

When we talk about business structure, we’re not just talking about sales funnels, systems and clients. You have to think about your life too. So once you’ve shifted your mindset, then you need to shift your structure.

3. Shift your boundaries

I talk about this so much on the podcast that I sound like a broken record, but I don’t care because boundaries are so important.

I love boundaries, they are so freaking good for so many things – for your clients, your mental health, your clients’ happiness, your results, your income, your energy and your life.

Setting proper, healthy boundaries is one of the best things you’ll ever do.

When it comes to prioritising your client work vs growing your own business, there are a few things I want you to shift.

How often do you want to communicate with your clients?

Check in with yourself on how often you *want* to communicate with your clients. How often do you want to check your messages and emails and respond to your clients? What days and times are you going to respond to your clients?

There’s no right or wrong. It totally depends on you, your boundaries, your structure, your mindset and your clients. 

If you need a bit of structure, think about what days and times you’re going to check your messages. This creates expectation for your clients so that they know that they’ll hear back from you in whatever timeframe you set.

Think about your boundaries around responding to your clients. Are you in a responsive mode or are you in a reactive mode? Being in a reactive mode is not a good thing for you or your clients. If you’re replying 24/7 all day, every day, then you’re not allowing yourself to focus on growing your own business.

How do you want your clients to communicate with you?

Think about the boundaries around how your clients can communicate with you. I’ve had clients whose clients have messaged them on Voxer, WhatsApp, Slack, email, Instagram DMs, Facebook Messenger, even texting them and calling their home phone. That sounds so stressful to me!

Choosing 1-2 places that you clients can communicate with you is the best thing you will ever do for yourself, your sanity, your happiness, but also just for a better client experience. Keep it simple for both of you.

You can learn more about creating healthy boundaries in Episode 032. Creating Healthy Boundaries in Business and Episode 073. Reflecting on My First 6-Figure Year. I highly recommend you check these out!

In this episode, I wanted to bring awareness to the fact that it’s okay if you want to give your clients an amazing experience AND you want to grow your own business, and grow your own income and impact. It’s okay to want to do both.

Once you’ve made that shift in your mindset, you get to decide that’s the way your business and life are going to be. That’s when you create everything else to support it by creating structure and boundaries.

I know that these few shifts in my beliefs, my structure and my boundaries were the 3 key things that truly helped me to change the game and call in empowered clients who are just so incredible, who love me for me and I love them for them. It’s the most incredible feeling in the world knowing that these women chose to work with me *even though* I prioritise growing my business.

Like I said, when you do these things, you’re not only creating a better mindset and a better life and business for you, but you’re also doing it for your clients – so there’s another mindset shift.

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