What Women Consultants Need To Remember When They’re Tempted to Give Up
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Have you ever noticed how closely your expectations for your consulting business are linked to your energy, and how quickly we can go from feeling energised and full of positive expectations, to drained and contemplating giving up?
When we feel like we’re on the verge of big things and our expectations are high, we can feel a huge energetic high and massive creative energy.
When you’re relatively new in business or you just discover something new that feels like it will end up being ground-breaking, it creates this entrepreneurial energetic high. I know, you’re a consultant, not an entrepreneur, but you’ve got that entrepreneurial spirit, it’s what gave you the courage to start your own business.
You feel so pumped up you can’t sleep because you’ve just started to see the world with new eyes and there is so much opportunity, you have to grab hold of it all.
This is a really powerful phase of business. Have you heard of those rescue stories where a parent lifts a car to free their trapped child, because the adrenalin and urgency gave them the energy and strength to do it? The entrepreneurial high goes that same huge boost of energy, that means you can cover a lot of ground very rapidly.
Of course, there are also downsides to that rush, because you can end up being a little ‘over creative’. You can move so fast that you end up massively investing yourself into ideas you haven’t tested or evaluated fully yet, which can mean changing direction too many times or making impulsive decisions.
If you notice yourself riding that high energy, invite your critical-thinking to the party too, so you can make sure you’re investing that energy wisely.
And if you’ve experienced the entrepreneurial high, chances are you’ve also experienced a low energy phase where you feel discouraged by your business (or even by the world). It feels like all the opportunities have evaporated and you want to quit and either start a new business or go back to paid employment.
It is normal to have both high and low energy phases in business, even in the space of 6 months. I used to have a running joke with the ladies in the mastermind programme I ran several years ago that I wanted to quit my business at least 3 times a year. And it wasn’t that the business was doing badly, it was growing and there was so much progress in that phase. But it pushed ME to also grow and often that feels like growing pains more than it feels like progress is being made. And the reason it became a running joke is that there would so often be someone else in the group who felt that like too.
We often feel like if something is hard, it’s a sign that it’s not working. But when you’re building a business the fact that it feels hard is evidence that progress is being made.
This is why I always encourage my clients to ground themselves in the business financial reports, because THIS is where you see the evidence of the progress you’re making.
Women consultants, I’d love to hear from you – have you noticed a link between your business growth and your own personal growth?
Free Report – The Six Elements of a Seven Figure Consulting Business
I’ve created a free PDF report called The Six Elements of a Seven Figure Business. It’s my most popular free resource and in it I outline the 6 areas of unscaled businesses that need to change in order to move past being ‘booked up and burned out’ and shifting into that higher gear that gets you cruising again.
It’s the framework that helps consultant women like you find their feet and get back to leading the business, rather than being buried in client work and back-end business operations.
Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear your feedback and future topics you’d like me to feature. You may also enjoy The Seven Figure Consultant Podcast, the show that takes you from booked up and burned out in your consulting business to THRIVING as the CEO of your 7 figure enterprise.