Introverted Entrepreneurs and the Importance of Self-Care

Are you overwhelmed and burned out with all of the work you’re doing as an introverted entrepreneur? Self-care is essential to you and your business. Although bubble baths and me time are important, finding ways to make the most of your time – as a form of self-care – are just as important. 

In this episode, I am going to share with you the importance of self-care for introverted entrepreneurs! From boundaries to automations and finding tools to help you become more efficient with your time – it’s important to not only make the most of your time but to also save time!

Self-Care Isn’t Just Considered Me Time

First of all, self-care means you need to value yourself and your time. So if there’s something that you don’t want to do and you want to say no, make sure you do that. I know a lot of empaths and introverts tend to say yes to opportunities because a lot of us might be people-pleasers, which in business can really burn you out and lead to overwhelm. 

That is why saying no, and knowing your limits and your boundaries on the work that you want to take on, or the clients that you want to work with, is a form of self-care. And it’s very important. We didn’t start our own business to be stressed out and do things that we do not enjoy. However, you are going to burn yourself out if you continue down this path, so really be mindful about what it is you’re saying yes to.

So when it comes to self-care, yeah, bubble baths are great for relaxing for an evening and catching up and binging a Netflix show, or reading a book, going for a long, nice walk. They are great forms of self-care in the moment, but when I’m talking about the importance of self-care, I really want you to look at it as the bigger picture. Long-term self-care, as I call it.

Setting Up Processes, Systems, and Automations in Your Business

Another form of self-care I feel like a lot of people don’t consider to be self-care, but it absolutely is, is setting up processes, systems, and automations in your business. Now, you’re probably thinking this just sounds like admin, back-end type of stuff, how is this self-care?

Once you have those processes in place, like for client onboarding, offboarding, updating blog posts or doing your social media and creating content – the tasks you do daily or weekly in your business – then figuring out ways that you can either automate it or use tools and systems to set it up more efficiently, is a form of self-care. It may not seem like it, but in the long run, it is!

So if you have lots of clients messaging you about wanting to book a strategy call, what you can do is create an email template that you can load into Gmail, Yahoo, or any other email system that allows you to upload templates, so you can craft an email with your calendar link for them to book a call. This may not be a big deal to you, but if you have 10 clients in the next 6 months who ask about your services and each email takes you around 5 minutes to compose – then you are saving yourself 50 minutes altogether over that time span!

Tools to Maximizing Your Time Using Automation

RescueTime Chrome Extension

It’s really awesome because it will continuously run in the background and it tracks what you are doing online, and website by website it puts it into category buckets. This extension will help you get clear on what you are doing in your business every day, and how you can then take control of your time and figure out ways to automize or create systems around what you are spending the majority of your time on.

Zapier

It’s an amazing tool that allows you to connect different apps that you use, and different systems together. I use this app for so many Zaps. Like if I have a failed member payment, it automatically goes on a spreadsheet, my team automatically gets a Slack notification about it, they automatically get tagged in my email marketing platform and then send an automated email. There are many ways that you can customize it depending on the tools that you use in your business to really save yourself and your team a lot of time by automating things that don’t need to be done manually.

ConvertKit & ActiveCampaign for Email Marketing 

My team and I definitely utilize the automations for every lead magnet, membership or product that is purchased. We have so many automations to really target our email campaigns to people in a way that it makes sense. Like if somebody purchases a virtual assistant website template from me, they’re not necessarily an introvert, so I’m not going to send them too many emails about my Introvertpreneur Club membership. I may send them one just to get them familiar with what I do and who I am, but it’s not that I’m going to want to send them too many.

ClickUp for Project Management

I personally use ClickUp and I am absolutely in love with it. It is an

amazing project management tool, and they have automations that you can set up that are fabulous. There are a million automations that you can set up, but whatever project management system you’re using, there are likely ways that you can use it even better to save time. It can be a time sucker initially to get these set up, but long-term they are time savers! There are other project management tools like Asana, Trello, and Monday which I have used before too. It all depends on their user interface, and if it’s right for you!

Creating a Self-Care Routine for Your Business 

I have myself struggled with burnout several times. I now know the warning signs on when I feel like I’m starting to head towards burnout and I will immediately take time away. I am a workaholic because I love what I do, but if I need a break – I will allow myself a break.

If you are in the mindset of hustling, you are constantly overworking yourself and that’s not what we want – especially as introverts! I don’t really attribute the word hustle to hard work anyway, I attribute it in more of a negative mindset and light. 

So no matter how you want to create a self-care routine for your business, make sure you are making yourself a priority. I can’t stress this enough, burnout is not fun. I think it probably happens to most entrepreneurs at some point which is really unfortunate.

My initial bout with burnout happened when I was actually working full-time on my initial business which was a jewelry business. I almost got carpal tunnel syndrome – I was very stressed out and overwhelmed. I don’t think I had brushed my hair for like a week even though I would wash it in the shower, I let it air-dry without brushing. There are ways to avoid it, so definitely take some time for yourself. Set those boundaries, say no if you need to, put systems and automations into place, and use time-saving tools to alleviate some of the stress.

Overwhelmed and Overbooked?

If you’re feeling like you’re overwhelmed and overbooked, especially if you’re overwhelmed with client work right now, the easiest and best ways to alleviate that include outsourcing and raising your rates.

For outsourcing, you can hire a subcontractor who will do a certain task of your client work that maybe isn’t your favorite. This will give you more free time and allow you to take on even more clients and increase your business revenue.

Then for raising your rates, you are likely not charging enough for what you provide to your clients. Definitely increase your rates and let your clients know, with 30 or 60 or 90 day notice whatever your contract is, that an increase is coming. If you lose a client or two, it will likely be off-set by the clients who stay on with you. This can allow you to bring on more dream clients, or have more time to focus on your business and growing the back end of it.

I hope you have found a lot of self-care tips. I know we dove a lot more into productivity and time management here, but those are all forms of self-care. Making sure to value your time and make the most out of your time, is really a portion of self-care, especially as an entrepreneur. Being productive and having automation set up saves you time.

Which self-care act are you most needing in your routine for your business right now?