5 Key Ways to Grow Your Business Without Burning Out
Article written by Maria Gavriel
As thankful as I am to read about women rising higher in their career ladder, or how fast they’re opening their own business (by 68%) … it would be counter-productive to bypass the harsh reality that is growing alongside these stats.
Like the fact that burning out is now declared the “new pandemic” that not only leads to chronic disease…studies now reveal that it literally is killing our women.
And if it’s not costing them their physical and mental health, and their life…it often leads to another heart-breaking fact that women are closing down their businesses 4x faster than men.
They’re also off ramping from their careers by the millions every year – careers they invested money and years to grow in (according to the Dept. of Labor and Statistics).
Not cool.
I like to project forward, and when I do, I can’t help but ask questions like…
“what happens if we continue like this, and these stats continue to rise?”
“will we ever reach true equality, or will we burn out and pull ourselves out of the workforce completely?”
This evidently is not sustainable, and something needs to change.
In order to do things differently though, we have to take a long hard look at what’s not working first.
At face value, what we see is that women today are struggling to meet the new demands of day to day life.
There’s a unique set of challenges now like…zoom calls, generating income, raising a family, cooking, tutoring, sports, and the pressure has slowly but surely grown, leaving women feeling derailed, depleted, overwhelmed and even guilty or resentful that they can’t manage it all and have to give something up (hence the stat about them leaving their career by the millions each year).
There’s a demand for women in business to “do it all” with more worry and stress than ever before in evolutionary history.
What’s interesting with the women I work with though, is that they truly do want to “do it all and have it all”, and I personally believe that this is possible with tried-and-proven systems in place.
As women are rising, growing and exploring ways to grow a dream business, and live a healthy life, with their loved ones…it’s becoming clear, that there’s no template for this yet.
Women want to continue to create financial prosperity, but more from the heart, and without it costing them their health (as recent numbers show).
As a result, new paradigms and systems are being created as we speak, by everyone that has cracked this code – and usually it’s cracked by those of us that did burn to the ground and had to find our way back up (myself included).
We came back differently though – rising phoenix – style. ☺
I know this road all too well – it hurts.
I almost lost everything I worked so hard to create.
As a high achiever, I grew several multi-figure businesses, and although they all did great, I was suffering; I created an autoimmune disease; and my husband and I were planning on separating. My parenting wasn’t so great either in all honesty.
Yes, all looked great on paper, but the suffering and loss was real and it was beyond painful.
That forced me to take a long hard look, bring in my first coach, clean up decades of programming that no longer worked and begin to create ways to live my life differently.
Which gave birth to several programs that I began to share with my clients, who were all suffering in some way – whether it was their health, their families, their social life, and even putting a cap on their business growth and potential.
Within a few months, every single woman’s life began to improve as mine did (yes, my husband and I are still together after almost 30 yrs now, and I get to only work 2 days a week, while my businesses continue to grow every year, and I enjoy my family moments every single day).
And the way we get to actually stay included in the game of business is by realizing that we operate completely differently than men, and therefore need to lead our homes and businesses in a way that makes sense to us (this is very different than the male paradigm we’ve been following since the beginning of time).
A great start has been to begin to realize this truth, and next…to begin to explore how to lead teams both at home & work.
By restructuring your entire business and home model into a team model where there’s a joint effort made to “run the ship”. It does take a captain or 2 to lead the crew to their desired goal/destination (especially during the unexpected storms).
What starts to evolve is your teams (both at home & work) are inspired to succeed through your heart-centered and clear vision, structure, and guidance.
As this develops, you may just be pleasantly surprised by how quickly everyone goes on autopilot in your home and business, while you’re away at a retreat (replenishing and enjoying it guilt-free!).
And if you do this well…your home team and work team will eventually grow into leaders themselves, where they’ll get to lead bigger teams for you as you scale your business.
As for your loved ones…they’ll grow into leaders in their life and begin to expand on a personal level.
At that point, life goes from being stressful and limited, to way sweeter, liberating and enjoyable for everyone.
Now imagine what your life and business looks like then?
Imagine what our world would look like if we put systems in place and duplicate them where people are no longer dropping their dreams and businesses from pure exhaustion?
What if instead, they began utilizing these methodologies to thrive, succeed, prosper and even enjoy it all? And then model it to the upcoming generation?
I can foresee the possibility of inspiring our communities and rising youth, and showing them “how’ to truly succeed in today’s world.
And affirming that we truly can have it all.
It time for us to courageously paved the way forward now.
This will take many of us to begin implementing together in order to take effect and shift sooner (against all current odds).
Which is part of my mission – I know I experienced my massive breakdown with burn out and success so that I have the opportunity to find a way out of it. And not just for myself…for all of us to finally do it together.
And so I’m calling all women to rise with me, take a strong stand to not allow the current stats to dictate our success, and to overcome them and rise with me and alongside the thousands of women that have joined me and shifted their systems and overall paradigm for success.
Will you answer this call with me?
Find Maria Here:
Maria Gavriel is a Business & Life Strategist, TEDx Speaker, Award Winning Author, 2-time Entrepreneur, and empowering purpose-driven women to create fulfilling,
prosperous, passionate lives doing what they love…
She’s been featured on TEDx, FOX, CBS, NBC, NPR, Arianna Huffington’s Thrive, YahooNews!, Magazines, as well as Global Leadership Conferences and Women’s Summits sharing how to achieve your ultimate vision, and create massive success without it costing what matters most in life.
Maria enjoys helping women break down the barriers that have restricted their ability to create the conditions for their best and highest self to emerge, and experience the life they were meant for.
References:
Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Average hours per day parents spent caring for and helping household children as their main activity,” American Time Use Survey (2019), https://www.bls.gov/charts/american-time-use/activity-by-parent.html; Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home (New York: Viking, 1989).
https://leanin.org/women-in-the-workplace-2020
https://www.inc.com/bob-house/the-state-of-women-owned-businesses.html
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2047487319897163
- Ahola, K., Väänänen, A., Koskinen, A., Kouvonen, A., & Shirom, A. (2010). Burnout as a predictor of all-cause mortality among industrial employees: a 10-year prospective register-linkage study. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 69(1), 51–57.
- Ayas, N. T., White, D. P., Al-Delaimy, W. K., Manson, J. E., Stampfer, M. J., Speizer, F. E., … Hu, F. B. (2003). A prospective study of self-reported sleep duration and incident diabetes in women. Diabetes Care, 26(2), 380–384.
