Small Business Savvy | Web Design, Systems, and Marketing

175. You've Built a Solid Business, So Why Does It Feel Like Work?

• Kristen Doyle, web design and business strategy

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0:00 | 11:17

In this episode, I break down why established business owners often hit a wall, and how recognizing the real issues behind burnout supports smarter decisions and sustainable small business growth.

What nobody tells you is that running your own successful business won’t always feel like freedom. Sometimes it feels like you traded your 9-to-5 for a 24/7 hustle where you’re never really off. If your business is up and running, your clients are happy, and yet every day feels a little heavier, trust me, I get it. I’ve lived through that exact season where the momentum that made everything work suddenly becomes the force that burns you out. This episode shines a light on the reasons behind that shift and what you can actually do about it, especially when hustling harder is just not the answer.

I’m sharing three culprits that most often trip up otherwise thriving business owners: outdated business systems, misaligned website strategy, and missing infrastructure as you manage growth. This is your invitation to step back, spot the cracks, and start working smarter. I’ll guide you through a simple audit to pinpoint the friction points, without throwing yourself into another big, overwhelming project. Get ready to rethink where your energy goes, what your website and systems could be doing for you, and how a few targeted changes can keep your business fun, sustainable, and set up to grow!

01:38 – The key difference between working well and working sustainably
02:57 – Three core areas where business struggles often start
05:01 – Why “hustle harder” isn’t the answer
06:47 – The one-week audit challenge to uncover what’s holding you back

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Show Notes: https://kristendoyle.co/episode175 

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Kristen Doyle:

You've done it. You've built a solid business with happy customers, proven products or services, and processes that work. But somewhere along the way, it stopped feeling like, I own my own business and I am so fortunate, and it started feeling like work, like going into a nine to five job where you're not in charge, and you're never really off. Sound familiar? Here's a hard truth. If you keep going the same way, when you hit that point where it starts feeling hard, if you don't change anything, the logical endpoint you're headed for is burnout, and none of us want to land there in our business. Today, I'm sharing why this happens to established business owners, and more importantly, what parts of it are actually fixable. Because while we obviously can't control everything in our business, there is a lot more within our power than you might think. You've got happy customers and a solid business, but you're stuck, guessing about what to focus on next. Is it your website, your systems, your marketing? If that sounds a little too familiar, then you are in the right place. Welcome to Small Business Savvy. I'm your host, Kristen Doyle, and every week we cover business systems, website strategy, simplified marketing, and the decisions that actually grow your business. No fluff, no shiny objects, just what works. Let's get started, y'all. For most established business owners, they've built something that's real, that works and that makes them money and helps their customers. That really is the hard part. You have figured out your offer or your service. You know who your audience is and what they need. You've learned how to serve them really well. But there's a difference, and I would argue, a big difference, between working well and working in a way that you can sustain long term. See, the trap that a lot of us fall into, and I know that I have been there in the past in my own business, is assuming that you just need to keep doing more of what was working. If posting on social media worked, post more, sell more, manage more, whatever it is. But the reality is, at some point, you're going to hit a ceiling where there's just not enough of you to keep doing more, and that is what points you straight toward burnout. So let's talk a little bit about why this happens. First of all, let's talk about what it's not. It's not your product or your service. You already have that established, you know it works, people love it. It's not even your audience, because they're happy with what you're selling. But it usually comes down to one of three places in your business. The first one is how you're operating your business, those systems that you have or don't have in place. It might come down to how you're communicating things, and that could be everything from your marketing, which is probably what we think of as communication, to your internal communication processes, or even your website, and what you're doing on your website to communicate the right information to the right people at the right time. And then the third thing that sometimes affects it is how you're managing your growth. So what kind of infrastructure have you built for your business? We are probably all familiar with, maybe the city we live in has grown really fast, and the infrastructure hasn't kept up. And that looks like things like traffic jams and power outages and all sorts of other issues, because infrastructure hasn't kept up with growth. We're all familiar with seeing that in our cities and towns, but when it comes to our business, it's easy to let the same things sneak up on you. Because most likely, you didn't set your business up from the beginning to scale past where you are now. How we set our businesses up in the very beginning, when it's just us, is great for a season, but it will only take us so far, and so that leaves us a lot of times operating in a gap, kind of stuck between what's working right now and what has been working, versus what we need in order to grow and to continue working well long term. A lot of times this looks like, things like you're manually doing work that could be systematized or automated, or your website doesn't reflect the right things anymore, and so you're always correcting with clients and customers things that really should just be up to date on your website. You're not struggling because the business is broken at this point, but because it's just not ready. It's not quite there to be ready for that next step. And it's really easy to start thinking that what you need to do to fix it right now is to hustle harder, to just, you know, if I could just be more disciplined. I know I've caught myself a lot of times making a to do list that is, let's be honest, probably not really achievable in an average week with real life happening, and then telling myself, you know, if I was just more disciplined, if I just followed my to do list closer, if I just took less days off, if I just wanted it more, if I tried harder. But the reality is, those things aren't the fix. It's not being more disciplined. It's not working yourself non stop. It's not hustling more. The fix for you at this point is making the right changes behind the scenes, creating those systems that turn your business into that well-oiled machine that we all wish we had. The good news is that is a problem that's actually fixable, and in a lot of cases, it's more fixable than hustle harder, be more disciplined, all of those kind of out there ideas that don't have real fixes. So instead of you personally constantly going in and tweaking and changing things on your website, or reaching out to people manually to respond to emails and to try to drum up business, or individually scheduling discovery calls, doing all your follow up manually, you need a website that automates those things for you. Where visitors can immediately get in touch, book calls, schedule appointments, find the things that they want to purchase without you having to intervene. Where your site is running for you and driving other systems behind the scenes to make things easier and help you grow. All right, here is what you need to do this week. I want you to spend one week auditing your time. Don't try to fix anything yet, but just write down everything you do on a daily basis. Stick a notepad right next to your computer, so you don't even have to change apps, and just jot things down as you change tasks. For each task you write down, kind of ask yourself, is there a way to make this better or smoother or easier? And if an idea comes to mind, then jot it down. Maybe your task could be delegated to a team member, or automated, or turned into a system, or updated in some way on your website so that things are working better. Even if you're not sure of what the answer is yet, just start noticing. Be honest with yourself about which area is causing the most friction in your business. Is it your operations, those systems and processes that are running? Is it your website that isn't doing everything it should be doing for you? Is it your marketing or internal processes of communication on your team? Maybe it's infrastructure. It's how you're set up to manage the growth that you're looking for. Don't try to fix everything right away, for right now, just notice, start paying attention to those things and jotting them down so that you can start thinking about ways to fix them. Here's what I want you to remember. You have built a solid business. It is working for you, it is making you money. It's doing well. But we all, as entrepreneurs, hit a point where we feel like it's not enough, whether it's, I'm not doing enough, or the business isn't making enough, we all are going to hit that point at some point in our business. If you're not there yet, you will be. And that feeling leads us to start trying a lot of fixes that lead us straight to exhaustion and feeling burnt out. But it's not because you're not good enough. It's because you don't have the right systems in place, and they haven't kept up with your business over time. So if you're listening and you're feeling that exhaustion right now, that feeling that you know you're trying so many things and it just isn't quite enough, then you are in the right place. You are not alone, and this show is for you. Next week, we are going to talk about what to actually focus on when you're at this stage in your business. Until then, remember, the solution is never to just hustle harder. It's always to work smarter and put the right systems in place. Make sure you are following the show wherever you like to listen or watch, so you don't miss the next episode, and I'll talk to you soon.