5 Urgent Things I Stopped Doing That Grew My Business AND Regulated My Nervous System

We're told that growth means doing more. More content, more strategies, more visibility, more of ALL the things.

But some of the biggest shifts in my business — in income, in capacity, in how I actually feel day to day — came from stopping things. Not adding more. Subtracting.

In this episode, I'm sharing the five things I stopped doing urgently that changed how my business runs and how my nervous system feels inside it.

You'll learn:

• Why checking your email every day might be costing you more than you realise
• How working reactively keeps you stuck — and what working ahead actually looks like in practice
• Why one protected week per month with no clients or calls can grow your business faster than filling every slot
• How to stop starting from scratch every time you create content
• What it actually means to switch off — and why half-availability doesn't count

If you've been feeling like your business is running you instead of the other way around, this episode will give you five practical places to start taking it back.

Connect with Mia:

Instagram: https://instagram.com/miapoko and https://www.instagram.com/ot_inspire_therapy/

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to the Freedom Therapist Podcast. Your safe space to learn and unlearn all the things about scaling your business without losing yourself in the process. I'm your heart, May of Puckle Povich, a previously vented mental health occupational therapist and business owner who found her way to fall back in love with business and life all over again. Because success doesn't have to come at the cost of your freedom. You're going to get so much chat, a lot of energy, and of course, a little bit of chaos because it comes with the territory. I can't wait. Today's episode is a bit of a personal one. I mean, when are they not? And honestly, one that I wish someone had handed me about five years ago because I was doing all of these things and they were quietly draining me, draining my business, chewing up my space, leaving me exhausted, all of the things. They were absolutely doing that. Because we talk a lot about what we want to add when we want to grow another offer, another strategy, another platform, more content, more visibility. And look, that stuff really matters. But today I really wanted to flip it because some of the biggest shifts in my business, and by shifts in my business, I mean in my income, my capacity, my nervous system, they all came from stopping things. Not adding more, but subtracting in a really intentional way. And so here are the five urgent, reactive, dysregulating things that I stopped doing that grew my business faster and honestly made me such a better leader, made me such a better business owner, and literally made me so much happier as well. So let's dive into them. Number one, I stopped checking my email every single day. I know, I know, I know it sends all of us when we hear this, but hear me out. I put an out of office in my email. So I have an out of office message that goes to anyone who emails me, and that means I genuinely do not have to open or check it daily. I know when I first did this, the like panic rose out of my chest, but I put it on a few, this happened like years ago, and I put my out of office on, and literally the world did not end. Clients did not leave, referrals did not disappear, I didn't miss things. But what actually did happen is that I stopped starting every single day in such a reactive mode because my go-to used to be come into work, check my emails, throw everything out the window, do whatever is coming up in my emails, and then wonder why I felt like I was chasing my tail all day. My brain used to feel like it was literally a ping-pong ball between other people's requests, other people's urgency, other people's reactivity, and my actual work. And so if you are someone who opens your inbox first thing and feels absolutely scattered and Dululu by 9 a.m., I would put money on it that this is why. Your email is literally everyone else's agenda, urgency, everything. Protect your mornings. That is when we are most likely to dive into our emails. Protect your mornings, put it on a schedule, put it in your calendar, and literally check my email three times a week. Three times a week. The out of office lets people know that we are busy doing client work and that we do take a few days to get back to things. No one is going to absolutely lose it. No one should be using email for urgent emergency requests, and their urgency is not your urgency. I hold that one so, so true. Number two is that I stopped working reactively, and by I mean stopped. I stopped it completely. And this is so important. This was the hardest thing for me. I have a little bit of a chaotic brain, and I used to literally fly by the seat of my pants in so many areas of my business, and then I would wonder why I felt so exhausted, so dysregulated, and literally like achieved nothing by the end of the day, by the end of the week, by the end of the year. So, what I do is a couple of years ago, you guys all know I used to run my business this way, but a couple of years ago, I fully like just sat with it and was like, I cannot keep going like this, I cannot keep running in this reactive mode. And so I stopped it completely. So, what I do now, and as a very type B girly, this is very type A of me and it takes a lot of work and I acknowledge that I see you in there, but I can honestly say what it has done for my nervous system is worth its rewards in just the absolute trillions. I batch whatever tasks I can. I work ahead, and even in the biggest, most chaotic seasons of my business, and trust me, we still have those, I am always at least a minimum one week ahead. Always. I have my bigger plan for the year, I know what's coming, and I work into that instead of like scrambling towards it. Because I have this bigger plan, I also then like don't get distracted by all these shiny objects and these new ideas that come in. Anything new that comes into my business, if I'm like, oh, I want to do that, I'm like, does it fit within that bigger plan? If it doesn't, it's gonna go in my little park area where I'm gonna come back to it at another time. Because what I know about myself, and I'm sure it's true for so many of us, is that I do not work well under pressure at all. Period, stop. Do not work well under pressure in any circumstances. And once I stopped pretending that I did, everything changed for me in my business. My business became somewhere I actually wanted to be in. My work actually started to improve. We were profitable, we had way more fun in the business, and like everything changed for me and my team as well. I really view that working ahead is not a luxury. It's literally a non-negotiable for how my brain functions. And if you are someone who feels like you're always behind, always putting out fires, always in reaction mode, your nervous system is literally paying for that every single day in your business, and so is your work. And that is not a business that we want to stay in long term. So look at what you can batch, look at what you can group together. Maybe it is literally just starting to plan out your clinical calendar the week before or two weeks before. Start small, start to batch things, start to work ahead, start to plan a little bit in advance, and then it will become easier as you continue on, and the payoff will be just so, so worthwhile. Number three is I have a no client, no call week per month. One week a month, I don't see any clients, and I have no calls every single month. One full week, no sessions, no nothing. And before you say, I can't afford that, I just can't do that. I would literally say, can you afford not to? Now I honestly remember this is probably like I introduced this in the last couple of years, but I used to be like I could never have a no-client week. Never. I would fall behind, I was always too far behind, I was always too busy. And once I actually made the decision to do it, it was like everything else just fell into place, like it does, because we just make things work. That's what we do as business owners. We make the decision, we put the intention behind it, and we make things work. Now I could not live without this week. This is the week where I think, I create, I plan, I breathe, I catch up on admin reports. It's where I do the work on my business instead of just in it. It's how I don't fall behind. It's completely also changed how I show up in those three other weeks, which I really didn't expect. I'm just such a better therapist, a better mentor, a better leader, I'm more present, I'm more energized, I'm more creative. And the irony is that week that I don't see clients is often the week that is really moving my business forwards as well. I used to get really caught up in like the day-to-day, and I think having this week has just allowed me to like really catch up on everything, but also really like double down in those tasks that actually have pushed my business to like the next level as well, because that's what we're always doing, right? Number four is I stop starting everything from scratch. This one is so practical, and I think it could change your life if you let it. Every podcast episode I record gets worked into two or three pieces of content. Same with my emails. So I might have a piece that explains a concept or shares my perspective, the podcast episode itself, and then I might share a personal story or a hot take on the same idea. I have one concept, multiple outputs, and I am not sitting down and thinking of 15 different things to talk about every week. I'm thinking of one thing and extracting every little bit of value out of it. If you are someone who is staring at a blank caption and feels like you're starting from scratch every single time, we need to find that system around it. Pick your idea, pick your theme, and try and pull out as many things as you can out of it. Think your hot take, a personal story, a strategy that you use, maybe a time when you've observed this in your work, maybe a little story about it, like whatever it is, you can do it. You can pull this information out. And really, the idea that we put all this pressure on ourselves to have like 30 new ideas or 15 new ideas per month for content, it's actually insanity. Like let's work smarter, not harder. And the last one I want to share with you, the biggest one that has been the biggest change in my business and growing my business, number five, is I actually switch off. Not just I'll switch off with Slack open, not just I'm just gonna like switch off and doom scroll. I'm talking like switch off phone down, no comms, actual offline time is built really intentionally into my week. This one, honestly, took me the longest to actually do because I think so many of us, especially therapists, especially women, have this deeply wired sense that being available is the same as being good at our job. It is not. Say it louder for the people at the back. Being available is not the same as being good at our job. It is absolutely not. The best thing I can do for my clients, my team, and my business is actually rest. Not like trying to rest. We're half doing a hundred double things, monitoring my notifications, like fully rest. I have a brick where I lock myself out of my phone because we know we've got no self-control. Those devices are made to override that. I build in that I go surfing a few times a week. Um, I build in that I go running and I like lock my phone for all these activities. I also lock my phone as soon as we've had dinner because we don't need to be online all the time. We don't need to be available, guys, all the time. Often it's actually us who aren't communicating our boundaries. And when we actually communicate those, we feel so much better. Like that resentment just disappears. And you know, sometimes it might feel really uncomfortable to do that. We might have to message someone and say, hey, look, I've got your message. I really want to give it the time that it deserves, but I just don't have time to reply properly for a few days. Like there's so many different ways that we can like really communicate our boundaries, but it does start with us. And so big thing for me is actually switching off, having that deep sensory rest, having that really deep like notification online rest and just switching off as much as we can. So there we are. They're the five things. Like, please stop checking your email every day, stop working reactively, build in your no client time, whatever that looks like each month. Let's stop starting from scratch and let's normalize actually switching off because we don't keep needing to add things in. When we want to grow our business, sometimes we've got to take a few of these things away to make space for the growth and the incredible things that you really want to work on as well. None of these are like glam, none of them are things you would never have heard before. But I can honestly say that every single one of them has completely changed the way my business runs and the way I feel inside it. If any of these landed for you today, I want to hear about it. Come and find me on Instagram at Me Apoco. Tell me which one you're trying first. Tell me if you've got any other ideas. I love hearing from you guys. Let me know if there's anything else you want to hear on these podcast episodes. Love taking a few recos, love a recommendation, send them on in. But I really, really just cannot tell you how much it means to get those messages from you guys. And if you love this podcast, if you listen to it, if you find it valuable, can you please, please, please hit those little five stars, hit those little five stars, leave me a review, leave us a review. Honestly, it just like is gonna help this podcast grow so, so much. We put so much thought into this, so much intention. And if you love it, it would mean the world to us if you could leave a review, you could write some little words, and if you don't like it, you can just close the app and let it go. Let me know on Insta if you want to connect. If you love today's episode, I want to know. Let's absolutely send it with reducing the urgency in our practice and giving ourselves some downtime this week.