Why Most Businesses Break When You Need a Break (And How to Build One That Doesn’t)

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Welcome to Business with Chronic Illness, the globally ranked podcast for women living.

With chronic illness who want to start.

And grow a business online.

I'm your host, Nikita Williams and I went from living a normal life to all of a sudden being in constant pain with no answers to being diagnosed with multiple chronic illnesses and trying to make a livable income, I faced the challenge of adapting traditional business advice to fit my unique circumstances with chronic illness.

Feeling frustrated and more burned out than I already was while managing my chronic illness to becoming an award winning coach with a flexible, sustainable online coaching business, I found the surprisingly simple steps to starting and growing a profitable business without compromising my health or my peace.

Since then, I've helped dozens of women just like you learn how to do the same.

If you're ready to create a thriving business that aligns with your lifestyle and well being, you're in the right place.

Together, we're shifting the narrative of what's possible for women with chronic illness and how we make a living.

This is Business with Chronic Illness.

Why most businesses break when you need a break, and how to build one that doesn't.

Welcome to today's episode.

It's painfully common among those of us as entrepreneurs.

Your business works beautifully when you are working in your stride.

But the moment your life gets real meaning, things start shifting and everything you feel like your business falls apart.

A migraine hits for more than a day.

A child gets sick for more than a day, your energy tanks for more than a day, your symptoms flare for more than a day and your motivation evaporates for more than a day.

Or honestly, you just need a moment for more than a day and suddenly no content, no visibility, no sales, no momentum.

It feels like you're starting over every time.

But here's the truth that might feel uncomfortable and yet freeing at the same time because so many people are telling you it's you, it's all on you.

And I want to tell you that it's not necessarily you, it's your system or lack of them.

Your business isn't failing because you need breaks.

You're human.

Your business is not working or producing because it wasn't built to survive the ebbs and flows of your life.

And today we're going to talk exactly why that happened and what a business looks like when it's finally designed for real life.

Your real life.

So let's get into it.

So this is something as a person who is going through my own journey as learning from surviving to thriving.

I am learning what over functioning looks like.

And I'M also spotting it in the world of what over functioning looks like.

And so what I have come to see is that most businesses are built on human over functioning.

And here's what I see over and over again in my clients in the industry.

And honestly, most businesses don't have a business model.

They have a self powered machine.

You are the content creator, you are the consistency.

You are the strategy.

You are the marketing, you are the energy source, you are the quote unquote system.

We are trained, right to think like this.

We are trained to think about businesses over functioning as just the status quo.

I remember my first business book back in like when I had my first business back in the day, right out of high school of reading E Myth Revisited.

And it really talks about this experience of like you love whatever it is that you're doing.

For this example, I think it was a baker and she loves baking pies and doing all these things.

And she decides that she wants to start a business.

And what she doesn't realize in that is that as she becomes a business owner, she actually has to become all of these different things.

She has to become a bookkeeper, she has to become a marketer, she has to become a copywriter, she has to become a community builder, she has to become all of these different things.

So all of these pieces are coming from her.

And a little bit of time is left for her to do the things she actually started her business for, which is to make pies, right?

That's what she started.

And so like many of us, we've been trained to think that is what we have to do.

And we function as the meaning of that.

Meaning that we are the ones doing all of those things, right?

Which means when you stop, so does everything else.

When this is such a huge thing, even though it's so simple, we think about it.

I talk to my husband about this often who is in a corporate space, right?

If he decides to take, you know, two to three weeks off of work, guess what?

That business is still making money.

Even though he is not doing whatever his role is in the company, you better believe they're still making money.

You better believe he's still getting paid on vacation days.

So I think so many of us have gotten into or have been conditioned really to identify as being an entrepreneur and a business owner, as the person who wears all of the hats and all of the hats rise and fall on us.

And I think that's natural.

That's especially true when you're starting out and you're like bootstrapping Everything.

But at some point, that is at most points, that's very unsustainable.

And we also live on the mindset of the conditioning of sacrifice.

Whatever you need to get it done now to receive it later, so you don't have to sacrifice as much.

And we see that because the online space really normalizes this.

They tell us to show up daily, they tell us to hustle through the slow seasons.

They tell us your consistency determines your whole reality of what success looks like.

But what they never say and what they never leave enough space for is that consistency requires capacity.

And capacity is not a constant.

Especially if you're living with multiple varying situations.

Pain, neurodivergency, chronic illness.

This isn't about like increasing your capacity because you don't have anything wrong.

You just have too many things physically happening in your life.

No, you're caregiving, you might be going through burnout.

You're doing all the things that makes you human, right?

And so capacity lives in those different spaces.

So of course your business breaks when you do, right?

When we take that time to handle or do all of those things.

So it was never built from the beginning, from the foundation, to hold anything but your best days.

So the real reason businesses collapse during hard seasons is really this.

And I think many of us are.

We name this, we see this, let's name what's actually happening.

Your marketing requires your presence.

If you're not posting, nothing is happening.

If you're not showing up, the system completely stops.

And it could be that you're not showing up because you're busy with clients or you're on vacation.

Doesn't even have to be anything bad.

That's not a marketing problem.

That's a structural flaw that we don't hear enough people talking about.

Especially for the beginning, middle and even scaling space of a business.

You have no evergreen pathways.

Everything depends on today's effort.

But sustainable businesses rely on yesterday's effort.

Still working, working today.

Your content has no compounding value if you're only depending on platforms like social media.

Short form content disappears faster than we can actually make it.

So it makes sense why many of you are exhausted.

Your offers require regulated energy and some offers require you, which makes selling those things impossible to even sell in your low capacity seasons.

Your safety depends on your output.

This is the biggest issue.

When your nervous system learns, my income is tied to my ability to perform, it becomes impossible to justify rest physically and emotionally, because rest now equal now you feel stuck.

Your business model is fighting your biology.

Like your little physiology of who you like, how you operate.

So what if we were able to reframe your business to flex, be flexible, to ebb and flow when you need to rest.

Your business should not fall apart when your body asks you to slow down.

A sustainable, grounded business is not one that requires you to be superhuman.

We have glorified the hustle, we have glorified all of this.

Your business model needs to be one that keeps marketing when you're offline, continues nurturing when you're in the bed, builds trust even when you're quiet, and grows visibility even when your capacity dips for a short time or a long time.

It needs to create demand even when you're not actively showing up.

And your business needs to hold you when life gets real.

What I mean by this, and I say this on my clients, your business should be able to support you versus you supporting the business.

Your business shouldn't need the best version of you in order to function, to create revenue.

It should be built for all versions of you, all of the different spaces of you.

And this is where I believe the foundational pieces of business have to be created.

And one of the biggest lifeblood things that goes to the websites doing these different things is marketing and sales.

And this is where I personally believe long form content.

And for me it's you know, podcasting and others, it's other mechanisms becomes a core of your grounded growth system.

So why does this make your business unbreakable?

Doing during the times where things are ebbing and flowing, or when there's difficult times?

Long form content stabilizes a business in a way no short form platform ever could.

Here's why.

Content that's long form keeps working when you aren't your listeners binge your content, your listeners read your content, your listeners share your content, save your content, your episodes.

Your content is easy to circulate, to share your shows or your content can get recommended.

It compounds your authority over time.

And even if you haven't posted on Instagram in a month, people can still still find you.

Podcasting or long form content doesn't require physical energy to maintain in real time all of the time.

Right?

You don't have to be performing visually if you don't want to.

You're not always chasing trends and like trying to figure out how to make them work all of the time.

You're not creating on demand, you're creating on your timetable and based on what's relevant to your business, clients and your potential clients.

Your content lives independently of your your daily feelings, your daily aspects of Everything, right?

Your content now becomes a business asset.

It's your backlog that can continue to educate, nurture and convert new people into your sales cycle, into your sales system every day.

Your content that's long form can generate sales for years to come.

To me, when I think about long form content, specifically with podcasting, takes the pressure off of my body to like be on.

Currently I'm doing this with video because it makes sense, but I can literally record in any capacity that I want to and I believe in.

When I'm seeing more and more people are wanting to see that real rawness, right?

Without you feeling like you need to be 100% made up.

Makeup, all of the jazz, the right lighting, the reflector, all of that, okay.

Your body is allowed to be human and still contribute to your business in this space, right?

Long form content builds self renewing momentum.

Meaning you can do it once and it keeps being supportive.

When your long form content leads into your ecosystem, your short form content becomes optional, not like you have to do it.

Your long form content tends to be more stable and produces more loyal engagement.

Your long form content means that people are intentionally sticking around with you during your quiet season.

So what happens when your business no longer breaks during your breaks?

When life happens, here's what it looks like.

In real life, my clients report things like I took a month off for surgery and I still had sales calls booked for after my surgery.

My content kept circulating even when I wasn't online.

Like I had people sharing my content.

One of my long form pieces of content kind of went semi viral because so many people were interested and I grew my email list.

I'm seeing my downloads increase and I'm seeing more people engaging with my content.

Even though I didn't produce 10 pieces of short form content this month, my audience grew while I was healing, meaning not posting every day.

I was able to take a real vacation without sabotaging what's going to happen with my upcoming launch.

My business didn't collapse when my life happened.

I'm not scared to rest anymore.

And that last one, to me, that's everything.

Because your business shouldn't create fear.

Like not the healthy kind of fear, like the fear of existential fear.

Right?

It should create stability.

And having systems in place gives you that stability.

Grounded systems give you that stability.

Long form content marketing gives you that stability.

And when those two things work together, long form content and your business systems, your business becomes beautifully peaceful and resilient, just like you are.

So if everything I said here is hitting a nerve in the best way, right?

And you're thinking, thank goodness someone is saying what I've been feeling.

Someone gets that I have been doing the best that I can as the human that I am and it's still not working.

I am still the person who is working on increasing my capacity, but I'm not receiving results.

Could it be that you have not created the systems and taking the time to do that in order to facilitate the revenue growth that you want to see in your business?

And I can help support you in this as your fractional long form business strategist, consultant for your business.

If you're noticing this in your business as a seasoned entrepreneur or practitioner who wants your business that doesn't collapse every time everyone's life in your life gets a little loud and human.

I love to design and oversee your overall growth through diving into creating long form growth systems for you as well as a business system that's grounded and stability for you and for your sales.

Also, I love supporting clients in my pockets editing and management because half the time many of you are stressed about I want to do long form but I don't have the time or space to complete that.

I can support you with that with our podcast and editing agency and our team can handle that for you.

This is for you.

You can find out more about all of that in the show notes in the links there.

This is just a reminder before we close out.

Your body is not a business risk, your humanity is not a flaw, your need for rest is not a weakness and your business can bend with you.

Your systems can support you and you can build something sustainable, something rooted.

I think it's really important when I say something rooted, I love talking about trees.

I love learning about the root systems of different trees.

And one of the things that I find so fascinating to trees that are in islands, that are in locations where they get a lot of hurricanes and storms, is that their root system creates a system that creates more strength on the foundation underneath the ground so that when storms come, they can sway and move and not break.

And I have seen where you can build rooted systems and still flex and shift and figure out what does work for your business without you sacrificing the tree.

You are the tree, right?

Can we embrace that new reality?

I've seen it happen with my clients.

I have a client right now who came to me in this space of feeling extremely frustrated and it's a work in progress, especially because we live in a world that continues to tell us that, you know, do more, do more, do More sacrifice.

More sacrifice.

More.

Oh yeah.

And be healthy.

Oh, yeah.

And like not, you know, overdo it.

But by the way, you're not doing too much, you know, that kind of thought.

And what I have seen with, you know, a couple of my clients, but this particular client that I'm talking about is that when we started building more of the foundational pieces of the system that works for her, rearranging her offers, rearranging her boundaries, reframing things a bit for how things are priced and quoting create it logistically, she doubled her income while taking more time off now than she ever has.

So it can work.

And I know lots of business owners, specifically women, who are choosing to run their business this way.

Okay?

So it's possible for you.

And if you would like to see how it's possible for you, go ahead in the Show Notes and book a call with me so that we can discuss how we can get that for you in the next episode.

We're going to be actually talking about capacity, what it actually means and why it matters for your marketing more than you think.

We're going to be talking about it because we hear a lot about that word capacity, right?

We hear a lot about how we need to expand and increase our capacity.

So I'm going to share with you some thoughts on what capacity is, how it affects why the industry's definition of capacity fails us, the real definition of capacity and what it means for our nervous system.

And lastly, the three forms of capacity most entrepreneurs don't realize that they're burning through and the big shift you need for more capacity and how to create capacity, aware marketing systems that that will help you grow sustainably.

So that is in our next episode.

So stay tuned for that.

That's a wrap for this episode of Business with Chronic Illness.

If you would like to start and grow an online coaching business with me, head to the Show Notes to click a link to book a sales call and learn how to make money with chronic illness.

You can also check out our website at www.CraftedToThrive.com for this episode's Show Notes and join our email list to get exclusive content where I coach you on how to chronically grow a profitable business while living with chronic illness.

Until next time, remember, yes, you are crafted to thrive.