Strategies and Tactics for Women by Dr. Shannon Reece

I recently posed a question on Twitter and Facebook to all the entrepreneurial “wanna be’s” and asked, “What is the biggest obstacle holding you back.” A big Thank you!! to all those who responded.  The comments confirmed that we each face many different challenges in our lives.  But women are great at sharing lessons learned from failures, as well as successes, in an effort to teach others.  There is tremendous power when like-minded women exchange ideas and wisdom.

From the list of responses to my query, today’s post is about dealing with the fear that can stem from a woman’s desire to achieve success.  When you think of fear, you often think about fearing failure, rather than success.  But fear of success is quite real and something that I address in my e-book, Conquering Your Fear with a Knockout Punch.

Fear of success is related to achievement and is often increased by the growing pains associated with finding success, whether you are just starting out or growing your business to the next level — things like longer work hours, greater responsibility, adding staff, launching a new product, etc.  Conflict arises when you become anxious about juggling the myriad of responsibilities in your life with your desires to run a successful enterprise.  Your doubt and insecurity begin to feed your mind with thoughts of, “How can I possibly do it all?”, “Will my family suffer?”, or  “I’m just not ready for this yet.”

No one ever said running your own business would be easy, but it’s certainly not impossible.  Instead of trying to work harder, the key to relieving the night sweats is to simply discover how you can work smarter.  One way to work smarter is by establishing systems.  There are routine tasks that you do each day, some many times a day — client intake, answering the phone, scheduling, maintaining inventory and billing, to name a few.  Reinventing the wheel each time you need to get something done wastes time and energy that you could be allocating elsewhere.  Plus, if you are the only one who knows how to run the show, you will drive yourself crazy trying to do it all, all the time.

You can avoid the need to talk yourself down from the ledge if you take the time to put systems in place to streamline your daily processes.  This will enable you to delegate more work because you have laid out the steps for someone else to follow.  No need to micro-manage.  Start with the basic things you do each day and work your way up to the more complex tasks.  Eventually you will have every task within your business organized into a 3-ring binder.  The greatest reward for systematizing your business is increased freedom —

• Freedom to work on that new project.
• Freedom to delegate tasks.
• Freedom to take some well-deserved time off.

Accept the fact that no matter how well you plan, there will always been the unexpected.  So streamline where you can to free up more time and attention to deal with the surprises in business and in life.

© 2010 Reece International LLC/Dr. Shannon Reece. All rights reserved.

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Dr. Shannon Reece – The One Trusted Woman in a Man’s Business World

Starting your own business can be tough, but having the right tools makes all the difference.  Dr. Reece provides the strategies and tactics women need to get their businesses from zero to launch and achieve real results.  For more information visit www.DrShannonReece.com.