Do you remember to give your finances and admin some love?

Last night I stayed in the office till 9.30pm to catch up on my admin and plan the next 6 months (roughly!) and was up at 4.30am this morning working on some admin in my home office. Yet I don’t feel tired. I feel incredible refreshed and focussed.

I’ve been on full speed since coming back from the festive break on 5th January and was a little embarrassed that I had allowed my admin to slip. You see, I love helping people and it was tax return season…. But there was another reason. 

I planned January with no admin time. It is one of my busy months and I wanted to help as many people as possible, but I put that before helping my own business. It’s not the first time I have done this but thankfully I did have the common sense to take the last weekend off and disappear to my partner’s parents’ house in the middle of the country to recover from January. A few years ago I worked right up until 31st January and burnt the midnight oil, but I thankfully I had learnt from that experience. 

But getting back to admin…

I now know where everything is and have been able to retrieve some files within a minute of speaking to someone this morning.

I know what time I have available. I have had two phone calls in the last hour and was able to pinpoint exactly when I can fit these new clients in, without compromising my current client base or my admin. Compare this to someone who called me earlier in the week and I said I would have to get back to her.

But more importantly planning and keeping up to date with admin, gives me a sense of self-love. 

It ensures that we are making time for ourselves and all the other important stuff (like admin!) that we can often forget about. 

Often people think that a 6-monthly or even just a 4-weekly planner is restrictive. I used to think this too. But the feeling of overwhelm when you don’t know where everything is, what time you have available or seeing the mountains of emails to reply to far outweighs any feelings of restriction. But you can build in flexibility! 

I suggest to my clients that when you need or want to move something you have in, you just simply move it to the next day or next week. If you have to fling it further into the future then that’s when you need to ask – What’s the most important thing I can do for my business right now and what would I do if I loved myself?

I listened to an interview with Jennifer Main and Faith Canter yesterday, where they talked about self-love. Jennifer suggested that you have non-negotiable activities. This she reckons is one of the underlying factors of self-love. I completely agree!

When a client comes to me and says they are aren’t making time for their finances or admin, I know there is a self-love deficit. I have seen it many times, and I recognise it from my younger self too, and the occasional time I put others before me, even now (I’m human after all). When we bring in more self-love, it doesn’t mean we don’t love our clients, or families. We do, we just have respect for ourselves too!

When I do finance coaching with my clients, we often spend far more time working on self-love and relationships than finance. This surprises people at first until a few months later when they start to see it all making sense. It’s only when someone has respect for themselves and others (without judgement) can they know their worth and contribution to the world and that is when they can run a successful business that is earning them money.

I talk a lot about this is my forthcoming book, Successful Business Minds, but for now I want you to think of a house that is built in a field without foundations. It might be fairly stable for a while but when a massive downpour of rain or a big storm comes, it’s highly likely to collapse or have significant storm damage!

Self-love is the foundation for your business. Finances, sales, marketing are all equally important but you can only get these right once you have built the self-love foundations.

Contact me if you would like to know more about 1-1 or group coaching. Or sign up to get our free eBook  (12 steps to improve your cashflow) and news of the forthcoming book (Successful Business Minds).

You can view Jennifer Main’s interview with Faith Canter here. I highly recommend it! I believe Faith has a few more interviews on self-love on the way too!

© Helen Monaghan