Welcome to a free edition of Start Up To Grown Up: Your source for ideas, insights and tactics to take back control of your business and scale it sustainably and profitably by Heather Townsend, award-winning author of The Accountants’ Millionaires’ Club and Founder of The Accountants’ Growth Club
I’m sitting here in a hotel in Antwerp in a reflective mood. This is the summer where I am drastically cutting my hours in order to give my body time to heal and recover.
This led me to thinking about what I wish I’d known 3 years ago that I know now.
If I am honest, I’d probably been telling most of this stuff to my clients and living in a blissful state of denial. Physician heal thyself!
Ongoing fatigue that doesn’t go away after a holiday is not something to ignore.
I thought I just needed a break. So I’d take a holiday. Or I’d kid myself that I’d taken a holiday just because I had stopped taking client calls for a week.
It would take me a few days to feel relaxed on my holiday. But that’s fairly normal. However by day 2 or 3 of my return from holiday I’d have that feeling of constant tiredness. It would fluctuate from just tired to absolutely exhausted.
That low-grade but continuous tiredness was my body waving a red flag. Yes, being perimenopausal was one of the culprits. But it was also the accumulation of my always on thinking and the emotional load of leadership. I still don’t yet have all the answers. One more tick or cross in the box and I will have, I think all the answers. Yes, autoimmune diseases have a genetic component (hello coeliac disease!), but they are also triggered by high levels of long term stress. Oh.
Properly take my holidays
Looking back over the last few years, I have to admit that I haven’t really taken my holidays. Yes, it’s been a week here or there on a sewing trip. Or a long weekend or part of a week away with the family. But often these trips with the family were not restful. They involved seeing my wider family, who I adore. But these big family get togethers are always an assault on my senses and involve expending large amounts of energy being sociable.
This current period has taught me that telling others to take their holiday and then not taking my own advice was a poor error of judgment on my part.
For avoidance of doubt taking holidays should mean:
Not checking emails
Coming off social media
Being present with my loved ones
I wish I’d started on Substack the moment I heard of it.
I’d come across Substack about a year before I started. I thought it looked like a good idea. But I was told not to as it would “split my focus” and we already had enough content.
Starting my substack has been one of the best business things I have done over the last 12 months. I’ve refound my love for writing and also demonstrated I can still build a tribe when I set my mind to it.
I just wish I had overridden the sensible voices in my team and started much earlier on substack.
I wish I’d launched my podcast much earlier.
I’d toyed with the idea of a podcast for years. But similar to my earlier point I’d been told, we’ve got enough content. We don’t need you creating more content.
My start up to grown up podcast has now had over 5000 downloads with 22 episodes that have been released weekly. It’s listened to in 94 countries and 34% of downloads come from Apple Podcasts. I.e. I’ve expanded my audience outside of the substack platform.
I never quite got started with a podcast. It all got overwhelming. I thought I needed:
A jingle
Artwork that had been professionally designed
Expert editing
Top notch sound quality
Guests
I’d made it too complicated. It appears that all I needed to do was have advice from a friend on Substack to just start.
Yes, that simple, start.
Let’s be honest here, how many opportunities do you have to be listened to by a loyal audience for 10-30 mins each week? We live in a world where most social media posts are rapidly scrolled through and rarely holds someone’s attention.
If you haven’t branched out into a podcast, this is your reminder to do so. My podcasts are unashamedly designed to accompany my substack article. They are not new content. They are repurposed content.
Flexing my people leadership style was key to growth
I used to work best with highly motivated, self starters who loved working from home and being highly trusted. Sadly the world is not full of these absolute gems.
I’ve now realised that I can’t have an abdication style of people management with everyone. Some people need a more directive micro management style. Others need somewhere in between.
My diary now makes sure that I have the right (or try to) level of personal contact with my team members. If I had known this much earlier I think my business would now be in a much healthier state. Let’s just say the dysfunctional stars would not have allowed to wreak so much havoc.
Dashboards are not an optional extra
Our marketing efforts had been dying from the inside out. AI literally decimated our search traffic.
If I had the benefit of hindsight I would have taken hold of the content marketing we’d been doing and been much more demanding. Search was changing before our eyes and we were not responding. I was too tied up with client work to be close enough to our marketing efforts.
If I had had the right dashboard in place showing me the reports of what was going on I would have got into the detail much earlier. But that’s hindsight for you.
Don’t put all your eggs into one ‘self-care’ basket
For years I kidded myself that my stress relief was exercise. And yes, exercise did help. But the level of pressure that I put on myself was that exercise wasn’t enough. Then when you can’t exercise to the level you want, i.e. like myself with a succession of injuries and then Fibro, it means there is nothing to fall back on.
But how many of us use exercise as our primary way of doing self-care? When what we really need to consider is a better balance of push and recovery time?
Final thoughts
It’s clear to me that I was involved in too much ‘doing’ over the last three years and not enough leading. If you want to grow and scale your business your day job needs to be focused on leading. But too often we get caught up in the cult of being busy.
Your action this week:
Go back to what you were doing in 2022. What do you wish you had known then that you now know?
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