In today’s episode, I am getting real about what it is like to be an entrepreneur while dealing with a flare-up. Nothing about this process is pretty, but I am sharing my tips on the best practices you can have in place to keep your business running smoothly.
What we talk about in this episode
- Comparing flare-ups to grief
- Dealing with frustration with my body, mind and everyone else
- The importance of having systems & procedures to keep your business afloat during these times
- How a team or partner can save your business
- My new FB community for Spooniepreneurs. facebook.com/groups/spooniepreneurcommunity
Links Mentioned
Loom: http://www.loom.com
Connect with Nicole
Website: http://www.theresilientva.com
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/theresilientva
Facebook: facebook.com/groups/spooniepreneurcommunity
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wnicoleneer/
00:02 Hey everybody, and welcome to the Spooniepreneur Podcast. I’m Nicole Neer, an online business manager living with fibromyalgia and bipolar disorder. On this podcast, I’m going behind the scenes in my business and talking to other Spooniepreneurs to get real about what it looks like to be an entrepreneur and living with chronic illness, to inspire you to start the business of your dreams no matter what life throws your way. Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Spooniepreneur Podcast. So on this episode, I want to just get really real, I guess about one of the struggles of entrepreneurship when you’re a Spoonie, which is how you keep your business going when you’re in the middle of a flare. So I am in the middle of a massive flare right now. One of the diagnosis on my really long list of diagnosis is chronic fatigue syndrome.
01:02 And lately it has just been kicking my butt. I can barely get out of bed some days, let alone shower. I have been in sweat pants for days and the brain fog has made even the simplest of tasks feel like I’m climbing Mount Everest. But when you were running a business it’s a constant struggle basically to keep your head above water when you’re feeling absolutely terrible. And I know that one of the biggest questions that I had when I was starting my business was how you keep client work going as a done for you service provider even when you can’t get out of bed. And chances are if you are listening to this podcast and you haven’t taken the plunge into entrepreneurship yet, I’m guessing that you have the same question. So today I was laying in bed and for some reason, I started thinking a lot about a project that I did in college at Sarah Lawrence about the stages of grief.
02:09 So I studied child psychology in college. My first career was as a social worker and in college I spent months reviewing what we know about the psychology of grief, specifically looking at the work of Elisabeth Kubler Ross and the cycle of grief that she studied. And so chances are that you’ve experienced each of the stages of grief at some point in your life, whether you realize what was happening or not. First, we go through denial of the loss that we’ve experienced and then we get angry at the world, which is followed quickly by bargaining with the universe, with whoever, to just give us back the thing that we lost, if we’re good enough, right? Or if we do all the right things. And when we realize that this bargaining doesn’t work, Oh boy. Then we get really depressed and eventually at some point we do accept what happened and we do our best to move on.
03:14 I don’t know about you, but I go through this cycle of grief. Every time I go through a flare, I try to deny that I’m flaring and I stubbornly insist that I need to just push through it and then I get pissed off that my body is failing me yet again. And so I start bargaining with my body that if it would only let me go to dinner with my family, I would stay in bed the rest of the weekend. If I can just get through this project, I promise that I won’t try to do anything else today.
03:47 And then I realized that that doesn’t work. And I lay in bed for days and I feel sad and lonely and in pain and I’m in the middle of a massive pity party. Oh. And it feels like just when I’ve accepted where my body is and I’ve gone through the process of adapting all of my coping mechanisms to have the best quality of life that I can, it starts over again with another flare. You just cannot catch a break. And so I would say right now that I am hovering somewhere between being angry and bargaining with my body because I have shit to do and I have no time to deal with all of the back pain and fatigue and dizziness and brain fog. And guess what guys, my body doesn’t care. And while a flare makes everything hard, I think the place it impacts the most is my business.
04:44 I feel like I am in this constant loop of making silly mistakes and being grumpy with everyone. Even just the process of recording this podcast, like I swear I’ve had to start over again a million times because I’m struggling so hard to put into words these thoughts that are in my head. And it’s not pretty. Nothing about this looks pretty. And then I go through this process of agonizing over whether I should admit to my clients that I’m in the middle of the flare or if I can just get through it and nobody has to know and I can just suffer in silence. Right. I cannot tell you how many times over the last week that I have just stared at the blinking cursor of a document for longer than I would care to admit because brain fog is just ruling every part of my life.
05:37 There have been so many times when I’ve had to prop myself up in bed with my laptop just to get a couple of hours of work in before I need to take another nap. But most of all, I think that I find myself in a constant state of frustration with everyone and everything when it just becomes too hard to think through the pain. And to be honest, you know, when you are in these periods where you feel better, this is why it’s so smart to create systems in your business to help keep it running. Because as Spooniepreneurs, I have to be honest with you guys, your business is going to fall apart at some point because of your illness. It’s not if, it’s when you are going to have a flare that makes it so bad that you cannot function. And if you don’t have systems in place to help you with this, you will not have a business at the end of it.
06:37 And so I’ve learned through so much trial and error what systems I need to keep my business running. And so I thought today it might be helpful to share with you what I do to flare proof my business to keep it running even when I’m falling apart. And so for me, the biggest game-changer was embracing the idea of working with a team. And I think as solo entrepreneurs, this can seem pretty counterintuitive because we think that it’s just us against the world, right? But working with the team is so smart. When I started off as a virtual assistant, I was a subcontractor for an amazing business owner who was able to step in if I needed to take some time off. I always knew that if I needed to say I cannot work 20 hours for this client because my health is falling apart, I need just to work like five hours a week.
07:37 I wasn’t going to screw over that client because there was going to be another VA able to come in and help that client seamlessly because I was working as part of a team. And now, to be honest, I have my own team that can support me when I need it. The truth is that if you want to have an ongoing partnership with clients, you have to have a partnership with somebody, whether it’s another VA, whether it’s a member of a team, you have to know somebody who can step in when needed. Or you need to stick with just taking one-off projects, you know, working on completing a website or just doing this project for this launch because those products are a little bit more forgiving. Another thing that has saved my butt more than once is building standard operating procedures for regular tasks that I do with my clients.
08:33 So as you’re working one week, I want you just to go to use loom Loom.com, and do a screen share of everything that you do for a client on a regular basis. This program is free, it’s based in the cloud, they can all live there forever and it’s just a way for you to capture what you do if you have the time or the spoons really. It’s also helpful for you to have like a step by step guide of that process with passwords, programs. And any other relevant information that somebody is going to need. Because when you hit that point where you need to hand off a task because you can’t do it you can just give that person who’s helping you out all the information they need and that steps them through it. They can watch the screen share, they can read the document, they have the passwords, they need everything is there thought out so that when you’re in the middle of a flare, you don’t have to think about it.
09:40 And finally, I’m living with brain fog right now. So this one is really, really important, but I have to write absolutely everything down. If I have a fleeting thought about a client, I need to have a place to house that thought because I will not remember it later. So right now I use a project management tool. It’s called ClickUp, and I can get it on my computer and my phone and having things that work in a cloud-like that. Honestly, it’s really important because there will be moments when I’m not able to sit up enough to access my laptop. But I can use my phone and I can write stuff down on my phone and know that it will be there, whether I’m working on my computer or my phone. And for some people, you might be more familiar with Trello, which is another project management program that works really well.
10:34 I’ve used it in the past, but the idea is just that when you have a thought about a client project or something that you need to do or something, you need to tell somebody, you need to have a place to write it down. So it’s easy to find when you have the energy to work, it helps you be more productive because you can sit down and that hour that you have, that you can work before you need to go rest again and you can get as much done as possible because you’ve really collected all of those things, there is a rabbit trail that you can follow to keep up with client projects and be able to take care of yourself. And so all of those systems are really important. But I have to be honest with you that even though I’ve built all the systems in my business, Oh gosh, I struggle when I need to take a step back and I’m flaring.
11:30 I feel just so incredibly guilty asking other people to help. And I’m going to be honest, I’m stubborn and I do not like admitting when I can’t do something. I was talking to my biz bestie, Sarah, about this last week and she gave me some tough love, she asked me, “wouldn’t it just be better if you took some time off instead of to push yourself through the flare? Like aren’t you going to just make it worse?” And she also lovingly reminded me that asking for help is something that we just have to do when we’re chronically ill. Even if we don’t want to we cannot be as independent as we think we should be. When we have a chronic illness, we depend very much on the kindness of others, which can feel very, very difficult. And I was thinking a lot about what she said.
12:20 And then I thought about this moment that I have when I’m able to get so wrapped up in the work that I’m doing because I honestly, I love it so much that the pain and the fatigue, they just fade to the background. It’s not that they’re not there because they’re always there, but it’s just that I’m thinking of something else so fully, that they don’t dominate every breath that I’m taking and when I’m working in this zone, I’m moving slower than I usually do. There are chances that there are probably some big mistakes thrown in there that I’m going to have to fix later, but in those moments, I just feel like I’m me again. Like I see that person that I am apart from my chronic illness and yes, you know, if we’re talking about the stages of grief, it’s totally denial at its finest, but there are days that are so rough that I really need those moments to keep me going.
13:23 Chronic illness has this way of robbing you of so much. And so having those moments of rediscovering yourself beneath all of the layers of pain and fear and anxiety, it’s just really powerful. And I have to be honest that it’s one of the biggest gifts that entrepreneurship has given me. And so I don’t know if for you it’s getting up and working on a client project or whether it’s finding a book that you love and being able to read a few chapters and just get away from it all. Whether you are bingeing Cheers on Netflix, I don’t know what you’re doing, but I just know that it’s important to have something that helps you for just a few minutes to step away from letting your chronic illness dictate everything that you do and finding some way to tap into that person that you are beyond the illness and the pain and the anxiety that comes from not knowing what tomorrow is going to bring.
14:26 So in a lot of ways, me sitting down here and recording this podcast one way of helping me to process that. So I really thank you guys for listening to my little therapy session and I hope that this was helpful. It is important to have systems. It’s important to say you need help and it’s important to also recognize when sometimes pushing on is actually helpful to your mental health. So that’s this episode of the Spooniepreneur Podcast. You guys have been giving me some amazing comments. I’ve had some conversations with people who are listening to the podcast and I’m going to be honest in this flare, it’s been one of the things that’s brought me the most joy is seeing all the people who are listening and starting to hear your stories and it’s really, really powerful.
15:21 So if you haven’t liked rated or reviewed the podcasts on iTunes, please, please, please do that. I also have a Facebook community full of Spooniepreneurs just as a place that we can get real about what that looks like to live with chronic illness and just have a place that’s just ours to talk about it. So until next time, thanks, guys. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Spooniepreneur Podcast. If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe, recommend rate and review on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. To find show notes and to get connected to our community of Spooniepreneurs go to http://www.theresilientva.com. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next week.