Capacity planning for small businesses can be a challenge. It involves mapping out existing and anticipated work, estimating the resources needed, planning for the unexpected, and regularly reviewing the plan. Capacity planning can help business owners take back control of their time and move from a reactive to a proactive strategy.

Do you ever feel like you are doing it ALL and are finding it hard to keep up?

When you are a solopreneur or small business owner with a very small staff, you do all the things in your business. You’re the product maker, the head of marketing, the bookkeeper, the office manager, and so on and so on.

With all of these responsibilities, how do you get things done?

And are they even the “right things?”

In this blog I give solopreneurs and small business owners tips to improve time and efficiency. Included is a link to download Your Most Impactful Work Guide.

In this of Small Business Stories, I chat with Liv Vieira, my powerlifting coach and co-owner of Iron Alliance Athletics Centre. It’s been exciting to watch Liv pivot and grow in her business over the last couple of years and see that she runs her small business with the same philosophy that she coaches her clients.

“Work on your business not in your business” is a pretty common refrain these days.

In fact, it’s been part of business vernacular for 36 years when Michael Gerber shared that exact advice in his book “The E-Myth Revisited.” While the words seem pretty self explanatory, it’s sometimes not clear what the difference is between the two.

And when you are busy running a business, taking time to figure out the difference is often time we don’t have.

In this blog I share my thoughts and practical ways you can make this shift.

Being vs. Doing. Doing vs. Being.

There is no versus.

We need to be focused, take action, stay committed, and be productive in our business. The key is to not let it take over.

Remember you're still a human being and you need to feel your feelings, create, bring awareness to your actions and impact.

Blending that being and doing together can mean taking the consistent action that you need to move your business forward

In some sense, as small business owners, we all fall victim to hustle culture. But when does hustle culture become counterproductive to our business and, more importantly, our self-care? In this episode of small business stories, my guest is Stephanie Woodward, we chatted about dedication to your business, the difference between entrepreneurial energy and grind, and how to ensure you’re taking care of the human behind the business.

Business isn’t always success and it isn’t always the manicured beautiful posts you see on social media.

It can also be messy, turbulent, overwhelming.

And last quarter, I overestimated my capacity.

Read on to find out how I’m moving forward and my advice for you.

Time can fly by in a blur. It feels so hectic, and I’m never really sure if I’ve got the things done that I planned.

But when I sit down to reflect, I find that even though it felt hectic and unclear, I still made progress on my goals.

There is inevitably a “Wait, What?” moment. How did that happen? Here I was feeling uncertain about my progress, and now I find that I’m right on track.

The thing is– the structure that I have in place is there to ensure that I get to that next best step and also to care for myself as a human. Which means, if I just keep picking away at the next step, eventually it all comes together.

Image Source: Instagram @lizandmollie

When starting a business, many of us like to ask ourselves, “what’s important to me as a business owner?” “What do I value?” The challenge is not only naming those values but creatively executing them in a way that they show up throughout your small business. Your business values are integral to your relationships with your clients and how they perceive you.

Boundaries are the guardrails that we put up for ourselves and our business that help define what we will and will not do. When we can stretch and when we’ve gone too far. What we will accept and what we will not.

In this episode of Small Business Stories, I speak with Skye Paul from Running Fox Beads about boundaries in her business.

Don’t let ideas freeze you with indecision. See them as the powerful advantage they are. Practice discerning which ones are most important.

Sometimes it’s not just the work that gets in the way of finishing projects, it can also be affected by how we feel. One of the hardest parts of being a small business owner is also managing all the emotions that come with running a business.

Here are three of the common feelings that I come across that prevent us from getting projects done.

Sometimes you gotta look at your business as you would a potential date. Is it a fixer-upper? Or is it love at first sight?

There is a difference between learning how to use a tool and understanding how to use that tool in a way that will benefit you & your small business. Just because a tool fills a gap, doesn’t mean that you are in a place to use that tool effectively. Here is how I evaluate tools for my business.

In this first episode of Small Business Stories, I talk with Emily Oriold, Co-Founder & Artistic Producer of The Norm Foster Theatre Festival, about taking risks in business. Emily shares her entrepreneur journey. We talked about trusting your gut, the power of the community you surround yourself with, and not letting fear dictate your momentum. This conversation was a joy for me.

Reflecting on last year seemed like a daunting task. Last year was hard, and I wasn’t sure that I’d accomplished that much. I was pleasantly surprised. Turned out my “what is the next best step” resulted in completing some significant projects for my business.