316: Dealing with Grief as a Business Owner
Brought to you by Pet Sitters Associates. Use ‘Confessional’ at checkout
Summary
How do you deal with grief as a business owner? We don’t always have the luxury of being able to not show up for the work. We have to find healthy ways of working through the grief process and giving ourselves permission to take guilt free time away. We walk through six things to consider when walking through grief as a business owner. Then, Natasha O’Banion answers, “What does it mean to be efficient in my business?”
Main topics
Stages of grief
6 Things to consider
Seek help!
Grief isn’t linear
Ask a Business Coach
Main takeaway: Life as a business owner is not conducted in a vacuum, so recognize when to take a step back.
Links
a full list of crisis hotlines around the globe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
grief, business, day, clients, pet, life, stage, process, feel, important, business owner, grieving, delegate, guilt, people, crisis hotlines, dealing, overwhelmed, focus, space
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin, Natasha
Meghan 00:10
Hello, I'm Meghan. I'm Collin, and this is Pet Sitter confessional and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Hello, welcome to episode 316 316. Hello, thank you to pet sitters associates and our Patreon members. And we actually have had a few questions this week about being a Patreon member. And what that means. We had a question if you could do it from Canada.
Collin 00:37
Yes, Patreon is a global platform. So it doesn't matter where you are, you can become a member of our Patreon. And in addition to that, there was also some questions about one of the tiers has a monthly meetup and how does this work? This is not in person this has done over zoom. And we all find a time where we come together and just sit in share and have some stories and have a laugh about what's going on and just have a little bit of community before we go about our day.
Meghan 01:06
So being a Patreon member means financially supporting the show every month, which we very much appreciate. If that's something that interests you, you can go to pet sitter confessional.com/support. Today's topic dealing with grief as a business owner comes from a listener who reached out to us on Instagram, they wrote, This has probably been the hardest year I've ever dealt with while being a business owner. And although it has been extremely difficult, and I have a lot of sadness inside me, I still show up every day with a smile and perform as if it's the happiest day of my life. This summer alone, I've lost three friends, my own dog 13 years, my fiance's father and my own mother just a week ago. And I have felt like giving up so many times, but I haven't. And I just tell myself that I'm going through some of the hardest days I will ever experience in my entire life. But my business is still thriving. And my clients have been so supportive with everything that has been going on that having them in my life actually made dealing with everything else. So much easier.
Collin 02:01
Life as a business owner is not conducted in a vacuum. Things happen all the time. And yet, we still have a business to run.
Meghan 02:10
Yeah, clients pass away, family members die, you may get a bad health diagnosis, the business is failing. These things happen personally, and in our business as well. And they deeply impact us. We've talked about this before, but we are business owners, we are the our businesses, our babies, and when things happen in our personal life, it does affect our business. And obviously when things happen in our business, it affects our personal life as well.
Collin 02:35
You have hopes and dreams for your for your life that you want to accomplish. And sometimes those get crushed, maybe you're ready to buy a house and start a new life, only to get turned down for the mortgage that is a grieving process that's going to impact you, it's going to change kind of how you look at the world around you.
Meghan 02:54
Or maybe you wanted to grow your business. But all of a sudden, a worldwide pandemic happens and you are not able to do that anymore for a period of time.
Collin 03:03
And if you haven't heard, there are stages of the grief process. And what's also important, and we're going to touch on this many times throughout this episode. None of these stages look the same for the next person there. We all experience them in different ways. So the first stage of grief is denial,
Meghan 03:20
you may not understand what has just happened, you may be confused or easily distracted forgetting things sometimes. The next stage is anger. And we all usually can identify this one pretty easily. We are impatient or frustrated. It can come across as sarcasm or a little bit irritability or passive aggressive. And then after anger, we sometimes start to bargain, we feel that guilt or shame, we start to worry or compare ourselves to others through this grief process of oh, I'm not grieving like this other person is
Collin 03:52
the bargaining stage is usually followed by depression, where we change our sleeps, we have reduced energy, we cry at times that are unexpected to us. So we can feel overwhelmed and helpless and sad. And in despair.
Meghan 04:06
The last stage is acceptance. This could take a very long time to get through or it can take a short amount of time. But we can feel some wisdom come about we are mindful of our behaviors, we are able to be vulnerable and tolerate emotions and really able to come to a full sense of the grief that we experienced and we are able to move on from it.
Collin 04:29
And while we say this is a cycle, it's not a progression that goes through this you do kind of go from one stage you may take a couple of steps to a different stage and then kind of work your way up and down and through this so that over time you generally start consistently landing on acceptance on the event that has occurred.
Meghan 04:48
And so some things to consider when you are dealing with grief as a business owner. The first one is to accept that there will be days that you don't get anything done. This is very important to realize because we try at least I, as a pet sitting business owner tried to get everything done all the time at the same time. But when you are dealing with a, basically a crisis in your life, whether it's personal or business, the grief can be really crippling. And so recognizing that you are maybe not get anything done on your to do list today, and that's okay. You may have a lot of plans, but you might be physically or mentally or emotionally unable to do anything. And that is okay.
Collin 05:30
Yeah, this is where a lot of the when we're in the stage of denial, and we bounce back to that, or we're sit in that for a while, where we are at either actively avoiding things we become easily distracted, we have mindless behaviors, where we aren't able to focus because we are so exhausted from the process of grief,
Meghan 05:50
this can be very hard as a solopreneur. Or even if you have a team, because obviously we're a service based business, and people rely on us for the care of their pets day in and day out. So what does this look like as a pet business owner?
Collin 06:05
Well, it is incredibly frustrating. Because again, as you sit back and you we may come in with a day, full of energy full of plans and things that we want to get done only to have an instant reminder, from a coffee cup that you pick up, that was your grandma's. And now you go back down into depression or anger and denial, and you just can't focus that day. And all of those things that you want to get done and worked on, just can't and aren't happening. But we're taking care of people's pets, we are taking care of people's homes and livelihoods and giving them peace of mind. So as the person who wrote into a said, Sometimes, she did have to pretend like it was the best day of her life and that she was happy. And I think what's important here is that you can focus on small things and other things external to yourself to motivate you through those times where you're struggling. So maybe that is, well, if I don't show up, the pets aren't going to get let out to go pee. So I need to show up for them. Maybe I can't show up for my self today. But I can't show up for the pets and make sure that they are cared for and kind of externalize a little bit of this motivation. Well, and
Meghan 07:13
maybe if you are at that stage of you need a little bit of comfort to get you through this, that you can take your grandmother's mug with you in the car, you can fill it with your coffee for the day. And that can be a little way of her being with you throughout the day of you driving to pets. Yep.
Collin 07:29
listeners may be wondering why we're talking about grandmother's coffee confidence, because I'm currently drinking out of my grandmother's our coffee cup.
Collin Funkhouser 07:38
But other things that we need to consider when we are going through this process of good. I'm a business owner, I'm a solopreneur. I have things to get done. But I'm also going through this really tough time. The second thing to consider is to possibly change your surroundings. a diversity of environment allows for new thoughts and a relief from being surrounded by the reminders of what's happening and going on. We're not actively avoiding and pretending like things didn't happen. But we are putting ourselves in new situations. So try a new commute to a client's location, try a different route on a walk. If you do a lot of work from home, find a coffee shop, if you find do a lot of work at a coffee shop, try working at home to add a little bit of variety in your life that's going to expose you to new things, especially during a time where newness isn't always the most exciting thing, this may
Meghan 08:26
be a good time to redecorate or tackle a new project that is nothing related to a grief or the anxiety that you are experiencing.
Collin 08:36
I think a major factor in helping us as we go through the grieving process is to give ourselves time and space to do that. But in order to make that step and give ourselves that time and space, we have to be able to delegate tasks in our life. Yeah, because
Meghan 08:50
I mean grief, it burdens us mentally, it sometimes makes us unable to make some decisions. Or if we're presented with even a few options, we can't make a decision because we are overwhelmed. So offload what you can so that you're not under this seemingly avalanche of choices. You know, if you're a parent just died. Maybe this is the year you hire a CPA and a tax accountant. So you don't have to worry about that you take that off of your plate. Because you recognize that this year, you just need to really focus on yourself. And you need to offload some of those things that you don't necessarily like to do, but you have to do. So next year, you may be able to take back over your taxes or you may realize that having a CPA and a tax accountant is great and it really lessens your burden. So this year though, you don't want to have to worry about all that. So you delegate it to somebody else.
Collin 09:44
Or maybe you just cannot handle having to go through the process of cleaning your home and the upkeep of that at the end of a long day. So for a little while. It'd be a month hire a cleaner to come in once a week to see that your house is cared for because you You aren't able to attend to that right now because your energies are focused on other things. Because we are grieving we are mentally physically, emotionally verdant and overwhelmed. I think that's one aspect of grief that very few people recognize and appreciate is just the immense amount of overwhelm, you start to go into and how little it takes to send you into that area of overwhelm and unable to move forward and make decisions. It could be just as simple where the light turned red. And now you can't process anything that day. Or maybe you couldn't find the shirt that you want to wear. And that just blows all of your plans. We operate at 100% When we are going through grief, and we can't operate above that, because we it burns us out through that. And so that's why finding space and time in your day to both a go through the grieving process. But be to mentally decompress is so important. And delegating is one of the best ways to do that. If you have staff, now's a great time to hand over more of the visits to them, or more of the admin work to them, and trust that they will do it. Well.
Meghan 11:10
Something that we've done when having grief in our life is ordering the HelloFresh boxes. We really like those because we don't want to have to think about you know what's for dinner tonight? Or do I need to go to the grocery store and get these three items, it's already done for us. And we all we have to do is just chop it up and put it in the oven.
Collin 11:28
It really is nice. This is not a promo for them or anything. But yes, as many decisions as you can take off your plate and automate as in your life as much as possible. And meals is a huge one. And that takes a lot of stress and strain off you just in in a good week, let alone when you're going through this entire grief process.
Meghan 11:45
And so that's why another thing to think about when dealing with grief as a business owner is trying not to overthink or fixate on things.
Collin Funkhouser 11:53
When my mom passed away. All I could think about was my own death and the death of everyone else around me. What would happen if that would what would it be like? It was a spiral. And I was so focused on death that I actually didn't live for a very long time afterwards, overthinking and fixating on what happened is a natural response to grief. And I think, because it's because it's such a life changing event. How could we not think about it all day. I know for me personally, I felt guilty when I didn't fixate on it. But after my mom died, I remember the day I didn't think about her. And it just killed me with guilt to think that this major event happened to this person that was so important to me. And I didn't think about her today. So I went into this guilt cycle. And it kept happening over and over again. So what do we do about this? What should we focus on instead, our life, we should focus on on our life or those around us that may still need us or those around us who we still have connections to that we have a way of influencing on, you don't have to be perfect with this. And that's okay, it will keep coming back around and around. But the more we look internally to ourselves and realize that we are important that we have value, that we have things that need to get done that we have a life worth living, the easier it is to take one more step at a time.
Meghan 13:21
And this can be pretty easy in our job because a lot of us got into this because we love the the animals that we care for the cat cuddles and the dog licks that is a great aspect to our job. And so when we focus on that, and I know, you know, we have to all of a sudden have to deal with all the admin stuff and all the business side of things. But when we just, you know, cuddle with the animals, and when we just provide the care that they need, it can lift our hearts, that I am here for a reason. I am here for a purpose, and I make their lives better.
Collin 13:55
Yeah, what can I do today? Maybe it's not that I want to do the admin work. So we're going to delegate that away. What can I do today? What's one thing I can do today? And you're right in the work that we do? It's not just what can I do? It's what do I get to do and knowing that my work provides an immense amount of value to other people. That is a very special connection that we have with that. But sometimes it's hard to do that alone. And so I will say that another aspect that we have to focus on while we're going through the grieving process is finding a community because you are not alone. being around others who are grieving is is an amazing healing process.
Meghan 14:37
It can be really isolating to be or to feel like you are broken and you are hurting and seeing everyone around you like they're perfect and they have everything together. They have all their ducks in a row and we went to a mental health fair back in in the spring in the spring and we actually I had thought that The time for the most mental health crisis is in people was in the winter when it's cold, and it's dark outside. But the lady actually had said to us that it's actually the spring when the flowers are starting to bloom. And life is coming out again in nature.
Collin 15:18
Yeah. And yet they look at the world and they say, I don't match what I see around me. Everyone else is really excited for spring all the winters gone, there's more sunshine, the flowers are out this, the birds are in the air, but I am not okay, I'm not okay. And there was such a huge delta between how they felt and what they perceived in the world around them, that they really did impact them greatly. And we see this this happens whenever you are feeling so overwhelmed, so defeated, so depressed, and yet you walk down the street and everyone else looks like they're happy, everyone else looks like they're fine, that you don't feel seen at that point, you don't feel recognized or acknowledged, and you feel more and more isolated.
Meghan 15:58
But that's why it's so important to have people around you that you can go to that there's a safe, or a safe place and a safe space that you can be vulnerable. Because being around a broken and hurting people helps us understand that we are not alone and that it's okay to not be okay.
Collin Funkhouser 16:14
Yeah, we relaxed and stop feeling like we have to be the ones to put on a front and fake our way through the end of the day. It's exhausting. It's both mentally and physically and emotionally draining. Because when we go through that process of fake it till we make it, it actually stops us from processing our own feelings because we walk around basically, actively denying our feelings and pushing them aside and say, No, I can't feel that right now. No, I can't feel that right now. I can't do that right now, I've got to do this. So we live in a state of basically unintentional denial in our lives, and that delta grows more and more.
Meghan 16:50
But it can really be hard, because again, we have these pets that we need to care for day in and day out, and their owners are relying on us and the pets are relying on us as well. So what do we do when I don't feel okay, but I still have these jobs that I need to fulfill?
Collin 17:05
Well, we certainly can still do work and not feel okay about ourselves. But I think that can also send us into some unhealthy places. So if you are comfortable, be open with your clients and setting proper expectations and bring in outside help. Now, not everyone is going to be okay with this. And that's totally up to you. Now, you will be impacted by your grief. Remember that you will be impacted by your grief. So it's okay to let your clients know that you're going through a hard time right now. And maybe make maybe taking some more time for yourself or you have decreasing availability in your schedule. And this is where you dig into your community of maybe you are attending a grief counselor or a grief group or a close knit other business network. You dig into them, you say, hey, I really need to step back right now to focus on myself and make sure that I'm okay, can you please take over some of these clients and refer out for a time because again, we need that space and separation to make sure that we are doing okay, first and foremost,
Meghan 18:10
well, and you can be as open or not as open as you choose to be you do not have to give them your entire story of why you have to take a step back and take some time in your business. You don't have to divulge any of that.
Collin 18:25
Yeah, exactly. You can just say, I mean, you can you can choose to say I'm needing to take more time to myself for for a period or you can say I'm having less availability. Or you could just say I'm not available for that time. Here's the people that I'm referring out to however you want to work. But part of this is when we are honest about our limitations in times of grief. It frees you from guess what this word keeps coming back here, guilt. It frees you from the guilt of feeling like you must live up to your obligations and expectations that mostly you've set for yourself. Grief and guilt go hand in hand. And the process of grieving is a lot of overcoming our own guilt for what we are going through and what we are unable to do while we work through that process.
Meghan 19:09
Today's episode is brought to you by our friends at pet sitters associates. As pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members and that's why pet sitters Associates is here to help. for over 20 years they have provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. Because you work in the pet care industry. You can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections and complete freedom and running your business. Learn why pet sitters Associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote at pets@llc.com. You can get a discount when joining by clicking membership Pet Sitter confessional and using the discount code confessional at checkout to get $10 off. Check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again at pets@llc.com throughout the stages of grief and your grieving process, whether it be personally or in your business. It's Very important to remember that everyone grieves differently. And that is okay, you should not compare. Even if you went through the same exact scenario as somebody else, you will go through the grieving process differently. It's important to be aware of dangerous grief, so any self harm or an unhealthy form of release. So that's yet another reason why it is very important to have a support system and a community around you so they can hold you accountable. And they can say, Hey, are you okay? Today I noticed this change in you, is there something going on. But if you find yourself in need of help, ASAP, and you don't know who to talk to, if you're in the United States, you can dial 988 Right now, and somebody will answer the phone and help you.
Collin Funkhouser 20:43
And there are crisis hotlines all around the globe. So if you're in England, you can dial 08006895652 If you're in Canada, 1-866-585-0445. And if you're listening to us in Australia, 131114. And please check out the show notes for a full list of crisis hotlines around the globe, to get connected to somebody who can you can talk to right now.
21:11
Please also
Meghan 21:12
remember that grief is not a sign of weakness, yeah, grief, it crushes us, sometimes we go through the process, but it is not what defines you. And it does not make you weak, and it does not make you less of a person, right?
Collin 21:27
Well, in many of us, as entrepreneurs, as small business owners, you know, like I'm a, you know, bad a business owner, I'm a, I'm a boss, lady, I'm a boss guy, I've got this, ooh, look at me, I'm tough. Look at all that I'm doing. And we go through this grief process. And then all this doubt, all this guilt comes in of there's no way I could be doing this, what look what I was doing, and you start to second guess yourself and you feel like you aren't capable anymore, or inadequate and completely inadequate of I don't know what I'm doing. I can't tell this to my employees, I can't tell this to that my clients, or anybody around me, because I have an image to protect. I don't want to be viewed as as a weakling as I go through this stuff. And it's a cry when I start my day, because that was when my father's favorite time of day was no grief is a natural, healthy, legitimate process for us that it is okay to feel and work through those emotions. And that that is something that we have to grow to accept instead of hide and bury, because that's what we think is necessary as the entrepreneur and solo business owner,
Meghan 22:31
well, and you need time to process everything, as I said in the beginning, that some of these stages are going to take more time than others. And you may backtrack a little bit and as you work through it, and that is okay. There is no time limit on grief.
Collin 22:44
Unfortunately, yeah, it time doesn't really heal all wounds, we just grow into a different person at the end of the day. And part of growing and accepting that is a lot of simplifying our days, and what's on our plate for a time period. And knowing that we need space again, finding that space, both physical space, emotional space, mental space, to properly process everything. And a good check is anytime you start to go through a grief cycle and the emotions start to well up. If you find yourselves repeatedly pushing those away into the side, because you have other stuff to work on. Okay, we may need, we may have to do that for a period because we've got a grind in our business or it's a busy time or there are emergencies that we have to put out. But if that becomes how we deal with our grief is by an a day out by slamming the door shut on it. Okay, that's a big sign to me that it's time to really pull back on everything, shut everything off for just a blip and do a big assessment of how we're doing, do a check in with some friends,
Meghan 23:47
because you will have good days and bad days. So don't be surprised by the grief cycle. Again, it's not a linear process. And I think it's also important to remember to breathe. It's obviously something we do all the time. But taking a few minutes throughout the day of doing the deep breaths is really you know, we talked about this in the chaos episode how you deal with the chaos in your business. But it is important here to to remember to take deep breaths to kind of come back within yourself and kind of block out the world and say and check in with yourself and say, Okay, how am I doing? How am I feeling? What do I need to change right now? And how do I want to be feeling?
Collin 24:28
Yeah, how am I eating right now? How am I exercising right now? What's my sleep like right now? All of those things can actually add onto and further complicate our grief process and how we process new inputs and can dictate some of our overwhelm and some of our anger and frustrations and our other emotions that are outflows of this grief. So if we don't take that time, if we don't take that space, if we're not taking care of ourselves in the moment, we will be further hindering ourselves for processing things. is in a in a healthier and healthier way. And it's it's kind of stunting our growth and prolonging the time period that we feel like we have to work through this.
Meghan 25:09
So I think dealing with grief as a business owner is really a lot about checking in with yourself and asking yourself the hard questions. And am I okay today.
Collin Funkhouser 25:19
So this hasn't exactly been a really fun, tearful episode. But I do hope that if you are both experiencing grief, you have experienced grief or if grief comes into your life at some point in the future that this episode or people in the community can give you a little bit of hope, and can give you stuff to work on and focus on and strive for. Because ultimately, as Megan said, checking in with ourselves. Grief is a very personal process. It's a very personal thing to us. But being disconnected from a community and others around us further isolates us, making us feel alone and unsure of what to do with feelings when they come up. So the best thing that you can do right now is to start plugging in to a broader community. Start with close knit local friends that you can check in with regularly. If you're not a member of our Facebook group, please join so that you can be connected with senators from across the globe who I promise you have all experienced grief, trial and turmoil in their personal lives that have impacted their business. And don't be afraid or ashamed to reach out for help and ask questions. I promise you, every single person who is in our group, including ourselves, have sat in the car at some point in the day and cried their eyes out because they just couldn't take it another step. But they needed some relationships, they needed some connection to help them process that in the moment. So we hope that you can do that and hope you can get connected to others. And if you need help, if you need guidance on what to do, please help. Please reach out to us. We'd love to talk with you and help get you connected to others locally and in the broader community as well.
Meghan 26:57
Yeah, you can either send us an email at feedback at petsitter confessional.com. Or we actually have a phone number. We do yes, we did. Don't ask me what it is. Six sorry. 63648260. If you would like to leave us a voicemail.
Collin 27:11
On this week's Ask a business coach segment with Natasha Albanian, she answers the question. What does it mean to be efficient in my business?
Natasha 27:18
Yeah, being efficient and looking at that machine, right, putting gas in the machine and making sure everything is running smoothly, in the quickest, shortest amount of time. A big thing in the pet world being efficient is our driving time, we spent a lot of time in the car driving around town from one client to one client because we're like, you know, well Susie, call me on the south side. And then Betsy call me on the west side. So now my clients all live a good distance apart, we have to remove that because being efficient means staying in one dense area, making sure we maximize when we're getting to that one spot. And then when we max out all the potential for every corner block, then we expand to the next territory. But if you're allowing your clients to dictate where you know, oh, I didn't know I was gonna have a client over here and I didn't know I was gonna have a client over there. Well, now you're driving 25 minutes with traffic back and forth just for 30 minutes, it no longer makes sense. So we would call that non efficient at that point.
Collin 28:15
Understand where those limits are those boundaries. And really I think looking at those numbers and going is this actually profitable the way I'm currently operating and where's my money going to and my business.
Natasha 28:26
Even with petsitting We don't charge those almost overnight fees. We don't charge the sleeping in our house overnight fees. We're charging overnight and fees the same price as pet sitting fees. So we want to make sure if a client is going to get you know a three time drop in pets it is not going to be a comparable price. If you they wanted you to spend the night I see that a lot like their pet sitting rate is the same exact rate is there almost overnight will almost overnight has you sitting in their house for at least six hours. Why would that be a similar price
Meghan 29:04
if you would like to join the Tosh was monthly membership group you can do so at automated seo.com and use the code P SC 20 for 15% off. We very much appreciate you listening to this today and hope you found it helpful. Thank you also to pet sitters associates and our Patreon members and we will talk with you next time.
29:22
Bye
