6 ways to stress less and work less

Now, I'm gonna say one thing that's gonna surprise you and that is I do believe there are times that businesses where we need to hustle. Don't get me wrong I am not a fan of hustle culture and I don't think your entire business life should be entirely hustle focused. But I do believe that there are seasons where we should hustle, but they're also seasons where we should stress less and work less. Today I want to share six ways that we can stress less and work less because I believe at By Kayleigh - there are 1 million resources on how to fill up your diary, but maybe not so many on how to work a little bit less in a business. Let's go!

1. Create Templates

I hear you guys talking about how much time you spend doing your emails. Now you know might not be ready to invest in a CRM system just yet, but one simple hack that I have for you that can save you a bit of time is to create some templates in your notes app or saved on your computer ready to go. I have templates for almost everything, from common questions that I get asked from brides to common responses that I find myself saying over and over in my business. I literally copy and paste these templates and what that does is it allows me to think a little bit less about what I need to say because guys… we have probably given these responses over 100 times in our business. You guys know that I like to work smarter not harder here, and one of the easiest ways you can do that is just having some templates of the most common things that you say to your clients mapped out somewhere, for you to easily access.

One thing I also find is having a document with some troubleshooting responses to some hard discussions. I hate conflict but having this document that has some go to responses for some of the harder questions that I get asked really allows me to stress less when I am asked them. For example, one question we get asked a lot in the bridal industry is, why does the bride cost more than everyone else. When we get asked this, it can sometimes be really frustrating because really what we want is for our brides to value and know this already. You can take the stress out of the situation by having a backed up template ready to go for when you are asked this. What I have found it it's actually takes away so much of the stress around the situation because I just have a go to response already prepped. I have this for a lot of common questions such as:

• Why does the bride cost more?

• Can i have a discount?

• Other makeup artists are cheaper

• Can you do this for free?

PS: I have a lot of these emails scripts actually available within the Level Up Club if you ever need help with any of this.

2. Give yourself Time Off

One thing when you an entrepreneur that can happen is that you can actually end up overworking yourself throughout the year. You don't have a manager or a senior member of staff telling you “hey you have X amount of holiday days to take this year you better book them in”. It's just us that is responsible for this and on average most entrepreneurs actually take a lot less holiday vacation and they would do working an ordinary job. One thing I like to do is at the very beginning of the year, I like to map out the weeks that I would like to be off. We don't have to ask anyone for that time off, but we do need to make sure that we are plotting it in and making sure that we take it. Here in the UK, there is an average holiday days of 28 days per year. Use that as a starting point if you want and at the beginning of every year map out your 28 days. But remember we are in charge here, and it is one of the most beautiful freedoms that we have as entrepreneurs, so you can take as much or as little as you want, but just make sure you are taking it. Top tip for this: make sure that you're having adequate time off throughout the year, this is something that I'm not very good at just yet but I'm really going to try at it next year. I often find myself working four months in a row with no holiday so take a look at your calendar and make sure that you have good breaks scattered throughou

3. Identify your stressors

Okay, this one might sound a little bit simple, but one tip that really helped me stressless was work out exactly what stresses me out. Take a blank piece of paper grab your pen and write down the top five things in your business that bring you the most stress. It's natural in business to not like every single thing that we do, and there's certain things in my own business that bring me a lot of stress. An example of this is in my bridal business. A few years ago, it's no secret that I was tremendously unhappy within my bridal business and I actually resulted to thinking that the bridal industry was not for me. When I got some mentoring, I did this exact exercise and I realised it wasn't that the bridal industry wasn't for me it was actually just there were certain things in my business that I wasn't enjoying. One of these was excessive travelling. Here in London, it's quite hard to have a car. And what I was doing was, taking brides from hours outside of London in really hard to get to and remote areas, and it was causing me a lot of stress. I was having to take my kit for several hours on trains and sometimes end up walking over 30 minutes with it to get to the destination. I implemented some boundaries within my business such as only taking brides within London now and expensing travel and uber fees. I really looked at what was making me quite unhappy within my bridal business and I would take each one of those points and I would resolve it. Take each thing that you feel a little bit stressed out about within your business and see if you can come up with a resolution for it. This might seem like quite an easy fix, but it's actually something that all of us forget that we can do with just some simple boundaries.

4. Outsource

You know it was coming, you know I couldn't resist, but genuinely guys the ultimate way to work less is to actually take some things off your plate and give them to somebody whose job it actually is. Things like social media management, general admin, SCO, calendar management,, Facebook ads, there are so many things in a business that we put an expectation on ourselves to do. In actual fact, those jobs take social media management, for example, is a full time job in many businesses that we put on our own shoulders. If you have the budget to, I would seriously invest in an expert who can help take some of these tasks of your plate. Not only does this give you more time within your business, but it also allows you to work a little bit less if you want to. It's no secret that entrepreneurs work sometimes double the hours of a traditional office job. So it's time to rebalance that's a little bit. If you are working relentlessly too much, it might be time to get some help.

5. Systemise

So maybe you are not in a financial position yet to outsource. After all, there are a lot of new make-up artist here in the community as well. Don't worry boo, I've got you! If you are not in a position right now to take on an extra member in your team, you can always lean on the magic of technology to help you. Most things now can be scheduled or systemised. The biggest example, is my own bridal CRM system. I did hire somebody to build this for me, but I know many make-up artist have built their own. The beauty of this can be seen first hand in my own business, where now my bridal admin takes me mere seconds every single week. I'm not even kidding. I would say before it will take me maybe on average 6-9 hours a week to sort out my bridal admin. By implementing a CRM system. I probably spend less than 10 minutes on this a week. Bridal admin, especially if you are a full-time bridal artist is no joke and can sink a lot of your time and can cause you a lot of stress. By using the systems that we have a disposal, we can actually eliminate a lot of the human error that can come with manually managing these things and we can also gain back an amazing amount of time in our business. I would say I used to be fairly stressed out when it came to my bridal admin, but now it is the most stress free thing in the world and I cannot rave about it more.

6. Ideal Client

Hear me out - you're probably wondering how on earth an ideal client can make you stress less and work less? Simply if you are working with clients who adore your work, who you absolutely love working with. The type of clients who get you out of bed in the morning, the type of work that really fills up your soul. That is the work that we need to be aiming for. If you are working with absolutely everybody, saying yes to every single booking, and having a lot of clients that perhaps make you a teeny bit unhappy, then chances are you need to do some ideal client work. Working with your ideal client is really one of the best ways to achieve a happier work life. Happy people, tend to be less stressed, so truly, if you are feeling a teeny bit unhappy at work right now its probably down to WHO you are working with.